I’ve discovered the cure to my Los Angeles homesickness – going back to visit.

My wife and I moved to Washington (we live on the Sammamish Plateau about 30 minutes from the MSFT campus) almost 2 years ago. It took a year to get used to the idea of “seasons” and the need for separate summer and winter wardrobes. The rain doesn’t bother me as much as the darkness in winter – if you work 9-5 and have an office without a window you could go weeks without seeing the sun. My wife misses the beach and swimming as an outdoor sport. I miss pro hockey. And of course, we miss our friends and family back in LA.

Sometimes, it feels that we made the wrong choice. But this past weekend I think has cured that for good. It took an hour and forty-five minutes to go 20 miles on a Saturday afternoon. I can’t see the Santa Monica mountains that are only 10 miles away. Hell, I can barely see the building off the freeway from all the smog. It’s hot, my eyes burn, I’m frustrated and I’m really glad I don’t live in LA anymore.

We’ll still come down to visit. My wife Julie grew up here so her mom, dad, step-dad, three of her brothers and one of her sisters live here. My uncle lives out in Palm Springs, but he gets into the city on occasion. We have tons of friends – Julie and I both went to college here. But I’m never moving back.

One interesting thing that this visit has made me realize: I need to get into downtown Seattle more often. When I lived in LA, I lived in the main city (not the Valley or Orange County). There is culture and diversity that you can only find downtown and I’ve been spending too much time in the suburbs. After 10 years in the heart of the “urban jungle” of LA, I guess the pendulum swung too far back the other way.

It’s not my final phone. It’s a loaner since my wireless provider couldn’t seem to process the order for my replacement phone due to “server issues”. I have to return this one next week when my “real” phone arrives. But, hey, at least I can make a phone call from my car in the meantime.

Jeff Schlimmer has the latest on the new drafts of WSDL 1.2. Given my general issues with WSDL, I’m very excited about the changes. Port Type -> Interface. Service/Port -> Service/End Point. Plus a whole new document on message patterns. Want to read, but for now, I must sleep.

So I was supposed to have a new mobile phone by now. I spoke to the sales rep for my wireless provider Monday who had to convince the customer care department that they needed to give me a shiny nice new phone to make up for all the crap I’ve put up with for the past six months. Maybe it should be called customer we-don’t-care. Anyway, they finally agreed and I was supposed to have a new phone yesterday. Except that it didn’t arrive. My bill arrived no problem, so they obviously have the right address. I call the rep, and he’s not available.

The only thing keeping me with this provider (for now) is that it will suck just as bad with every other provider anyway. What a crappy business model: “We suck slightly less than everyone else”. Maybe it should be their advertising slogan. Let’s put it on a billboard.

My dad (who needs his own blog) pointed me to a presentation from the 2nd Microsoft Research Rotor Workshop that was held in April in Pisa, Italy. The presentation in question is by Luca Cardelli on the subject of programming language innovation, a topic I’ve blogged on before. I want to take a look at the other speaker’s content, but a couple of things stand out from Luca’s talk.

• Programming Language data has traditionally been triangular, i.e. object graphs, while persistent data has traditionally been rectangular, i.e. database tables. This leads to an integration issue between the programming language and the database. However, data is evolving. XML makes persistent data triangular as well.
• In addition to data evolution, we’re also seeing an evolution of program flow. It’s moving away from threads and RPC and towards schedules and messages. IMO, that’s what Service Oriented Architecture is all about, but Luca’s point is there’s no support in the programming language for this model.
• There’s great coverage of the concept of “semi-structured” data. It’s not an array. It’s not records. It’s “unusual data” in Luca’s terms, which needs unusual programming languages.
• I get the feeling Luca is recommending new languages, not retrofitting existing languages with support for XML data and schedule based program flow.
• Luca points out that type systems for programming languages and for XML are still “deeply incompatible”. This jibes with my last XML entities post. I don’t want different programming styles for internal and external entities. If I can get a programming language that makes it easier to code against XML, that makes exposing internal entities as XML that much more reasonable.