I recently accepted a Senior Programmer position with BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee and moved to Chattanooga. So far loving it. Weather has been great all these days, raining a bit, but i like it. Moving was smoother than ever. Thanks to my new employer and their contracting agency kwick way.

I certainly miss my friends, my colleagues and my old job back in Peoria. People who are close to me may know that it was a tough decision to move to this new job. But one has to move on.

I wish i write more, but got to go. Hope i get some time and mind to write more in coming days.

Jonathan Schwartz's Weblog: Different Isn't Always Better, But Better's Always Different

From: James Gosling
Date: August 24, 2007 8:16:58 PM PDT
To: Jonathan Schwartz

Subject: How was Java named?

The story goes like this:

We needed a name. We had been using "oak" (which was selected essentially randomly by me), and while the team had grown attached to it, the trademark lawyers ruled it out. We had lots of email debates about names, but nothing got resolved. We ended up in the awkward position where the #1 thing stopping us from shipping was the name.

Our marketing lead knew someone who was a "naming consultant" (I don't remember his name, but he was great). We could neither afford the price nor the time of a conventional product naming process. He agreed to do something rather odd, but effective and quick: he acted as a facilitator at a meeting where about a dozen of us locked ourselves in a room for an afternoon. He started asking us questions like "How does this thing make you feel?" (Excited!) "What else makes you feel that way?" (Java!) We ended up with a board covered with essentially random words. Then he put us through a sorting process where we ended up with a ranking of the names. We ended up with a dozen name candidates and sent them off to the lawyers: they worked down the list until they hit one that cleared their search. "Java" was the fourth name on the list. The first name on the list was "Silk", which I hated but everyone else liked. My favorite was "Lyric", the third one on the list, but it didn't pass the lawyers test. I don't remember what the other candidate names where.

So, who named Java? Marketing organized the meeting, the consultant ran it, and a whole pile of us did a lot of yelling out of random words. I'm honestly not real sure who said "Java" first, but I'm pretty sure it was Mark Opperman.

There certainly wasn't any brilliant marketing mind who went through a coherent thought process."

Do you want to know how companies like google, apple, cisco, yahoo got their names ? You can read it here.

Tumblr Inspired Quick Post Wordpress Plugin

I always wanted the tumblr like quick post functionality on my wordpress blog. This cool little plugin helped me get that.  Thanks Josh Kenzer for the simple yet wonderful plugin.