In my last post, I speculated that I might work on RSSAlerter at night while I'm on a contract in Oklahoma City.  It turns out that I'm working such long hours during the day, all I want to do when I get "home" is play poker. Oh well. At least it's a fun gig, despite the language.

I have 7 domains from which I can receive email, not including my Gmail and MSN accounts.  All mail for my domains funnel down to a few POP3 accounts, which I check with Small Business Server.  My SBS is configured to send all SMTP outbound through Verizon, my DSL provider.  It was difficult for me to pin down exactly when it happened, but some time recently, I lost the ability to send SMTP from home. I didn't know the exact date because I mostly use Gmail for outbound mail now, and I've been too busy lately to really hunt down the problem.

Well, today, I set aside some time to investigate, and found this.  It turns out Verizon decided to implement a breaking change on their SMTP servers that means I can't use SBS to send email anymore.  Thanks, guys! I'm glad I'm giving you money!

As I mentioned before, I hate Comcast, which is what caused me to switch to Verizon in the first place. Now I hate Verizon too. (Yes, I'm quick to hate companies with poor customer service. Sue me.) I'm going to start hunting for a company that can just deliver reasonably priced high speed internet to my door, then leave me the hell alone. No firewall, spam blocking, no frills. I can take care of all that stuff. I just need a public IP, and a customer service department that knows why the word "service" is in their department's name. Anyone have any recommendations for a company that services Dallas?

(BTW - I have SMTP outbound again. I signed up for a $15/year service from DynDns.org)

Comment spam sucks. I'm getting deluged with email to approve comments from these slimeballs.  Google says they have the solution, but I have to agree with Robert McLaws. We're not going to stop the spam with a rel attribute (though, I'm glad Scott Watermasysk has a .Text quick fix). The only way we're going to stop these bastards is with CAPTCHA.  I hope that's hign on the Telligent priority list.

One of my keyboards started to get a little flaky, so I needed a new one. I remembered a post on Scott Dockendorf's blog about Microsoft's Thumbprint Reader Technology, and I found a good price at Amazon, so I decided to go for it.

The keyboard itself is decent, but nothing spectacular. It has specialized buttons clearly aimed at the home user -- "My Documents", "My Pictures", "Messenger", stuff like that. Things I won't use. They can be reprogrammed to launch any app, but still I'm not sure I see the need. The wireless mouse that comes with it is interesting, with a multi-way mouse wheel. I won't use that, because I love my Optical Trackball (thumb operated). The fingerprint reader, however, combined with the software from Digital Persona is very cool.

When you visit a website or windows application with a login form (technically, any form that you fill out the same way each time [correction: this turns out not to be the case - if it doesn't look like a login form, the software will not fill it in]) for the first time, you put your finger on the reader. After authenticating you (which is surprisingly fast), the Digital Persona software asks how to answer the questions on the form -- with the ones that are obviously about your identity displayed prominently. After you tell it how to fill out the form, you are able to put any registered finger on the reader again to have it fill out the form for you.  (It does not work on Java apps, and probably won't work on Flash apps. Anything that's not using a native Windows control is probably not going to work.)

I had no idea how many times I typed a username and password during the day until I started using this thing. I liked it so much, I bought a 2nd one for the other machine on my desk. In retrospect, since that keyboard still works, I probably should have gotten the stand-alone fingerprint reader. That gets you the benefits of the reader and DP software, without the expense of the whole keyboard.

MSDN is offering a special deal on the Imation Disk Stakka (the link doesn’t appear to be protected, so I think even non-MSDN subscribers can get the special price).  Since I like technology toys, I thought I’d pick one up.

Eventually, I liked this thing. It’s a cool concept, which I’ll describe in a moment. But, first I have to tell you that it took 3 attempts and intervention from someone on their helpdesk before I got a working unit. Imation outsources their online store to Digital River, so there isn’t a real connection between their helpdesk and their retail operation. When my first unit was DOA, I was told I needed to return it and re-order because they didn’t have a mechanism for replacement.  I did this – meaning I have paid for two units while waiting for them to refund my money for the first unit – and the 2^nd unit I received was defective as well!  Both were shipped in the retail box, which doesn’t have sufficient padding, with just a shipping label pasted to the outside. I’m pretty sure this is what caused the trouble. Someone on the help desk offered to test a unit himself, pack it well, and ship it to me himself, rather than go through the fulfillment center.  This finally resulted in me getting a working unit.  So, if you read this review and decide you want one, just beware of the possible DOAs.

