Anyone know of such a beast?

My baseline criteria is:

• Does not run a Microsoft OS
• Is not an iPhone
• Is not a PalmOS Treo.
• Has a full Bluetooth stack - including A2DP, various HID profiles, etc
• I'd prefer a full keyboard, but I can wiggle on that
• Music support, with open formats (I can put my own MP3's on it)
• Very good Bluetooth 'modem' capability. Want to use it as a data gateway for my laptop
• At least a few games. The only game I really play on my Treo anymore is Sudoku. I think that may be a dead requirement on any replacement device.

My current top contender is the Nokia N95-3 (the North American version). Pricing is down to about $300 (the -3 is a slightly 'older' version, but has a removable Micro-SD slot - pretty good for loading music and other stuff on it), but I want to make sure I'm not missing out on something. (Oddly, I can't find that price on Amazon now. I'll keep looking).

One possibility is going with a fairly cheap, capable Bluetooth enabled handset now - no music, games, etc, but able to function as a phone and a GSM modem, and look toward an Android based solution in the next 6 months.

Pointers?

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(Tim on Jul 22, 2008 5:44 PM) What about a Centro? It's a Palm device but is not a Treo. I don't know how good its Bluetooth support is, but I think it meets all your other criteria, and the people I know with 'em have been very favorably impressed by them. That's what I'm actually tempted by when my VZW contract goes up.

(dbs on Jul 22, 2008 5:54 PM) I do like the Centro, but it is still a PalmOS device. PalmOS is dying, and unfortunately Palm has done zero to boost to the stability and functionality of the OS in years, particularly in the bluetooth stack area. Read any of the forums on folks trying to write decent BT apps for PalmOS and you'll hear an incredible litany of failures, crashes, reboots, and lockups. PalmOS is dead. Long live PalmOS!

(Doctor Memory on Jul 22, 2008 6:08 PM) I can narrow this down for you pretty easily: AFAIK the only phones in the world that meet all of your criteria are Nokia N9-series devices. I strongly advise trying to borrow one before you make the investment. Symbian is... well... there's a reason that Apple was able to waltz in and capture a third of this market out of nowhere. (You know, it'd be really nice if MT's "remember me" feature was sitewide, rather than per-thread. Or if it had OpenID support.)

(Doctor Memory on Jul 22, 2008 6:15 PM) er, where by "N series" I of course mean E Series.

(dbs on Jul 22, 2008 6:47 PM) @DoctorMemory : re the openid / remember me stuff, we're on the verge of switching to the newest version of MT... I'll definately make a point to make sure it works.

(dbs on Jul 22, 2008 6:54 PM) AIEEEEE!!!!! The E90 Communicator is $770! Alas :(

(anonymous on Jul 22, 2008 7:38 PM) Moderator: Please send this to original poster. http://www.gsmarena.com/search.php3

(Matt Lawrence on Jul 22, 2008 9:00 PM) I'm considering the new iPhone, but have my doubts. I'm hoping that someone will release a ssh client for it. Other than that, I really want to be able to tether, but I don't know if that will ever be allowed. Otherwise, the Nokia N95 looks like the way to go, it's just rather expensive.

There's much to talk about, all sorts of geeky interesting things to go on about camping, food, waste, economy of living, and social interactions, but for now I'm just going to enjoy the air conditioning and modern plumbing.

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Eclipse shows you errors and warnings in realtime. Usually, they're fairly accurate. Today I was editing a struts.xml file, and was getting a validation warning. When Eclipse senses a problem with the XML (based on it's DTD), it tells you "this XML file fails the DTD validation".

But it doesn't tell you where.

This completely baffles me. "Somewhere in the following several hundred lines of XML code, there's a problem. But I won't tell you where or what it is."

Off to the W3.org Validation service. I fed the XML file into it, and lo! A detailed description of the problem, and where it was:

Line 26, Column 39:
document type does not allow element "include" here.

<include file="struts-editevent.xml"/>

Was that really that difficult?

Gnar.

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(Lisa on Jul 15, 2008 10:11 PM) If you ping me tomorrow, I can find out what XML editor we use w/ Eclipse. :)

(Doctor Memory on Jul 18, 2008 11:49 PM) It's not free, and I totally get why you wouldn't want to have to jump out of Eclipse into another program just to edit an XML file, but... oXygen rocks so hard it's in danger of breaking the spacetime continuum. Just sayin.

