Connected Systems Developer Competition

Well, the winners were announced tonight at a dinner for all of the finalists. Unfortunately, I think I'm allowed to say that I was not among any of the winners in any of the categories. I mean, I was among them in the sense that I was surrounded by winners, but I myself was not one.

I still had a great time exploring San Francisco on someone else's dime, had a great dinner tonight, and interesting conversation with a bunch of Europeans and a French Canadian. I can't say that I'm not a little disappointed at the moment, but that will all change tomorrow at the Mascone center.

See everyone in Detroit on Tuesday!

San Francisco, Morning Day 2

Jetlag sucks. I've been awake since about 4AM PST.

Hit up BK for breakfast, and walked back down the the Mascone Center where tomorrow's launch event will be held. There's already a satellite truck in place, which will be carrying Steve Ballmer's Keynote Speech live on the internet.



Here's what the 4th Street Entrance looks like:


And here's the Howard Street entrance:


When I made it back to Union Square, where my hotel is, I noticed four strange cars continuously driving around the square:

San Francisco, Day 1

I walked around San Francisco this afternoon. Actually, I walked up Powell Street to the piers. And when I say up, I really mean UP Powell Street. Did you know that someone put a big hill in between the bay and Union Square?



I hope this guy's parking brake works:



Anyways, I bought my ticket for a trip to Alcatraz tomorrow. I had to do it. I'm a big fan of haunted places and that genre of television (i.e., Ghost Hunters on SciFi).



All-in-all, I don't think that I would ever like to live in San Francisco. I'm just too much of a sub-urban person. Not too sure that I like the left coast either. Did you know that they just start eating when I'm ready for bed? I mean, I'm exhausted, and people are just now heading into the restaurants to eat. (Of course, it is 6 PM here).

And, what is it about me that tells everyone on the street to stop me and ask for money? I'm not just talking about homeless people, because I'll give change if I have it in my pocket. But the CoS was out giving their stress tests, and they stopped me. (To them, I say: FREE KATIE!) And, also some scam out there collecting money for "the crack-dependent children" stopped me. I hate to be a prick, but if I'm going to donate to a cause, then it will be through an organization like the Red Cross, not some guy on the street.

I also travelled down to the Mascone Center, and up Howard Street. I was going to eat at the Thirsty Bear Brewery, but this other place right next door caught my attention: Chevy's Fresh Mex. It's a chain, like On The Border and Don Pablo's, but we don't have one in Toledo, and it was pretty good eats. Had a few XXs with a steak and shrimp fajita. Mmmmm.

Oh, and the hotel that they're putting me up at: The Westin St. Francis. Neat place. Though, there are a bunch of people walking around at the moment in Black Tie apparel. I felt a little out of place with my jeans and sneakers. ;-)

Flying out to SFO

9:15 AM (EST)
While waiting to board the flight, I noticed a rather large guy in his twenties or thirties gleefully coming over to my direction. He walks past me, and I hear him say, "I thought I recognized you. I'm a big fan of yours, and just wanted to say 'Hi'." The two people that he was talking to, and who's very presence turned this guy into the equivalent of a 12-year girl old meeting Brittney Spears, were none other than the Mythbusters themselves.

Yes, Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were traveling together on my flight from Detroit to San Francisco. I wonder if they're going to try to reproduce the "large person got stuck to airplane toilet due to suction" myth on this flight... Hopefully, it won't be the "stewardess survived when the aircraft broke up in air" myth...

Surprisingly, I'm pretty sure that they flew coach and not first class. There's a myth that was just busted for me (celebrities fly coach, too).


10:45 AM (EST)
Purchased a snack box for $3.00. In it were some Ritz Chips (never heard of them), a mini summer sausage, cheese dip, chocolate giant Goldfish Grahams, a mint, and a wet-wipe. I'm assuming that the cheese dip was for the Ritz Chips.

The complementary Diet Pepsi was also consumed.


11:24 AM (EST)
Had to go pee-pee. It was certainly an interesting experience doing so while encountering minor turbulence. For what it's worth, this was my first trip inside of an airline bathroom, despite having flown a dozen times before.

While doing my business, I kept thinking of the crash scene in LOST where the guy in the bathroom flies up and hits the ceiling.

I still haven't seen the Mythbusters go into the bathroom with a large person yet. I'm in the back of the plane, so I'm keeping my eye on who uses the W.C…


11:45 AM (EST)
Hi, me again. I'm reading Bill Wagner's book Effective C# - 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your C#. Bill does a pretty good job of taking all of my C# skills and telling me that I suck at coding.

