This will finish the "what do you read this summer" posts.

Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by James Wallace and Jim Erickson is basically a Bill Gate biography up to about 1993.  It focuses mainly on Bill's interaction with computers in general and then Microsoft specifically, but it also includes not necessarily Microsoft related information about Bill.  I think it is a good source of "how did Microsoft get started" information...if you are looking for that type of info, that is.

The Interpretation of Financial Statements by Benjamin Graham and Spencer Meredith is a primer on common financial terms.  If you aren't too familiar with how financial statements work or what their line items mean, this book is a good place to start.

Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies was quite the conversation piece last year when it was released.  It is a first person account of the counter-terrorism efforts of the United States government over the last 20 years or so.  As Clarke says himself in the book, it is written form his perspective, but that aside, it provides a glimpse of where we stand and how we got to where we are.  If Clarke's account of Clinton's efforts are to be believed, it also gave me a bit of respect for him.

The Supreme Court by William Rehnquist is a detailed history of the United States Supreme Court up to the (almost) present day.  Like All the Laws but One, it is written for those without a background in the law.  It explains the history, the purpose, and the day-to-day operations of the Supreme Court.  It was a very interesting read and I am saddened that he is no longer around to write similar books in the future.

Apple Confidential 2.0 by Owen Linzmayer is a history of Apple from its founding to about 2003.  For the most part I found it very informative, though two things stood out as annoying.  First is the style of the book.  Rather than taking a time line approach, the author takes a topical approach and then does that topic chronologically.  This makes the book a bit disjointed.  For instance, if you have never heard of "Copland" (and I hadn't), you have to wait till near the end of the book to understand how it fits in the time line.  The other thing is that, though the author is critical of Apple general and Steve Jobs specifically, he often makes incorrect claims about market share, product performance, and the like.  It's not annoying Apple fan boy literature, but it isn't exactly unbiased either.  Then again, it's hard to find a book on either Apple or Microsoft that feels unbiased.

It's My Party, Too: The Battle for the Heart of the GOP and the Future of America by Christine Whitman was of interest to me, because she was the governor of New Jersey when I lived there.  The book describes Whitman's opinion on what it means to be a Republican, where the party stands right now, and where it needs to go.  It was an interesting read, though I think her logic is flawed in many cases.  One major instance of this is brushing aside issues such as gay marriage and abortion as though her position is the only logical and acceptable one.  If such things were so obvious, the issues wouldn't be hotly debated as they are.  That aside, it is an first person account of roughly the last 50 years of Republican politics.

For the last little while, I've intended to review the books I've read lately.  Of course, I was so involved with reading the next book that I never quite got around to it...until now.

The first book on my list is Shadow of the Giant by Orson Scott Card.  I made the mistake of reading Ender's Shadow a few years ago, which resulted in my getting hooked.  I subsequently read Ender's Game, Shadow of the Hegemon, and Shadow Puppets.  The long awaited Shadow of the Giant is the final book (I hope!) in the Shadow series.  It was quite the page turner for me.  The scenarios are a little contrived (as they are in the other books), but plot is more engaging.  If you've read the others, I'd certainly recommend reading this to round out the series.

Next up is The Dark Side of Camelot by Seymour Hersh.  Hersh has become a favored author of mine, which is a bit odd.  He writes, presently, for the New Yorker to which I once subscribed.  When I was a subscriber, however, I hardly read it.  Hmm.  Anyway, this is written in sort of a "tell all" biography of John F. Kennedy.  I got the impression after reading Chain of Command that Hersh was anti-Republican.  I think now that he is simply a blunt muck-raker and will point out flaws he finds in either party.

Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by John Perkins is somewhat of an odd choice for me.  I read it, because it appeared to be a book about an insiders' view on world economic trends.  It turned out to be a not-too-thrilling auto-biography.  Perhaps I'm a victim of the economic machine that Perkins describes, so his book is lost on me.  At any rate, it wasn't too inspiring.

The late William Rehnquist's All the Laws but One is a history of US civil rights in war time.  Rehnquist takes a balanced look at the needs of the government to protect the people in time of war and at the rights of the people that government is there to protected.  It is a scholarly work but one that is suited for a common, non-lawyer audience.

Antonin Scalia's A Matter of Interpretation, however, is a work that is likely more suited for lawyers.  While much of it made sense to me, I can't help but think I missed some points due to my lack of background in the law.  The format of the book is Scalia's view on how the laws should be interpreted, followed by response by four others, followed by Scalia's counter-response.  I make note of this, because I expected this was a single author text when I got it.

J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince was better than its predecessor Order of the Phoenix but still left a bit to be desired.  The plot felt contrived just as it did in Order of the Phoenix.  For instance, I couldn't help but think that Harry and Dumbledore didn't meet too often, because it would have threatened the plot flow.  In reality, however, I think they would have met together more frequently, shared more information, and accomplished much more.  This is fiction, however, so it is still a must read for those who have trudged through the first five books.

Rich Dad's Prophecy by Robert Kiyosaki is a book I picked up at an airport on a return flight from North Carolina last year.  Shortly after returning home, it settled on my bookshelf and began collecting dust.  Like other books in the Rich Dad series, it is a guide to money management.  It warns of an impending stock market crash as a result of mandatory stock sales in ERISA-based retirement accounts in the coming years as baby boomers hit retirement age.  The goal of the books isn't doom and gloom but rather awareness and preparedness.  I'm not sure that I subscribe to Robert's logic, but I recognize he's richer than I am by a long shot and is worth listening to.

I don't want to weigh in on content of video games, but I do want to weigh in on a few of the business practices. The last few weeks have been alive with hub bub over the Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas' hack that shows explicit sexual content with a downloadable mod. In the last few days, Take Two has finally owned up to the hardcore porn it included in a video game that parents were buying for their teen age sons...parents that quite likely weren't also buying them copies of adult magazines or subscriptions to porn sites. My issue with this is not that GTA pushes the envelope with what is acceptable content for a video game but rather that they deceive those who buy the product. If you want to sell hardcore porn in a video game, then do that. Don't pretend you're selling something else. Call a spade a spade.

I've received several failed email delivery notices today.  It seems that someone has decided to spoof my domain and send out a large batch of, doubtless, unsolicited spam.  As if the spam isn't bad enough, whenever a destination address is invalid, I get notified.

On the trip north a few weeks back returning home after a weekend of playing Settlers of Catan (I'm sure we did other stuff too), I discovered the best price for gas that I'd seen in weeks.  It was an out of the way Flying J in Salt Lake.  It seems this price is a regular occurrence.  I just checked Flying J prices for the state of UT, and the only prices below $2.20 are in Salt Lake.

In case you aren't aware of it, Flying J publishes its fuel prices on its web site, filtered by state.  To check prices near you or near where you'll be see http://www.flyingj.com/fuel/gasoline_CF.cfm

Thanks to amazon.com and the magic of ebooks, I spent most of the last day reading Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. (unlike yesterday, I now know that Da Vinci is not spelled DaVinci).  For the ten people out there who've not read it or been told what it contains, consider this a spoiler alert.

Overall, I liked the book.  It was adventurous, pseudo intellectual, and generally playful.  One of the main points, however, struck a nerve.  I speak, of course, about the sacred feminine so often referred to in the text.  First, let me state what I understand to be the author's point, then I'll state what my issues are based on that understanding.

The Priory believe in the sanctity of women, their innate ability to produce life.  They exult them, as did many religions prior to Christianity, as goddesses.  They believe that man's (the gender, not all humankind) ability to commune with Deity happens only via woman.  In short, woman is divine and man partakes of that divinity via union with woman.

