This is an extremely tentative blog, in which I expect to put some of my past mistakes on record and add new ones. My mistakes as a programmer and author tend to relate to Java, Javascript, XSL, and XML/XHTML, but I may also post about mistakes in politics, parenting, house renovation, driving in upstate New York, and so on.

Let me begin by admitting that back in the very early 1990s, as an asst. prof. of Computer Science at Colgate University, I was a lurker on a discussion list about the dawn of the WWW, with frequent posts by some guy named Tim Berners-Lee. And the NSF had given me a grant for NeXT cubes, which were running his first browser...and my desktop PC was linux.colgate.edu. Very forward-looking, yes? Well, actually no. I dropped off that WWW list because even though I liked the idea, I didn't see how it would get the critical mass of users I thought it needed. And I told my students in Operating Systems that Linux was filling a temporary need but it wasn't going anywhere. After all, I was teaching with Tanenbaum's book (the earlier edition) and everybody in my world knows his view of Linux.

So if you expect me to say anything true, even in areas where you might think that I ought to be an expert, I am hereby warning you that this is a totally irrational expectation.