It's been a while since I've posted one of these but I've been a bit busy.  At work I have delivered my first JSF application (and possibly last) to the QA folks.  I personally see a lot of flaws in JSF but I do believe it is probably the most robust web framework I've ever used.  With great tools like RichFaces and Ajax4Jsf (recently merged into one project) you can develop great looking and feature rich web interfaces.  There are some annoying Swing style components you have to work with to get to your data and everything seems to need to be converted into some other JSF type.  You get in return a very appreciated abstraction from Servlet code and a whole lot less javascript.  It seems that even through things went well on this project there are people well above my pay grade making the decision to move towards Swing.  Obviously I'm going to push to use JSF whenever we have the option of building a web application but that may not be where the company is heading.  Better than .Net I suppose.

All work and no play make homer go something something.....go crazy?  Don't mind if I do! 

Well I have not gone crazy but I may have gone Halo 3 crazy.  I beat the single player campaign on Heroic difficulty over a 24 hour span.  Of the nine levels most didn't take more than an hour to complete.  There was a lot of tough spots and trying to figure out what was the best way to attack a specific situation.  Since I've completed the campaign I've played a few games online moving up the ranks to Sergeant Grade 2.  From looking at how the rankings work I think I can make it up to Lieutenant but doubt I can get much higher. 

Probably the most enjoyable part of Halo 3 so far has to be the Campaign Scoring option.  This mode allows you to play through a level again but for a score.  Each level has an achievement for hitting a specific score on the level.  You get bonus points for earning meddles by getting head shots, assassinations (punching an enemy from behind causing them to die) and grenade tagging (some grenades have the ability to stick to an enemy). 

Probably the most important part of Campaign Scoring is have skulls active.  On every level of the game there are skulls to be found that affect how the game is played.  One skulls turn off your HUD, another just turn off your radar and another will give all your enemies double health.  These skulls all have a multiplier that helps you earn more points.  So far I've gotten through the first six levels and have a nice set of skulls activated.  I'm playing campaign scoring on Normal because I find it very easy and no most levels can beat it in under a half hour.  The game really is not much of a challenge on Normal difficulty.


I have made time to do some other stuff as well.  I finally watched Knocked Up and it was a very funny movie.  I think it hit home a few points of married life you don't see mentioned.  It's a solid comedy from the 40 year old Virgin folks so if you liked the one you'll like the other.  I'm still waiting from Lost to start up again and I'm debating if I should start watching Heroes even though I've missed almost the entire first season.  For a limited time the first episode of Heroes was available in HD for free on Xbox Live Marketpalce so I watched it and really liked the show.  I need to get seaosn1 to the top of my Netflix queue but keep forgetting.

On a pure hardware segment I though I may have lost my 360 and my ipod on the same weekend.  My ipod had been giving me issues syncing up and now it had completely stopped.  I was ready to just give up on trying to get my podcasts but then I decided to try my usb cable from my charger at work.  Well how about that!  It was the stupid cable that was not working.  The ipod survives for a few more months. 

Over the last weekend I turned on my 360, was checking out someones online profile then I hear a popping sound.  I thought it was my cell phone but when I tried to navigate through the 360's blade UI it was frozen.  I turned it off and then on again and got the three red lights...general hardware failure!!!  Well I tried turning off and on again but still got the red lights.  Then I unplugged everything and replugged it in and turned it on but still got the lights.  I grabbed my camera and captured the three red lights and went to upload the picture to my flickr account (along with some new shots of Colin and Leah).  Talked with a friend over IM then went back to the 360 prepared to call Microsoft.  In a desperate attempt I tried to turn it on one more time then it came back to life! I couldn't believe it made a recovery.   I'm hoping it was just some fluke that it got the error before. I still uploaded the picture so enjoy.