Down time

So Christmas is getting near and apparently the goose is getting fat (but I ain't putting a penny in the old man's hat!) My last official day at work this year was Friday 17th, but in reality I'll be working over the "vacation", as anyone who knows me can attest. I see this more as "working from home" than "holiday", but them's the realities.

I've made a promise to my family to do no work on Christmas Day and New Year's Day, which since I've had kids isn't hard to accomplish - lots to keep me busy: lending moral support to the turkey as it gets cooked, eating the turkey afterwards and playing with the kids. Very different to the mid-90's, when I remember writing the first version of the Arjuna Transaction Service over Christmas Eve/Christmas Day (did a lot of its testing while watching The Lady in White, strangely enough - excellent film). Back then it was called JavaArjuna and was in use in the University before there even was a JTS or JTA specification from Sun. Hence the tag-line we still use today: that it was the worlds first 100% pure Java transaction service implementation. It looks a lot different today, thanks to the efforts of everyone over the years here and all of our other incarnations.

Anyway, this break is already looking busy, what with WWW 2005 papers to review (4 down and another 14 to go), the usual plethora of work commitments, updates to WS-CF with Eric and Greg and the odd teleconference. Oh, and a blog entry now and then. Believe it or not, I'm kind of looking forward to the festive season.