last night i ended up staying at work until around 8 or 9 pm putting the finishing touches on a demo for usfi. i also skipped working out, and came in early.. to make sure everything was kosher for today’s demo. wouldn’t you know, they rescheduled it for next monday. wasted overtime has to be my biggest pet peeve, but.. at least i got to go home early today (~3:30).

when i went to work this morning, i had no idea today would be more exciting than an average day in the life of marshall the java developer. after i got to work this morning, i loaded up thunderbird and checked my email. Ivelin (from JBoss) was going to be in Dallas for the day, and wanted to have some drinks with me and catch up etc. well, it turns out.. he was here with Norm from JBoss sales to speak to the dfw java user group about productivity in J2EE applications. he told me that they had reserved about 30-45 minutes of time for me to talk about JBossAOP, and JBossIDE.

wait.. could you rewind that a second? you want me to give a presentation/demo to a group of 30 people? i was nervous and excited all at the same time. this was a great opportunity for me to start honing my public speaking skills, and quite possibly a measurement by Ivelin to see how well i do under the gun in a situation like this. after i came home from work, i headed over to Ivelin’s hotel and met Norm. Norm was a real cool easy going guy.. definately a salesman, but knew his technology extremely well (unlike most salesmen). Ivelin, Norm, and I walked through the slides they were going to show, and I gave them a quick walkthrough of the work i’ve been doing on the plugin. they debriefed me on what they wanted me to talk on, and it seemed everything was set. taking Ivelin’s car, we drove from DFW airport back to 75 & 635.. about a 10 mile drive. once we got to the building, java developers from around the dfw metropolex started filling in one by one… building my excitement, and nervousness. thankfully, honain, naaman, and irfan (or as i so affectionately refer: “the pakis”) showed up to the meeting. thanks to the pakis for coming and showing their support, you made my day. i gave my demo, answered lots of questions from the jug members, talked about aop, and was more exhilerated than ever when i finished. i really want to do this more. it’s a rush, really. maybe as i hone my speaking abilities more, i’ll be able to pull that trait that my father (hopefully) passed down to me.