The reason that I take issue with this line of thought is this - despite the numerous overtones and undertones of balance - yin / yang, male / female, black / white - humankind, the Priory perspective is not balanced.  The female is divine and the male is not.  That seems more than a little unbalanced to me.

What I would consider balanced is this - believing in the sanctity of man and woman, that woman cannot produce life without man nor can man without woman, that ultimate communion with Deity (creating life, thus becoming a creator like unto Deity) for man requires the woman and for woman requires man.  If one is divine, then so is the other.  If one is not, then neither is the other.  This is balanced.  This more correctly reflects the difference between man and woman.  Each needs the other to be whole.

This in no way is meant to disparage woman or the sacred feminine but simply to recognize that woman is only half of the equation.  Had the text reflected this as well, I think the ideas that seemed radical would have been much easier to swallow.  Then again...it's only a work of fiction, perhaps Brown was after a good thriller and not trying to be an ideologue.

I think I'll have to put up a page devoted to the books I've read / am reading.  I just finished 7 Habits of Highly Effective People this week and figured I'd read The DaVinci Code for a change of pace.  There are two points that I want to make about 7 Habits.

First, I'd say that some of the supporting arguments feel a bit contrived (perhaps that's just my skepticism), nevertheless the points are valid.  I think perhaps the most striking thing I'll remember from the book was near the beginning when discussing integrity.  The basic idea was that if you don't act with integrity, in time, everything you say or do will be viewed sceptically.  I have, arguably, a suspicious nature but for some people significantly more so than others.  There are some people I won't trust to be honest about anything unless I have at least one other source to verify the claim.

Second, it's very idealistic.  There are things that would be difficult to pull off.  Covey even acknowledges this himself.  At one point he says that if you practice this (I believe it was habit 5 seek first to understand then to be understood) others will likely feel you are trying to manipulate them.  (That's something I can well relate to, since I've heard it often against me and other missionaries.)  He recommended explaining what you were doing before doing it.  Something like - I'm trying out a recommended practice from the 7 habits...

I definitely think it was worth the time to read it.  It reminded me of another Covey book, Spiritual Roots of Human Relations, which I started reading back in high school.  One of these days I might even finish it. 

Two weeks ago I was introduced to the Settlers of Catan board game.  I'd played a few electronic versions in the past and was not disappointed in the "real" thing.  Naturally, I couldn't resist getting my own copy.  Keith introduced me to a wonderful web site that had pricing with which I was pleasantly pleased - http://www.fairplaygames.com/.

As of this writing (and barring a lucky break on eBay), this site has the best prices that I could find.  If you want the whole kit and caboodle (as outlined below), you'll even get free shipping.

• Settlers of Catan
• Settlers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion
• Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights
• Settlers of Catan: Cities & Knights 5-6 Player Expansion
• Seafarers of Catan
• Seafarers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion

(For those unfamiliar with the game, Cities & Knights and Seafarers require the base Settlers of Catan game.  In like manner, the expansions require their respective base games too.)

I finally finished Kenneth Pollack's The Persian Puzzle today.  It is a book about US-Iranian relations.  It gives a brief look at the Iran over the last several thousand years, then focuses on the past fifty years or so.  It concludes with Pollack's advice, for lack of a better term, for US foreign policy with Iran.

One reason I'd recommend this book is that as a result of it, I have more respect for both Presidents Clinton and Bush (W) than I had before.  Regular readers of my blog know my feelings about Bush, and those who know me personally know that I feel similarly about Clinton.  I found this book to be unbiased, notwithstanding that it was written by a US citizen and non partisan.  If you're looking for a good read, check it out.

Now it's time for me to get back to 7 Habits, Code Complete, and Expert C# Business Objects...

I've been playing with Money for a few days.  Overall, I'm happy with it, but there are some annoying items.

• A good deal of text is not selectable.  I should be able to select any text (especially account info, amounts, payee names, etc.) and copy it elsewhere.
• If you select "Online Registration" from the About dialog, you can't close it without registering.  There's no "x" to close it.  There's no cancel button.  Not even alt+F4 works.
• It includes items that a common person wouldn't consider as income as income items.  I'd guess that if I make a credit card payment, that most people wouldn't consider the credit of that payment to my account as income.  I realize that it is from an accounting perspective, but I'm not interested in GAAP here.  I just want to know how much money I have coming in from work (e.g. what regular people consider income).

On the upside, they fixed a huge bug that previous version had (the last version I used was 2002).  If you have more than one account with a financial institution, Money is OK with that now.  In the past, I had to play games to make Money happy because I had two cards from one lender.

A few years ago, for some reason, I all but swore to never shop from amazon.com.  As time went on, they've won me over.  Mind you, I still compare prices on other sites - buy.com, samgoody.com, walmart.com - before buying, but amazon nearly always has the best deals.  Lately, I've been taken by swift shipping.  I went on a buying spree last Saturday evening (1 DVD, 1 CD, 1 air purifier, 3 replacement filters, 1 heat resistant spatula), chose the FREE Super Saver Shipping (e.g. the slowest option available), and got ready to wait a week or so for my stuff to arrive.  My order arrived yesterday and today.  Kudos to you, amazon, for getting me my stuff at a better price than your rivals and several days before I expected it.

Apparently, there's a TV out there that likes to make distress calls.  I'm glad my new CD player didn't decide to do that.

I've got a pet peeve.  OK, two of them.  One is improper usage of the word myself the other is improper usage of the word went.

Improper myself usages:

Give the report to John, Bob, or myself, and we'll take care of it.

Myself, John, or Bob will do the report processing.

Proper usages (not using myself):

“Give the report to John, Bob, or me, and we'll take care of it.”

“John, Bob, or I will do the report processing.”

Proper usage (using myself):

I will do the report processing myself.

Improper went usages:

We could have went to the park, but we decided to take a walk instead.

I should have went at lunch, but I'll go after work instead.

Proper usages (not using went):

We could have gone to the park, but we decided to take a walk instead.

I should have gone at lunch, but I'll go after work instead.

Proper usage (using went):

I went to the store.

I'm sure this has been available for quite a while, but it's new to me.  MSNBC supports RSS.  This page explains what RSS is, what feed readers are, and also a list of MSNBC.com's feeds.  Cool stuff.

"Strange, but absolutely true! Just go ahead and try it!

While sitting at your desk, lift your right foot off the floor and make clockwise circles. Now, while doing this, draw the number "6" in the air with your right hand. Your foot will change direction and there's nothing you can do about it. "

from Chris Johnson.

Now there's a whole collection of penguin games.  My current top score is 1987.76.  Thanks FurryGoat.

When I get some time, I've got some blog stories to tell.  For the time being, I thought I'd at least post an entry per month...a bit less than the “at least an entry per day” target I had when I started my blog.

Two of my friends were married and I neglected to give them shout outs.  Congrats to Jeremy and Lauren.  Also, congrats to John and Emma.

One of my classmates posted a link to a nifty tool - http://www.belarc.com/free_download.html  Among other things, it catalogs all the software on your machine.  For all my Microsoft software, it not only listed the Product IDs but even the installation keys.  Pretty slick.  I didn't know that the installation key was retrievable.

Yep, I'm still alive.  The FlyingJ experience has gone well.  Last week they invited me to upgrade from contract to employee status.  I'm in the processing stage now, so soon I'll be a normal employee again.  Wow, it's been a while.

