December 2005 - Posts
We got word back from the vet on why Gizmo died so suddenly. Apparently for a long time now Gizmo had been dealing with a bad build up of some kind of bacteria in her intestines. According to the vet, there are countless things that can cause this to happen to dogs, but they have no idea what caused it in this case. This is partly the cause of her sensitive stomach and explains why she vomited so frequently throughout her short life. Apparently, the last time she got sick she must have aspirated (inhaled) some of her vomit and that caused pneumonia. The combination of the pneumonia and the intestinal bacteria is what got her and the vet agreed that when this sort of thing does happen, it happens quickly. He did say that the type of bacteria wasn't contagious so we don't have to worry about our other dogs.
The lesson here is that if you have a dog with a "sensitive stomach", take it seriously. The fact is that if your dog periodically throws up for no apparent reason might mean that you should take it to the vet.
-- Matt Ranlett
Where's my Xbox 360? I've had one on "pre-order" since October and I still don't have it. What the heck? So I thought I'd check out XboxTracker, which uses the web services of certain retailers to see if they've got in stock 360s. The entire list of 24 distinct vendors is listed as either SOLD OUT or BACKORDER. However, more impressive than the sheer volume of missing 360s is the impressive array of bundles you can buy.
- Check out this bundle from Target for nearly $2000! It includes a 30" LCD TV and surround speakers.
- If you want a TV but can't quite spend that much you could get this bundle from BestBuy for a mere $1800. Of course, that's only a 23" LCD TV and doesn't come with the speakers but it does make you wireless.
- If you really want to go nuts however, Gamestop.com has you covered with this $3700 bundle that includes a 42" plasma TV from Dell.
The long and short of it is that while Microsoft might have actually shipped its target 3 million consoles, the demand is still so high that every available console gets snatched up right away. I won't see my console until January or February. <sniff> <sniff>
-- Matt Ranlett
John Kirkwood is starting a Cobb county based .Net certification study group. Keep tabs on the new Yahoo Group site for meeting announcements: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MCPDStudyGroup/
-- Matt Ranlett
Do you still need some holiday gifts? How about some stuff for yourself? MediaPlay stores around the country are closing and everything in the stores are marked 20-50% off. I went last night and scooped up some sweet deals! My coo-worker who told me about it just got all his own Christmas presents there.
The last store will close its doors in January. Find a store near you quickly!
-- Matt Ranlett
I feel kinda like this:
The PSP is AWESOME! The web browser is great, the games kick butt for being portable, and the movies look like they’re high def due to the crystal clear screen! Seriously cool. But seriously, the photo was funny so I couldn’t help posting it.
I still can’t wait to get my Xbox 360! I was walking through Walmart Sunday afternoon and they actually had three in the case. I almost bought all three so I could sell them on Ebay but I resisted. I figure I’ve probably missed the $800/Xbox prices. However, one of my co-workers did send me this clever way to market your Xbox 360 on Ebay:
— Matt Ranlett
Last night 27 people showed up to the cross user group holiday party/Visual Studio Launch Event recap. I gave a quick slide deck based recap of the Launch Event content (the web slide deck is now online at the Atlanta MS Pros website). Chris Wallace followed me with some great demos of new ASP.Net features including site maps, master pages, and the wizard control.
We followed the short presentations with some open forum discussions about the nature of the user groups in Atlanta and the kinds of topics. We heard a variety of opinions, including a significant minority of people wishing there was a user group in Cobb county. I've actually got someone who is now interested in possibly leading a Cobb county user group with a focus on studying for MCSD certifications. We need to get a location in Cobb county, so anyone who might be able to help with that is encouraged to either leave a comment here or send me an e-mail. We got some requests for different topics, including Microsoft's CRM software, Object Oriented Programming basics (an ever popular beginner topic), Development tips and tricks (like using SQL Server to send e-mail), and more. The ghost of the Atlanta Mobility group showed up to request some more mobile development topics. We had some great topic ideas, one or two presentation volunteers, and lots of fun overall. We had balloons all over the room (sparking an outbreak of INETA style volley ball during the open forum discussion) and plenty of traditional holiday food - Chinese food!
Thanks go out to the Microsoft Biztalk team, who generously provided enough Biztalk books for everyone in the room to get one. We also had plenty of other launch event prizes to give away - shirts, pens, flashlights, tool kits, and more. And one more time, I'd like to thank Doug Turnure for generously footing the bill for our highly overpriced Chinese food. Apparently I am now banned from planning the menu!
-- Matt Ranlett
One of my new toys finally arrived – a brand new Sony PlayStation Portable. This wicked little handheld entertainment device plays games, movies, music, and photos on a sweet High Definition screen and with dual stereo speakers. It’s very nice!
