Oblivion for One
By Max Guernsey, III

Stop all the clocks?
Why bother?

This is the end...

...of life.
...of love.
...of joy.
...of pain.
...of experience.

At least, for one.  At 2:30 pm, today, one of our cats, Seelie, died.

For those of us left here, we go on; some more affected than others.  Yet, that's not really the point... is it?  Mourning is an inherently selfish thing.  We lament our loss; our pain; our experience; but those things all pale in comparison to what Seelie has lost: existence itself.

She is no more.  To her, there is no more "to be."  There is no more her for there to be no "to be" to.  Nothing.  No experience.  No love.  No joy or hate.  The world does not exist.

So I say "Stop all the clocks?  No need.  Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone?  No call."

For Seelie, the clocks have stopped and the dogs have stopped barking.  From her perspective, those things all happened and more: The entire universe, including herself, ceased to exist the moment she died.

Who will be next?

DataClass is almost here!

The new version of DataConstructor, DataClass, is almost ready for prime-time.  I've got all of the critical v1.0 features ready for release and all I have left is the packaging and tutorials.  I'm looking for beta testers so, if you are interested, let me know.

Each beta tester earns one Agile team a license to use v1.x of DataClass.

Quitting stack overflow

I tried being a member of the stackoverflow community.  At the end of the day, it appears to be no different from facebook... just another waste of time mindlessly drifting wherever the winds of mob mentality take it that day.  All investment, no return.

I'm done and you should seriously consider the following question, if you are a user: do you really get any value from it or is it just another addiction to a meaningless point system.

DataClass nearing completion

As many of you know, I'm working on the next generation of DataConstructor technology, DataClass.  I am personally very excited about this new product - it takes database building, design, and testing to the next level.  Here are some of the benefits that DataClass has (with red asterisks next to the benefits DataConstructor gave you):

• It is a compiled language.
• The only things not compiled are the SQL and DDL scripts themselves.
• It enables designs with zero duplication.
• No duplicated strings even between database scripts and .NET code.
• It facilitates transition testing knowledge.*
• DataClass still enables you to build a database from any historical version to any future version.*
• It alleviates the need for most transition testing design.
• For certain database platforms, basic design structures will be validated implicitly.
• It does not require a license at runtime.
• The compiler is the licensed component, not its output.
• The developer is licensed rather than the application.
• It allows you to define a complete class of database.
• Transition logic.
• Public, private, and protected design elements are all defined in one document.
• Version info.
• All are compiled into a single .NET class.
• Public aspects are made public.