I've got some unrelated items to post about, so here they are in no particular order -

If you are doing WinForms development and need borders on your custom controls, you might consider inheriting from System.Windows.Forms.Form rather than from UserControl.  You'll have to remember to set TopLevelControl to false and to set ControlBox to false, but otherwise, things will be very similar to deriving from UserControl (with the exception of a much richer set of properties and events).  Oh, one other thing, remember to explicitly set Visible to true, when you add your new control to the Controls collection of a form or control.

Two weeks ago, I dreamed that Robert Scoble stopped blogging.  He declared that he just didn't see the point of it any more and had better things to do with his time.  I guess my mind didn't see that as too strange considering some of the other things that have happened lately - Microsoft and AOL settled and stopped throwing mud, Microsoft and Sun settled and stopped throwing mud, W3C and many others came to Microsoft's aide in their fight against Eolas.  I don't know what in the tech world would surprise me at this point.  Perhaps Ellison could publicly call Bill a nice guy?  Hmm, some things are just too far fetched.

I picked up two new (but old) CDs - 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged and The Cranberries Unplugged (a compilation of several live/unplugged events).  With the 10,000 Maniacs purchase, my music collection is now fully legal.  I've had one dubbed tape, which I received about 10 years ago, that was holding me back.  Horrah!

I finally watched, for the first time, the movie AI.  Not sure what I think of it.  It was interesting and certainly far better than Anti-Trust, another movie from a similar time frame.

Last but not least, after fighting with the beta team on a previous Microsoft beta that same team invited me back...oddly enough, it seems the structure of the beta has changed somewhat and is now in line with what I suggested.  I doubt it was me that made the difference, but I'm glad to know that Microsoft learns even from folks who fight with them.

I'm writing this from Windows Longhorn build 4074.  I finally downloaded and installed it.  So far it's worked out much better for me than the PDC build did last fall.  It definitely needs a lot of work, but it looks good considering it's pre beta.

One less than happy thing is that FreeTextBox (the default input method for dasBlog) doesn't seem to like me typing in it.  Not sure if it's a Longhorn issue or a Longhorn via Virtual PC issue.  Either way, it's very annoying.

While I'm being annoyed at things, here's something else.  I'm annoyed at DVD players that require remote controls to work.  I've got buttons on my player, shouldn't I be able to use them to navigate a menu if I lose my remote?  I think so.  Toshiba didn't.  I was talking to my brother about this issue last night.  Tonight, ugh, I lost my remote.  Fortunately, it only took me about 10 minutes to find it, but...I'd still prefer to not need the remote to play a disk.

I'm also hot and bothered by my sunburn.  One advantage of living in the desert is that I can get a sunburn in about 15 minutes.  Yesterday, the sun had me for several hours, so my arms, face, and neck are quite red.

To enable archiving of my website, my hosting company moved it from a Windows 2000 Server to a Windows Server 2003 box.  As a result, permissions were and IIS settings were a bit off.  If you were visiting during the week (not that I was writing during the week), that's what was going on if you were getting page errors.

A few years ago, I killed some time by taking eMode's IQ test.  The result?  A paultry 136.  A few minutes ago a popup from Tickle (eMode with a new name) got through my popup blocker, so I took the test again.  Result?  138.

Seems snopes also featured the cat video in my last entry.  From them I learned of a supposed Nokia cat video commercial.

I found this on a blog yesterday, and shamefully I don't remember where.

Disclaimer - not suitable for small children or cat lovers.

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~jimbeamblack/cat.mpg

I took some pictures today (yes, of waterfalls), though I'm not sure exactly how I plan to post them.  I probably won't upload them for a few days (they're pretty big, so I'm thinking about how to deal with that), but I'm making progress.

 

I found this on Brad Abrams' blog and thought a few of my readers might appreciate it.  It's put together by the US Navy.  Have a look.

To quote a friend of mine, my new job with Flying J is keeping me busy, stretching me, and keeping me happy.  It's also given me (ack!) a mostly normal schedule.  I'm getting up at about 6 a.m. and getting back home around the same time in the evening.  I don't really have to think about work when I'm not there (though I do).  It's quite a switch from the way I've worked since the beginning of 2001, where I was pretty much on call 24/7.  Both approaches have their advantages, but I'm happy for the current change.

I'm working on taking some pictures of the scenery.  I know, corporate buildings aren't too interesting, but, in the desert that is Utah, I work in a good looking area.  They've landscaped the area all around the building with waterfalls, a pristine stream, very green grass (with stepping stone foot path), and a good variety of flowers.  I haven't developed great photography skills, but that notwithstanding, I should have some shots in coming weeks.

I've recently accepted a job offer, so my blog posting frequency is likely to decrease a bit.  Currently, I work at home and set my own hours, so I can adjust my schedule to blog.  Starting Monday, I'm off to work in an office again.  Having a schedule is a bit rough, but I'm looking forward to calling 5 p.m. time to quit working though.  Happier times are ahead.

Actually, quotes of the day, but I wanted to keep the titles consistent.  Again, thanks, Mom.

An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field.

Niels Bohr

Don't worry about people stealing your ideas.  If your ideas are any good, you will have to ram them down people's throats.

Howard Aiken

A good friend of mine and a companion when we were missionaries, Ryan Bonham, has started a new company call CleanCut.  If you're in the market for candle maintenance tools, have a look.  A wick trimmer or a wick dipper just might be the tool you're looking for.

Thank, Mom.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing;  it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Voltaire

This blogger has been very busy, stressed, and sick lately.  I'm hopeful that tomorrow I'll have a clear head again and can return to regular programming - complaining about technology implementations, and thinking out loud on idealism.  If you can stomach one more quote of the day, I'll post it in a bit.

Thanks, Mom.

It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit.

Harry Truman

Thanks, Mom.

Half of the American people never read a newspaper.  Half never voted for president.  Let's hope it was the same half.

Thanks again, Mom.

Democracy is a process by which the people are free to choose the man who will get the blame.

True to their word, the Canon PowerShot A60 that Dell promised me arrived today.  I was a bit surprised that AirBorne didn't make me sign for it.  I guess I didn't hear them knocking, because I only discovered it when I went outside to get my mail.  Anyway...

Since I've barely even held a digital camera, much less owned one, I'm enchanted by it.  Truth be told, I have no idea how good of a camera it is.  It has menus and buttons all over, so, I suppose it must be good. 

My likes so far are the auto focus, auto zoom, and auto lighting.  It seems to be saying, “Look, I'm a camera, and I know how to take pictures.  Unless you're really sure you know what you're doing, you just point and click and leave the rest to me.”  I'm happy with that arrangement.  The pictures I've taken are really sharp (and really huge - 1600x1200 by default).  It even turns itself off (covering the lens and everything) if left idle for too long (I think three minutes).

My dislikes are that it doesn't auto sync with some atomic clock to get the proper date and time.  Yeah, this is picky, but if my cell phone can do it, surely my camera can too.  My other annoyance is that for the download picture software to recognize the camera is connected to the PC, the camera has to be in review mode (where you see all the pictures you've taken but can't).  Silly me, I didn't figure it would matter, so when I first plugged it in, the camera was in picture mode (the “I'm taking pictures” mode).  I think you should be able to download and upload (why would you want to upload pictures to your camera?) in either mode.

So, overall, I'm a happy new camera owner.

I've been interested in the how's and why's of the consumer financial industry for some time now.  What do those numbers on the bottoms of checks mean?  What's the relationship between my credit card number and the bank that issued it?  Are there sets of credit card numbers that are invalid?  How is McDonald's paid from my credit card, when I buy my Double Quarter Pounder?  Etc.

