January 2006 - Posts
This past weekend I made dinner for Kim and a few of her friends. Now, I don't pretend to be a great cook, but I do occasionally enjoy making something that people like to eat. So this weekend's menu included smoked chicken (one of my better dishes), sun-dried tomato polenta, steamed broccoli, french bread, and a lemon chiffon pie.
The pie was the real winner in my book, and it was probably the easiest thing to make. Probably 10 minutes of prep. I got the
recipe off of the
Food Network website. What's really nice is you can even watch a video of this dessert being prepared so you know exactly what you're doing. Lemon chiffon pie - it's pretty, it's tasty, and prepared this way, minimal fat.
-- Matt Ranlett
Put your name and other information online, answer a marketing survey, receive a discount card good at almost no places I go. But it is another thing I can potentially carry around in my wallet:
-- Matt Ranlett
First of all, does everyone know who
Jeffery Richter is? He's a cofounder of
Wintellect, he's the author of several books, including
this one, he supposedly contributes to
this blog (although I can't find any of his posts after 3 seconds of searching), and he apparently owns a cat (we'll forgive him for that one). Now that you know who he is, would any of you like to come hang out with him? He's coming to Atlanta where he's planning on giving a short technical presentation on the general topic of Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.Net followed by an informal meet and greet in a local eatery (probably involving Buffalo wings).
****************************************************
YOU MUST REGISTER TO ATTEND
http://www.clicktoattend.com/invitation.aspx?code=106837****************************************************
This kind of opportunity doesn't come along every day. Please come out and bring your brains! We promise to show you something good then numb the pain with beer later (you'll be buying your own beer, just so we're clear)
-- Matt Ranlett
The web site www.somethingawful.com has a weekly Photoshop contest where people do some crazy funny things. This Public Service Announcement parody was too funny not to post.
-- Matt Ranlett
Back when the four of us were preparing for the
SharePoint 1, 2, 3! presentations,
Keith Rome showed the rest of us how
XPath worked in 30 seconds or less while I was working on a Windows SharePoint Services web services demo. Incidentally, this demo is now
online and available for download. But that's beside the point. The point of this post is that I, for a period of one day or so, knew what XPath was and how to actually use it. Of course, that was the last time I looked at it so that knowledge hasn't exactly stayed fresh. Namespaces, root elements - yeah, I know the terminology. I could explain it at a high level. But when someone asked me if I knew how to write an XPath query (and then told me to hold on while they finished something else) I figured I had better refresh my memory. Checking out the web, I found this great
tutorial online. Very short, sweet and to the point. I'm not sure I could learn the material from scratch out of this tutorial, but it's a great refresher.
-- Matt Ranlett
I very nearly shot myself in the foot big-time today. I have been trying for 2 days to get XP Media Center Edition installed on my home PC, the old desktop that we only use for web browsing. I figured that since I was expecting to get my Xbox 360 any day now, and I wanted to be able to use it to read my MP3 collection and photos from my home network, I could prepare the network by pre-installing Media Center.
My PC has 3 disk drives - two 120Gb drives and a 20Gb drive. The previous install used one of the 120 Gb drives as the main system drive. I was just planning on doing this again, but after the first try failed to erase the system drive (because I copied the setup files to that drive) I had to chose the 20Gb drive. I couldn't use the other 120Gb drive b/c that's where all my backups were. Or so I thought. Apparently through a comedy of drag and drop errors I put the backup of My Documents on the 20Gb drive, where it promptly got erased. Since my 20Gb drive is in use as the system drive, I thought I'd wipe out all traces of the old system and get back my 120 gigs. I couldn't format the disk for some reason (a file is apparently still in use b/c my user names are the same from the old install and the new install) so I manually erased every file on the disk. I didn't even realize I hadn't actually backed up the important files.
So about 20 minutes ago Kim asks me if she can use the PC to edit our wedding guest list. What!?! There was actually an important file on the machine. I totally just killed myself. When I told Kim that I'd erased it, she told me with tears in her eyes that it was the only copy and that rebuilding it was going to be out of the question. Of course, I told her not to freak out, I knew just what to do.
Google...."recover erased files"
MindSoft Utilities XP 9 for Windows XP to the rescue! This suite of utilities includes an Undelete tool that scanned the entire drive and let me restore the file perfectly. The day was saved and I looked like a big hero. Because it saved my neck, I will heartily endorse MindSoft Utilities, especially the Undelete tool. It was very easy to use, with a great search tool that was able to search through 90Gb of deleted files to find exactly what I needed to restore. The best part is that not only is it certified spyware and adware free by www.softpedia.com, there is also a FREE trial version.
-- Matt Ranlett
Does anyone remember that scene in Lawnmower Man where the "smart" guy straps his girlfriend into a video game so they can have sex?
Well, apparently some people are so interested in this concept, sex in games, that they've established an actual conference about it - the
Sex in Video Games conference to be held on June 6-8 in San Francisco. I know sex sells, and sex used to be the
driving force that got both the VCR and the WWW into people's homes, but an actual conference on how to create "Massively Multiplayer Online Erotic Games"?