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(metahacker on Jul 14, 2008 10:39 AM) I'm pretty sure my car will fit beside the driver's side. Not sure they could get into their car afterwards, mind, but they were in my spot.

(Kai von Fintel on Jul 14, 2008 11:16 AM) Agree with 1 and 3. But 2 actually one might dispute. First of all, the lot seems rather empty, so why should one care. And more importantly, that sucker is so huge that if it were squeezed into one slot, the ones next to it would be almost unusable anyway, thereby blocking three slots! I have often chose not to try to park in a slot that's next to such a monster because I was afraid my car would get hurt when they leave.

(Chris Devers on Jul 14, 2008 2:18 PM) Someone with an identical land yacht was parked the equivalent of that way in the parallel spaces at work last week, parked "correctly" but taking up at least 1.5 space lengths. As the only free space by the time I got in was behind this behoemth, I had to squeeze in, and in turn was forced to be way behind the line on the back of my own car. Looking out the window later in the day, the land yacht had set sail for deeper harbors, leaving his space empty and my space, because it was forced to park so far back, was in turn now forcing a whole row of cars to park several feet back from the spaces -- making the driver of my car look like the idiot jerk. I may be an idiot & a jerk, but usually for better reasons than that...

(yummy on Jul 14, 2008 5:14 PM) http://www.youparklikeanasshole.com/notices/notice_1.pdf

(dbs on Jul 14, 2008 6:52 PM) @Kai The picture is rather misleading - I had to go past that spot another 4 cars to find a space. The lot was not 'full', but this guy was definately buried close to the Panera I was headed to.

(dbs on Jul 14, 2008 6:53 PM) @yummy That is outstanding. I'd be nervous touching soemoen's vehicle though - taking a picture is already a bit edgy. But ooh the temptation.

Following this success, and watching Zach teach himself Python and learn basic programming skills using Scratch, I found myself wanting to do more to support OLPC. I don't have bottomless resources to throw at the project, but I still wanted to contribute somehow.

After getting to know some of the project folks, and after some back and forth, I was admitted to the OLPC Support crew, and now am an official OLPC Support Volunteer.

What this means is when I have some spare time, I log into the support system and answer questions from folks all over the world about OLPC, the laptops, and the applications. I'm a volunteer, so I'm not paid, but I feel that I'm giving something to the community. I can answer questions and communicate clearly, there are people who need help. For the most part, these are people who, like me, feel the OLPC project is important, and are willing to contribute to it, and get a unit of their own to boot. I'm proud to help them out as much as I can.

In 4 days, I've handled about 38 problems. That's 38 people who are a little better off with their machines than they were before.

This is one of the few true volunteer organizations I've ever committed myself to. I've always given financially to causes I believe in, but when it comes to manning booths or spending weekends "lending a hand", it's usually been isolated to things like SF and gaming conventions.

This is bigger. This is important. This means something.

And I'm helping it be successful.

It feels good.

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(martha Shevett on Jul 13, 2008 11:24 PM) Bravo!!!

(martha Shevett on Jul 13, 2008 11:24 PM) Bravo!!!

(Lisa on Jul 14, 2008 8:47 AM) That's very cool. :)

I'm signal boosting this message a bit. Our cohousing group (collectively Sawyer Hill Ecovillage, consisting of my group, Mosaic Commons and a second community, Camelot Cohousing) have just completed the state-mandated lottery for offering our affordable units to qualified buyers under the 40b Affordable Housing law. Because we did not have a full slate of applicants, the process is now thrown open to anyone who qualifies within the 40b limits.

If you've been interested in our project, and have held off because of the daunting numbers, now may be a perfect time to look into it. These units are being offered on a first come, first served basis.

We have 40b units available priced between $136k and $176k

The 40b limitations are:

• Income limits between $46k/year and $76k/year, depending on number of family members.
• Assets no more than $75k

Note there are a variety of exceptions for seniors, single parents, etc. See this web page for details.

We also still have a few market rate units for those families who don't meet the limits for the affordable units, so come check us out: http://www.sawyerhill.org.