I have peppered the few people I know in the financial services industries with questions.  Still, I had many unanswered questions.  Joe Ziegler has provided many answers.  I found a link to it when searching for credit card validation for use on e-commerce sites.  If you are interested in either subject, visit the sites below.  If anyone knows of good info an ABA routing, please let me know.

Credit Card 101 - Joe Ziegler

Credit Card Validator control for ASP.NET - Paul Ingles

After much travail, Dell sent someone to silence my banshee fans and give me a new AC adapter.  They also are shipping me a Canon Powershot A60 digital camera for my inconvenience.  I'm a more satisfied customer than I was yesterday.  I'm hopeful that my days of Dell trouble are behind me.

Now, I'm mad.

On Sunday, February 29, 2004, I called Dell to report a problem - when I picked up my laptop everything froze.  This happened in Windows, in BIOS, whenever.

2 March 2004, a tech support man came to visit me with new parts to solve my problem.  Though it did solve my problem with not being able to pick up my laptop, it disabled several keys on my keyboard.

3 March 2004, the tech support man returns with a new keyboard.  No dice.  Same disabled key problem occurs.  Dell decides to ship me a new laptop and forgo piecemeal troubleshooting.  OK, I'll wait for my new laptop to come.

12 March 2004, my new laptop arrived with the wrong power supply (70 watt not a 90 watt) and the cooling fans are broken (make horrid noise, sometimes don't run at all, sometimes run for hours).  I called to let them know the problem, and they told me I had to send my new laptop back first.  There's also the problem that my support contract would expire on the 14th and my old laptop wouldn't arrive by then.  I can only renew my contract M-F 8-5, so I have to wait till the 15th to resolve that.  All of this aside, there is no reason for Dell to hassle me about the old laptop, since they sent me a defective old laptop to begin with.

13 March 2004, I call Dell and report the problem again and get the same result as the night before.

15 March 2004, I call to renew my contract.  I give a credit card number.  All is well with the contract.  Actually, not quite all well.  My “new” laptop is really a refurbished laptop, and Dell seems to think that the previous owner still owned it.  Ugh.  After resolving that, all was well with the contract.

I also, tried again to get my new laptop fixed without sending the old one back yet.  The issue is this - if the power supply or fans cause my new laptop to die, I need the old one to fall back on.  Nobody at Dell cares about my needs, though most of them agreed that their company policy on the matter was foolish.  So, I ship my old laptop back on Monday (less than one business day after the new one arrived, and I'm supposed to have 15).  I was promised that a new AC adapter would be sent, but that the fans couldn't be fixed until the old laptop was sent out.

17 March 2004, I track the package and Dell received the old laptop early in the morning.  It's now two days since I renewed my contract, so that should be updated in all the systems now.

19 March 2004, Still no new AC adapter.  I called to get my laptop fixed and received personal assurance that all would be well and I'd get a phone call from that tech support agent on Monday if all wasn't fixed yet.

20 March 2004, I send several emails to Dell via their support web site.  I receive no response.

22 March 2004, I receive no phone call.  I have no AC adapter.  My fans still sound like banshees.  I receive an email saying my support contract couldn't be processed because the contract I wanted isn't available for refurbished systems.  The agent tried to call, but number was disconnected.  Ugh.  Of course the number was disconnected, I moved two years and nine months ago!  Dell knows my new number and address.  It knows my cell phone.  It knows my email address.  Still, I didn't get contact until a full week had passed.  Grr.

I also received an email (response from the emails I sent on Saturday via the web site) saying a tech was coming to fix the problem.

24 March 2004, No phone call.  No tech.  No AC adapter.  Very mad customer.  I emailed a few times and told Dell my opinion of their service.  I got more apologies and a new promise of a dispatch.

25 March 2004, I send a few more angry emails in response to Dell's “truly regret[ing]” my inconvenience.  I call Dell and discover that the previous support dispatches had been canceled because my contract had expired.  Of course, nobody called to tell me they were canceled or what I could do about it.  I'm currently on the phone and have yet another personal promise from tech support that the problem will be resolved (e.g. a tech will be at my house tomorrow) and that she'll see to it personally.

I'm not holding my breath.  26 days and counting, and I still don't have a fully functional laptop.

Another quote from Mom...

Why not go out on a limb?  Isn't that where the fruit is?

McAfee's consumer AntiVirus, FireWall, etc. software came preinstalled on my new laptop.  (Actually, it's only partially preinstalled.)  On reading through the Dell branded McAfee SecurityCenter, here are a few thoughts.

Sadly, I ranked 1 out of 10 on the My AntiHacker Index.  I'm scared!  I'm vulnerable!  The bad guys will ownz0rs me any second now!  What do I do?!  SecurityCenter to the rescue.  I can install McAfee Personal Firewall Plus.  That'll make everything better.  But wait, why don't I use SecurityCenter to “Test My Computer's Security” first.  Clicking on that link opens a browser window on hackerwatch.org.  I opt to do a Port Scan.  Not surprisingly, I pass with flying colors (“No open ports were found.”).  McAfee's own hackerwatch.org site says I'm totally secure (because it can't get passed my hardware firewall), even though McAfee's SecurityCenter flunks me with a 1 out of 10.  Seems that 1 out of 10 doesn't mean I'm not safe from the bad guys.  It really means, “You don't have the McAfee Personal Firewall Plus or other similar McAfee product installed.”  Incidentally, to score 10 out of 10, you can install Personal Firewall Plus and leave it disabled.  So long as you are paying McAfee, that's enough.  You don't actually have to use the software.

Now that I know the AntiHacker Index is of dubious value, what about the AntiAbuse Index and AntiAbuse Index?  SecurityCenter explains the My AntiAbuse Index in these words: Your AntiAbuse Index provides a measure of how secure your computer is against the latest privacy abuse outbreaks.  The index is computed based upon which types of privacy abuses currently exist and how prepared your computer is to defeat these abuses.

One of the factors that influence your AntiAbuse Index is external privacy abuses.  For example, if there is a privacy abuse outbreak, does your anti-abuse software protect you from this scenario?...

I don't know what a “privacy abuse outbreak” even means.  It seems to me if there is an evil piece of software running around invading my privacy, it'd be classified as a virus or a worm.  My antivirus software (which just happens to come from McAfee) should take care of that for me.  By using a term like “outbreak” it scares the reader into thinking you need a special product to protect you.  However, I say that's a load of marketing unreality just like saying I need McAfee's firewall, because SecurityCenter was too inept to test for a hardware firewall.  The reality is if there is an outbreak of anything, antivirus software should deal with it.  The day to day, social engineering kind of things (warning: you are transmitting your credit card, social security number, etc. in plain text!!) should be handled by privacy protection software.

So far SecurityCenter has two strike against it in my book.  It lied to me about needing a firewall.  It tried to deceive me by instilling irrational fear of privacy abuse outbreaks.  Let's see what's next on the list.  Ah, My AntiSpam Index.

Arggg!  I've got a 1 out of 10 for that too.  My Inbox must be bursting at the seams with spam.  Please save me, McAfee!  First, let's see what that My AntiSpam Index is.  According to SecurityCenter: Your AntiSpam Index provides a measurement of how secure your computer is against receiving inappropriate, unsolicited, and virus-infected email.  The index is computed based upon which types of spam abuses currently exist and how prepared your computer is to defeat these abuses.

One of the factors that influence your AntiSpam Index is external spam abuses.  For example, if there is a spam abuse outbreak, does your anti-spam software protect you from this scenario?...

