EclipseLink Hates MySQL… Probably

Being TopLink’s mutant flipper baby, it’s no surprise that EclipseLink’s (2.0.0) support of MySQL is substandard. If you have been using the two of them together, you may have noticed that LOBs don’t really work quite right. Some of the blame is probably for MySQL, with its multiple length-specific LOB column types, but it at least handles specified lengths and does the work for you. So, if you have been getting exceptions when you’re trying to insert a bunch of data, you’re using EL’s DDL generation, and you have been lazy about fixing it yourself, read on…

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They Should Have Called Java “Molasses”

Possibly a testament to why people hate the JCP, that style of bureaucracy, and why almost everything that isn’t touched by it actually gets things done, I ran into what I would consider a blocker when it was requested that I have the currency symbol and percent signs optional for form inputs using f:convertNumber and found that it was impossible with Mojarra. I can’t see any reason why they would be absolutely required. There isn’t even an option to make them optional with some listed caveats or “we don’t think you should do this, but here’s the gun.”

After about ten seconds of research, I found this enhancement request:

Have f:convertNumber add currency symbol if not present for type=currency

This issue has been rotting there since 2008? It was marked for consideration, its priority reduced, and then rescheduled four times, not even for JSF 1.2? Who puts these retards at the helm?

So, in typical fashion, we have to shoehorn business processes into the framework. Well, not this time. I have decided to abuse AOP once again and patch around it.

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Don’t Panic! Cable TV Rates Increasing in 2010!

Cable bills rising in 2010, how to lock your rate in today
http://www.walletpop.com/blog/2010/01/13/cable-bills-rising-in-2010-how-to-lock-your-rate-in-today/
Josh Smith – Jan 13th 2010 at 12:30PM

The next cable bill that comes in your mail could contain a belated bad start to 2010 in the form of higher prices. Not only are new offerings, like 3-D programming…

I stopped reading right there. Of course, following my instincts, I composed an inflammatory response. “Lock it in at $0. TV is bad for you. It destroys lives, families, and is destroying our country.” This was enough to get at least one TV apologist to come out of the woodwork and try to justify a mass of cancer by the little fetus in fetu inside because it’s still a life!

The news media is destroying our country, I can agree with that. Not all of TV, but most of it. What about the cooking shows? I see you guys watching those from time to time! ha. If anything push the FCC for a la carte TV subscriptions where you get to pay for the channels you want. If that were the case I would probably have about 10 channels and be set.

Good points, but not good enough.

I would rather rent or buy quality shows. The rest, even the crap I’ve watched, is easy to give up. The cooking shows are even shit almost all of the time. It’s just Real World all over again or some fat chick trying to show off. The occasional gem like Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations are just cynical, nihilistic, and/or hedonistic fluff making fun of how stupid everyone is and the intended audience already understands. It’s just passing the time until Rachel Ray comes on and ruins your life. It’s purely optional, and I would rather sit in silence while I eat, since reading while eating is too difficult. Other shows that involve science and nature are on the borderline of expendable entertainment, like Good Eats where you may learn some technique or science behind cooking. Shows like Planet Earth just make you want to kill, so they can be very inspiring and help get you through the day. They’re all available in other forms, though.

All of the aforementioned shows are available off of TV:

… and so on.

It’s also not the news media. It’s the people who watch it. People have been taught that news is actually news and not entertainment. The lines blurred over time and now there’s almost nothing left of “news”. The only way to change it is to stop watching altogether, since they aren’t responsible enough or smart enough to be able to determine which is which. They sit, eat more garbage, get fatter, and are entertained, thinking that this is the only time they get to themselves in their day after getting raped on both ends by their employers, the government, and any purveyor they deal with cutting new holes to rape them, too, so they’re going to be entertained. All other forms of entertainment are practically dead and you can’t even go to the park without the threat of being mugged, perceived or real, or having the park not be covered with graffiti and McDonald’s trash. You can’t even talk to people in public without them suing you. People have lost their imaginations and are too jaded to come up with and enjoy any form of constructive entertainment because TV does it all for them. Watching a cooking show does not make you a chef, watching Friends does not make you funny or cool, and watching MTV does not make you black.

It really boils down to stupid people being irresponsible with their time and lives and TV the catalyst, drug, or whatever that enables it instead of people, I don’t know, educating themselves.

Oh, American Gladiators is on…

I don’t know who Keith Downey thinks he is…

Spam is particularly fun when you have the opportunity to reach a real person on the other side with a snide response, closed bank accounts, electricity turned off in the middle of winter, or a truck of research cadavers. So, Keith Downey, whoeverthefuck that is, at some piece of shit company, SourceEdge (ooh high tech), thinks it’s a good idea to spam my Eclipse development email address with an ad for his wares.

—– “Keith Downey” <KeithDowney.SourceEdge@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I am doing a quick email check with you, to see if there are any IT or
> Engineering jobs, I can help you fill today at your company. I can
> help fill any Contractor positions or Direct-Hire positions or
> Contract-to-Hire positions. Additionally, I can also help fill
> positions in the Accounting / HR / Sales / Management areas too.

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How To Easily Get Row Selection Working With ICEfaces and AspectJ

If you’ve succumbed to not being able to get Spring Web Flow to work with your other framework of choice (I am only using ICEfaces as an example because its fresh in my head) and have to figure out how to reimplement row selection for tables and such, since you can’t readily use SWF’s OneSelectionTrackingListDataModel et al (i.e. result-type=”dataModel” in a flow configuration), there is of course an AOP solution. What can’t it do?!

I have an aspect skeleton sitting around for this, and of course you can use it if you want. (Fuck, you can use the whole library. I just have to get my SCM back online.) You just have to have everything else in place to make it go, like load-time weaving or whatever. Anyway, it’s basically the Decorator pattern, something AOP introductions… are. Here it is…

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