December 2004 - Posts
We're spending Christmas -> New Years at home this year. It's not as exotic as Depoe Bay, but it's still nice and relaxing. I'm sitting by the front window which faces south, where the sun should be. It's trying to break its way through the clouds but having a tough time of it. (Come on sun, I'm rooting for you!)
I'm just chillin... reading "Faithful" between cat naps. Ah, this is the way to relax. : )
I'm going to be presenting at the Boise .Net user group meeting on Thursday, January 20, 2005. The topic? IIS 6 for Web developers.
Abstract: Internet Information Server 6 in Windows Server 2003 is a major upgrade from IIS5. In this session we’ll examine the new IIS architecture and explore ways you can take advantage of it to create web applications with more performance, scalability, and reliability. We’ll look at Application Pools, HTTP.SYS, sample code, and more.
Hope to see you there!
Well, another Christmas has come and gone. We had a good one here at the Blizzard household. The kids let us sleep in a bit, which was very nice, and we didn't start opening presents until after we had eaten breakfast.
Yesterday evening as I was watching one of the football games on TV, I decided to make myself productive and started taking down the Christmas tree. We have a pretty big artificial tree that looks pretty real. (When Rory came over last week he took a sniff to see if it was real.)
So there I was at 6 PM on Christmas day, football game on in the background and me taking down Christmas tree ornaments. It didn't take too long, and I won't have that undone chore hanging over my head until after New Year's like I did last year.
Happy New Year everyone...
It's been a while since Ryan Farley created this masterpiece, but it's time for another showing:
Merry Christmas, everyone!
About 6 weeks ago I switched over to Vonage. I had talked to a few others who had the service and they said it was reliable, had an excellent signal, and a great price. Cool! Technology to the rescue for my high phone bills.
So I switched.
And my wife immediately was unhappy. She noticed feedback and echoing during conversations. She noticed the message waiting indicator sometimes didn't work. She noticed that occasionally our internet service would go out and she couldn't make or receive phone calls.
I noticed my wife was extremely picky.
Umph! I don't think I ever called her a be-atch to her face. No, I would never do that. Well, maybe once. Hmmm. Things were really going downhill.
A couple of weeks ago when I received a "Please come back and we'll give you 3 months free" letter from the phone company, I jumped for joy! I immediately called them (using my cell phone because cable happened to be out and I couldn't make a call from my regular telephone (son of a be-atch!)) and begged them to switch me back.
The switch back happened yesterday. Live is once again serene in the Blizzard household.
From the 3Leaf blog...
Technology Year in Review
This is a list of Technology purchased this year and my love, hate, or complete disuse of said technology.
Star Ratings included...on a scale of 0 to 4.
Happy Winter to you!
Happy Winter to you!
Happy Winter everybody,
Happy Winter to you!
Last week I broke a string in my tennis racket. Saturday afternoon I restrung it then hit for an hour on Sunday. Last night while I was playing doubles I snapped the strings again. Grrr. I must have nicked one of the main strings with the clamps as I was stringing it.
I was much more careful this morning. Hopefully I'll be able to get through the night without breaking them again.
Greg posted a tidbit about Mt. St. Helens and how it's still doing its thing. As I was flying back from Seattle last Friday I was able to grab a picture of the steaming mass. It looks so small, almost like a little zit on the face of the earth. I guess that's what a volcano is. But a steaming zit? Hmmmm..... I'd rather not think about that.
That's St. Helens in the foreground and Mt. Adams in the background...
As I mentioned last night, today is Rory's birthday. Go wish him a happy one!
In Rory's honor, a Haiku:
Floating 'round the sun
Spreading joy from year to year
What? Another one?
Happy Birthday, Rory!
Man, today was an absolutely beautiful day here in the Northwest - one of the first nice ones in quite a while. There was lots of blue sky and sunshine.
Hey, tomorrow is Rory's birthday. He looks pretty good for a guy who is almow 40. Everyone go over and wish him a happy one.
Ever since I grabbed my copy of Halo 2 back in early November with Greg and Jason, my son hasn't played any other XBOX game - until last night, that is. He had a buddy sleep over and there they were, playing NFL Fever 2004. I was amazed. They tried to play it on XBOX Live, but nobody else was online wanting to play it.
Since Halo 2 came out the only other games I've seen people in my friends list playing have been Rainbow 6 Three and Ghost Recon 2. I've played some Ghost Recon Island Thunder lately (I don't have GR2)...
Why not Halo 2 for me? My son says I ruin his chances at advancing up the Halo 2 online ranks whenever I play. (And it's true... I stink at it. I need to get a second XBOX Live account so I can play with the level 3 & 4 folks.)
I just finished watching "I, Robot" starring Will Smith. Great movie. Well worth watching. I had heard some unfavorable reviews of it, but they were from folks who didn't like it as compared to the book. I haven't read the book, but I think I will now that I've seen the movie.
Recently announced: the ASP.NET 1.1 member management component prototype. It gives you an easy way to manage membership for your web site. Check it out! (Note: this is a non Microsoft supported component.)
Microsoft ASP.NET v1.1 Member Management Component Prototype
The Microsoft ASP.NET v1.1 Membership Management Component Prototype contains classes that allow a developer to more easily authenticate users, authorize users, and store per-user property data in a user profile. The authentication feature validates and stores user credentials which a developer can use to manage user authentication on a web site. The authorization feature lets you treat groups of users as a unit by assigning users to roles such as manager, sales, member, and so on. Combined with ASP.NET's built-in authorization functionality, Windows Shared Hosting developers have end-to-end support for maintaining user-to-role mappings and authorizing users based on this information. The profile feature enables you to provide users of your Web site with a custom experience. By defining and using profile properties, you can track any custom information your application requires, including user information and user preferences.
Mmmmm.... Good nerd dinner.
As Ian and I were deciding on what to order, he said, "I think I'm going to have 'Bangers and mash.'" Hmmm. Sounded to me like firecrackers and slop. He patiently explained to me that "bangers" are English sausages and "mash" is mashed potatoes. OK. That sounded much better than what I had envisioned.
So we both ordered the "Bangers and mash," and I felt very British for a while. I even put some "Extra Spicy" English mustard on the sausages, which Ian said was nothing compared to authentic spicy English mustard.
It was excellent food. And lively conversation. There's nothing like a nerd dinner (although excellent food is definitely not the norm).
Oh yeah... Ian is a masterful cab-hailer. After dinner he dashed out into the middle of a busy San Francisco street and flagged one down like a pro. Very impressive.
Good times.
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