Hmm, that sounds just like the AntiAbuse Index.  A few thoughts - first, I have Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 installed.  I have my junkmail settings set to Safe Lists Only (the highest setting offered...basically, if I don't explicitly trust an address, any mail from that address is considered spam and doesn't get to my inbox).  OK, so SecurityCenter lied to me about being protected against unsolicited email.

Second, since I'm using McAfee's antivirus software, shouldn't that take care of protecting me against virus-infected email?  Either McAfee's AV software is lousy, or SecurityCenter is deceiving me again.

Third, what the heck is a “spam abuse outbreak”?  Some have said that at least 50% of email delivered each day is spam.  If we aren't already in an outbreak scenario, I don't know what an outbreak is.  Since I'd say we are already in an outbreak scenario, and not one piece of spam has hit my inbox in months, I'd say Outlook is doing a great job.

All in all, it seems that SecurityCenter is throwing around technical terms and scare tactics to sell its products.  The indices aren't based on how secure, private, etc. you are.  They are based on how many McAfee products you have installed (even if they aren't running!).

If you happen to be a man named Julius Caesar living in ancient Rome in the imagination of Mr. William Shakespeare, you might want to stay home today.

For the rest of you, this is just plain old March 15th.

Yesterday, I opened the box with my new laptop, plugged it in, turned it on, and was greeted by AOL Buddy.  Earthlink and Real also tried help me feel welcome.  I was also surprised to find .NET Framework 1.1 anxiously waiting to execute some managed code for me.

Real has filed a 1 billion dollar law suit against Microsoft, in part, due to the inclusion of Windows Media Player in Windows.  Real says this hurts their business.  Curiously, Real Player and Windows Media Player were preinstalled on my new laptop.  It seems to me that Real needs to sell its player a bit better and form deals with OEMs to have it preinstalled, just like Microsoft has with Windows and Office to have them preinstalled.  You can say that Microsoft gets a free ride now, but in the beginning, Microsoft had to fight just like everyone else.

Sun also has a suit against Microsoft, in part, due to the inclusion of a Microsoft Virtual Machine for Java in Windows and the lack of a Sun JVM.  What I find interesting is that the .NET Framework 1.1, which is not part of Windows XP Professional or part of Service Pack 1 for Windows XP Professional (both of which were preinstalled on my new laptop), was preinstalled.  That tells me that Microsoft talked nicely to Dell, hooked them up with an easy to use setup program for 1.1, and the rest is history.  If Sun is so adamant about consumer Java development, why doesn't Sun (or why hasn't Sun for the last several years) talk nicely to Dell and other OEMs, hook them up with a nice J2SE setup program, and let the rest be history.

Why can't Real or Sun do exactly what Microsoft had to do to get its software preinstalled on PCs?  Why should they get a free ride?

OK, these aren't daily, so it's not really a quote of the day.  Perhaps, I should say “Today's Quote” instead?  Anyway, here's the quote du jour:

From the good folks at the AP: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4400653/

I'd like to see more written on RSS, so the general surfer will be as comfortable with it as they are with email or site URLs (please nobody say that an RSS feed lives at a URL too, I know that ).  Perhaps, though, we should solve the RSS vs. ATOM debate first.

It's snowing again?!  The warm (relatively) weather of the last few days and the rain of today nearly removed all the winter's snow.  I suppose an hour or so ago, the sky decided the ground was ugly and decided to repaint in white.  I wish I had my snowblower working.

Last July was insanely hot in Utah (about three weeks or so off 100+ degree temperature).  Air conditioning was great, but it didn't feel too efficient to me.  I decided on a different approach.  I hopped on eBay and bought trees.  25 trees.  OK, 15 trees (5 maple, 10 willow) and 10 shrubs (burning bushes).  The willows promised to grow very fast and get tall enough to shade my two story house.

On 26 December 2003, my trees were buried.  We got a foot and a half or so of snow that day.  During the next week, we got about that much again.  My poor trees have been buried for nearly two months.  Thankfully, the temperature is rising (last months average temperature was 22 degrees) and I can see my trees again.  I only hope the deep freeze didn't kill them.

From a typical February month perspective (28 days), my blog has been up and running for a month.  Here are a few tidbits I've learned during that time.

Almost nobody has heard of RSS, or ATOM, or news aggregators in general.  There are bloggers, who don't even know what these things are.  One of the many things that we as an industry need to work on is simplifying the adoption path of new technologies.  I'm not sure I have great ideas on how to do that, but I'm convinced of the need.  One helpful item, I think, would be to reduce the ridiculous format competition (for most people, is there really a need for whatever goodness ATOM supposedly offers?).  We take something already complex for non tech people and make it more complex.  Bad move, I think.

The Internet is as unreliable as ever.  Referral hits don't always mean someone is linking to you.  Email notifications don't always arrive.  Stats tracking software falls asleep sometimes.  Google's ranking algorithm is more fickle than a 2 year old deciding what to eat (or not eat, or throw on the floor, etc.) for dinner.

Most importantly, blogs allow me to communicate with many people.  According to my logs, I'm regularly read by folks from at least 10 different countries and at least two major software companies.  It is interesting to think that my voice is heard by so many (though very few compared to many other bloggers).

Thanks to Mario, I've discovered there's a newer version of dasBlog.  I just upgrade from 1.4 to 1.5.  Everything seems to be working correctly to me.  Please let me know, if you have any problems.

intraVnews is not high on my like list today.  You see, I decided that rather than take up 200 MB of blog posts in the .pst file where my email, contacts, calendar, etc. reside, I'd make a special .pst just for blogs.  I moved the intraVnews folder from the mail .pst to the new “for blogs only” .pst, and all was well.  OK, all was well in appearance.  A few hours later, I realized I'd received no new blog posts.  I checked my feeds, and intraVnews couldn't find any of the folders for the feeds.  Ugh.

On further investigation, I discovered the problem.  Rather than store a path like \\blogs\intraVnews\Microsoft Employees\Dare Obasanjo\ (blogs is the name of my “for blogs only” .pst), it hardcodes the Outlook folder ID.  So, if you rename the folder, it's OK, because the only important thing is the ID.  If you move the folder (in the same .pst) all is OK, because of that folder ID.  If you move to a new .pst, then all bets are off and all feeding is stopped.

To solve the problem, I exported my OPML, unsubscribed from all my feeds, imported my OPML, and let the feeding begin.  Since all my state was lost, I had to manually reset that.  Also, since the OPML did not reflect the folder categories I had created (it reflects categories by wherever the feed's folder first lived, changes are not reflected in the OPML grr), I had to move folder around and do some renaming.

All in all, it is still a better experience than I had with SharpReader, but the a bit of brightness has worn off.  I should also mention that I tried NewsGator again, and it still doesn't behave the way I want it to for NNTP.  Until it can handle NNTP as well as Outlook Express, it isn't worth its price tag (since the free OE and intraVnews cover the same functionality).

It's amazing what you find on the Internet looking for something else.  Yesterday, I had a small dispute with my friend regarding the date of Kurt Cobain's death.  I claimed spring 1994 (April or May), and he claimed it was in the fall.  As soon as I remembered we had talked about that, I google'd a bit to find the date.  As it turns out, Kurt was found dead 8 April 1994.

That's what I was looking for.  What I wasn't looking for was the notes of a private investigator implicating Courtney Love in Kurt's murder.  I'm not sure what to think about his statements, and I find it very curious that the PI is selling his case file.  I know, though, that I'm sad once again thinking of Kurt's death.

