There's a common misconception out there that I'm part of the YUI team. Well, I'm not (I work on My Yahoo!), but that didn't stop me from submitting some code to be included in the 2.3.0 release (details). I've been secretly working on this little creation for the past few months and now that the release is here, I can finally talk about it.

The 2.3.0 release of YUI is the first to include my unit testing framework, unimaginatively named YUI Test. The basic idea was to create a super simple way to write unit tests for JavaScript. I really like unit testing, but found most of the JavaScript options to take too much time to get up and running. With YUI Test, you can include a couple of files and quickly write and run a test case. There's tons of assertions geared towards common JavaScript data types and the default failure messages are helpful enough such that you don't really need to provide custom ones (though that is an option).

I'll be talking more about YUI Test in the coming weeks and months, but for now, check out the documentation and I hope you enjoy the wonderful world of unit testing.

Recent readers may be wondering what this blog is about. Hey, this guy Nicholas wrote these JavaScript books, so his blog must be about JavaScript, right? I know many book authors stick to their subject matters on their blogs, and many bloggers have common themes that they try to post around. I am not one of those people, and here's why.

I don't just blog about JavaScript or Ajax or programming because that's just one part of my life. In the grand scheme of things, it's actually a rather small part of my life. My job as a software engineer and author represents my professional life, but my entire life is made up of so much more.

I was drawn to writing long before I started writing about JavaScript. I kept a journal for a long time and wrote letters to express myself, even if there was no real recipient. Words are the way I communicate and this blog is another way that I can flex that muscle.

So what is this blog about? It's about me, my life, and everything it entails. Sometimes it's programming, sometimes it's social, sometimes it's relationships, sometimes it's sports; all the time, it's me.

A year ago today, I hopped on board an American Airlines flight at Boston's Logan Airport. The destination: San Francisco. I came out without knowing where I was going to live and with most of my stuff packed away in boxes on some huge truck on its way cross country. This was the biggest move I'd made in my entire life, from Boston to California, and I was scared out of my mind.

You need to consider that this is a guy who commuted to college all four years and didn't move out until 25...and that condo was about 10 minutes away from my parents. Go ahead and chuckle (I still do), but those are the facts and I am not ashamed to share them. I was, for most of my life, fearful of major changes and transitions. It led me to question many times what business I had even contemplating moving across country to a place where I didn't know anyone or anything. Was I out of my mind? Had I completely lost it? I knew it would be hard, but I really had no idea how hard it would be.

This past year has been an amazing journey. I honestly feel like I've lived several lifetimes in the course of these 12 months, growing and experiencing at such a rapid pace that it makes my head spin. In a single year I found a place to live, found doctors and a dentist, got an awesome job, helped launch an amazing product, wrote another book, got homesick, felt overwhelming joy, made new friends, fell madly in love and had my heart broken (more accurately, torn out, thrown on the floor, and danced upon), gave my first public talk, had all my mercury fillings replaced, wrote for the YUIBlog twice, cried myself to sleep, watched more football than ever before in my life, called home at least four times a week, learned qi gong, played poker, improved my diet, met some amazing software engineers, laughed, been in awe of my surroundings, went on my first (and second) hike, and learned a lot about myself.

I still have trouble fathoming how I got where I am right now. I had no idea what to expect when I moved out here, and every time I thought I was nice and settled in my life, something would happen that would throw me into a tailspin that I'd have to fight hard to pull out of. At those points, I often ask myself, "Why did I do this? Why did I leave my nice, quiet, stable life in Massachusetts and travel west? Why did I leave behind my family, my friends, and my condo?" The answer: because it was time for a change. For once in my life, it was time to stare fear in the face and say, "bring it." And I'm glad I did it. I still don't feel like my life is stable at this point, but this past year has been an amazing journey that I will always be thankful for. I can only imagine what experiences the next year will bring.

It's getting to be that time of year again. Chatter is starting to pick up, training camp is about ready to open and preseason games are just around the corner. That's right, it's almost time for football to start. Frequent readers of my blog know how big of a Patriots fan I am, how upset I get when they lose, how elated I am when they win. And now I'd like to share why.

For 40 years, the New England Patriots did next to nothing. In a city where the Red Sox rule and the Celtics and Bruins brought home championships, very few cared about the Patriots. Among those very few? My dad. Possibly the biggest Boston sports fan I've ever met. It didn't matter who was playing or what was going on, my dad followed all four teams with a vengeance. And so, for as long as I can remember, Sundays were spent speaking out the elusive Patriots game.

Fans in popular regions probably don't know this, but your hometown team's home games are only televised locally when the game is sold out. The idea is that it will entice people to buy tickets to see the game instead of sitting at home watching it on TV. But the Patriots were horrible, and so it was rare to see home games in Boston; we'd mostly see the away games.

When Bill Parcells was hired as head coach, all of a sudden people got excited and every game sold out (every game since that time has sold out as well). Of course, they made it to the Super Bowl in 1996 only to get destroyed and embarrassed by the Packers. The Patriots then started a familiar and steady decline.

