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Jason's Random Thoughts of Interest |
I found the following link to my blog today while checking out my referrer stats:
http://www.toledofreepress.com/?id=4326
Lisa Renee Ward, a prolific blogger about Toledo topics, picked up on AVIMH's 2-year anniversary announcement and included that fact in her "Blog It! Toledo" online column in the Toledo Free Press.
This is the week! The annual rivalry between Ohio State and the University of Michigan will be played out on Saturday November 18. It should be a very interesting game this year, with OSU being #1 in the standings, and Michigan #2 (both teams are undefeated this season).
But, I have to be honest: that's about all of the sports facts that I know.
For me, this game represents bragging rights for the next year. Not only among most of my co-workers, who actually live in Michigan by choice (yeah, what are they thinking?), but also between me and my wife, who has always been a Wolverine fan, despite living in the glorious land of scarlet and gray all of her life.
I have one particularly fond memory of OSU-Michigan week. Back when I had a local office that was 7 miles from my house (instead of the current 80 miles), I also had control over the office infrastructure. We had one particularly obnoxious U of M alumnus who was brave enough to drive down to Toledo on the Friday before the game. We'll call this individual Erik, because that's his name.
Erik always makes it his mission to stir the pot, and this Friday was no exception.
We used ISA Server for the office firewall, which allowed me to set up all kinds of little rules. One thing that I did was create a rule so that every so often, the firewall would refuse to load whatever internet web page that he was trying to get to, and instead take him to a locally hosted "error" page. The particular page that I created was adorned with OSU-related stuff, and even played the OSU fight song. Yes, my friend, we Buckeyes pwned him on that day. DFWN
I've been lucky enough to have bragging rights for the past 2 years. Let's make it 3 in a row!
There's been a few hiccups in getting the registration site live for CodeMash, but today, you are now able to register through the website!
CodeMash (www.codemash.org) is a fairly unique conference that will be held on January 18-19, 2007 at the Kalahari Lodge in Sandusky, OH. It stands out from other conferences that I've attended because it is will be a cross-pollenation event, bringing together developers from many different technologies (Java, .NET, Ruby, PHP, etc) into one common forum.
It is also completely organized by the developer community, acting as a non-profit entity. This means that your registration fees (which are extremely low for a conference like this) are being spent on the conference (i.e., your meals, etc), and not as a means of turning a profit.
We toured the venue last week, and I was totally blown away. I had no idea that we had this high of quality of a conference facility in Northern Ohio outside of major metro areas. Sandusky is halfway between Cleveland and Toledo, and is probably better known as the location of Cedar Point, one of the best amusement parks in the entire world. Kalahari is also an indoor waterpark resort, so it will be an attractive destination in the middle of January.
If you're interested in attending this conference, then you will want to register soon. Not only do you have to worry about being shut out (registration is capped at 500 attendees), but also there is a time limit for making room reservations at a great price ($88 a night, which includes admission to the waterpark).
https://www.codemash.org/register.aspx
(If this conference sounds interesting to you, even if you can't attend, then please help to spread the word through your blog, or by telling a friend, etc).
Dustin Campbell and I were chatting the other day about the whole confusion behind the .NET Framework v3.0, and why they decided on that version number despite the fact that the core (i.e., the CLR) is remaining at v2.0. He filled me in on a little nugget of information that I think, if entirely accurate [not that I doubt Dustin, but I doubt my ability to correctly remember everything that he said], should have been articulated by Microsoft in the first place to stop whiners like me from making such a big deal about the versioning.
It seems that all of the upcoming Orcas features that we've been calling "3.0" (LINQ, extension methods, yada yada yada) do not require anything new in the CLR. The languages will have new compilers, but the new compiler will still generate v2.0 MSIL and metadata (i.e., they will generate CLR 2.0 assemblies).
So, from that perspective, I can start to see why it's no longer important to tie the framework version number to the CLR version number. It seems that the CLR is stable, and could effectively remain at the current version indefinitely without hindering the ability to add additional functionality to the languages (like LINQ and extension methods).
Never been a fan of Apple's new series of ads. I mean, they're very well done (kudos to the agency that thought those up), it's just that I'm on the opposing team.
Apparently, Rory doesn't like them either.
tags: mac, pc, rory blyth
The CodeMash website is live!
You can now submit abstracts if you want to present and you can pre-register to hold your spot in line. Official registration should be open soon and will cost only $99 for a two-day event!
Bruce Eckel, Neal Ford and Scott Guthrie are all keynoting the event.
You can also download information about the event if you are interested in sponsoring.
Upcoming Webcast: November 6, 2006 at Noon EST
Heartland User Group Webcasts
Functional Programming and LINQ - Shifting your object paradigm.
Bill Wagner – Ann Arbor .NET Developers
Join us for technical presentations by experts from around our the user groups in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee. In this webcast, Bill Wagner will demonstrate the new language extensions in C# and VB.NET called LINQ.