He and I weren't exactly best buds.  I was just one of a few million other fans who had never met him but could feel like I knew him through his music.  It was an raw, emotional, eternal, eerie music.  I once thought I knew exactly how Kurt felt.  Probably not, since I didn't partake of any of his lifestyle (no grunge, no drugs, etc.), but I was just a dumb teen fan back then.  Still, he was one, whose music I could relate to as a teen.  I suppose, perhaps, thinking again about Kurt's death is like thinking again about John Lennon's death for those a generation or so older than I.

The last 24 hours or so have seen a good deal of conversation with me and a close friend.  We talked about all sorts of things, including but not limited to the role of the United States in Iraq, the meaning of liberty with respect to US citizens and non-US citizens, judicial review, gun control, and several religious topics and doctrines.  Oh, we also talked about the age of oceans, string / brane theory, and the birth of the universe.  In fact, it is for this reason (the lengthy discussions), that I didn't blog yesterday.

My point in saying all of this is that my friend is a very smart man and I'm glad he challenged my beliefs on several fronts.  Thanks to his willingness to share his ideas with me, many of which are contrary to my own, I have a lot to think about.

Rick Schaut wrote a list of rules for comments:

1. Be nice. The shrill voice that passes for public discourse these days is, to my sensitive ears, far more offensive than the content. I believe it’s possible to say anything you want to say, including providing critical feedback, without being a jerk. Name-calling, personal attacks and obscenities aren’t necessary for well-reasoned public discourse.
2. Stay on topic. Comments are not a forum by which you can express your opinions independent of the issues being discussed relative to a particular post. If you want a forum for expressing your own opinions, then start your own weblog.
3. Be concise. Comments are not the place for lengthy treatises. If you want to respond to a number of points that I raise in a particular article or post, then the right thing to do is set up your own weblog, and compose a response with the appropriate links.
4. Have fun. If reading my weblog leaves your blood boiling, if you don’t learn anything, if what I have to say doesn’t get you to think at all, then you should probably unsubscribe. Life is too short to not spend our time toward constructively positive ends.

I'm not quite sure why this post struck me as funny.  Perhaps because they ring so true?  Perhaps because I've been the aggressor more than once in an online forum?  Not sure which, but I'm glad I have a blog for my own expressions.

Korby paraphrases Dave Winer's visit to Microsoft early this week.

'If there was any doubt that the television media controls who gets elected President [of the US] before this year, there's certainly no doubt any more. It's pretty clear to people across the political spectrum that the television executives killed Howard Dean's chances of winning the Democratic nomination.' 

I very much disagree with this.  Considering how much press Dean had prior to his less than stellar performance in Iowa, one would think the media one the election for Dean.  I can't even count how many in the media essentially pronounced Dean the nominee if not the president months before the primaries and caucuses began.  After all, he had the most money, he was pioneering with technology, he had Gore's and others support.  Dean was a shoe-in.  Oh, but wait, that was just what the media was painting.  Nobody had asked the people what they wanted.  It's the people, who are speaking now, in my opinion, not the media.

Then again, perhaps if I had heard Dave's comments in context, I'd have a different opinion.

Korby Parnell has given me a few things to think about this week.

I wonder... how do you think democratizing technologies like blogs might someday manifest themselves in the television medium?  Can television (or radio for that matter) be “democratized“? Or is it an inherently command and control medium?  For instance, is it completely insane to imagine a world in which people create and consume personal TVBlogs?  Might I someday be able to switch from the MSNBC news feed to the Slate news feed to the Dave Winer news feed?  Is it completely inconceivable that I might someday receive popup-style alerts on my home television (ala Outlook 2003 or SharpReader.NET) that a friend has posted to her blog while I'm watching a sitcom on NBC or ESPN?

I think such a thing is very possible. TV is already being incorporated into PC usage via Media Center PCs (among others).  Benjamin J. J. Voight was talking about video blogging a few weeks ago.  I can easily see text, audio, and audio/video blogs in the future co-existing with “professional” articles, radio shows, and TV shows.  I could also see some RSS-like technology, perhaps attached to a Media Center PC or Tivo, allowing for easy subscription and aggregation of those unprofessional and professional works.

neowin supposedly reported this, but they are down at present.  Yikes.

Update: CNet has a little bit more info.

Update: Betanews also has some things to say.

Last update:  Washington Post (thank n4cer for the link) says it's the real deal.  It's only partial, but this is still a very sad thing.

On Tuesday, I installed what every patches Windows Update was handing out.  On Wednesday, every email I received that was processed by one of my Outlook rules, came in threes.  That is, I received three of the same email.  I'm not sure if this new behavior is related to any Tuesday patching.  Since this behavior doesn't seem to occur at the mail server and I didn't make any other modifications (that I can remember) to my system, I'm looking at the patching as a prime candidate.  Has anyone else seen this or know how I can stop it from happening?

A few other thoughts - a few times I've only received 2 instead of 3 copies of each email.  Also, I wonder if intraVnews has anything to do with it.  Other than my virus scanner, it's the only Outlook addin that I have.

I've had a few biting smart application experiences lately.  About a week ago, I was editing some .acx files in FrontPage.  Why FrontPage and not Visual Studio, you ask?  I don't really have a good answer for that.  It was a convenience thing.  VS takes forever and a day to get itself back in physical RAM after my laptop has hibernated.  FrontPage comes up much, much faster.  Since I was doing some non code edits (CSS and HTML stuff) and some site maintenance stuff (deleting orphaned files, backing up the site, etc.), I used FP due to its lower memory overhead.  Hmm, looks like I had a good reason after all.

Anyway...the non blog portion of lparky.com is composed of a few user controls to construct the header, footer, menu, meta info, include the style sheet, etc.  At least three of the controls have broken tags (the open or close but not both).  Well, FP decided it wanted to be uber helpful, and it generated the missing tag part for me.  This resulted in less than satisfactory HTML (my HTML was well formed).  Despite telling it in no uncertain terms that I knew what I was doing, it insisted on “helping” me.  Finally, I opened them as plain text, and FP left them alone.

I had a similar experience yesterday sending previews of HTML email to one of my clients.  I've not yet figured out how to directly edit the HTML source of an outbound email from Outlook (if it is possible, please let me know how), so I used Outlook Express.  (In retrospect, it would have been easier to just write a script to send them, but I didn't realize that OE was going to “help” me so much.)  I copied the full HTML into the email and sent it.  I unhappily discovered that OE wanted to be as helpful as FP.  It removed a few quotation marks, added a few tags (my HTML was well formed), it butchered my spacing, etc.  I was less than pleased.  Finally, I sent my client links, so he could view the emails online instead.

These are issues that don't do a lot of damage, but they waste time.  They take control over my content.  Microsoft Office XP started in the right direction with Smart Tags (do you want to turn off this behavior?).  Options like these (I've just changed this for you...do you want me to keep doing that, or what you rather I leave you alone?) need to be more prevalent.

For the first time since I started reading blogs back in October, I'm current.  I've learned about a wide range of topics and met some interesting people.  My current blog count is 153, and I think I'll keep it around this number.

When I wrote “Rules of Engagement” a few days ago, this is the type of thing I was looking for.  I think the only one with which I take issue is - Write Tight.  I, um, don't optimize my writing.  If I'm in the mood, I'll proof for grammar, punctuation, and spelling.  I typically don't go to the trouble of doing short and sweet.  I don't take issue with Relax, but I don't think it's too likely that I'll do it.  Speaking of relaxing, I need to write about stress.

