The Cattle Drive forum is where the drivers get together to complain, uh rather, discuss their assignments and encourage each other. Thanks to the enthusiastic initiative of Johannes de Jong, you can keep track of your progress on the drive with the Assignment Log. If you're tough enough to get through the nitpicking, you'll see your name on the Graduation Log.

Gettin' them doggies...
Lots of activity on the Cattle Drive lately! Around 20 drivers are keeping the nitpickers busy lately, the majority kickin' up dust in the OOP and Servlets corrals. Activity in the JDBC corral has raised quite a bit of dust - more on that later...

And a shiny spur goes to...
After this month's storm of drivers we're gonna be needin' to stock up on some more spurs. Two notable drivers, Dirk Schreckmann and Louise Haydu each picked up not just one, but two silver spurs by whipping their way through both the Java Basics and the OOP sections of the Drive. Incredible!

Our very own Michael Pearson picked up a gold spur by gettin' himself through the Servlets, not an easy task. A major milestone was set by Marilyn deQueiroz, who is the first to get herself out of the JDBC corral. Awesome. (But we knew that.) Y'all done real good, keep up the good work!

Back from being out on the range...
Good news from one of our wayward Cattle Drivers who found their back: Manju Jain, a.k.a jytsika, is back with us to share in the dust and grime of the Servlets section. Welcome back jytsika, glad you made it!

Saddle sore...
So close and yet so far, that's how it feels when you're just about to graduate from one of the Cattle Drive "schools."

Elouise Kivineva is well on her way to pullin' in that oh-so-coveted first silver spur after the Java Basics assignments. Ronald Schindler still has his eye on the silver spur for OOP, his saddle is well broken in by now. Hang in there, Ronald! He's joined by Josué Cedeno, who has moseyed his way up to the last OOP assignment and is just itchin' to get onto those Servlets!

Peter Gragert has been sweatin' in the saddle with the final assignment in the Servlets section. He'll enjoy that sasparilla at the graduation celebration! Greg Harris has been steady on the trail, and is now about to attack the last Servlets hurdle.

The JDBC corral has three cow pokes hoping to join Marilyn to form an elite group of JDBC graduates: Jason Adam, Lance Finney and Daniel Olsen are already picking out new belt buckles to match their JDBC spurs!

Nitpicking is hard work too...
We know they're workin' reeeeeally hard, after all we've seen what those assignments look like once the nitpickers have combed through 'em. Hats off to Marilyn deQueiroz and Jason Adam for their dedication and patience with the pesky vermin that always manage to make their way into those assignments. Newbie nitpicker Pauline McNamara has just started collecting nits too.

Tips for the Trail...
Here's one that comes back time and again: if you've gone through the Cattle Drive you've most likely heard of "print as you go". Often you don't need to track all those strings or pass 'em through a bunch of methods, you just need to print 'em! Check out the interesting threads on this topic over at the Cattle Drive forum.

Written by Jason Adam and Pauline McNamara