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Friday, February 08, 2002 [5:03 PM] VSLive! So is anyone planning on attending VSLive San Francisco, February 13-15th? If you are please stop by and say "Hi!". Just look for a big ugly guy with lots of hair at the Visio kiosk, that'll be me. We'll be showing the new modeling tools included with VS.Net along with our new Visio SDK that includes a .NET interop assembly. Yes you can program Visio using C# and VB.Net... [11:15 AM] Another soul in need of help I just received e-mail from another CSS victim! Steve Vore is also in the middle of a re-design, but he's doing it live! Brave man Steve, brave man. This is really worth doing. Browsers need to support CSS standards and we need to learn to use it. Just say no to tables as a design/layout element! Around the web CNet: "Developers feel the squeeze" - A good read for the small shops out there. The Economist: "Down in the Valley" - Talks about the troubled times in the Silicon Valley. Ouch, I sure wouldn't want to be there right now. [9:47 AM] ASP.Net Richard has become quite the CLR/.NET guru over the past eight or so months. Here's a reason he LOVES it so much. I've heard the debugger is worth it's weight in gold in VS.Net. Special thanks! Yesterday I was pulling my hair out trying to figure out what to do with my site re-design! Well Michael Bernstein saved my butt and pointed me to the solution! Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!! (Hey it looks like Michael is an author as well! I'm not worthy, I'm not worthy!) [8:52 AM] Movie line of the week answer Those of you that guessed Tombstone hit the nail on the head! Val Kilmer was a wonderful Doc Holiday. Mr. Craig Knoll was our "official" winner. Congratulations Craig! Yesterday was an all time record for guesses, there were a grand total of eight. Hey it's a start, right? If this does by some chance catch on I think I'll have to turn this into some kind of web service with auto responders and automagic posts of the winner, stuff like that. Anyway it's fun! Please keep playing, tell all your friends. My favorite response came from Charles McColgan. "Val Kilmer is fantastic in this movie, he makes consumption cool." - He did indeed Charles! Dave and Microsoft I'm very pleased to see Dave has our attention once again. Go UserLand! So here's the million dollar question for ya Dave... If Microsoft wanted to start a blogging community based on your software would you do it? I think that would be awesome! There's no reason for us to go off and create our own stuff, like we tend to do, when someone already has something that works! Manila based weblogs running on MSN! Wooo-Hooo! Thursday, February 07, 2002 [4:51 PM] I HATE CSS! Okay... Here's the deal. I'd like to make this site 100% CSS compliant. I'm attempting to remove use of tables, with some exceptions, but the entire layout of this site is based on tables within tables. It actually works quite well, BUT.... I want to go all CSS. So I've been messing with a site re-design for quite some time and I just cannot figure this *!@#%&* stuff out! How in the world does one do a nice three column layout that sizes properly? Not like this! If someone can tell me how to do this the correct way, please drop me a line. This is driving me absolutely NUTS! I just want three columns of stuff; links, blog space, and calendar+more links on the right. The middle column should be the largest. I just don't get this crap, that probably why my site looks like it does! I have found a new respect for web designers, 'nuff said. [11:36 AM] Movie Line of the week Ok here it is.... "I'm your huckleberry." Ok quick, what movie! Send your guesses here. As always I promise NOT to share your e-mail address with anyone! Mirror Project submission Here's my mirror project submission. I know, I know... it's hard to see. By the time I arrived in Oslo I was so pooped out I just snapped the picture, put the camera down, and fell asleep. [10:04 AM] Mornin' Y'All... That's how all us hicks talk out here in the San Joaquin Valley. Well maybe not but we have some dear friends from the Bay Area that swear we have an accent. Funny! Not much to talk about this morning. I'm still alive after posting my wife's picture yesterday, that's a good thing. She hasn't looked yet so you may not see any posts tomorrow morning. DOH! Picture for Dave Dave Winer, Mr. Scripting, loves to create hand drawn images then scan them to view on the web. Who can blame him. Drawing by hand is so very natural and it's something I do as well (GASP!). BUT once you've drawn it by hand you need to draw it in Visio so you can tweak and twist it to your hearts content. Try that with a drawing created in ink! Anyway I've gone ahead and created a Visio rendered image for him and he was kind enough to post it on Scripting, thanks Dave! So Dave if you happen to read this send me your mailing address and I'll forward a copy of Visio to you so you can pump out your next drawing on you own! It's super easy to use! .NET and XML-RPC? Has anyone cooked up XML-RPC support for .NET yet? I'd put money on it. Wednesday, February 06, 2002 [3:56 PM] Halo Madness! If you've spent any time playing Halo you will appreciate this! I know I certainly did. Note: Requires QuickTime! Thanks Dan. [1:55 PM] Kim I just found this picture of Kim from Christmas. I really love it! She has that "don't think I don't know you're taking a picture of me buster" look on her face. [9:31 AM] Wong, wrong, wrong... Richard Stallman is wrong. Miguel de Icaza doesn't owe the community squat. I particularly love this quote "We would like him to come to the free software community and explain himself to us about it." What do I love about it? He uses free and explain himself in the same sentence. Hmmmmm, let's see here, he's FREE to do whatever he wants but by golly he'd better ask us first. I know all the Microsoft haters in the world will see if differently, but that's your choice. You're FREE to form your own opinion. Is Microsoft complaining? Nope. You can look at that two ways as well. First you can take the Microsoft bashers viewpoint and say that we're polluting the world and software as we know it, locking people in. Secondly you can look at it as a new open standard. Sun had their chance with Java and chose to keep their technology close to their chest. The .NET CLR and C# have been submitted as standards to the ECMA. That means folks like Miguel can now influence future versions on equal footing with the big boys. If Miguel is able to make Mono fly the Unix community will have access to a bunch of software they wouldn't have otherwise had access to. That's how I see it. Plain and simple; no big conspiracy to overthrow the world software market. I wouldn't worry about it too much if I were you, Why? Because while you're worrying we're working VERY HARD to create the best software the world has ever seen, period. If you want to compete quit looking at what we're doing and focus on your products and services. Rant.... off. Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the views of the author and not necessarily the views of his employer. Tuesday, February 05, 2002 [3:47 PM] Hey There... Someone hire this guy and let him finish this project! This is a particularly good idea. Richard has talked to me at length about it and if he can just find the time to finish it! It would make extending Visio's Find Shape feature a breeze, not to mention open a door for shape developers to vending shapes on the web. [11:01 AM] Visio So I have a question for Visio users and developers alike. What would you like to see us do to Visio? What's missing? If you develop against the Visio engine what would make your life better? Can we add new object/methods/properties that would make talking to Visio easier? Are there shapes we could do, better yet is anyone out there creating shapes that they'd like to sell? Is the Visio community good enough or would you like something more? Could you use a server based component (no we don't have one!)? We're working hard on the next release and we've asked these questions A LOT. We talk to corporate developers, corporate users and partners about what they'd like to see in the product and I often wonder if we've heard enough? Now is the time to voice your opinion. Tell me what you like and don't like; I'm a big boy I can handle it! Visio is already great, tell me how it can be better! I promise I'll forward your e-mail to the appropriate Program Managers on the Visio team, and I WILL NOT give your e-mail address to anyone else. Who knows something you ask for may be in Visio next time around. Visio End-User Suggestions, Click Here. Visio Developer Suggestions, Click Here. [8:28 AM] Mornin' Well today is going to be a slooooowwwww day. I'm working from home because my youngest daughter is not feeling well. So as I'm typing this I'm connected at 28.8, wooooo-hoooo! That's blazing speed. I'm downloading new code, getting e-mail (that's been going on for 20 minutes), and typing this blog entry (no bandwidth use there). Hurry up Charter and get me my cable installed! Rumor has it they're going to offer high speed service SOON! Hurry I have money burning a hole in my pocket! No more phone line strung across the floor, wireless all the way! That is.... if we ever get it? A New Gift Yesterday my wife surprised me with a nice new clock! I've wanted a nice clock, which chimes, for years and years and years. Well I don't have to wait any longer. Apparently it's called a banjo clock (that's what it's shaped like), it chimes every 15 minutes, and counts each hour. Sweet! The Mirror Project I just discovered The Mirror Project last night and I have a photo to submit, all I have to do is find it now! Check it out and submit a photo if you have one. Transition Complete? I'd imagine the transition of this web site to its new home is officially complete. It looks like it happened without the slightest blip. Wow! Now all I have to do is figure out why my wife can't send e-mail through our CrabApples mail server when logged in to MSN??? Anyone know how to fix that??? I have some instructions someone at MSN but it's not a complete solution. We can get e-mail but we can't send it? Weird, we'll get it. Monday, February 04, 2002 [1:05 PM] A question for my employer. I live in a very small town in the San Joaquin Valley of California, Exeter(population ~8,000). Exeter, like most valley towns, depends on agriculture to employ most of it's inhabitants. Visalia(population ~93,000), the town next door, is a bit more diverse but is still largely an agricultural community. We have many talented computer type folks living and working in the area. They're mostly employed by small shops with the occasional large company sprinkled in the mix. They can configure and use a variety of platforms, including our beloved Windows. In fact quite a few of them make a living writing custom web applications for Windows based web sites. So where's all this headed? Good question... My question to my employer is this. Why not put .NET to the test and put a large datacenter right here in the San Joaquin Valley? We've already put some very good services in place and I'm sure we'll be putting more and more online in the months and years to come. So why not take advantage of the talent pool in this remote place? Take Visalia for instance. It's centrally located with access to a major highway. The cost of living is VERY low here and you could probably get local government to cut you all kinds of tax deals just for moving into the area. The city seems to have a fairly nice telecommunications infrastructure, so you should be able to get big communications pipe. You wouldn't have to build a site because there's plenty of space available in and around the city of Visalia. Not only is it affordable it's also quite beautiful. Forty-five minutes to Sequoia National Park and a couple of hours to our beautiful California coastline. So why not put the area to work for the company? The Valley could use the boost and Microsoft could take advantage of a talented work pool and inexpensive facilities. It's also a great way to prove our .NET vision. Who cares if the data is coming from Redmond Washington or Visalia California, in the end it doesn't really matter does it? [9:08 AM] Good Mornin' Y'All! Ahhhh we have a nice shiny new week to look forward to! First things first! Congratulations to the New England Patriots! Wooo-Hooo! I don't know about you but I was pulling for them. I really wanted to see Drew Bledsoe get a ring. He's been such a wonderful leader for his team, and all of the NFL. He is what's right with the NFL, just the opposite of selfish, me-me-me-me-me types like Terrell Owens. He's the kind of person kids should point to and say "If I play in the NFL I want to be just like him!" Who knows maybe next year Drew will be able to lead a team of his own to the Super Bowl and win it all. The Redskins need a QB (as much as I HATE the Redskins!!!). Super Bowl "Show" So did anyone notice all the "performers" that were lip syncing? I absolutely hate that! I think the NFL was ripped off. Hey guys I could stand up there and mouth the words to the Star Spangled Banner just as easily as anyone else, and I'd do it for a WHOLE LOT LESS! If a band/artist is paid to sing and perform they should sing and perform, not just perform. Did they lip sync because the suck? Maybe, just maybe.... Sunday, February 03, 2002 [9:31 AM] Happy Birthday! Today is my youngest daughters birthday! Happy 11th Birthday Tater! Hey they even decided to have the Super Bowl just for you!