I totally read it on Some Guy’s Blog

I recently attended the Pragmatic AJAX training session in Reston, VA. Here’s my writeup!

The Excellent

• I couldn’t have been more impressed with the speakers’ ability to quickly incorporate our feedback into their presentation. I was not alone, I’m sure, when I indicated that the attendees would benefit from more hands-on experience with coding in AJAX. Overnight, we were granted the ability to begin experimenting with some of their presentation slides using AJAX techniques during their lecture! This proved to be the ultimate bite-size morsel to accompany the more substantive formal labs.

• I very much enjoyed the exposure to Selenium and the accompanying Selenium IDE for Firefox. I hope to be able to get more hands-on with this technology in the near future.

• Although Stu was not married to the diagram they prepared outlining the various areas in which both client-side and server-side AJAX technologies could possibly contribute, I felt that the diagram gave me a very useful tool in evaluating any prospective AJAX toolkit that walks in the door. The first thing that happened to me upon returning from this training was “Have you heard of AJAX Framework A or AJAX Framework B?” The answer was that I hadn’t, but at least I have a good rule-of-thumb for figuring out how we might best be able to use that framework.

• Our login to Codecite works, and the presentations are available there! This practically eliminates the need for an explicit debriefing session from me. Wow!

The Good

• Kudos to the Pragmatic Programmers for providing a discount in order to purchase the Pragmatic AJAX book. I had already purchased it, but now their excellent Rails Recipies book can be mine. And I got it for cheap!

• They’re not directly responsible, but I’m happy that Prototype exists. I would never dream of writing more than 100 lines of JavaScript without this framework in tow, AJAX or not.

The Not-So-Good

• Justin, be yourself, but you could probably calm down slightly.

• While it’s not the responsibility of the speakers or the organizers, I would have enjoyed the ability to discuss some of the application of what we were learning with my fellow classmates after hours.

Megan got me XM Radio for my car and I’ve really been enjoying that. It didn’t take long! We also spotted a sale on the boom box unit at a going-out-of-business sale at a Sam Goody franchise, and that will be very useful for work around the house without having to pay for a second unit monthly.

XM Radio is sort of like cable for your radio, for those who aren’t familiar with it. I listened to a song called “Hank Williams, You Wrote My Life”, followed shortly by a song from Broken Social Scene. (On another channel, of course.)

My folks also got me a new oven, which is a lot less sexy, but also a lot more useful, when it all comes down to it.

I haven’t really made any goals for the coming year. I did that for year #26, but they didn’t really seem to match with what I thought was the right thing to do at the time. I’m not sure if it’s my goals or my attitude that need adjusting…

I turn 27 on February 13. That seems pretty old to me. My man Dan Castle hypothesizes that it may be the extra syllable, and I believe that factor cannot be discounted.

I must say that I am more and more disconcerted by the difference in ages between myself and college athletes. (I am a big sports fan, after all.)

I don’t have any reason to belabor this point, but I thought I’d throw it out there. 27 seems a lot more odd to me than seeing 2006 for the first time, but I suppose that I’ll have to get over it.