Must be an age-difference thing. Olive/Clarkson and 40 to me means some meh restaurants, but I don't think of restaurants that close by 9:00 or Harpo's Chesterfield to be night life. Helen Fitzgerald's is just crap. Night life outside the City is limited to Maplewood and the Loop as far as I'm concerned.

Maybe so, but Java's generics are still far better than having Java without generics.

When it's neither too hot nor too cold and isn't raining or snowing, I do enjoy riding my bike recreationally; if the infrastructure supported it, I'd ride my bike to work, but unfortunately riding my bike to work would be risking death on either a busy highway or windy, wooded, shoulderless roads. Right now it's cold and snowing, so this time of year is a definite no.

Generics a bad thing, really? As a developer who was stuck using 1.4.2 when Java SE 6 was already available, I longed for generics.

Arpaio has done many more and frankly worse things than intercept a few people's mail. He's brought his department numerous lawsuits.

The sweet spot is the XHTML syntax of HTML5; it gets you the advantages of using all your existing XML tooling and strict conformance checking with modern HTML5 web app support.

With his basic contempt for his fellow Americans and blatant disregard for the Constitution, it is incredible that Maricopa County keeps re-electing Joe Arpaio. It's unsurprising he would try to intercept the mail of his critics.

Who says making fracked oil in the U.S. unprofitable is a negative consequence? Fracking has had a negative impact on the environment, and I'd just rather say good riddance.

You're obviously not a Java developer. We're a Java shop where I work, and we make heavy use of Apache: Apache Commons (org.apache.commons.lang.StringUtils.isNotBlank, anyone?), Struts, XMLBeans, Axis2, and of course ant for our build scripts.

In Java land, we've been waiting for lambda functions for a long time.

Has Microsoft made any strides in developer friendliness since Microsoft Programmers' Workbench, released c. 1993?

So you're wondering what hot young thing you want to get to know this summer? Is she going to be JSON, MongoDB, WebGL, or maybe Node.js? The reality is The Business doesn't care. The Business only cares about one thing and one thing only: that you're driving value-add moving forward. Getting to know Clojure is only so much developer indulgence; The Business doesn't care, and they only see that it will make you more valuable to some other employer instead of them. You are better served learning all the intricacies of the ancient information system that's mission critical. Learn all the contradictory layers and business rules that have accumulated over the years. Learn what keeps it happy. You should be a SME, a go-to guy The Business can call on when it has questions. Then learn about Gantt charts and a bit of project management. The all-coveted tower of Lead is found on a path through these. You will code less and sit in meetings and on bridges more. You may even add a process of your own to the bureaucratic machine.

Look to your elders. How did they become Leads and architects? It wasn't by learning new technologies, APIs, and languages; it was by understanding The Business, respecting the chain of command, following process, and paying their dues. Just play your role as a well-greased cog in the corporate machine and grind on and on.

IANAL: Nintendo holds the copyright on its video games, obviously. A walkthrough may fall under the category of "derivative work." When a user uploads a video to YouTube, presumably they agree to YouTube's terms and conditions: a license to use the uploaded work. YouTube in turn has agreements of its own with other copyright holders like Nintendo. Presumably Nintendo could try to make the case that the walkthrough violates their copyright and/or trade dress protections. Instead, they "settle" with the walkthrough creator by taking their ad money. :) Maybe the content uploaders can be given the option to have the video taken down instead of the ad revenue going elsewhere.

So let me get this straight: You want the business to spend millions of dollars so the secretary can jerk around on Tweeter and Face-In-a-Book? Sure, for a "hip" startup of a few twentysomethings who sit around and play with Nerf darts all day and grow out their beards, upgrading to The New Shiny isn't a big deal, but real businesses get work done. We don't care if you're some alpha geek badass who knows all the latest functional programming fooey and open-source Lunix whatever; we want you to obey: do what we say, do it efficiently, and do it cheaply. We just want what worked yesterday to work tomorrow and keep raking in the dough.

We still use Windows XP Professional and Microsoft Office 2003 where I work. I think some machines have been upgraded to Windows 7 and a newer version of Office, but at least we developers are still on XP.