It's been a _long_ time since I posted. The only thing that even make me want to post was aaronl's comments about GNOME (and KDE I would guess, given that he's so against using memory..)

I really wish I could come up with some comment that make aaronl realize how inflammatory/silly he sounds. He quotes numbers about how terrible memory consumption is in GNOME apps, then turns right around and states that he knows the numbers are inaccurate -- beyond that, he's makes the statement that he's not even trying to _be_ accurate.

*sigh*

I wrote Gabber. I've had my own concerns about memory consumption (X-Virge can vouch for that :)). Fact of the matter is tho, that the GNOME libs provide some great functionality. They do it in a modular manner and overall in a fairly clean way. I've considered removing GNOME stuff from Gabber, but on review I've found that there's just too much good functionality -- I'd wind up with an ugly client that nobody would use, and all for the sake of having one less dependency. No thanks.

Monday (late nite)
Another day has passed by. I've been visiting my grandparents and little (tho he prefers "younger") brother in Panama City this weekend. It's been nice, I guess...nice as being away from the fiancee and one's projects can be. I hate to travel, but I love to move. Weird, huh?

Gabber is coming along nicely and I've learned a lot about gtk--. It is an excellent adaptation of the gtk+ toolkit. The sigc++ signaling toolkit is great and I have even integrated it into jabberoo. It's excellent for doing any kind of event based system that neats strong typing and/or ref-counted objects.

Another great lib I found is the Views Template Library (VTL). I'll have to post that link later. Basically it's another layer of abstraction that allows you to view a container via multiple views. Hence, you can view the container as sorted by a certain key, w/o having to actually sort the container (of course, you trade performance for lesser memory).

I do like C++. I know some people complain that it's too complicated, or too slow, or too low-level. *shrug*. It works for me and I believe it's a language that's gonna stick around because of its complexity and richness. I would be remiss to not quote graydon's excellent summary of the language:

"C++ is the mecha godzilla of the programming world: learn to pilot it, and you will be able to lay serious waste to tokyo. Don't learn to pilot it, and king seesar will whup your sorry ass."

Well, I survived my trip to Denver. Actually, it was a most excellent trip. It was good to meet jer & temas IRL. They are Cool Dudes (TM), and I'm proud to say that I work with them.

My fiancee's birthday-weekend-rama has been completed successfully -- now back to my normally scheduled programming. :) Today, I've been working on getting gpg setup so my emails are signed and am currently working (read: waiting on openSSL to build) on transitioning the Gabber source code over to SourceForge.

This week should be a big week for Gabber as I plan to get proper support put in for agents/services and groupchat. I've also heard some rumblings that a gtk-- person want to help us move to gtk-- 1.2pre. That needs to be researched a bit as I'm not sure that the gnome-- 1.2pre has been released yet.

Gabber has finally started to reach critical mass. It can now send/recv messages, chat -- groupchat will be implemented after I get back from Denver. At that point, most of the Jabber clients will support groupchat and I'd imagine that we'll start to move away from using the #jabber channel on IRC.

Jer is trying to get me to write an article detailing our rather unique approach to using libglade/gtk-- in the gabber. I might just do write a piece about..wonder how much flak I'd get from the Gnome people about using C++. :)

In other, less techy news, I'm trying to get my workout routine re-instated in my life. I miss my kata workouts and have lost a fair amount of flexibilty. It's gonna be hard, though..especially the first week or two. Blech. It hurts just thinking about it. Fortunately, it's fun once I get started and I know I'll start feeling better once I get in the groove.

Flying to Denver early tommorow morning. Woohoo. Finally get to meet jer & temas in person. Great fun all around, I'd say.

Tuesday (now Wed.). My eyes can hardly stay open. It's been a better day than yesterday, but I'm ready for it to end. One more time, I managed to get the fiancee upset at me. I'm becoming quite the expert, tho I suspect wedding-stress is a major factor in the anger-at-dave algorithm. Whatever, the case, I love her.

In less emotional news, I managed to rewrite my deleted programs and get a spec for the next software iteration from my client. Of course, I won't be doing anywork on that until I get gabber working...tommorow, I think. It's do or die on gabber, now. I'm starting to get a rep for all talk and no code..time to change that.

With that, Adeiu.