Actually, it's not that bad. He just explores some best practices, and jumps into MSIL at times to show why one method of doing something is far better than another (after the code is compiled). If you don't walk away with at least one bad habit corrected, then you must be Anders Hejlsberg.

Though, I think Bill needs to watch out. I mean, he only put 50 specific ways into his book. What if someone comes along and makes a book with 51 specific ways, and gives away that extra way for free? You would get 51 ways for the same price as 50, and which book do you think people would buy?

51 chimpmunks, twirling on a branch, eating sunflowers on my uncle's ranch. You know that old children's tale from the sea….



11:33 AM (PST)
Wheels down in SFO. I'm a traveller, here from the future!


1:30 PM (PST)
After wandering through the SFO airport parking garages, finding the AirTrain, and then being lucky enough to get off at the right stop in order to board the BART, I somehow made it to downtown San Francisco. A quick couple of blocks away from the train station is my hotel, and now I'm all checked in and paying $15/day for internet access from my room. I do see a Google Wi-Fi access point in my network list, but the signal is too weak to connect.

Well, time to explore the city for a little bit...

Launch Event Software Revealed

Mark Relph shows pictures on his blog of the DVD set that will be passed out at the Joint Launch Event. While no one really had a clear understanding of which versions of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 would be given to every attendee, it now looks for sure to be the Standard version of both. Cool!

San Francisco Bound!

I'm now officially on vacation from work for the next week and a half. First on my agenda: take care of some outstanding things at work tomorrow. ;)

Then I fly to San Francisco, and will spend the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday trying to keep myself occupied in a strange city all by myself. I hope to make it out to Alcatraz on Sunday morning--that would be too cool.

I've got a prior engagement on Sunday night, so I'll be missing the .NET Rocks party, which is only blocks from where I will be. :(

The thought of skipping my event and attending Carl's crossed my mind, but I figured that would be a bad idea, since the event that I am attending is paying my way out there. ;)

Then I'll attend the Launch Event on Monday! Yay! But, I won't get to party too long afterwards, because I need to catch a 10:25PM flight back to Detroit (arriving o'dark-hundred), pick up a rental car, and head to the Detroit version of the same Launch Event. Yay!

You'll find me in Detroit on 11/8 at both the Users Group booth and also in the Ask the Experts area (but, unfortunately, not at the same time [grin]). Stop by and say hello!

.NET Rocks Roadtrip Webcam Videos

I'm collecting frames from the DNR Roadtrip webcam (dunno what to do with them), but so are other people!

Paul Sturgill has been assembling the daily collections into videos (along with Franklin Brothers music). After he stopped, I tried my hand in it.

The software that I used creates AVI's, and I selected the DivX codec cause that seems to be all the rave (but, video production is NOT my forte).

I'm open to suggestions for making this better, like how to create something that would actually stream from the server instead of apparently downloading first, and then playing from the internet cache.

October								November
Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa		Su	Mo	Tu	We	Th	Fr	Sa
						1				1	2	3	4	5
2	3	4	5	6	7	8		6	7	8	9	10	11	12
9	10	11	12	13	14	15		13	14	15	16	17	18	19
16	17	18	19	20	21	22		20	21	22	23	24	25	26
23	24	25	26	27	28	29		27	28	29	30
30	31

Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Day 6

Day 7 (part 1)
Day 7 (part 2)
Day 7 (part 3)
Day 7 (part 4)

Day 8 [all-night editing session]
Day 8 (part 2)

Day 9 [on the way to Raleigh]
Day 9 (DivX AVI that I created)

Day 10 (DivX AVI that I created) BTW: Carl is NOT in the bathroom playing the guitar, but it made me do a double-take!

I only had a few frames for October 23-24, so I just threw them into an animated GIF:
Day 11 and 12

Day 14 (DivX AVI)
Day 15 (DivX AVI)
Day 16 (DivX AVI)
Day 17 (DivX AVI)
Day 20 (DivX AVI)

I only caught one frame during the entire day of November 1:
Day21

Day 22

Day 23 (part 1) (DivX AVI)
Day 23 (part 2) (DivX AVI)

Day 24 (time zone diff) (DivX AVI)
Day 24 (Los Angeles) (DivX AVI)

Day 26 (DivX AVI)

Apparently, the webcam broke on the trip from Los Angeles to San Francisco. :(

TinyThings

Check it out: Rory's podcast is finally available!

Named TinyThings, it's all about Rory's fascination with embedded/mobile devices and development. This first 1.5 hr episode blows you away with a very technical, in-depth interview with Mike Hall of Microsoft (didn't we see him ride around on a Segway, do all those Pod Attacks, and also give part of the keynote presentation at Tech-Ed '05?).

