I've been primarily working with XML databases (eXist) on the back end the past several years. But the need for doing more client-side work (via JavaScript) has been increasing. Having dealt with Microsoft's weekly build breaks in IE 4 (I seriously had a list of build numbers from each week that different customers installed IE and a different aspect of my web application broke), and their inability to follow the ECMAScript standard, I've gone very grudgingly back into the whole build apps with JavaScript movement.

What I would like to be able to do is write XQuery on both the server and in the browser. The Sausalito made that promise, but it just never felt quite right to me.

Node and CouchDB together appear to do the same with JavaScript, and with impressive results from what I've seen. I've spent a long time evaluating it and a few other frameworks for a future project, but the surprise find for me has been AngularJS.

Having been raised with MVC back in the 1990s in C++ and Java, there has just been something about AngularJS that has totally clicked with me. I can take a bit of the load of rendering pages away from the XML database backend and use static HTML pages in the dynamic fashion that was promised since Netscape Navigator 2.0.

It's been nice doing everything in a single language - XQuery - for the past several years. The Model is XML, the View is XHTML and JSON output, and the Controller is XQuery. All of it running on the server side.

The division of labor in AngularJS feels right to me. It's organized well. (Part of that organization appears to be a reliance on Node for project management. So understanding Node is useful, even if you're not going to be running from a Node HTTP server.)

It appears that they're all trying to find technical or social engineering methods to get females interested in STEM subject. My daughter is very good at math and science and would like to explore the field more. But with college a couple of years away, the main issue is money. How are we going to pay for her to go to a good school where she can explore STEM subjects more?

She thinks that she wants to go to the U.S. to study, but as soon as recent help for student aid was announced, the prices at most colleges went up to match it, especially for out-of-state / out-of-country students. The in-state tuition was a bit pricy for a good STEM university, even that is crazy now.

I've found that I do have more errors that I used to as I type. And my speed is not nearly what it used to be. However, I easily out-type news reporter friends of mine while chatting (both on computers - not mobile). They write a couple of articles a day. Shouldn't they have more key presses than a coder?

I'm blaming the newer keyboards for a lot of the increased errors that I feel that I'm hitting. Keyboards from the 1980s just felt a lot better. You had to have intent to hit a key. That doesn't seem to be the case any more.

I've done this by accident a number of times at both the Asia Series and World Baseball Classic at Tokyo Dome. Thinking back, all I did was have a general admission ticket on a pass carrier around my neck and just walk into the press area while nodding to the guard at the entrance. I was supposed to meet some friends there once, but they got stopped by security. "What? This is a restricted zone?" I had no idea before then that anyone wasn't allowed in there.

I guess it goes to show that if you really believe you belong somewhere and look the part that few will challenge you.

I'm just surprised that it's taken everyone this long to see these tactics in politics. Microsoft has been teaching them these techniques for over a decade.