Hi. Bye. part II

On this time last year, this is what I wrote:

When you're dreaming with a broken heart, the waking up is the hardest part.

You roll out of bed and down on your knees
and for a moment you can hardly breathe.

Wondering was she really here.
Is she standing in my room.

No she's not cuz she's gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.

John Mayer, Dreaming with a Broken Heart.

Well, I was prepared for it to happen this time around, which I guess is the silver lining. The last time she disappeared on me, I was crushed. More than I ever knew I could be. This time, I'm saddened that she's not in my life again, but am happy that life is still going on as usual.

I'm gonna miss her just as much this time around, especially after having one amazing night with her, but it isn't going to do what it did to me last time. Too bad this night was all just a matter of perspective. Her and I never could get on the same page, which is a damn shame because the times we were, we were one hell of a couple. Those times were few and far between though and we couldn't communicate worth shit, so I can only hope she finds someone that she can get on the same page with.

As for me, I'll be looking for a woman that can bring out that same emotion I had while with her. But this time have it reciprocated. It was nice to know I could still feel that deeply for someone. For a while I thought I had gone completely cold. Thankfully, I have not. There is someone out there for me and while I patiently wait for her to come (back?) into my life, I'm gonna keep doing what I do.

Never thought my story would come true, but it kind of did. She left as quickly as she came, just like I thought she would. But this time, it took just a bit longer for me to get over her than the guy in my story did and I'm not terribly sure how unfair she thought it was for her to just leave. All I know is that it's time to move forward and believe that if she wanted to be with me, she would have stayed or she'd make it known. C'est la vie.

FairUseCommander

So I have these encoded windows media files that I legally acquired (no, it's not porn) that I could only watch on my windows virtual machine. I wanted to be able to watch the videos at anytime from my mac so I went about trying to figure out how to remove the DRM when I came across FairUseCommander. It makes it pretty simple to remove drm from a batch of files. I've found it very helpful, but I'm running on a brand new xp install in a virtual machine with windows media viewer 9.00.00.4508. I know I read that there are some caveats with the different methods of drm removal so I kept my system pretty fresh. Out of all the different drm removal suggestions, FairUseCommander is the easiest to use.

IBM Rad + Websphere deployment issue

I recently ran into an issue when I would deploy an ear to a WebsShere App Server (WAS) and would receive this error :


AppDeploymentException: [null] java.lang.ClassCastException: org.eclipse.jst.j2ee.commonarchivecore.internal.impl.ArchiveImpl


I generated the EAR using Rational Application Developer (RAD) by simply selecting File > Export and selecting EAR under Java EE.

When I deployed the ear to my local test WAS, it deployed fine, but I received the error when it was deployed to a non test server. It turned out that the ear did not have the deployment descriptor in it and while it was fine for the test server, it is required for the actual server.

To resolve the problem you select the context menu of the ear by right clicking the project and selecting Java EE > Generate WebSphere Bindings Deployment Descriptor. It creates the application XML in the project and everything should deploy correctly.

Installing eclipse plugins into RAD

With eclipse 3.4 and above it's simple. You have to find the shared eclipse install, usually in an IBM folder under SDP, and unzip the downloaded plugin into the "dropin" folder. Seems simple enough, but I keep on forgetting. Given that I am sucking at blogging as of late, I figure I could use this as a place to keep notes.

I just installed the eclemma plugin into RAD 7.5 and, for once, it was simple to do. Yay!

Updated 3:34pm

...or not. Tried installing the PMD plugin. It didn't work from the drop in folder. I had to copy the files directly into the SDP directory. Oh well. If anyone is wondering why I'm doing this manually, for some reason, I get a 403 forbidden response when I run it from the machine inside the government network, so it isn't able to download the plugins when I try to do it from the software updater. When I'm on a personal network, it works fine. Might be a proxy setup thing, but I don't feel like figuring it out.

Dancing to the beat

Being able to really "hear" the music is very important in any dance, but it can be especially difficult when dancing to salsa music. This is because the music has layer upon layer of instruments that can sometimes make it hard to hear the percussion in order to derive the "one" beat. A friend on Facebook recently posted the Salsa Beat Machine which I have been using to strip the rhythm down to only the clave and congas. It really helps to discern between the 3/2 and 2/3 clave when trying to find the one. In any case, if you love latin dancing like I do it should help out your dancing so check it out!

Quotes

Beyond Just Dance

Grand opening is this weekend!!! Check out the calendar on their site. I put it up using Google Apps and Google sites. It was just setting up a template, but it was so easy I didn't have to write a lick of code. Good times. Anyway, check it out! BeyondJustDance.com