This episode continues it's BBC-feel with the British accents continuing into Rob Mile's review of the Gizmondo.

Give it a listen, yo! (Side note: I don't know what's up with all these "Yo's" as of late)

http://neopoleon.com/tinythings/blogs/main/

Screw You, Mr. K-Mart Sales Man

Did you know that K-Mart used to be where you picked up personal computers? Really!

I just had a flashback to my youth, circa 1983, give or take a few years. I remember that K-Mart sold Commodores and maybe even Ataris. They also used to have a coin-op arcade. Very different from today's bankrupt K-Mart that now somehow owns Sears.

So, while my mother shopped around, I would head back to the 'Lectronics section where the Commodore 64's would be powered on to the READY prompt



Yeah, that's going to sell a customer on buying this machine. Look, it shows a pretty blue screen with a flashing box!

So, I would always try to help out by creating a program on the spot. Pro Bono, even! I don't recall what the programs would do exactly, but it was surely more interesting than the READY prompt.

Well, this prick of a salesman would always come over, say "These are for sale. They're not toys", and power-cycle the C64. Did he not know the err of his ways?

Now that this memory has been released from the very depths of wherever memories are kept for 25 years (give or take), I can finally say: Screw you, Mr. K-Mart Sales Man working in Lima, Ohio in 1983! I was doing you a favor, yo.

We now resume normal programming....

Weblog Usability Article

Jakob Nielson writes about Weblog Usability: The Top Ten Design Mistakes.

Interesting points that I haven't really thought of before, and ones that I think I'll take steps to change in the upcoming future (I smell a New Year's resolution!).

I started this particular blog a year ago with one goal of remaining semi-anonymous. Apparently, that didn't work anyways, because this blog is the #1 MSN search result for my name (and #2 on Google, due to an old page that I created while in college being older, and therefore, more relevant in Google's eyes). Anyways, the article mentions that posting anonymously does nothing to increase your reader's trust in the content. This is exactly why Scoble also lists his cell phone number.

The other issue that has me thinking is the use of Blogspot.com for hosting. Blogger has been a decent service provider, albeit missing a few features that I would like to see. But, the article states that it's only time before *.blogspot.com authors will be viewed as novices, sort of like what you think when you see a @aol.com email address. So, I'm seriously thinking about my own domain for the blog and whatever else I end up doing next year.

Corn Maze

Spent the afternoon lost in a corn maze that is a couple of miles from my house.

What's a corn maze? Well, they plant the field in the spring. Then, when the corn is about ankle-high, they mow an intricate maze into the field using a riding mower.

Now the corn is high (ready for harvest), and throughout the maze are check stations. You have a card that you punch at each station to "prove" that you made it all the way through.

It's a good way to burn a couple of hours!

Speed up MSDN Subscriber Downloads

I found this post a while ago, but finally put it into use tonight. As I was downloading the SQL Server 2005 DVD image (~2.5GB), I noticed that I was only getting 25 KB/sec speeds. Sucks to your assmar!

After adding a USA mirror IP to my hosts file, and then trusting microsoft.com in both my Internet Explorer Trusted Sites and Privacy Sites, I saw the download speed jump to 300-400 KB/sec (it varies, but right at this moment, it's down to 115 KB/sec). The time remaining went from 25 hours to 2 hours.

Oh, yeah, and at first, the speed up didn't work. I had to flush my DNS cache so that it would pick up the new IP address from the hosts file (start|run: ipconfig /flushdns)

San Francisco: Wish There Were Someplace To Eat

I wish that there was someplace to eat near the hotel that I'm going to stay at:

VS 2005 and SQL 2005 RTM!

MSDN Subscribers can download the RTM versions of Visual Studio.NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005 (Developer Edition) today!

First-hand Account of an Urban Legend

It all started about 10 years ago. I moved into an IT role at an air freight company, and started to support a time and attendance system. This thing was written in FoxPro 2.6 DOS (because Fox Software was a local company before MS bought them), had multiple clients running on 386-SX machines, and centralized tables that resided on a Netware 3.11 filesystem.

So, there was always this story (urban legend, actually) that went around the office about when the supervisors were first trained. Despite the application being DOS-based, it did use the mouse to allow for field selection and button clicking. The instructor was in front of the class, and was telling the supervisors how to fill out a timesheet. One of his instructions was something to the effect of "click the button at the bottom with the mouse".