I also went out and got a game for it – Burnout Legends. This is the best racing game I’ve ever played on the Xbox and the PSP game is equally fun.
— Matt Ranlett
So I work at a company whos business it is to sell CDs and DVDs. We're actually a big company, in the top 10 music retailers in the US. As a result of our association with the various distribution companies like Sony/BMG and WEA, there are tons of sampler and promo CDs floating around the office for the employees to listen to. I like music, and I listen to it all the time. I figure my exposure to some of these samplers gives me an opportunity to listen to stuff I'd never buy, but since all I have to do is pick it up out of a stack... So here are a few recommendations:
I also ran across an interesting cover. Long ago, Johnny Cash scored a hit song with his Legend of John Henry's Hammer. I've got a Greatest Hits CD in my car with this song on it. Today, I was listening to a sampler CD from Putumayo World Music (www.putumayo.com) and I found a blues cover of the song, this time by Tangle Eye called John Henry's Blues. Both are good. Check out the legend of John Henry - steel driving man.
-- Matt Ranlett
Dan Attis has given several presentations to the various user groups (VB, C#) of his favorite dev tool - CodeRush. This, plus the demo I saw at TechEd 2005 where one of the DevExpress people was flying through code so quickly I had trouble keeping up, made me want to try it out. Of course, in my typical style I procrastinated until recently. I love it and I'm endorsing it for everyone else out there.
Download the full featured 60 day trial versions of CodeRush and Refactor!
Watch the tutorial screencasts (Scott Hanselman told me about these)
Impress everyone (including yourself) with massive productivity
Spend the $250 to buy them (or better yet, have someone buy them for you)
-- Matt Ranlett
When I took Gizmo to the vet last Tuesday, I asked them to do an autopsy to figure out why she (an otherwise healthy 3 year old dog) got sick and died in a single day. The vet said that he couldn't find anything wrong in the autopsy and sent samples of all of her internal organs to the vet school at the University of Georgia. It's one of the biggest and most respected of it's kind in the country. Results should take about 2 weeks (meaning that I might have them in time for Christmas)
-- Matt Ranlett
Last week was a spectacularly crappy week for me. It started off with one of my dogs dying on Tuesday morning. Then, on Saturday, I found out that the house I am trying to sell has water in the crawlspace and I can't get a letter certifying that I don't have termites unless I let the inspector treat the house as if it did have termites. The inspector (from Terminex) couldn't find any termite activity, but since the letter he would have ordinarily signed is a guarantee that there are no termites and the water in the crawlspace might attract the termites in the near future, he feels that he might be opening Terminex up to some kind of liability. Therefore he wants to treat the house for me at the low low cost of $900.
Of course, this doesn't take care of the water in the crawlspace. According to the termite inspector, it looks like it's just seeping through the cement blocks along the entire length of the back of the house. I called a waterproofing and cement company to get a quote on what it would cost to fix that problem. That's a reasonably priced $1400.
Did I mention that while he was under the house, the termite inspector also noticed that my kitchen sink was leaking and getting two of the floor joists wet? When we looked under the kitchen sink there was a huge pool of water filling the cabinet (which, luckily, was lined with linoleum so most of the water was contained). I've had to call a plumber to the house before and the minimum charge for 5 minutes of work was about $200
Yup - This weekend's home inspection is going to end up costing me $2500!!
Now, I looked at the plumbing problem in the kitchen (after I used a wetvac to suck out all the water) and I think I fixed that myself. So that saves me about $200 (unless I didn't fix it permanently). My next plan is to fix the water problem in the crawlspace. I am still waiting on some other companies to give me quotes, but I'm not expecting anything much less than the one I got (the guy seemed very reasonable and knowledgable). Once the water problem is fixed, I'll likely call a different termite company to inspect the house again and see if they'll write the letter without my having to spend $900 to treat the house for termites it doesn't have.
-- Matt Ranlett
Looks like I forgot to blog my impressions of last week's C# User Group's 2005 year end wrap-up.
The meeting began with a presentation on the Windows Communication Foundation (which used to be called Indigo) by Luthor Stanton. Luthor gave us a sort of WCF 101 which seemed well received by the audience of about 32 people
Getting down to the business of the future of the group, the audience reaffirmed the group's committment to advanced programming topics. In fact, the group may be straying away from C# language technologies and focusing more on advanced topics which are language agnostic (all presentations require C# code in a nod to the group's name). There is also talk of one or more UG projects coming up. The first project will be to replace the website (which is almost entirely static content that has to be hand modified) with a real, working ASP.Net application. There needs to be some work done on the mailing list as well.
