Every day is a chance to start anew. Every day is a new beginning. While trite, the previous sayings are quite true, and on this first day of April I have decided to take them to heart. I have looked at my life and have come to the realization that I'm making some pretty big mistakes. These mistakes don't just impact me, but others. I have a small following here on this blog, and my other sites, and frankly, I worry I may have led folks astray. I must do something about it or I will never forgive myself. It is, as I said above, time to begin anew. It is time to get SERIOUS and stop joking around. With that in mind, I promise to...

1) Stop using silly variables in my code samples. What, pray tell is, the point of the variable below? You tell me:

<cfset parisHilton = createObject("component", "com.celebrities.trash")>

I mean serious, what do these two things have in common?

Let's be honest. I'm whoring my blog for Google AdSense. Does that help the community? No. From now on, I'll use serious variable names. All variable names will use East Hungarian Pre-WW1 Variable Name Scheme Rules (Rv. 2). Example:

<cfset -<x>-*y = "%third";+4!>

(By the way, that outputs "Hello World", but we all knew that, right?)

2) No more talking about Star Wars. Star Wars is for kids, not grown men. I'm clearing my room of all Star Wars toys and replacing them with copies of Ayn Rand books and tag posters. Also, in relation to rule #1 above, no more using Star Wars planets for code samples. It's stupid. I shall have this stupid thing lasered off my body at my earliest convenience. And as for ColdFusion Jedi? Seriously? How long have you guys been laughing at me. Am I four years old?

3) No more off topic posts. No one cares about Lost. It's a fad. It will soon go away like pet rocks and the cfinsert tag. No one cares what the Island is or what in the heck fhe four toe state means.

  1. No more "simple" posts. I tend to do posts that share simple tips, like how to handle interpolation in cfchart. While this may be useful to a few people here and there, it isn't serious. It doesn't reflect the real, day to day work most ColdFusion developers are doing. Most of all, it isn't Object Oriented. I don't know about you, but before my morning bowel movement I typically write a few delegates and at least one active record CFC. Why aren't I blogging about that more? OO is in everything I do, and from now on, every blog entry will deal with OO, and OO only. OO is for serious developers and I'm a serious developer darnit!

  1. A casual dress implies a casual mind. No more working in shorts and a tee shirt (with optional shoes). Today I begin my official, and daily, new dress code...

  1. And finally, no more going hyper over the 'lastest' cool thing. If you follow my Twitter and this blog, you know a typical day for me is something like this:

DUDE! I just found out about the cfoutput tag. It is AWESOME!!!!

WOOT! I tied my shoes while reading about jQuery! jQuery FTW!!!!!

OMG - Tomcat didn't build. WTF?!?!?!?!?!?!? I love Tomcat but it isn't perfect. IT SUXORS!

From now on, I promise to take a more slower, serious, and sensible approach about the things that interest me. For example, consider this pre-Serious Ray:

Dude! ColdFusion 9 is so FREAKING awesome. I can't say why, but it is. It's got more cowbell than a dairy farm!

And this is how I'll handle it now:

ColdFusion 9 will have a version number one higher than the previous version. At least according to my inside sources.

I hope my readers will agree. This new, more direct, Raymond, will be much better than the silly "ColdFusion Jedi Master" of the past. Welcome April. Welcome Full On Seriosity!