All of the supervisors completed the task successfully except for one. This guy couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. The instructor walked over to him and asked him to repeat the task to see if they could figure out why it wasn't working. The supervisor picked up the mouse, actually pressed it to the computer monitor, and clicked.

Now, I had always thought that this was truly an urban legend, similar to the Tech Support Horror Stories email chain circulating on the internet. But, at tonight's User Group meeting, I got first-hand confirmation that this really happened...from that instructor himself! Small world.

Connected Systems Developer Competition Finalists Posted

The list of 15 finalists were posted for the Connected Systems Developer Competition.

http://www.csdevcompetition.com

Congratulations all!

NWNUG Presentation - Josh Holmes - October 25

Note: This event has passed. Sorry if you missed it.

Mark your calendars. On Tuesday, October 25, INETA Speaker Josh Holmes will be presenting to the NW Ohio .NET User Group (NWNUG) in downtown Toledo on new Data Binding and Caching features in ASP.NET 2.0.

http://www.nwnug.com/dotnetnuke/Default.aspx?tabid=31

It's not too often that we get a national speaker from the INETA Speaker Bureau, so this is a big event. (I'm not going to mention that even though Josh is a national-level speaker, he happens to live in SE Michigan)

If you're a regular attendee, then please don't miss this upcoming meeting. If you haven't been to a meeting in a while, then please plan on making an appearance for this one. And if you have never been to a user group meeting, then by all means, come spend the evening with your peers to see what all the excitement is about! Bonus points if you bring multiple friends and co-workers. Extra bonus points if you can get your pointy-haired boss or sales goob to attend.

It costs you nothing, plus you get Pizza and Pop, plus you might walk away with one of several door prizes that are given away at the end of the night (things like XBox games, Microsoft hardware, and Microsoft software).

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

If you've never been to a User Group meeting before, then I can understand your sense of anxiety. But, it's really not a big deal. You show up to the location, sign in to the facility's guest book (i.e., if the building has security), then go to the meeting room. Find a seat, enjoy the show, fill out a survey at the end, wait around to see if you win any of the raffle prizes, and then go home. It's really that easy, and you'll learn something in the process.

Computer Bag Recommendations

I'm in the market for a new computer bag. Probably a backpack, but I'm open to suggestion that might sway my decision.

I'm still using a black leather clamshell bag that came with my Gateway laptop 7 years ago. It works, but only because it's on-hand. I'd really like something new (read: without ripped out zippers from stuffing too much crap into the pockets).

On a different note (but strangely related), I was surprised by something recently:

I haven't flown in probably two years (possibly three). And, at that time, I was staying at the destination for a week, so I had luggage to check.

In a couple weeks, I'm going to be flying out to San Francisco for a few days, and then flying back. Now, in the past (pre-September 11), I would have just carried everything (2 pieces) onto the plane and not worry about checking a bag. But, I read on DTW's web site that they only allow one carry-on. WTF??!

So, since I can't stuff 2-3 days worth of clothes into my laptop bag, it looks like I'm forced to carry-on my laptop, and check a duffel bag. What are the chances that I'll be buying clothes in SFO due to luggage lost by the ground crew of a bankrupt airline (NWA)? Luckily, it's a direct flight, so they won't have to transfer my bag from one plane to another.

In conclusion, I think I'd also be interested in any computer bags that could accommodate overnight clothes and toiletries as well (serving as my only piece of carry-on luggage).

UPDATE (10/24/2005): Thank you to Aaron for pointing this out: A laptop qualifies in the same category as a purse (albeit, a MANLY purse). The 1-piece of carry-on luggage is in addition to your purse (it's EUROPEAN!).

From the DTW FAQ:

How many carry-on items are passengers permitted to take through the passenger-screening checkpoint?

Passengers are limited to one carry-on item along with one personal item, such as a purse, briefcase or laptop. Check with your airline for specific security and baggage requirements.

This blog is 1 year old!

No idea if these translate appropriately, but...

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!
С днем рождения!
Feliz aniversario!
축 생일!
Buon Compleanno!
Ευτυχή γενέθλια!
Alles Gute zum Geburtstag!
Joyeux Anniversaire !
Gelukkige Verjaardag!
生日快乐!

The post that started it all:

http://jasonf-blog.blogspot.com/2004/10/new-blog.html

JavaScript Execution from IE Address Bar

I never knew of this capability until today:

You can execute JavaScript from Internet Explorer's address bar, and it will use objects on the currently loaded page.

For instance, load a page into IE (perhaps the one you're currently reading???), and then type this into the address bar:

javascript:alert(document.all.length);

or

javascript:alert(document.body.innerHTML)