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(andrea on Jul 8, 2008 9:32 AM) oh nice! I dont think I could hold it still enough at 1/15 a second. Would be fun to play around with though :)

The syncing of my feeds never actually worked too well, so if I finished reading articles on one machine, when I sat down at the other, I couldn't be sure if the '18 new articles' really meant 18 new articles. Also, Google Browser Sync is being end of lifed, so I need to find an alternative.

For a while, I switched to using Akregrator for KDE. All in all, I found it a fantastic tool, very fast, easy to use, and well integrated into KDE. Alas, I don't always sit at my desktop machine, and really started pining for a way to stay synced on my feeds while out and about, while still being able to read at home.

After denying the inevitable for so long, I'm now working with Google Reader, which appears to do everything I need in an RSS aggregator, and is not localized to one specific machine. I'm slowly migrating my vast array of feeds (somewhere around 200) into it, and organizing them into folders by subject.

So far, I'm reasonably happy with it. It works, it's fast, it's ubiquitous, and, well, it's Google. I have some real issues with how Google is overly dependent on their AJAX magic to get things done, though Reader doesn't seem to too overboard with it (unlike, say, something like Picasaweb, which I loathe).

I'll give it a few weeks and see how well I like it. Fortunately, it hasn't required a major investment in time or configuration to set up. About an hour of basic twiddling and I'm up and running. Stay tuned!

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(Perley on Jul 6, 2008 9:07 PM) Been using Google Reader for ages, well OK since I started doing RSS. I don't have much experience with anything else, but as you point out, ubiquity and mobility make it really handy. Looking forward to using it on my iTouch. :-)

(Robert on Jul 7, 2008 6:38 PM) Pick up the ~/.kde/share/apps/akregator/data/feeds.opml file and import into Google reader. Migration complete in a few clicks. The problem I had with Google Reader is that it doesn't keep the folder hierarchy that I can use in Outlook (shudder) or in Akregator. Also, I fly 4-14 hours a week, and having an offline reader is required. I just use synergy to control the desktop machine, meaning I boot up the laptop for *every* computing experience of more than 15 minutes. But that works for me, especially with IRC in screen on the ubuntu box at home.

I've come to the conclusion 'yawl' just can't cut it as a development host. I had no idea that Pentium 4 CPU's were such garbage. A 2.26 ghz machine isn't fast enough to do serious work in Eclipse.

Most of my development is done on 'clipper', but alas it's a Windows machine (it can't help it, it was born that way). I wanted to start fiddling with CONGO (v2.0) via Konqueror, and hit upon running up ye ole VNC viewer on 'yawl', and just 'moving' the Eclipse environment onto yawl's desktop.

Lo, it worked remarkably well. Clipper's monitor is powered down, and I have an Eclipse environment on my Linux KDE desktop, but actually powered by the Windows dual core laptop next to it. I could overlap a Konqueror browse window and flip between it normally, and keyboard interaction was snappy and useful.

It's not quite like having a local Eclipse install, but it's mighty close. It gives me a feel for what it's like for folks having big vmware server installations, and other less fortunate folks dealing with the variety of RDP based solutions, and being able to just pop into an existing running machine and work with it directly.

Really though, I should have a faster desktop machine. Alas, that'll have to wait, it's pretty low on the budget tree nowadays. And, in case anyone is curious, that is in fact a snapshot of CONGO v2 running in a pure Java environment - screens and back end all running within a Tomcat server. Sure it looks identical to CONGO v1, but that's by choice. Quick port to Struts + JSP, then enhance and refactor. Progress is being made.

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Someone in the group pointed to a fascinating atheist blog / website called Russels Teapot. On the top of the site is the following quote:

"If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time." - Bertrand Russell

Pretty good commentary and right in line with my thinking.

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(bolson on Jun 27, 2008 12:05 PM) Speaking of concise theology and religion, Jesussays, and modern prophets agree.

(sah on Jun 27, 2008 12:29 PM) My head spins with the "what made the big bang? what existed before the big bang? if god exists, who made god?" I don't believe anything. Then again, I believe everything.

