JDD has written a very moving piece of his trip to Chicago to be at Elena’s funeral.
Its a learning account for us to show how acquaintance turn into friends and then relatives..Thank you James.
His mention of a quote at the end is marked-
Sam Phillips wrote in a comment on Daniel’s blog: Not every death is a tragedy and not every life is wonderful. But a wonderful life no matter how it ends and no matter how short it was is never a tragedy.

I cant take this any longer..it seems like every month I run into someone who is grieving for a kith/kin or hear of a death. This time around it is little Elena. She would have been a happy little six year old..She was the daughter of a fellow geek - Daniel Steinberg. I only know Daniel through fellow developers in the Open Source world. This hurts deep. I coudnt stop tears flowing down my face…
Being a parent myself I can only imagine what Daniel and Kim are going through.
This day is special as I shave my head for a strong Mom and Dad in Daniel and Kim.
I love you both. You inspire me to be a better parent

Being part of “event driven projects” (read SOA project) these days, I am playing a lot more with MQ and async mode than ever before. Its different from the SYNC HTTP world and I have come to appreciate both.
I will have some basic aysnc calls implemented from Portlets and JSF apps, which I will share here. Stay tuned.
The moral of the story is the IoC/Hollywood principle rules - Dont call Us, We will call You

Sorry folks, for not writing in a while. I have been laptopless (yet again), travelling all over this green earth and making some personal headway with house hunting, RV trips and such.
Life sometimes get so busy that we forget to sit down and pen our throughts…
I am working on writing some short stories from my Mom and will be posting those soon here.
In the meantime, hang tight and enjoy the ride…

Just to keep y’all updated on our current happenings and future plans -

• I started taking Karate classes at the local Y. Its been very humbling to hang out with 7-10year olds in the class. I am looking forward to free Kung Fu lessons as well
• The kids started music lessons by learning notes, beats and other fun stuff as part of a children choir. Sam was against “girly” choir stuff, but as soon as he realized its not all about singing and it was more of true music lessons, he perked up. He has also made new friends. Jay had a ball as well.
• Stef has been having the never-ending allergy/cold/cough for a while and its really taken the toll on her. She is trying to balance the medication.
• This weekend we will be in Houston to see the city and spend some time with a friend.
• We are looking forward to our Oregon trip and will start heading west end of March/April. I will keep you posted regarding this.
• I installed Linux (RH based) on my primary laptop and am having some HW issues - more on this when I actually figure out solutions and work out the kinks.
• My Mom will have her corner on our site to write stories that she told us when we were kids. I wanted to have this to start a legacy as well for her to have a virtual space. You should be able to get to it from the main site. I will post an update when it goes live.