The language features added for the Orcas release of C# and VB.NET start moving those languages out of their Object Oriented roots into the realm of functional programming. It’s a different way of programming. Rather than designing classes with behaviors and data, you create functions that take data as inputs and produce different data as outputs. That radical shift can lead to much simpler ways to express your designs.
In this session, you’ll see the new syntax in these languages, and how you can leverage those additions to create more concise programs in less time.
Registration: http://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/eventdetail.aspx?EventID=1032314537&Culture=en-US
Event ID: 1032314537
Upcoming Topics:
11/20 – Intro to Workflow. What’s all the Noise About? – Brian Prince, Central Ohio .NET Developers Group
1/8 – Web Services Software Factory – Mike Wood, Cincinnati .NET Users Group
Just a FYI to anybody keeping stats at home: This blog turned 2 years old on October 22.
Thanks go out to everybody who actually subscribe to and read my posts. I don't think I'd be writing if I didn't have my 4 regular readers.... Well, 2 readers if you don't count my parents....
I've been using Internet Explorer 7 as my primary browser for about 6 months now (various beta versions). I've always been an IE fan, dating back to version 4--, actually preferring it over the various Mozilla flavors. This probably has a lot to do with the fact that most of my clients standardized on IE, so any web application that I developed was targeted for that single platform.
I only had a few minor problems with the beta versions of IE7, so my experience has been excellent thusfar. Yesterday, I downloaded and installed the RTM version.
Perhaps it is simply a coincidence, but I've been noticing some weird problems now with my laptop. For instance, it goes into sleep mode when I close the display. More than once now in the past 24 hours, upon waking up, the laptop does not show the login dialog--just the wallpaper and mouse pointer. The only thing that I seem to be able to do is power down and reboot.
Also, more than once, the browser has just seemed to stop responding for 1-2 minutes. It doesn't allow me to switch tabs, or scroll.
I don't want to just blindly blame the RTM version of IE7 for these problems, but I find it strangely coincidental that they started after I installed this most recent update.
The Microsoft MVP program is a recognition award for leadership in the Microsoft-platform user community. I'm not a Microsoft MVP, but many of my friends are. Some things happened during the last round of awards (beginning of October) that make me question the intention and/or value of the program.
First, they awarded, and then rescinded the MVP status for Cyril Paciullo, the maker of Messenger Plus, a free addon for MSN Messenger that is also a distribution vehicle for LOP (nasty adware program).
http://www.networkworld.com/news/2006/100606-micro...
Next, they didn't renew the award for Jamie Cansdale. Jamie wrote TestDriven.NET, which is probably one of the most widely used addins for Visual Studio by unit testing advocates everywhere. The reason cited: Jamie violated the "MVP Code of Conduct" because he happened to make his program work with the Express SKUs (Visual C# Express, Visual Basic.NET Express, etc). Or, at least this is the speculation of what the violation was.
This is not severe, but still annoys me every time that it comes up. Look at this screenshot:
Here I have the project set up so that ClickOnce will automatically increment the revision number after each publish. Well, something apparently is not working, because it seems that at least once a day, I get "Version already exists on the server" errors.
Blah! Is it me, or VS2005 that's at fault? I'm going to blame the latter, since I never make mistakes.
A good friend of mine in the Microsoft community, Josh Holmes, has made the jump and became a blue badge himself. Congratulations!
Details from Josh himself: http://www.srtsolutions.com/public/item/143418
My work email account filled up (I hate quotas), so I had to find things to delete. One was an email from Mokee containing a really neat picture of my Bubby (Evan) staring out of Mike's back door at the swingset.
I simply titled it "Yearning"...
(I think it looks great as my computer's wallpaper)
NWNUG'ers: I'll probably publish the NWNUG Introduces... Delegates screencast and article to the user group web site later this week. I'm still thinking about what format I want the followups to these presentations to be. Definitely an article format instead of just the PowerPoint slide deck, but still debating on the whole screencast thing (bandwidth and all).
If you attend the group, but missed the last meeting on 9/26, then what I'm referring to is a new Intro-level mini-presentation (30 minutes or less) that we're going to try to have at the start of each meeting. The artifacts from this presentation will then be made available on the website for future reference.
My new favorite Delegate trick (courtesy of Dustin, who raves about it just about every time that we get together):
somelist.ForEach(Console.WriteLine);
Console.WriteLine qualifies as an Action delegate! The result is that you can dump out an entire collection to the console with one line of code.
I think that most people who actually know me also know that I have two young twins who run around my relatively small house making all sorts of noise (and creating an equal amount of chaos, which I've come to accept). I don't have the space to dedicate an entire room as a soundproof home office, so when I <airQuotes> Work From Home </airQuotes>, it really means that I'm at a Panera Bread somewhere drinking the same cup of coffee that I purchased hours before. (Sidenote: Don't get me wrong--I loves their Turkey Artichoke panini and soups as well, so they've gotten plenty of my money for what little Wi-Fi I actually use).