(Dennis/Joanne on Jul 2, 2008 11:30 AM) A worthy and relevant TV Series (shown in a censored version at only a few PBS-TV stations not too long ago) may be the 3-part BBC-TV Series, "A Brief History of Disbelief." If interested, internet locations of Video clips (YouTube and related) may be noted at: http://naturallyus.livejournal.com/9564.html

"A lot of people have a romantic notion of living in a lighthouse," said historical society president David Ball. "There are responsibilities that go with it. There's a lot more to it than people think. It takes a special person, no doubt about it."

For the past 22 years, that special person has been Ruth Downton. Since 1986 she has lived in the keeper's cottage at the picturesque, 198-year-old lighthouse that marks the entrance of Scituate Harbor. But Downton is set to retire this fall.

I know for me, being a lighthouse keeper definitely had that romantic edge of being on your own, doing a job that others depend on, isolated but there for the ships and travelers that pass nearby. I suppose nowadays I'd need to have a net connection...

See the entire article on Boston.com.

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(sah on Jun 25, 2008 2:42 PM) This really surprises me, mostly because of posts like this , and your new community, which could hardly have you living any closer to your neighbors. I always thought you really really liked being around people?!

(dbs on Jun 25, 2008 2:46 PM) It is a conundrum. I am an introvert who needs people around me. Yes, it's confusing, welcome to me.

I managed to avoid all the downpours that were skirting through the area, and got in about 10 miles on city streets. I passed all the hot spots of Cambridge... Porter Square, Community Boating, Central Square, Harvard Square, etc etc

Afterwards, Zach and I had an hour or two to kill, so we walked down on the north end and took a good look at the Constitution (I had never actually seen it in person). We didn't have time to go on the tour of it, but Z was suitably impressed ("That's a big boat! All wood? Wow.").

The combination of the long walk and the bike ride, and my lack of anything resembling regular exercise lately (coupled with helping Tim and Ellen move yesterday) has left me pretty wiped out. The hot tub is calling my name.

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(jacflash on Jun 22, 2008 8:31 PM) All wood and built without power tools, Zach.

(Terry on Jun 22, 2008 8:45 PM) You're inspiring me to get my bike tuned up. Although I doubt I'll be ready for city riding until next spring! The trails, however, are calling my name! Glad you had a good ride. And.. wooden boats and history and happy kid! W00t! Mmmm. Hot tub!! Yay you! Reading that made me wish very much that I had access to one. Mmmm.

(Ellen on Jun 22, 2008 9:02 PM) Thanks so much for your 3-D Tetris skills :)

(dbs on Jun 22, 2008 9:27 PM) @jacflash - I even pointed that out to him. Actually, the big lecture came when he asked what the railroad rails were doing in the pier, and I explained that the railroads were the MODERN way of getting materials off the ships and to inland cities. When the Constitution was in service (yes, technically it's still in service, and yes, it's a warship, not a merchant), things got unloaded from the boats by hand, onto wagons, and moved to inland cities by horse and ox. (this was bolstered by us seeing a Hansom Cab go by, and me explaining to Zach (after he said "That's a HUGE HORSE!") what draft horses were for.)

(dbs on Jun 22, 2008 9:28 PM) @Ellen - You're quite welcome! It was fun fitting things into the storage unit!

(dbs on Jun 22, 2008 9:31 PM) @Terry - The ride was super-awesome, but man am I wiped out. Legs are all wobbly, and then we had a couple hours of Mosaic meeting to attend. It was a great meeting, and Zach was super through it (yay!), but i am totally toasted.

(sah on Jun 22, 2008 9:42 PM) Was it really a hansome cab? That's very unusual! And actually, small carriages are usually drawn by smaller fast horses. Draft horses are for heavy and slow hauling, farm work, etc. A hansome cab ( or carriage) would more likely be pulled by a light, fast horse. When I drove a carriage in the city, my horse (as are most of the carriage horses) was a very small gelding. The load is pretty light, as I could actually pull the thing myself.