The year 2001 was a rough one for me, personally. I had developed a serious illness that wasn't responding to anything the doctors were doing. I was sick, weak, and depressed. When the football season started, it was little more than a blip on my radar. I remember sitting in front of the TV with my dad on opening day, turning to him and saying, "Dad, why do we watch every game, every year when we know they're just going to suck?" My dad, with a small grin on his face said, "because there's always a chance." The Patriots then went out and lost that game to the Bengals.

The next week was September 11. Obviously, I don't have to explain what a horrible event that was. Football games were cancelled that week, and rightly so. In my sick and depressed state, I was crushed and scared. What was wrong with the world? How would life every be the same?

But life continued, and so did football. When the games returned the next week, Drew Bledsoe went out with a life-threatening injury and I was at my breaking point. At least with Bledsoe in the game, I thought, they had a chance. As long as they had a chance, I had something to look forward to each week. The Patriots struggled through the rest of the game as well as the following one. But then something strange started happening: they started winning.

As if the winning wasn't shocking enough, they were winning against good teams and doing so convincingly. With my health still declining, Sundays were the highlight of my week. It was three hours that I forgot how lousy I felt, how tough the struggle would be to make it through another week. Slowly but surely, the Patriots won my faith and became a bright spot for me during a time when there were few.

Following that Patriots team through the playoffs, the tuck rule, and the trip to Pittsburgh, they made me believe that anything was possible. They played as a team, and they did so with heart and honor and class.

Going into the Super Bowl, I believed that they had a shot against the Rams and not just in the "I stand behind my Boston teams no matter what" way. I had faith. They had come too far to be stopped now. And of course, they weren't stopped. When that Vinatieri field goal kick when through the uprights, I remember falling into my dad's arms and just saying very softly, "they did it." I didn't know if I should laugh or cry, but I knew that I felt, for the first time in my life, that anything was possible. This was a team who had no chance and yet, despite everything, they proved everyone wrong. If they could do it, certainly I could too.

The road to health was a long one for me, and it's still ongoing. It would be trite and just plain stupid to say that the Patriots helped me get better. I had to do a lot of work to heal and continue to do so. What I will say is that that Patriots team was a light in an otherwise dismal year for me. They made me believe in something during a time that my faith in everything had severely wavered.

So you'll need to excuse me when I get a little emotional during Sundays. Every Patriots game reminds me of that time, of that team, of the feeling that they gave me when I couldn't get excited about much of anything. Most of all, they remind me of my dad looking at me, grinning, and saying, "because there's always a chance."

I understand that recruiters are necessary for companies to keep new employees coming in. I understand that good ones are very valuable and that bad ones can ruin you. I have friends who are recruiters and, clearly, they're good people otherwise they wouldn't be my friends. But there are some recruiters who really give the rest a very bad name.

I know it's the job of recruiters to contact prospects, but there's a right way to do it and a wrong way to do it. The right way, as far as I'm concerned, is to send an email. This can be done either through a web site or through a networking site such as Linked In. Recruiters who do that will receive a reply from me, and at this time, it will kindly state that I'm not looking for any opportunities but I appreciate the consideration. Some of these recruiters I'll even accept into my network so that we can keep in touch. Again, this is the right way.

The wrong way is to look at my Linked In profile, see that I work at Yahoo!, then call up the Yahoo! main number and ask to speak to me. I consider this to be an insult, to me and to my employer. You are taking away time from my job and disturbing me at work. You can further bury yourself in my eyes by leaving a message asking me to call you back. I will not be calling you back. Ever.

Want to go for extra points? Leave a message that sounds mysterious. I got this one last week: "I need to speak to you and it's time-sensitive, so I'd appreciate a call back by Monday at noon." Do you she got one? No way, don't insult me by playing games.

If, for some reason, I answer the phone (which I tend to do on occasion...crazy, I know), just tell me straight up that you're a recruiter and I will tell you straight up that I'm not interested. This doesn't make us friends, nor does it make you someone I want to talk to ever again (as mentioned above, you disturbed me at work, which is the wrong way to approach me). So, when I say, "thank you, I'm not interested," and hang up, don't call me back. And if, for some unknown and clearly misguided reason, you do call me back, don't complain that I shouldn't hang up on you because it's rude and I'll never get another job if I'm rude to recruiters. I said I wasn't interested and I'm getting back to my job. And the fact of the matter is that you're probably the second or third person to call me that day with a job offer, not to mention the two or three emails I got also offering jobs. So don't think you're going to ruin my reputation by telling the recruiter network that I hung up on an unsolicited phone call. My body of work speaks for itself and I stand behind it, along with the scores of co-workers who I've worked with (go on, read the recommendations on my profile). Recruiters really shouldn't threaten, chastise, or lecture, no matter how mad that I turned down your advances. Haven't you ever been dumped before?

To my recruiter friends, you know I love you and that this post has nothing to do with you directly. It is advice for those recruiters who don't know me and don't realize how badly they're shooting themselves in the foot with their actions. As always, it's a small percentage of a field that can give everyone a bad name. Here's to the good ones.