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Google Checkout resolution, fun with Terracotta and some extremely personal stuff

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If you at my last post, you’ll see I was whining a bit about Google Checkout and Google Adwords. Fortunately, that was resolved this week. Google re-opened my Adwords account (yay!, even though I’m not using it right now) which then allowed my credit card to work with Google Checkout. Lesson learned. . .Google’s left hand doesn’t always meet with Google’s right hand in a quick and responsive manner.

If you are looking at purchasing some books from the Pragmatic Bookshelf before the end of the year, now is the time to do it. From now until 11/25, they have a 40% off sale off of most everything in their bookstore. Here’s a link to the most recent newsletter with the information:

40% off PragSale

Thanks to help from some of the Terracotta guys this week, I finished upgrading a client’s Spring based web application to be able to support TC 3.1.1. Prior to 3.1.1, there was a <spring> element that made configuring a Spring based app really simple. From 3.1.1 and forward, that support has been dropped. There were a number of code changes that I had to make this upgrade happen, but now, thankfully, that is behind us. Now I can get back to some heads down iPhone development.

Finally, I’ve held off on posting some extremely personal stuff for quite a while. The rest of this post is going to be real personal, so if you are here for the nerdly stuff, you can jump out and I’ll get you up to date on more development news next week.

If you are still here, thanks for hanging around.

Since I was running behind in posting this week, I just read that Pastor Billy Joe Daugherty passed away this morning from Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Some of you know, but probably most don’t, that my wife was diagnosed and treated for a form of NHL a few years ago. She’s been clear for 2 years. When she was diagnosed, it knocked the breath out of our family for a couple of days. Once we got our heads back on square, we knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that 2000 years ago Jesus died for Val’s healing. We had (and continue to have) great people that kept us reminded of that without beating us over the head with it.

So, why is my wife still hanging out here on planet Earth and Pastor Billy Joe isn’t? I can’t answer that. Medically, there are almost as many forms of NHL as there are stars in the sky. (ok, slight exaggeration, but not by much) I don’t know the exact form that Pastor Billy Joe had, but based on how quickly it appeared to progress, I don’t believe that it was the same form as my wife had.

Here’s what I do know: Pastor Billy Joe was the real deal. He loved God and loved people. I never had the honor to meet him, but over the years I’ve known numbers of people that have called him their pastor. Consistently, people have said what you see is what you get. Even when a guy came in and punched him out during a service, he didn’t punch back, he still showed love to that guy. (The redneck in me probably would not not have. I would hope I’ve grown up more by now.)

Today, we lost from our day to day lives one of the greatest examples of Jesus on the planet. To Pastor Billy Joe’s family: you are in our prayers. To the family at Victory Christian: keep loving people.

See, I told you that was going to be personal. With this week being Thanksgiving, go hang out with as much family as you can, blood or otherwise. Enjoy football (if you enjoy that kind of thing 🙂 ) But mostly, be thankful.