(dbs on Jun 22, 2008 9:48 PM) @mah sister: You know what, I think you're right. Actually looking at that wikipedia article, Hansome cabs are two wheeled, and what we saw was a 4 wheeled carriage. The horse pulling it was draft-sized though, not a smaller faster horse. Big hooves, long forelocks, Big Animal :)

(sah on Jun 22, 2008 9:55 PM) Yeah, I thought so. I don't think I have ever actually seen a hansom cab, I drove a Victoria ( carriage). People often use draft horses for carriage horses because they think that is how that should be. It's one of those things that bother me. Kind of an anomaly. A carriage horse should be light and lively. Didn't it smell good!

Over 5 years ago, I began work on an application called CONGO, a registration and badging system, not only in the vein of "There's gotta be a better way", but also to help out a friend who was running registration at con in Philadelphia.

The first versions of CONGO were crude, but worked well - with a custom Swing interface, custom terminals and servers, it was an impressive setup. What wasn't apparent was this was my first foray into writing any decent sized Java application. I made what I thought at the time were good design decisions, and looking back on 30+ events run, and hundreds of thousands of badges printed, I'd say the design was, for what I knew at the time, solid.

But it's time to change. With everything I've done over the last 3 years in Java and enterprise-level applications, I feel I'm ready to rewrite CONGO into a proper Java based webapp. CONGO 1.0 was part Java, part PHP, part templating. CONGO 2.0 will be a pure java application, based on Struts, and will allow features that I could not shoehorn into the old model

I started work on CONGO2 about a week ago, and I have my first screens working properly and chaining together as they should. Part of this process is factoring in the old logic code, and linking it up with the new presentation layer I'm building using JSPs and Struts. This means making calls to 12,000+ lines of Java code that was written as I was learning the language.

But one thing I did consistently - I documented my methods. Every piece of the CONGO appserver has full Javadocs describing how to call the method, and what it returns

Because I'm doing CONGO2 using modern tools (like Eclipse and Tomcat, my GUI is showing me these docs whenever I try to link to my old code, and is reminding me how to use the old libraries. Why is this remarkable? Because other than generating static documentation, I've never actually seen my own comments and documentation popping in interactive windows in my IDE. Until now.

It gives me a little thrill each time I see my own docs pop up as helper windows in Eclipse, showing me comments I made half a decade ago on structures and calls, and reminding me how to use the system.

It wasn't easy to learn Java, it wasn't easy to learn Swing, it wasn't easy to learn JSPs, JSTL, and Struts. But now I do know them - some more than others, and I'm enjoying this massive refactoring of one of my proudest creations.

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(Lisa on Jun 20, 2008 9:47 PM) Are you normalizing the database too? ;)

(dbs on Jun 20, 2008 9:53 PM) The first step is going to convert everything off the PHP code onto JSP and Struts. No database changes at all. I want to duplicate Coconut compeltely in Java. Once that's done, I'm going to start adding things lke the new Addresses structure (stop using reg_locations, break it out into 'phones' 'emails' and 'addresses' or the like). The next step after that will likely be a total reworking on the transactions system, which was sorely stressed on the last event, and has some gruesome hacks in it. Once those are done (or perhaps during them, I'm not sure), chances are I'm going to switch the database interface to Hibernate, which will probably require a refactoring of 80% of the code in the old classes, but will also, at least, normalize the tables. :)

(Tom Limoncelli on Jun 21, 2008 2:12 AM) Have you considered Google GWT? You write everything server-side in Java, and it compiles the routines that should run on the web browser into JavaScript. Works with Eclipse, etc.

(dbs on Jun 21, 2008 9:03 AM) @Tom Contrary to popular perception, Google isn't the answer to everything. I considered it, and discarded it. To me GWT is not mature, is a very niche technology for the moment, and isn't exactly a marketable skill. It might in the future, but if I"m going to spend weeks learning a new environment, I'll learn one that is in wide adoption. Not to also be too snarky, but if Google Apps are any indication of the magic of GWT, then it is wildly inappropriate for what I'm doing at the moment.

(Tom Limonelli on Jun 21, 2008 11:37 AM) Dude, I know Google isn't the answer to everything. If I did I'd ask why you didn't use Google App Engine too. I'm more curious (1) if you hadn't heard of GWT at all (which would be an interesting data point), or (2) you did an evaluation and what you didn't like about it (which is very interesting to me). The other thing I'd recommend is YUI: http://developer.yahoo.com/yui I've seen some excellent YUI designs, and I heard interesting things when the creators were interviewed on a podcast. Tom

(Randal L. Schwartz on Jun 22, 2008 3:38 PM) Have you considered using Seaside, the up-and-coming continuation-based web framework running on Portable (and mature!) smalltalk? See http://seaside.st for details.

