Are there any human beings out there?

Hello hello hello.

I am blogging!

There's no way I'm actually going to post this.

What if it were "OK" and "acceptable" and even "encouraged" to just try something new, to stumble and fumble, to do it wrong and try again, to say to yourself, "I don't belong here," but to keep at it anyway, however tentatively and hesitantly; so that that eventually, maybe, you found yourself actually having something of a clue, being moderately competent, and even being able to help out others who were struggling along in the same direction? Ha! Dream on.

I work with a small, dedicated group of technologists. Ants, actually. I have a little ant farm on my desk. I watch them as they build their little tunnels. And carry food around. They're very good at what they do -- and if you aspire to build tunnels (and carry food around) as I do, they are excellent and inspiring teammates.

I also have human teammates. I lied to them when I set up Grails for the first time this week. Not "lied," exactly, but misled. I said (and I'm quoting from memory): "I got my first Grails app up and running in 20 minutes!" And at the time I shared that, I meant it. I was genuinely excited. But what I left out what was how I had, over preceding days, spent maybe 40 minutes trying and failing to set up Grails on my Mac. I kind of futzed around installing the Java JDK and "GVM" (Groovy Environment Manager) as best I could, but I couldn't actually get Grails itself to start. I'd type "grails" and, you know, "command not found." Then my friend Sten (who shall remain nameless to protect his privacy) shared with us a link to what turned out to be just what I needed: an excellent video tutorial for setting up Grails from scratch on a Mac, at http://www.grailsexample.net/installing-a-grails-development-environment-on-os-x -- and from there it only took me 20 minutes to get my first Grails app started.

So the moral of the story is... what? Stumble and fumble, but keep trying, and eventually things will come together. Sometimes. No guarantees. Either that, or: Lie your way to glory.