I upgraded to the latest version of mojoPortal and decided a fresh look was long overdue.  I'm using a slightly modified "tabular1" theme included with the latest mojoPortal.  Check out the new skins that are available!

I've also decided to transfer my blog back to the main site.  For now I will keep all my old blog entries here until I find the time to migrate them here.

One of the reasons I haven't blogged much in a while is all the problems I was having wth dasBlog.  Hopefully with the latest version my major problems will be resolved and I can resume blogging.  Well... here goes my first post under dasBlog 2.0...

About seven or eight years ago, I had the pleasure of "mentoring" (ha-ha) this young whippersnapper fresh out of college.  It didn't take long to recognize he had a lot of potential.  And, ever since I've been looking for an opportunity to work with him again.

Well, the student has become the teacher.  Check out Chris' new blog, DesignInDrive.  While I've spent the last several years gunslinging code and cranking out big, steaming piles of applications using my WAD methodology, Chris has been learning the ins and outs of domain-driven design, extreme programming, agile development, and a slew of other buzzwords.  I love Chris' writing style, and I really look forward to him shedding some light on these subjects.

"...how do I implement this in my organization/job/etc., and still get done all the stuff I have on my plate right now?" The answer is that it isn't easy. It's like changing pants while driving 70mph with a car full of screaming kids while towing a boat trailer. And yet, that is the situation that virtually everyone who has a real job when they discover this stuff finds themselves in. Thus, we will call our discussion "Design in Drive". There's no exit ramp and you wouldn't have time to stop, even if there was.

I'm currently backing up my data so I can go back to using Windows XP.  This is the third time I've given Vista a serious chance at being my primary OS.  I really want to love Vista.  The interface, the glass effects, the new start menu and lots of little things make Vista very compelling.  However, my productivity has gone nowhere if not declined.  I've got software issues.  I've got driver issues.  Sometimes my CPU just loves to stay at 100% for no real reason that I can see.  Maybe there's some background indexing going on, but the only choice I have is to reboot.  Sometimes I try to expand a folder in Explorer and end up watching a cute animated hourglass/folder until I want to start beating my keyboard with anything within reach. 

I'm really disgusted with how much time I've wasted on Vista.  I'm a geek.  I'm addicted to new and can't help myself.  I'll probably be back.  But not until SP1.  Good grief.

In case you haven't heard, the production version of ASP.NET AJAX is finally here.

My favorite music player appears to be gone for good.  I knew that Yahoo had purchased it, and it would only be a matter of time before it would be assimilated.  I'm a big fan of Yahoo Music Unlimited, but the Yahoo Music Jukebox pales in comparison to the features that MusicMatch had.  MusicMatch's music library management and Super Tagging features are the best I've ever used at updating MP3 tags, looking up track info, renaming files, and so forth.  I hope they bring it back.

The other day I sent an e-mail to a company (who may or may not remain nameless as time progresses) regarding a product that I have installed on all my computers.  I asked what the company's plans were to support Windows Vista, and if there was a beta I could help test.  Here's the reply I received.

Thank you for your recent inquiry. 

Microsoft will be releasing Vista to the Public on January 30th 2007, after which we will look into making our Software compatible with the new Operating System.

After the release?  Are you kidding me?  Surely no software company that depends on the Microsoft OS for their livelihood would be [insert absurdity] enough to wait until it was shipping on new computers before they "...look into making [their] Software compatible...."  And, I believe making this particular product compatible with Vista would be quite a non-trivial task.

I hope that Mr. Technical Support Specialist is just seriously uninformed.

This might be related to my earlier display rotation woes, but now some of my context menus are showing up to the left of my mouse cursor instead of the right.  For example, when I click my Quick Start menu or if right-click on the desktop, the pop-up menu is to the left of my mouse pointer.  I haven't been able to figure this one out yet.  It's not a show-stopper, but this is just frustrating.

[Update 2007-01-28] Oh, thank goodness I found the answer.  This was driving me up the wall.  Under Control Panel -> Tablet PC Settings I changed the "Handedness" to "Left-handed."  A litter counter-intuitive, but whatever.  Keep in mind, my laptop is not a tablet PC. 

I decided since Virtual PC 2007 RC was out, I'd give Windows Vista another try.  Everything had been working OK for the last couple of days.  However, when I came into work this morning, plugged everything up to my laptop and booted up, Vista decided to change my monitor orientation and rotate both my laptop display and my second monitor 90 degrees.  Not only that, but it changed my mouse so that when I moved it up and down, the pointer moved side to side (which of course is up and down relative to the new orientation).  Trying to navigate the display properties under this condition is like trying to trim your ear hair using two mirrors (oh wait... maybe you didn't need that mental picture).

Here's the nice part.  Under display properties (Control Panel -> Personalization -> Display Settings), monitor rotation/orientation was no where to be found.  I started to Google the issue (by now turning my head and half my body totally sideways).  I found some tips for certain display drivers that use keyboard shortcuts to change monitor rotation, but this didn't work for me.

After digging around, I finally found something.  Under Control Panel -> Tablet PC Settings I was able to change the screen orientation to "Primary landscape."  That fixed my laptop display, but didn't fix my 2nd monitor.  To fix the secondary display, I found that when I went to Control Panel -> Windows Mobility Center, and then clicked the button for "Connect display" for External Display, it magically rotated back to landscape.

How's that for intuitive??

Jay must have been desperate for five people for me to make his list.  As Eric says, this meme must be about burned out :)

1. I didn't graduate high school.  What would have been my junior year in high school was supposed to have been my freshman year at Simon's Rock College of Bard.  Instead, I started taking classes at a local vocational-technical school and later got special permission to take the G.E.D. early.
2. As a teenager I played a screaming electric guitar, had hair halfway down my back, and had dreams of being a jukebox hero.  Nowadays I pick fingerstyle acoustic for fun, play bass for the student ministry band at my church, have hair that is short and vigorously turning shades of gray, and my dream is that I will be a hero to my wonderful wife and five boys.
3. My first Visual Basic application (1995?) was taking data collected from an automated (robotic) fabric testing system, loading the data into an Access 2.0 database, and then plotting the data using Excel 5.0 VBA.  The last I heard, it was still in use.
4. Several years ago, Johnny Cash stood in line behind me at a Kroger's grocery store.
5. I was born at home in a bathtub.

Now I need to tag five more people...

• Josh Evitt
• Joe Audette
• Erik Lane
• Bob Yexley
• Aaron Conrad