(Randal L. Schwartz on Jun 22, 2008 3:39 PM) Have you considered using Seaside, the up-and-coming continuation-based web framework running on Portable (and mature!) smalltalk? See http://seaside.st for details.

(dbs on Jun 22, 2008 9:52 PM) @Randal Heya merlyn, ltns :) There's sort of a long term issue with me and frameworks (heck, with languages too). There's always something up and coming. If you keep learning the new shiny, you never learn why it's so shiny, and what it was designed to replace. You've seen it with Perl->Python->Ruby-> whatever the latest whee is, and you see it with web frameworks. I decided to go with Struts (at least using Struts2) and JSP and the JSTL and the like because it is, by far, the most widely deployed web framework around. Just search monster.com for any keyword combination for Java, and try to find more jobs :) (okay, you might be able to do it with 'java servlets', but that's cheating. And, much as I love the concept of Smalltalk, it's not exactly a career move to get into being a Smalltalk Guru. It's sort of like being a LISP god. You get adored by a few people, but it's hard to make a living at it.

1) When changing a struts.xml file, within an Eclipse WTP environment, being serviced by Tomcat, WTP does not click that the Tomcat server needs to be restarted. The 'Dynamic' part of WTP does not take effect, and no matter how many times you save what you're working on, it won't go live in the server until you actually restart Tomcat.

2) Despite all the awesome advances in Eclipse in the last few years, there's twitches that still drive me absolutely gonzo. One is that the 'smart insert mode' (which helpfully closes XML tags and closes quotes and parentheses for you) cannot be turned off globally. You can do it on a per-editor basis, but not globally, so I'm always forgetting to turn it off when I open a new editor. Another is XML syntax validator is still quite twitchy, and occasionally will flag incomplete tags or non-well-formed XML when the file is just fine. A close and re-open fixes it, but ugh.

3) Last, but not least - that which almost got me up on the roof with a high powered rifle. I give you a quiz as my example. One of these two struts.xml configurations apparently tickles a bug in Struts2 and will cause an internal server error and stacktrace with a Null Pointer Exception. The other will not. Can you figure out which is which?

<action name="/*">
	<interceptor-ref name="mystack" />
	<result name="success">/WEB-INF/jsp/{1}.jsp</result>
	<result name="login">/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp</result>
</action>

<action name="*">
	<interceptor-ref name="mystack" />
	<result name="success">/WEB-INF/jsp/{1}.jsp</result>
	<result name="login">/WEB-INF/jsp/index.jsp</result>
</action>

1. INFO: Server startup in 954 ms 2. Jun 17, 2008 7:41:14 PM org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve invoke 3. SEVERE: Servlet.service() for servlet default threw exception 4. java.lang.NullPointerException 5. at com.opensymphony.xwork2.config.impl.ActionConfigMatcher.convertActionConfig(ActionConfigMatcher.java:168) 6. at com.opensymphony.xwork2.config.impl.ActionConfigMatcher.match(ActionConfigMatcher.java:144) 7. at com.opensymphony.xwork2.config.impl.DefaultConfiguration$RuntimeConfigurationImpl.getActionConfig(DefaultConfiguration.java:316) 8. at com.opensymphony.xwork2.DefaultActionProxy.prepare(DefaultActionProxy.java:169) 9. at org.apache.struts2.impl.StrutsActionProxyFactory.createActionProxy(StrutsActionProxyFactory.java:41) 10. at org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.Dispatcher.serviceAction(Dispatcher.java:494) 11. at org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher.doFilter(FilterDispatcher.java:419) 12. at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.internalDoFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:215) 13. at org.apache.catalina.core.ApplicationFilterChain.doFilter(ApplicationFilterChain.java:188) 14. at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardWrapperValve.invoke(StandardWrapperValve.java:213) 15. at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContextValve.invoke(StandardContextValve.java:174) 16. at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardHostValve.invoke(StandardHostValve.java:127) 17. at org.apache.catalina.valves.ErrorReportValve.invoke(ErrorReportValve.java:117) 18. at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardEngineValve.invoke(StandardEngineValve.java:108) 19. at org.apache.catalina.connector.CoyoteAdapter.service(CoyoteAdapter.java:174) 20. at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11Processor.process(Http11Processor.java:874) 21. at org.apache.coyote.http11.Http11BaseProtocol$Http11ConnectionHandler.processConnection(Http11BaseProtocol.java:665) 22. at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.PoolTcpEndpoint.processSocket(PoolTcpEndpoint.java:528) 23. at org.apache.tomcat.util.net.LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.runIt(LeaderFollowerWorkerThread.java:81) 24. at org.apache.tomcat.util.threads.ThreadPool$ControlRunnable.run(ThreadPool.java:689) 25. at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:619)