I guess I don't miss it too much.  I can't even remember what it was called.  I think it was Musli, actually.  I'm sure Jake, errrr, Jack will correct me on that. 

Anyway, I miss it.  I just had a pleasant bowl of Cap'n Crunch, and it was OK, but I'd love to have the crunchy, chocolaty, so German but in the middle of Moscow Muesli.  (The thing that I'm trying to describe is like a granola cereal with chocolate chips.  It was very good and I ate it quite often toward the end of my mission.)  Mmmmm.

Cereal aside, I was thinking of posting about dreams, distractions, and stress in the near future.  Look forward to them in the next few days.

Thanks Dare for this link to President Match.  I had the unfortunate experience of discovering, according to the site, that I'm 100% aligned with George.  Ugh.  I'm sure there's a bug.  Here's a bug - I want the Patriot Act repealed.  He wants it to be in force perpetually.

Could it be that as much as I have no desire at all to vote for George, than none of the other candidates have what I'm looking for either?  That's a very unpleasant thought.

I'm learning (or forcing myself to accept) that I can learn things from even the most unlikely of places.  Going through horribly written code, I can still learn a function or two that I've never seen before.

Pinging Weblogs.com failed: Thanks for the ping, however we can only accept one ping every half-hour. It's cool that you're updating so often, however, if I may be so bold as to offer some advice -- take a break, you'll enjoy life more.

You may not be so bold!  Besides, I was over half an hour by 13 seconds.

One of my favorite bloggers, Rob Mensching, broke his vow of silence today.  He writes some good technical stuff, if you're into understanding the innards of MSI.  If not, his personal writing is very good too.  Thanks for sharing yourself with us, Rob.

I see that KC also reads Rob.

I doubt you or anyone else in your family is reading my blog yet, but, oh well.  Everyone...let's give a big Potato Man cheer for Andrew Borrowman!

To read a blog.  To blog.  To be a blogger.  Don't bug me, I'm blogging!

A year ago, I thought that blog (short for web log) was something that web server software generated...a text file of HTTP requests.  I thought the word was rather silly, but now I use it in my everyday speech.  Hmm.

Another word “grok” has wandered into my reading lately.  I think this is a foolish word too.  Why not just say “mull over,” “think over,” “think about,” or “ponder” ?  I wonder if I'll grok my acceptance of the word “grok” a year from now.

I only have three items tagged for follow-up in Outlook right now. 

I'm first on Google for the moment. 

Click on the image to enlarge.

That almost sounds like one of Shinji's lines from Neon Genesis Evangelion.  It's not though.

I blogged yesterday about losing all my read blog state.  Well, for the last little bit I've been trying to reclaim that state.  This involves going through the 100+ blogs I read and marking read what I've already read.  Long story short (too late!), I came across an entry from Brian Loomis, to which someone had responded thusly:

Considering the number of poorly written and researched articles in popular tech magazines and sites, I don't see that they have anything on blogging. I've seen far more accurate information on Microsoft products from Microsoft bloggers than I have seen from CNet, eWeek, etc.

I thought, yeah, I agree!  Well, of course, I agree.  BobSmith (that's me) wrote it.  I'm glad to see I agree with myself.

I am a bit surprised by this.  lparky.com came online in March.  I've been involved with other stuff, so I haven't done all too much with it.  Still, it managed to get visitors...and I don't mean friends of mine, whom I persuaded to check it out.

Here are the unique visitor stats from the last few months:

Month	Unique Visitors
October	15
November	33
December	143
January	411

For the last few months, I some incredible growth (measured by percentages).  Most of January's numbers come from hits to the blog.  Wow.

While I'm thinking about it, is there anything specific that the readers would like to hear about?

This gave me a laugh.  In the first few days, I'd edit an entry several times.  Now though, I only do corrections for formatting or link errors.  I'm generally good about grammar and spelling too, but when blogging, it just doesn't seem as important.  Blogging is more of a stream of consciousness thing than a well thought out thesis.

Last week I switched to the Silver color scheme on my Windows XP box.  The idea of looking at all gray has annoyed me for quite some time now.  Amazingly, though, I think I really like this style.  My taskbar is shiny.  Windows Media Player 9 nicely changes its color (that part was manual) to match.  Mouse hightlights look good.  Office 2003 skins itself to match.  All in all, I'm happy with it.  Yep, I'm happy with it.

Wo is me!  I love state.  State is cool.  Archives are cool.  Archives with state are cool.  Last night SharpReader robbed me of archives with state.

I was happily reading blogs, when I decided I wanted to mark one post as not read.  I moused quickly....a bit too quickly.  I selected Mark all as unread.  Rather than mark every post for that feed unread, SharpReader decided that I wanted to mark every post (about 8000) for every feed (about 130) unread.

PotatoMan.RssAggregator = new intraVnews();

Good bye, SharpReader.  You've annoyed me once too often.

Google's love is fickle.  In the 24 hours since I posted my ranking for certain search terms, I fell dramatically.  From 2nd to 39th on one!  Ouch!

More than likely, Google spidered and found that content that used to be here wasn't here any more (older articles don't appear on the front page).  Such is life.  I'm not blogging to be googlicious anyway.  That was just a nice side benefit.

I've talked about being a tester and a programmer.  I just thought I'd clarify my work history somewhat.

When I returned from my mission, I started school at BYU.  Within a few weeks, I got a job at the MTC testing T.A.L.L. (Technology Assisted Language Learning) versions 2.3 and 3.0.  Primarily I focused on the Russian version.  I also tested associated content creation and management tools, as well as the teacher component of T.A.L.L., Teacher Assistant.

I had a wonderful time testing.  Complain, complain, complain.  Many of my bugs were overruled, but many of them were accepted.  It's quite a thing to look at a product and know that you helped bulletproof it.

I spent about a year testing eventually become head of testing before taking a dual role as tester and programmer.  Keith Borrowman moved on to green pastures, and I replaced him as the programmer for Teacher Assistant.  DJ Dewey then replaced me as TA's tester.  (Ugh, I still remember that almost impossible to fix half check mark bug he found!  I also remember his future wife, Kim, mocking my use of Courier to align some text.  Here's a link to pictures of Deej and Kim.)  Though they'd probably dispute it, I still consider Keith and DJ better programmers than I am.

About four months later, another department snatched me.  Windows DNA, VB COM components, etc.  It was quite fun.  It was also the beginning of my current career as a web developer.

In the years since then, I've developed internal web sites, external web sites, and some desktop apps.  I'm currently a self-employed programmer.  Still, when big companies are nice enough to let me beta test software for them, I get to exercise my testing skills.

OK, so maybe I'm not really a tester at heart.  Maybe I'm just critical and irritable.  I've already said once on this blog that when I judge myself, I lack objectivity.  This would be another one of those times.

Being critical is a curious thing.  It's often regarded as innately bad.  Critical, judgmental, negative, etc.  How many people jump for joy at being criticized or judged?  Right, almost nobody.  Or do they?

I can take a critical look at a thing and in so doing state its good points.  When I say that a thing is good or that I like a thing, I'm also judging it.  Objectivity.  I think the negative connotation of those words comes from a lack of objectivity (that or low self-esteem).

While I'm on the subject, and I'm sure I'll get back to it again, Outlook 2003's rules wizard makes me cranky.  I suppose I should say that I allow it to make me cranky, since I choose how I respond to things, don't I?

I love Outlook's rules. (That was a judgment call!)  I've have 42 of them right now.  Here's the problem I have.

