For my thousands of adoring fans (!) who read this, I thought I’d post a quick note about how things are going here at the Valvoline Runoffs.

I returned to Mid-Ohio from Seattle in time for testing on Friday and Saturday; I was running ok, nothing spectacular; I seemed to always be a few tenths off of the fastest guys.  Pretty close, nothing to worry about.

Sunday was raining all day, hopefully not an indication of things to come.  This was an off day; I wasn’t testing, so we just cleaned up the car and got it through the required technical inspection.  All went well.

Monday was the official start to the runoffs, and we had our practice session in the morning.  This also went pretty well; I went out on factory-shaved tires (about 4/32″ tread depth), on their second heat cycle; I had the 6th fastest time (1:41.9) out of the 29 cars entered.  Not too bad, I figure…we can work with that.

This morning we had our first qualifying session; there are 3 total qualifying sessions, one today, one Wednesday, and one Thursday.  We line up for qualifying according to a random draw; I was lucky enough to draw #1, so I went out first in line for the session.  I ran on shaved tires (2/32″), on their second heat cycle.  I had clear track ahead of me for about 10 laps, and managed to turn a 1:41.7, which is good for 6th position on the provisional grid.  Unfortunately for me, the provisional polesitter cooked off a 1:40.7, and I just have no idea where I’m going to find another second – a second is an eternity on a racetrack.  Just to give you an idea how fast this guy is, the second fastest qualifyer had a 1:42.2 – half a second slower.  Third fastest was, I believe, a 1:41.5 – and the field is pretty tight after that.

Anyway, hope this didn’t bore you all too much…I’ll post updates if I get some time.  And if I don’t post anything, and you just can’t stand it, I believe official qualifying and race results will be posted here as they are made available.

BEA, IBM spar on Web services development. Companies exchange platform insults [InfoWorld: Top News] [via Sam Gentile]

“BEA in a statement said it found that the development of a Web service to accept and confirm an employee ID number took developers only five steps with Workshop as opposed to 28 steps in IBM’s platform to partially replicate the same Web service.”

Hmm…does it really matter if it takes 5 clicks or 28 clicks to generate my web service?  Maybe the first time I do it, I might care…but once I’m familiar with the tools, and I know what I’m doing, it doesn’t matter too much.  And I’m not going to be able to deploy that 5-click web service anyway – there’s a lot more involved in deploying a web service than running through a wizard.

As an aside, I’ve used IBM’s tools (WSAD) for quick-starting web services briefly, and I gotta tell you, it was certainly not as, uh, intuitive as I might have hoped.  Of course I’m probably spoiled by Visual Studio .NET.  :-)

Well, it’s been more than a week since my last posting…and it’s probably going to be a bit thin for the next couple of weeks as well.  As much as I want to pour out my thoughts about binary XML representations (seriously!  I think we need such a beast), I don’t have time to organize my thoughts about it at the moment.

I’m trying to get ready for the SCCA Valvoline Runoffs.  This is sometimes referred to as the “olympics of amateur motorsports.”  It’s at the Mid-Ohio Sports Car Course, which is a phenomenal track; probably the most difficult and technical track I’ve ever driven.  I was out there this last weekend testing and doing a double regional race, trying to get some much-needed track time.  The regionals actually went pretty well; on Saturday, I qualified 7th (out of 28), and finished 1st…and on Sunday, qualified on the pole and finished 1st.  Things are looking good so far, but the best drivers in the country will be at the runoffs…and my lap times from this past weekend would probably only be good for mid-pack at the runoffs.  My goal this year is a top-ten finish; we’ll see how it goes…I need to get some good testing time in at the end of this week, and get those lap times down where they need to be.

So this week, I’m out in Seattle with a client; then I’ll be back at Mid-Ohio testing Friday and Saturday, and the runoffs start next week.  So, not sure how much I’ll be posting…but I’ll probably try to post a couple of quick updates throughout the week next week so you all know how it’s going.