How the hell am I supposed to debug that?

I finally did, after a good 2 hours of hair-ripping, gnashing of teeth, and spewing my venom upon the #struts IRC support channel.

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But I've never seen one go as badly as this.

This is the story of FedCon USA. A Trek convention in Dallas Ft Worth where the organizer, one Tim Brazeal, apparently through pure incompetence, caused an entire event meltdown. The reasons appear to be manifold, but the causes seem to be miscommunication, poor organization, and in some cases, out right falsehoods.

On the flip side, it appears this failure is, apparently purely due to mismanagement, and cannot be ascribed to malice. He didn't wreck the event on purpose, for profit or for some other reason - he simply screwed it up. Badly.

It should be noted, that this is FedCon USA, which only bears the name FedCon as borrowed from FedCon Germany. That organization, which is widely respected, issued a press release describing their dealings with Tim, and how he lied and alienated them as well. FedCon Germany withdrew support for the event, but Tim went on advertising that he had their financial and organizational backing:

I never in my life meet an individual like Tim. First he seems like to be a great buddy, but after a while you discover a person, who is constantly lying, apologizing and making things up. He was never straight forward, almost everything he said was a lie. I never in my life met someone who actually believes all this BS he says. He was always totally sure, what he says. But saying and doing are two totally different things. He is the person who says: "Okay no problem, i book the flights for you!" As soon as you hang up he totally forgot the conversations he just had. But if i would have told the fans earlier, I would for sure got some legal problems!":
All i can say is, FedCon Germany (the real thing) is always a feast for the fans and if i can help out some of you at one of our next shows please let me know, just email us and sent us some proof that you purchased a ticket for FedCon USA and we give you something back at our next show.
I also think, the whole staff from FedCon USA (not Tim!!) have nothing to do with this mess and they sure worked their asses up to make some things better, but with their figurehead hiding in dream worlds, lame excuses and lies, this was just not possible.

My heart goes out to the volunteers, staff, and particularly the attendees who, in some cases, drove many hours or flew in for the event, only to have most of the guests not show (even though they were still on the conventions schedule), and have the event shut down halfway through Saturday.

So next time you're having a hard time at an event? Think of how bad it could get, and thank your event staff.

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(Doctor Memory on Jun 16, 2008 11:14 PM) So apparently this is the same genius who ran the "Save Enterprise" campaign a few years ago and convinced several thousand idioticgullible Trekkies to send him money for a "fan-funded" Enterprise before Paramount smacked him down. And they let him run a con? I'd say I'm astonished, but mostly I'm just amused.

(dbs on Jun 16, 2008 11:21 PM) @dr_m - ther'es a lot of traffic on the net pointing out that the folks who let him use the 'fed con' name should never, ever have done so. They actually removed support from the event after they realized what a bozo he was, but never announced that they had, thereby continuing the veneer of legitimacy. One thing is fairly clear, the guy will never, ever, have a chance of doing business on the net again, with his name being spread far and wide. And everyone agrees he totally screwed it up. The poking at FedCon GMBh is sort of overflow.

(Doctor Memory on Jun 17, 2008 12:52 AM) One thing is fairly clear, the guy will never, ever, have a chance of doing business on the net again Man, I admire your optimism.

(sah on Jun 19, 2008 12:04 PM) Sounds like the goat show I was at last week. Yeah, liars will always find new suckers, they're born every minute. And ours are even named "CONway"! helLO!