1. Right click on an email and select Create Rule...
2. On the dialog that appears, click the box by the text From (email address of sender).
3. Click Advanced Options
4. Click Next
5. Click the box by “move it to the ”
6. Down below, specify the folder to move it to
7. Notice that after you select the folder, a new rule has appeared: “and on this machine only”

There you have it.  Outlook, just to annoy you, has added a condition.  To remove it, you have to click back and uncheck the “and on this machine only” condition.  If I'd only created one or two rules, I'd probably not be too bothered by this.  Since I have so many, I see this bug quite often.  It spoils my Outlook experience.

I'm a bit lost on a recent Scoble post.  It seems to me that if you don't like something, and you have no obligation to do it, then, well, you shouldn't do it.  If reading Scoble brings you no pleasure, why do it?

I don't buy the popularity argument.  There are plenty of popular magazines and newspapers that I don't read.

I don't really buy the informed-ness argument.  I can stay informed on the tech world without reading Scoble.  (If for no other reason than so many others quote him.)

So, again, if you don't enjoy it, why do it?

Back in 2000, I wasn't too sure they'd make it.  Three years later, after a few profitable quarters here and there, they have their first profitable year.

I never send an email to more than about three people.  I almost never forward things.  I just don't do the “this is half an ounce of interesting, I'm sure the rest of the world (e.g. my address book) would love to know about it” thing.

Well, I never do that until now.  I just announced my blog to everyone in my address book, whose email address I think is probably current.  My AV scanner even warned me that I might have a worm, since I was sending to so many people.  At least I did a nice thing by BCC'ing everyone.  This way, your privacy is ensured (that is, only you and I know your address not the hundred other people to whom I sent the same message).

All is well, no worm, and if you received my email, you're not likely to receive another one like it from me.  If anything really interesting happens that everyone and their dog should know about, I'll post it here long before sending another email to more than three people.

I bought the Brandenburg Concertos a few years ago, but I never listened to them.  I altered that behavior last week.  I really like them.  Go Bach!

Obviously, Louis Parks is Potato Man.  Where did the name come from?

Potato is a double-edged sword for me.  I wrote a parable back in '96 about potatoes.  Rather than accepting the status quo, the potato was trying to be the best he could be and rise above his surroundings.  I wrote it to a missionary, trying to explain my thoughts on life.  A few months later, I told it to my companion at the Missionary Training Center (MTC).  (I'll blog about being a missionary a bit more some day.)  Since he was about 6'2" and I'm 5'7", he used to call me spud.  It was very complimentary, meaning that in his eyes, I was trying to be the best friend to him and the best missionary I could be.

Potato also refers to a sarcastic comment I made a few months ago.  Jeremy Field and I were taking a class together at University of Phoenix.  He's a good friend of mine, so I spoke very candidly about an issue we were both having with the class.  I choose the first word that came to mind, potato, for an analogy I was making.  So, when I use potato referring to UoP, I'm covertly showing off my cockiness.

Using the two definitions together, I suppose Potato Man means that I'm a cocky guy, but that I'm always trying to do the right thing.

I've altered things a bit, most import was is the nifty gray background on the right side.  This is the same background used on the rest of the site.  Jon Hoffman, an aspiring artist friend of mine, made it for me last year.

One thing I'm stuck on is the location of the calendar.  It currently is aligned with the links under Navigation, Categories, and Blogroll.  I'm thinking it should stay there.  Still, I can make a case for left aligning it with the Navigation, Categories, and Blogroll headings.

If I have any readers, feel free to let me know what you think and what would make the site better.

I just visited a site with a link that would close the browser window.  When I clicked the link, IE said, “The Web page you are viewing is trying to close the window.  Do you want to close this window?”  It seems odd that IE cares more about when a window is closed than when it is opened.  The issue with popups/popunders that has caused many (including the new version of IE) to make popup/popunder blockers might have been avioded if IE had simply produced a dialog saying “The web page you are viewing is trying to open a new window.  Do you want to open a new window?”

The Human Aggregator of Geek Life has linked to me.  I figured that linking to him yesterday was a long shot to help get me on the map.  I'm stoked that it worked.

What I wonder is this - how does he have time to go through all of his referral logs.  My blog's been up for under 24 hours and already I have quite a few hits from spiders, bots, sites, etc.  I wonder what his log looks like and how he manages to post as much as he does and go through his logs.

I'm not sure that I'd characterize myself as the most mellow of people.  I've posted under the alias BobSmith over at ActiveWin for a few years now, and any who frequent the site know that I'm very opinionated.  (I'm hopeful that the opinions I express are also rational.)

CNet reported today about yet another worm.  It's a typical mass mailer with a twist.  Instead of attacking Windows Update we saw with worms last summer, it's set to attack SCO.  For those who are upset with SCO, I don't see that this as a very wise way to vent frustration.  It's immature at best and destructive at worst.  It reflects poorly on the OSS community.

I'm half assuming here that this was written by some OSS advocate.  It may have been some OSS antagonist, who wanted to harm OSS's reputation further.  Either way, I find it deplorable.

Please, update your AV software and don't open attachments that seem even close to questionable.  Microsoft has more information on a few easy steps to protect your PC.

Good luck, Daryl!  Don't let the naysayers get you down.

OK, the Internet is cool.

I've had this blog up and running for under 12 hours and Robert Scoble has already found me.  I remember reading a post of his that talked of setting up a blog and having 10,000 readers by the end of the week.  Perhaps we are closer to that reality than I previously though.

I'm a little late with this, but, hey, I just started.

Rory makes me laugh, and this entry made me laugh more the most.  I hope to have as much fun as he's had with my own referral logs.

I think the “candid blue” theme works best for me froma visual perspective.  Still, I love to complain.  I think I'll have to make some time to learn the dasBlog template format and work some visual magic.  I guess that means I'll have to learn some visual magic first...

Scoble seems to read everyone else on the Internet.  I wonder how long it'll take him to find me.

I've been reading blogs for a few months now, but this is my first time writing.  What are the do's and don't's of blogging?

Last night I began shopping for .NET blog software.  I had a less than pleasant experience with .Text.  I'm sure it's a great platform, but it didn't seem to like me too much.  It kept giving me date parsing issues.  Oh well.

So, I moved on to dasBlog.  Hmm.  I was hopeful when I had it up and running locally in about five minutes.  I was less than hopeful about two minutes later, when I got an “Illegal characters in path“ error.  I was sure that http://www.lparky.com/blog/ contained no illegal characters, but dasBlog was unrelenting.

I was determined to have a blog, so I downloaded the source to dasBlog.  I set a few breakpoints and quickly discovered that my trouble was due to a missing template file.  Ugh!

So, here's part of the bug -

C:\Program Files\newtelligence AG\newtelligence DasBlog 1.4 (Source)\newtelligence.DasBlog.Web\themes\dasBlog should have a file called “homeTemplate.blogtemplate” but, it didn't.  Now it does and all is well.

The second part of the bug -

The error handling code to deal with the missing template was less than adequate.  Line 217 of Themes.cs in newtelligence.DasBlog.Web.Core.Theme has this line:

return new StreamReader("<p>no template</p>");

I don't know about you, but I don't think that's a valid path.  System.IO didn't think it was valid either, which is why it kept telling me I had invalid characters in my path.

If anyone in the dasBlog world is listening, you can recreate this with a default install of the current 1.4 code.

All in all, I'm happy to finally be blogging.  I still believe that open source software is only free if your time is worth nothing.  This experience underscored that reality for me.

Louis becomes a blogger.