Up to about 4 years ago, I had an actual office only 7 miles from my house. And then it moved to 50 miles away, and most recently to 80 miles away. Heading into the office on a weekend in order to get a little project work done is no longer feasible.
I'm wondering what other possibilities there are out there for a place to actually work. It would have to have exposed electrical outlets (so that I can keep my laptop charged), free Wi-Fi Internet access, and allow me to talk on my cellphone without getting "shushed". There should also be free parking, and restrooms nearby. ;-)
The public libraries around here qualify for almost everything except for the "talking on the cellphone" part. There are other restaurants besides Panera (i.e., Starbucks and even McDonalds), but Wi-Fi is typically not free.
What I really need (and this is one of those business ventures that I'll never have the time or money to pursue) is an office complex where I can rent an actual office by the day, week, or month if I need to. It would be targeted for all of us remote workers, and priced to be much more affordable than leasing a small office space. The building would provide the internet connectivity and even offer a phone extension that you can use. Oh, and like any real office, it should also have a watercooler and coffee maker for free coffee ("a penny saved is just a penny").
I know that there is something similar to this in Southfield, MI (for example), but I think it's more for providing a facade that you have an office rather than just giving a remote employee of some company a place to sit for a day. Besides, Southfield is as far away from my house as my current office, so that doesn't help my present situation.
So, anyways, with a lack of alternatives, it looks like I'll be heading to Panera in Perrysburg either this afternoon or tomorrow afternoon to get some things done. Can I get anyone a panini while I'm there?
UPDATE: As I sit here in Panera, I realize why I keep coming back here instead of just anyplace with wifi: Delicious soup, some light jazz playing on the speakers, and interesting people all around ("interesting" in both the good and bad sense). For an observer type like me, it's just a neat place to hang out and get some things done.
Blogger's navigation kind of sucks. I experimented with a tag cloud (in sidebar), but the 3rd party provider of this service isn't as good as I had hoped.
The best way for someone to browse this blog is to use the monthly archives (also in the right-hand sidebar). That will give you all posts for a month on a single page.
I'll probably move the blog later this year and finally use dasBlog on a hosted server. Then I'll have a little more control over how content is displayed to the user (specifically surrounding navigation options).
Until then, enjoy catching up on my thoughts, plskthx! ;-)
UPDATE: I think I realized why I received a few complaints about it hard being able to navigate. In my template, I only had the Archive list showing for the main page and archive pages. So, if someone landed on a specific post, the monthly archive list would not be displayed. Whoops! Problem fixed. Dig away!
Time to complain about an annoying feature in an otherwise awesome product: SQL Server Management Studio.
I opened a table today to do some editing of bit field data. This is your basic Boolean (True/False) column in a database table. SQL Server itself represents Boolean (bit) data as 0 and 1.
But, SSMS displays "True" and "False" for the field values. Furthermore, while editing a bit field, it only accepts the words "true" and "false".
So, look at the error that pops up when I try to change a "True" value to false by entering "0" (which, I'll reiterate for clarity, is what SQL Server ITSELF requires for "false"):
I was recently an extra on the set for an upcoming episode of The Simpsons. It was so much fun watching the filming process. Homer is totally like his character in real life, and Lisa is quite the Diva!
I had one of the grips snap a picture before they kicked us off of the set:
tags: Simpsons
I noticed today that there are now some drawing tools on the Windows Live Local scratchpad that allow you to draw polygons and lines right onto your map! Cool!
Here's a map that I marked up. Path #1 shows what my "commute" looks like if and when I go to my office (note that by policy, this is not supposed to be mileage that I can expense since it is considered a commute). #2 demonstrates that even after a polygon is added to a map, you can still edit vertices if you need to.
These are groovy features, but one thing that I didn't like was that while drawing the line, there was no way to pan the map. I'm not sure how that problem would be solved since panning normally involves mouse-down dragging, but it is definitely a limitation. (I zoomed out to solve the issue, but this results in a lack of accuracy in placing the points).
I love the "CTRL-ENTER" shortcut in Internet Explorer.
That is, if you want to go to a www dot com website, like http://www.microsoft.com for instance, just type Microsoft in the address bar, and then press CTRL and ENTER at the same time. The "Microsoft" will be wrapped with "http://www." and ".com".
Well, every now and then, I would mistype the CTRL-ENTER part, and the contents of the address bar would shift to be right-aligned (for Right-to-Left reading). I could never figure out what keys I pressed, because it would always happen so fast.
This morning, I finally figured it out. CTRL-Right Shift (the one right under the ENTER key) will shift to RTL reading order, and CTRL-Left Shift will return to LTR reading order. Note that there's also a right-click context menu on the address bar combo box that allows you to do the same thing.
Now I don't have to assume that my laptop is possessed by mischievous demons.
tags: IE, Internet Explorer, RTL
