Code, Life and Community
From a comment on an earlier XBOX entry in my blog, linked was the new white and blue versions of the XBOX that you can get in Japan. I really like the blue one! ......
Just finished reading 'The Sun Also Rises' by Hemingway (again). He is my absolute favorite writer. I have no faith in the writers of today and consistently find myself turning to the classics. If you *need* or want to get away from reading computer book after computer book (I did) - go to Amazon and get this book. It is pretty exciting. Bull fights, troubled women, troubled men, fishing, drinking and more drinking. You will not be disappointed. The dialogs are outstanding and the interactions of ......
Went to lunch with
Devin Rader today and he told me about where to get the Lorem Ipsum text ...
from the Lorem Ipsum site of course! (I need it for a screenshot in a book I am doing at the moment).
I just noticed that ASP.NET Pro magazine just reviewed my latest book - ASP.NET Professional Secrets. Nice!
Besides looking at the candidate's issues and how they hold a pen or something of that matter, I usually head out to their websites and take a look at the code they are putting out there as well. It do find it interesting in how and what technologies people use when using technology as a tool. My review here of Presidential code is by no means saying who you should vote for - I stay away from those conversations - but use it as you wish - that's all! My first stop was in Texas country! 1) Republican ......
I recently got this game, Links 2004, and was quite excited to give it a round. Overall, it is fun game (though friends tell me to check out Outlaw Golf). The graphics are superb and it is fun to change the weather to something rather annoying for the player - or if you are the one sitting around on a rainy cold day, then giving yourself some sunshine. The people in the game move and hit the ball quite realistically. You can also play all sorts of famous courses around the world which is exciting ......
I really realized today how much I miss Sunday football. Oh well. Spent the day trying to wire coaxial cable for the TVs in a future cool basement of mine - but without any luck. This cable is tricky stuff I think. I have been spending gobs of money on special end connectors, crimping tools and all sorts of stuff - but I am only getting static on the TV and I am starting to get rather pissed at it all. It is going to seem pretty defeating to call in the cable guy for this ... maybe Monday I'll head ......
4th, you say? What about the third? Well, I just finished author review on the 3rd Edition and then had to get the Table of Contents for the 4th edition in by tomorrow morning - so I spent some of the day on it. I think it is a great book and it will be exciting doing the 4th edition on Whidbey. If you would like to see something different in the 4th edition of the WROX Professional VB.NET book, then let me know here by commenting ......
I posted a link to Stone's first round of the World's Worst Album Covers .... so I had to post a link to his second stash:
World's Worst Album Covers II
Again ... FUNNY FUNNY FUNNY.
My wife is getting her Masters degree in Finance at the moment and she has to get ready for a class presentation. The teacher gave them instructions to present using ..... get this ... transparencies! What, is that correct? Her question to me was where do you do this sort of thing? Kinko's I guess. But I was just stunned that people are even still using these things? Hello ... knock, knock ... 21st century calling. Last I came across these things was in high school ('84-'88). I thought we had progressed ......
After my first post on this 'Interesting Interview: Software Patents Will Destroy Development', I started reading a little more about this issue and came across this editorial called 'Another Fine Patent Mess'. It seems that Microsoft now has a patent for sticking multiple scripts into an XML file and the author was wondering how such a thing could be patentable. I tend to agree and think we have a definite situation here. It also isn't Microsoft's fault as they are forced to play the patent game ......
Out of the depression woods? Maybe. It seems we have turned the corner after the financial services bust (which went along with the dotcom bust - not that many traders any more). Today our stock surged almost 20 percent! Outstanding! Whew, glad I decided to join the company's stock purchase plan and locked up a good amount of shares at $10/share (today it hit around $49/share) ......
The first company that Microsoft focused on for the Windows Server System ad campaign has showed up in the computer rags and online.
You can see the Microsoft page on it here. The
Reuters ad will first appear on March 15th in
Computer World magazine. I am quite excited about it as it took a lot of people's effort to make happen.
Nice to see Robert Scoble met up with fellow-employee Eric Auchard from
Reuters.
Today, INETA is officially two years old! It is hard to believe that INETA is two years old this month. When we launched INETA in February of 2002, .NET was fairly new and we came to the scene with about 40 user groups in our association. Today, we have close to 500 user groups and more than 170,000 members from all over the world that are part of INETA! Our growth is more than anyone ever imagined and outstanding as it is, it is also one of the most difficult things in managing INETA. More growth ......
I have two articles on the front page of the ASP.NET Developer Center on MSDN. The first: Using JavaScript Along with ASP.NET - I used to be a big JavaScript user during my ASP 3.0 days and I was one day thinking why I didn't use JavaScript as much with ASP.NET 1.0/1.1. I think for me, was that it wasn't as easy to use as it was with ASP 3.0 and I looked at how I would accomplish the same sorts of tasks I did in the past, but now with the use of server controls. The Forgotten Controls - HTML Server ......
Nice to see some great INETA activities happening in Europe! If you haven't gone to a user group meeting yet, then you are missing out! Already, there are hundreds of great user groups around the world. A .NET User Group is an outstanding way to learn .NET - learn with your peers, see it in action, see how it is making it in the field, best practices, etc ......
Seems there are some more words coming out about XBOX 2.0. Details include: XBOX 2 might not include a hard drive, but instead depend on flash memory. They are not sure that XBOX 1 games will work on XBOX 2 IBM will be the chip supplier (already knew that) Scary ... I have been making a huge investment in XBOX 1 games and controls and wouldn't want to really upgrade. I doubt game vendors will have XBOX 1 and XBOX 2 versions of their new games that come out after the release of XBOX 2. Yikes, I think, ......
Just recently, Reuters sold off a good part of their TIBCO shares for around $500million. You didn't know we had a huge stake in TIBCO? .... well, Reuters owns quite a number of companies, such as: Factiva (with Dow Jones)EquisMultexAVT There's plenty more, but those are some major ones. These are great companies that have great products and I've noticed that Reuters does a great job of bringing these companies products and people into the mix ......
Awhile ago, I wrote a book called the Visual Basic .NET Bible with Jason Beres. It was a fun book and it has been translated into something like more than eight languages already, which is cool. I like to look at the translations and see what they did - since they don't involve the original authors at all. The latest translated version of the Visual Basic .NET Bible that I found out there is the Spanish release. The interesting thing here is that the title of the book is just Microsoft Visual Basic ......
NOT ME! But as I was walking in NYC last night to get a slice of pizza, I looked down on one of the street sellers in Times Square and saw that he was selling a large collection of perfectly formed snowballs. Hmmmmm.
Where is the best place to watch today's SuperBowl? Why, in Saddam's former palace of course! It seems that there is going to be a big SuperBowl party in one of Saddam's former palaces for the troops. Dang cool!