D15c0v3r3d L05T

After banging away in Lotus Notes and the Domino Designer for a migration project we were doing at work I returned to the Ruby world I have been warming up to for most of this year. I had no longer opened my terminal window when someone came to me requesting a special xml feed for our marketing department to provide a career site vendor. Although there was a legacy app in Lotus Notes that could be set up to do the task, I had no heart to go back into Notes. I decided to use some ruby career site code that sat in our development environment, but I couldn’t seem to get any traction.

As I quietly stared at my computer screen a slowly descending cloud of fear began to envelope me. I watched the cursor blink in terminal as I tried to remember how to make Ruby talk to me.

rwheadon$ jruby -v

jruby 1.3.1 (ruby 1.8.6p287) (2009-06-15 2fd6c3d) (Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM 1.6.0_15) [x86_64-java]

rwheadon$ |

At least that did something. Now how do I generate that silly xml file?

rwheadon$ jruby console

Error opening script file: /Users/rwheadon/devStuff/amp/console (No such file or directory)

rwheadon$ |

Complete fail, I wondered if 4 weeks in the Domino Designer had erased everything else I knew.

My Matter is Mush
I stared at the screen, watched my cursor blink,
Thoughts gone blank, I took a draw on my drink.
There’s a database object in there somewhere,
but memory of how to access it is gone, maybe off to the fair.

irb, console, server and mate brought nothing to light,
Perhaps it’s alzheimers I thought with a fright.
Command line syntax wrong with a clatter of keys,
My eyes begin darting, oh let me remember Lord… please, please, please.

Someone is coming… got to minimize, maybe check my mail,
Mouse has lost connection, my approaching peer is going to give me hell.
He leans over my shoulder and asks “what is that? what did you do?”
I slump in my chair and confess my head has turned to goo.

“not job_order but JobOrder, remember… a Class”,
He offers some light trying not to harass.
I sigh in relief, It’s coming back to me now,
p JobOrders.first and the screen responded with text somehow.

Like a bad dream when it gets better,
Things turned around and I got through the test.
Nothing to write home in a letter,
Just a little blog fodder at best.