Operating System: Windows XP Service Pack 2 (RTM)

Default browser: Mozilla Fire fox 0.9.2.

Application in use: MSN Messenger 6.2.0137

Problem: When I click a hyperlink in a messenger conversation, the link opens in IE not in Firefox.

Problem with attitude: I'd think that after the whole hoo-haa Microsoft had to deal with over bundling IE in Windows, that it would reign in its applications and make them obey the settings in Set Program Access and Defaults.  MSN Messenger, Outlook 2003 SP 1, and Outlook Express 6 Service Pack 2 all quite often ignore my default browser setting.  I'm not amused, Microsoft.

Joe Beda's explanation of some issues surrounding porting Avalon to Windows XP.

1.1 SP1

1.1 SP1 (Windows Server 2003)

1.0 SP3

Thanks, Eric.

All dasBlog versions are affected.  See Clemens for details and the patch.

I tend to participate a lot at school.  I've got seven posts and one assignment waiting in my outbox for UoP's servers to get back up and running.  Our classroom newsgroup server (I think an Exchange 5.5 box) just went red (up from orange) on the server status page.  I think that means - the poor box is down and has been for some time (around 15 minutes, I'd guess).

I'm not sure that I should have said I had stories to tell, but I do have some context to share about my earlier days of blogging.

Around the time that I started blogging, I was talking to a software company that I wanted to work for.  If I recall correctly, I had my first live (non email) contact a few days after I started the blog.  In a few days, that company appeared in my logs, so I knew at least one person there was reading me.

From that time on, well until I hooked up with Flying J and the other company and I cut our ties with respect to employment, I always had them in the back of my mind when posting.  It was kind of funny.  The perspective I had to take, which I also used at Flying J when I was contracting and not yet an employee, was that I didn't want them to have any surprises if they hired me.  I told my team at Flying J that they could expect me to be the same person I was when contracting - in humor, boisterousness, opinion, coding ability, etc.

That's a bit of context for my earlier days.  Now, I'm writing (when I actually post, that is) whatever I feel like writing without too much thought for how current or future employers might see it.

I just recently listened to this webcast on the Microsoft Application Updater Block.  The samples were very helpful, since they solved a problem I was just beginning to have last week.  I needed the update to occur synchronously on startup not asynchronously as the app was running.  I'm happy to report that I snagged a bit of the sample code today and now updating is working perfectly.  If anyone else is having the same issue, check out the GAPP.Samples.UpdaterApplicationBlock.Plugins project in the samples.

Seems that Carl struck a deal with Microsoft a few months back to get .NET Rocks archives hosted on MSDN (http://msdn.microsoft.com/dotnetrocks/).  I wonder why episode 75 didn't make it.  Is Microsoft that afraid of Mono that it couldn't host an interview with Miguel?

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.