Inaugural URUG meeting

Last night we had the inaugural URUG meeting at Ben Galbraith's house. Jamis Buck of 37signals fame is the founder and we had a good discussion about various aspects of Ruby and what we want to do with the group. Between Jamis and Ben, the group has some great connections, so hopefully we can get some great speakers like Ben has been able to do for UJUG. I will probably be giving a presentation on RubyCocoa at some point.

Who is Michael Vaughn?

Alias struck again with one of its patented season ending cliff hangers. This one could be the most interesting if the writers do a good job. I would like to see Alias go back to its roots with showing conflict between Sydney's social life and secret life. Maybe, with Jennifer Garner supposedly pregnant (No!), the writers will be forced to do some better writing.

NCIS: Nooooooo!

I really enjoy NCIS but I don't watch every show. I've been watching Sex & the City on TBS because I never got to see it on HBO. And I hadn't read any articles about the show's season finale. So with Sex and the City over, I was able to watch the show. I didn't even know it was the finale. I started watching the show because of the lovely Sasha Alexander who plays Agent Todd. Then I grew to enjoy the dynamic between her character and Agent Dinozzo. So, it was with total shock and sadness that I experienced the final seconds of the finale. Those bastards! And I'm not talking about the terrorists. I'm talking about the genius at CBS who decided to kill off one of the most enjoyable (not to mention beautiful) characters on TV. Not only that, but they've now ended one of the most fun relationships on TV. And like me there are probably a lot of men out there who are no longer going to watch. We'll move onto the next thing Sasha Alexander is in.

24: The best show on television

I saw the season finale for 24 last night. I am continually amazed at how the writers have kept the intensity of that show going for a whole season, let alone 4. Every episode is intense and has you on the edge of your seat. If only Alias could have done the same thing. Most shows fall off, but 24 has been consistently good.

Backpack

37signals released Backpack today, which is their personal information manager web app. It looks pretty good. You should definitely check it out if you're looking for something to help you get organized. Not only that, it is written in the amazing Ruby on Rails. I wish it had some of the features of the old Lotus Agenda, but maybe that's a good thing ;)

Jamis Buck works for 37signals and is one of the developers on Backpack. He lives down in Provo and is starting a new Utah Ruby User's Group, which I'm excited about. The first meeting should be this month, somewhere in south Salt Lake, which I'm very happy about. Finally, some cutting edge technology in Salt Lake. Now, we need to get a Cocoa developers group going.