Michael Maheu

Yesterday I kayaked to Capers Island with a local group and the owner of Sea Kayak Carolina, Scott Szczepaniak. The last day of summer was nearly perfect with cooler weather and lots of sunshine. Winds were gusty up to 20 knots, but slowed down in the evening. We launched from my normal spot at Garris Landing right on the Inter-coastal Water Way (ICW). On the way out we had the wind at our backs and a following tide, so we made great time. The distance to Capers from the landing is about 4.5 miles. One of the reasons for this trip was to scout out camping sites, since you can camp on the island with a permit. My plan is to paddle camp there quite a bit this winter.

I have been using Linux since 1998 in some form or fashion. These days Linux is the only server platform I deal with, and over the years have become very speedy in setting up web, mail, rails, java, and repository servers based on either CentOS or a form of Debian. When I got a new Macbook Pro about four months ago, I got into OS X as it was something new and well, I now had an Apple laptop. OS X works as advertized and is a great operating system. That being said, when it comes to system administration and development I am more productive on Linux. This may not be the case for everyone, but it is for me. I am possibly the odd ball. Most people use Windows because that is what they are use to. I don’t use Windows enough, so I fumble around like a noob in some respects.

Anyway to get to the point. Yesterday I installed Ubuntu on my MacBook Pro and I am now in my comfort zone on Apple hardware. I still have the OS X partition, but at this point things are looking really good. Everything that should work on the MacBook Pro does:

Bluetooth
Wifi
Trackpad
Sound
Dual Displays (Laptop + 20in Cinema)
All video formats
Quick Search (Like Spotlight)
Google Desktop and Google Gadgets
OS X partition mounted
CD Burning
DVD Ripping
iSight (Including Cheese which is like Photo Booth)

Here are some pics:

Funny how we have things in common with people we don’t know. One thing we probably agree on is that work is for the birds. We all try and make the grind the best that we can. Early on in my career I pushed really hard to be the best in my field. I spent many hours on and off the clock to learn programming languages, best practices, design patterns, and even infrastructure concepts and design. To be honest I could go on and on about the technologies I have studied. Now that I am approaching 40, I am trying to find the best way to enjoy life and do the things I want to do while supporting myself and the family. How does a guy like me go off and kayak for a few weeks or even a month without ending up on the street.

Well a few years ago I left my job working for large company in Florida to go into a business partnership and own my life. I wish I could say that it has been awesome and I have paddled all around the world, but that would be false. The truth is, I have the freedom to paddle when ever I want, when I have time. It is true I paddle all the time and many times during the week when folks are slaving away, but then I will end up on call to someone in Japan at 10:00pm. Don’t get me wrong it beats sitting in an office all day trapped, but it does take a lot effort no matter what your situation to get ultimate freedom.

Six months ago I came across a man by the name of Greg Stamer Greg is what I consider to be a professional sea kayaker. In other words, he is at the very top when it comes to skill level. People give him stuff, and pay to have him around for training and lectures. Greg talks on his blog about leaving the working world to follow his kayaking dreams. A success story yes, but even he has had bumps in the road. Still, I am sure that Greg would agree it has been worth the risk to have the freedom to follow your own compass.

For the last three months, I have made it my mission to emerge myself back in sea kayaking. Currently I own two Valley sea kayaks and so far, have put them to good use. This blog about myself will probably be full of technical musings and kayak stories. For now I will leave it at that.

I have been enjoying Groovy and the Grails framework. Basically I am a 10 plus year Java guy, but have emerged myself in Ruby on Rails here and there over the years. I was able to jump onto Grails super fast, especially with the IntelliJ and NetBeans plugins. At this point I can’t see any advantage over Rails other than the fact that I am way faster as a developer in Java. Also, it seems to me that with Groovy and Grails you get all that Java stuff that has been proven in so many enterprise applications. I mean out of the box you are building a web application based on Spring and have access to any Java API you wish.

To be honest I started to develop an application for a large client of mine using Ruby on Rails. I figured this would be my best bet for speed and a quick prototype. I dismissed the fact that I would be making calls to the JIRA (Atlassian.com) API, since it was WebService or their new JIRA 4.0  RESTful Service. Then I said to myself if there are any bumps would it not be great to already be working on the Java realm? Yes, I thought and switched. At that point I was prepared to give Grails a very short time to make me feel confortable. Grails won obviously, as I am now building the application using Grails. I will soon post any pros or cons I come across.