The general concensus of the group was that as long as we stuck with advanced topics and kept the caliber of the presentations as high as they typically have been, there might not be much that can be changed. Some people voiced opinions that they'd like to let the main presenter have more time with their presentations, but Keith correctly pointed out that when a presenter starts earlier than 7pm, people get upset about arriving late. That is why we generally have 2 presentations, a short one first, followed by an hour and a half long presentation at 7.
Keith is always looking for topic ideas and presenters, so please send him an e-mail if you're interested: http://www.atlantacsharp.org
-- Matt Ranlett
PS - I almost forgot to thank Keith here. Keith took over the group this year in the late spring and was instrumental in growing the group from an average attendance of 5 people to an average attendance of 30 people. Keith single-handedly wrangles all of the details of each meeting, needing almost no help at all from Brendon and myself or even Doug Turnure. Keith's done a great job turning this group around and making it into a training experience that dedicated developers truely shouldn't miss. Congrats Keith!
Yesterday (Monday 12/12/2005) was the annual year end Atlanta MDF wrap party where we look back at our past successes and where we look ahead to our future successes.
Before I go any further, everyone needs to take a moment or two to thank Douglas McDowell, our fearless UG leader, for the incredible amount of work that he puts into planning the user group and making everything happen. Brendon and I try to help out where we can, but for the most part all we do is run the meeting if Douglas is out of town. Douglas plans the meeting presentations and sponsorships months in advance, secures the location for the group, handles the newsletter, and generally makes his expert subject matter knowledge available for the rest of us. Thanks for being there for us Douglas!
We did some meeting planning in terms of possible future subjects. Here's the list in no particular order:
- Upgrade from 2K to 2K5
- Data Mining
- WMI and SQL monitoring
- Encryption and certificates
- Application/database/enterprise architecture
- SQL Express
- Hardware/Capacity/Availability (SANs, 64 bit, etc)
- Disaster Recovery
- Dimensional Modeling
- Data Warehousing 101
- PSS panel - what, why, how
- SSIS
- SSRS
- OO Programming for Relational People (an intro)
- CLR/TSQL improvements for more performant queries
- Score Cards
- Management Views + System Tables = monitoring beyond the GUI
- Service Pack 1 (not yet released)
- Partitioning
- Development with VSTS
- Microsoft Certifications
This is what the 30 of us present came up with in the 15 minutes we brainstormed. What we're looking for is to have some of these topics presented by subject matter experts we bring in from outside the group (like most of our meetings last year) and some of the presentations should come from within the group membership. We heard some complaints that we might be getting too vendor-heavy in terms of our presenters
-- Matt Ranlett
The lucky few who already have their Xbox 360s (I'm still waiting on mine) and those who have been following every detail of the next-gen console are already aware of this, but I'm guessing that the majority of you aren't. Microsoft has come up with a way to reinvent cash for the purposes of online transactions - Microsoft Points.
Microsoft Points, in a nutshell, are pre-paid currency units equivalent to small cash units. You use these points to purchase downloads from the new online Xbox Live Marketplace. You can download things like themes, photos, and arcade games like Bejeweled and Joust. GameSpot has a great list of the online content available buried in their PRG3 content.
Why bother reinventing money? After all, the original version of Xbox Live offered premium content for small cash sums. There are two reasons - first, the extremely granular nature of Microsoft Points means that you can now purchase things for extremely small amounts - $0.10 at a time or similar. This is significant b/c now you can more granularly purchase what you want to buy (say a single map rather than an entire set) and you can purchase items for less than the minimum required credit card purchase amount. Imagine charging a $0.30 purchase on your AMEX - the fees would be prohibitive to the merchants. This gets around the minimums.You can purchase 2100 points in the UK for 1bout 18 pounds. You can purchase 1600 points in the US for about $20.00 but I can't find a link that confirms this. The other reason Microsoft decided to reinvent the currency is to give people who typically don't have credit cards the ability to purchase items from the marketplace. This of this as a gift card for children. Also, you no longer have to put your credit card online (for people who are nervous about that sort of thing).
This BusinessWeek article talks mostly about mobile gaming and how Microsoft will be aggregating great games for mobile devices, but the bottom of the article talks about these "micro-payments" and how you might in the future be able to use these Microsoft Points in MSN Messenger and MSN Mail. Maybe you'll be able to download the animated avatars into MSN Messenger and perhaps even share it between MSN and your Xbox Gamer Card. The interviewee, Chris Early - manager for the Microsoft Casual Games Group, also states that you might soon be able to win points for playing games, suggesting that perhaps online game achievements might eventually be turned into Xbox Marketplace currency.
-- Matt Ranlett
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