Back to Java after 10 years

Dusting off the Java books and taking a deep dive back into the Java world again.  Hopefully it will be like riding a bike.  I do miss coding in Java and I wish I would have keep programming on some open source projects on the side.  A lot has stayed the same, like the language, but that may change with Java 8 adding Lambda Expressions.  I've noticed there are a lot of new packages and frameworks in the last 10 yearsand I'm trying to get my head wrapped around them all.  I use to like all the Apache projects and I use to be a master at Ant scripts.   As I dive back into Java I'll have to see if there are some better tools.

Good old days
I remember building really cool stuff like a JMS processing queue to handle shopping card orders.  Creating Ant Scripts to build jars and war files creating bash scripts to deploying them to a Custer of 3 BEA Weblogic servers.   Now it's all kind of a blur but I remember learning a ton, drinking a lot of coke and working 60-100 hours per week for weeks trying to code and deploy.

What I've discovered
I am really liking IntelliJ (JetBrains really knows programmers needs) but the project setup is way too complicated, I just want to create a simple Java Console project.  I'm way too use to Visual Studio and the simple selection, I'm sure I could install packages and make Visual Studio complicated.  So far I've found NetBeans to be the easiest to setup a quick Java project.  I'm still going to have to dig into all these packages and see which ones are worth it.
Also PluralSight is a great resource for refreshing Java Skills and it's not badly priced.

Me playing with Java, here is my life code:

   1 
   2 
   3 private class Life
   4 {
   5   bool dead = false;
   6   int days = 0;
   7   private Life() {
   8     live();
   9   }
  10   
  11   public void live()
  12   {
  13      while(!dead) {
  14       code(); work(); family(); school();
  15       play();
  16       eat();
  17       sleep();
  18       days++;
  19     }
  20   }
  21 }