no not mine (that went back to my client, remember?), someone else's. Brand new acer c111 (or c112).

Posted from BLInk!

it's just a time thing. I say it's evolution, not revolution.

Softwaremaker has gone the dasBlog route and his new [must read if you are doing anything with WSE] weblog is here: www.softwaremaker.net/blog.

Posted from BLInk!

This is not the first case of worn-out TabletPC enthusiasm I have seen. I really do envision a future where tablets are the norm...where they *are* the laptops. Where a laptop is a tablet and a tablet is a laptop and it's all mobile computing and there is no distinction any more. But the problem for many who have been excited about it for years now is that it is still "a future".

Posted from BLInk!

Steven Lees writes about some upcoming changes for VB in Whidbey. I had to laugh at this understatement: Refactoring is another feature that we've heard a lot about from VB developers.

Posted from BLInk!

One of the local votes on Tuesday is to go ahead with the plans for the Regional Technical Center here in Vermont, bringing together and expanding upon the success of the exsiting Tech Centers in Burlington and Essex Junction. This has been a big controversy in Vermont and one that seems to be fueled by misinformation (or so say those on both sides of the argument). A lot of educators are against it even some that work at the existing Tech Centers. The problem is not in the desire to have the RTC, but in the actual current plan that is being voted on. My understanding is that voting against this plan does not mean that you are voting against the RTC but you are insisting that they go back to the drawing board and make a better plan. I really have had a hard time keeping on top of the arguments pro & con. Of course, everyone wants to see more opportunties created for people in Vermont and it will also benefit Vermont businesses - though this should not be the primary goal, otherwise, we are creating a worker mill.. I wish that teens did not have to worry about their careers at such a young age and can focus on developing life skills. I lived most of my life in NY State where BOCES has been a great success.

Posted from BLInk!

Have you see Jeff Prosise's planes? Here's another one.  I thought they were real, thanks to the way the photos look... until they started accumulating! I knew that he couldn't have so many. Then I looked a little closer and then finally saw this video. Very very cool, Jeff!

Posted from BLInk!

KVM stands for Keyboard Video Mouse. Since I bought a new desktop this summer, my former daily driver was sitting in a corner doing nothing. I just bought a KVM 2 Port Switch made by LinkSys that is one sweet little cable with all of the connections built in. I can now switch between that computer and my regular one without moving any more muscles than my little index finger to tap on the Scroll Key twice. Love it! Now all I need is Ghost so that I can use that machine either to test additional beta software or to emulate a clean client machine to test installations, etc.

Posted from BLInk!

Jim Blizzard is an organized guy. I would never have thought of enabling

• Bulleted
• Lists

or

1. Numbered
2. Lists

in BLInk! without him.

Posted from BLInk!

Bliz has kindly agreed to play around with BLInk for a bit. Hmm - spell checking hadn't thought of it!

I appreciated all of  his nice comments but just wanted to clarify something.

One thing he misunderstood was about the API limitation on categories and titles. That is only for the Blogger API. I saw the common workaround but could not get it to work from my application and finally ditched it. However, the Metablog API absolutely supports titles and categories. I also use dasBlog, as does Bliz and am posting with the Metablog API from BLInk! with titles and categories. No problems at all with that. I don't have to go back to my blog and add those things in after the fact.

.Text and dasBlog support both APIs.

Posted from BLInk!

I'm sorry - is it just me? This is on the windows forms home page. "Just in case you didn't know that there are chicks that write code, we wanted to bring your attention to this gorgeous woman's chest."

Then there's that other picture we've seen a lot of that really cool looking chick in the green shirt. Something about that picture is all about her chest also. I double checked with a number of people when we first saw that photo over and over again during the MVP Summit and they all conferred that it was hard to see the rest of the photo. Something about her boobs - like she wasn't wearing a bra or something - just totally drew your eyes (and mine - totally heterosexual woman, here) right to her chest.

I dunno - I just figure there's got to be a happy medium here somewhere.

Posted from BLInk!

Cool!! This might finally enable me to rip that Access database out of one last of my old VB6 projects.

It also made me wonder why I haven't even played with this stuff yet and then I realized I've kept myself busy with WSE2, ADO.NET2 and a host of other new things. Oh, to be able to just spend all of my time playing with the new toys and call it a job. Yeah I know some people actually have that as their job definition.

Posted from BLInk!

details here from NASA website

Posted from BLInk!

Here's a picture of Richard Campbell atop of Kilmanjaro. Hooray! Richard went with a bunch of RD's and some other folks, too.

Posted from BLInk!

I need to see something that is in the latest ctp of the beta. However, I don't have a good setup on any of my machines for VPC, and therefore I can't download and install the VB.NET Express AND C# Express and wipe out my current full beta bits. I need to see both language implementations of this function which I know has changed.

My other option is to download the full app CTP from MSDN which then also requires the latest SQL 2005 Beta. Sam Gentile said it took him two days to install this. I don't have that kind of time to mess around.

I have about 5 minutes of research I need to do in the ctp right now so I'm kind of bummed. I was excited to see my MSDN universal disks arrive today but alas - the bits weren't in there.

Posted from BLInk!

I was sad to hear today someone say that they did not switch their applications to .NET because of the poor U.I. They were actually talking about an ASP.NET application, but just kept saying  “.NET application“. And seemed to be unaware of the smart client with a web back end option.

In the long run they ended up keeping with their current app (a fantastically architected VB6 application) and distributing it via Citrix ($$$) but are happy not to have to tax their thousands of non-technical end users with the requirements of a machine to run a desktop app. I never really knew very much about Citrix. The capablities that he was describing blew me away.

Posted from BLInk!

when I spoke in Montreal, I got to use a remote control (had used on at DevDays also). I love the freedom it gave me to wander around. So I ordered one after some recommendations and am looking forward to using it. This one is by Atek.

I know it looks like it might double as some kind of sex toy...but I'll never tell.

Posted from BLInk!

Dare Obasanjo asks for prescriptive guidance for developers on when web services and ws-* should be used. This goes past the "web services or remoting?" question that we have all seen that chart for. (sorry , can't link to an example - but surely you've seen it). I am using web services in a non-interop solution where I own both ends of the pipe (over the internet) and have even implemented wse2 ...because I saw this as an "easy" way to solve my problems. In some situations, this could be a very bad choice. I would absolutely like to see what Dare is asking for. Including myself, we sometimes get so caught up in how to do something, that we don't stop to think whether or not it's what we need. I just spent weeks shoving wse2 down the throat of a production app that worked perfectly fine. Admittedly, I did this mostly due to a bit of an ego problem (and that I wanted to get past my “in theory“ only understanding of WSE2).

Posted from BLInk!

This was great to hear! I'm really looking forward to being and speaking at DevConnections in Las Vegas in a few weeks.

>

Posted from BLInk!

I have been waiting for Kate to pop her head up. She was on a vacation in Europe and then home for just a few days and then a long flight to Johannesburg to hit TechEd in Sun City.

So there she is and here are her first thoughts about being in that phenomenal place.

Posted from BLInk!