I'm not sure if we're going too far down the path to create a society of shut-ins, or not far enough! Can you imagine? People would never leave home! It would be just like that society Isaac Asimov wrote about in
The Naked Sun.
-- Matt Ranlett
Last night Comcast experienced an outage covering most of Atlanta. Of course I spent an hour at home trying to figure out what was wrong with my network before I called them. The entire night was wasted.
-- Matt Ranlett
TRY AT YOUR OWN RISK
I just got a call from a friend of mine asking how to copy a file from the GAC. I quickly told him and then asked around to see if it would be good for a blog post.
So here it goes, it is pretty straightforward.
Open up DOS Start->Run “cmd”
Change to the assembly folder CD C:\windows\assembly
It will probably look something like this.
Now CD into the GAC folder and then finally CD into the Namespace of your assembly. There will be a folder with the assemblies version and key, CD into that directory and copy out the dll.
That is all there is to it, if anyone knows more about the structure feel free to fill in the gaps.
—Brendon Schwartz
Per this
CBS news article, flying cars like the
Moller Skycar and the
AirScooter might be actually allowed to fly soon due to an invention at NASA called the "
Highway in the Sky" (which is apparently old news)
-- Matt Ranlett
She's protective of her privacy, so I'm not going to give out her last name. My friend Jennifer got engaged! Already discussing a September wedding, my advice is to move quickly because there is less time than you think to wrap up all the tiny details. She and her new fiance have been dating for about two and a half years now, and frankly, it's about time.
Now the question is how long until there are little Jennifers running around?
Congrats Jen! Couldn't happen to a nicer girl.
-- Matt Ranlett
This past weekend I decided I'd earn credit with my missus so I tried to be a bit romantic. I made us reservations at a swank restaurant and even got her a card. Of course, I gave in and gave her the card early, but it's the thought that counts. The evening went so well, I thought I'd share with the group...
First of all, I made my reservations online using
www.OpenTable.com. Cool little setup. You make free reservations online and if you make it to your appointed meal, you earn credits for doing what you were planning on doing anyway. Earn 100 credits for signing up and 100 per reservation you keep. Earn 1,000 points and you get a $10 gift certificate good at these restaurants. According to the website, they accept reservations for 76 Alpharetta restaurants alone! My reservations went through flawlessly and I even got a call from the restaurant confirming my reservation the evening before.
The restaurant I went to was awesome! Kim and I went to
Rainwater, on Haynes Bridge Rd. The ambiance was perfect and the service was impeccable. We sat in high backed chairs in a small room near a fireplace. We ordered drinks and I highly recommend their mojito - a sweet rum drink with lime juice and cane sugar. The appetizer we split was incredible - a trio of beef and fois gras perogis (the polish version of a ravioli) that melted in your mouth. We split an arugula and beets salad with blue cheese, pistachios, and some kind of vinagrette dressing. I can't remember the last time I actually ate beets (if ever) but I'm going to be adding them to my meals at home. Kim ordered swordfish on a bed of risotto and I ordered the special of the evening, a veal strip steak on a bed of polenta. I also ordered a side of their mac and cheese just because it was made with blue cheese which sounded good. Everything tasted as good as it sounds. We were so full we couldn't eat dessert, but because we discussed how good the special dessert of the evening (carrot cake cheesecake) sounded with the waitress, she brought us each a tiny bite of the cheesecake. Very good. The entire meal set me back $125 and was well worth it. Great food, great company in a great place. I HIGHLY recommend Rainwater
The room I ate in:
The foyer:
-- Matt Ranlett
Have you ever seen a Power Point slide show where the person seemed to be using the tool to do silly things just because it could (examples include gratuitous animations and sound effects). Well, just when you think you’ve seen the limits, check out this one where the guy uses something like 400 slides with a single word or image on each slide:
http://identity20.com/media/WEB2_2005/
It’s actually funny to watch b/c he has a great rythm and has the presentation down so well
— Matt Ranlett
Kim and I just got back from our local AMC theater where we watched Kate Beckinsdale in Underworld Evolution. My review – pretty good. Not great, but entertaining. I don’t think it was quite as good as the first one. The final action scene was pretty good – eliciting several loud gasps and oohs from the audience as the bad guy(s) get it in the end. I give it a 3 out of 5 hunched over developers:
— Matt Ranlett
Statistics can be made to say anything. No one is a champion of manipulating statistics like Nielson ratings corp. They've been studying the users of iTunes and they've found some interesting things, according to
this report:
"The legal music download aficionados are twice as likely than the
average user to own a Volkswagen or an Audi, with the third place car
making being Subaru. Their alcohol of choice is hard cider, followed by
imported and domestic beer.
Perhaps next time there will be report on other bad
combinations, like razor blades and lemon juice, or Drew Barrymore and
green dresses.
"
-- Matt Ranlett
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