The Stakka consists of two parts – one hardware, one software.  The hardware is an enclosed carousel with a slot for inserting/removing CDs or DVDs (full-size only, no shapes).  The software is an explorer-integrated inventory system.  When you insert a disc into the Stakka, the software asks what the disc is, and what category it belongs to.  You can then use the explorer portion to browse the discs that are in the Stakka and select one to be ejected. Viola, it spits it out of the slot on the Stakka.  It keeps track of all discs that have been ejected, and defaults to one of those when you insert another disc.

You can stack up to 5 units on top of each other, controlled off a single USB cable. Theoretically, with a powered USB hub, you can control over 100 Stakkas from a single PC.

It’s a little bulky, and takes up a little too much space on my desk for my liking, so it will probably be relocated into the closet with my servers.  Other than that (and the DOA problems), I like it a lot. I was rebuilding a machine the other day, and it certainly made it easy to track down all the application and driver discs I needed. It’s a lot faster than flipping through the old MSDN binders I used for storage previously.  At $99, it’s probably a frivolous toy, but if I build 400 more machines, it will have paid for itself. <grin>

I recently bought myself the Harmony 688 universal remote by Logitech.  I was looking for something that would control all the gear in my entertainment center, that’s acceptable to my wife. I already have the an older Philips Pronto Pro, but that takes a lot of work to program the way you want it, and my wife isn’t crazy about it.

What a great remote! There are three things about this remote (and the whole Harmony line) that set it apart from others that I have used. First, it has what they call “Smart State Technology”, that just means it remembers what is already on, what needs to be turned on, and what needs to be turned off.  Second, it is programmed through the Harmony website, rather than using an obscure sequence of key codes to represent devices in your rack and desired behavior. This means they have an enormous database of devices and codes, continually being updated as new devices are released.  And, third, there are “activity” buttons that do everything you need them to do. For instance, there is a button labeled “watch tv” that will turn on your TV, receiver, satellite/cable box, etc, and set them all to the correct inputs.  Another button labeled “watch DVD” will turn on all the appropriate devices for that activity.  If you switch from one activity to another, the remote knows what devices are on, and what inputs they are set to, so it only sends the IR codes for the difference in state. 

If, for any reason, the remote loses track of state, there is a “help” button that will ask a series of questions designed to isolate and correct the problem. For instance, if you used the remote to turn the TV on, but you turned it off manually, the remote will not send the “on” code to the TV for any TV-related activity. Pressing “help” prompts you with questions including “Is the TV on?”  Answer this with “no” and the TV will be turned on, returning you to the proper state.  Great stuff.

I bought one for my mother-in-law for Christmas, and she loves it already. If there’s someone in your family that struggles with all those remotes on your coffee table, it’s well worth the $200.

My family decided for me what my next project will be - they just don't know it. I currently maintain 3 blogs: This one, for programming- and geek-related topics, KyleBits.com for personal (non-geeky) rants, and a family-oriented blog for news/photos/etc about my wife and me. These are not just there to hear myself ramble (ok, maybe a little), but also to keep my extended family up to date. The trouble is, none of them apparently read the blogs!

RSS is a wonderful thing for bringing news and other info to your door, if you happen to be a tech-savvy person that's interested in that sort of thing. My family is neither. An RSS reader is overkill them. What's needed here is a program that sits unobtrusively in the system tray, and alerts them (with balloon help or toast) when there has been an update to one of their feeds. Clicking the toast will take them to the page in their browser (a familiar interface). And, for the sake of my non-technical family, it needs to be pre-configured to check my 2 other feeds.

I did a quick search and the stuff I could find wasn't quite what I was looking for ... and it's more fun to write it. So, it's time to start building...

Or, as we used to say, once upon a time, "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year".

I'll be spending the holidays puttering around the house, and alternating between two books: Joel on Software and The Winner's Guide to Omaha Poker.  When I tire of that, I'll rebuild my domain controller. I've been procrastinating, because it's just a laborious task. Sigh.

I'm actually considering turning my Linux box into a DC with Samba, and rebuilding my current DC as just a server. It'll certainly be easier that way when I need to scrub the server and rebuild next time. And it'll make Paco proud. :-)

Hi there. Welcome. Come on in.

It has been a long time since I've done any blogging about .NET and technology in general, so I'm excited to get this blog started. Once upon a time, I had grand plans for a community website called "Examining.net" (and I still have the spiffy domain name), but my job was sucking the life force out of me, so when I got home I wasn't interested in writing code anymore.  Then I accepted a promotion to lead a team of developers, which just made things worse.

So, what has changed? Nothing, really. Just my commitment. I'm tired of sitting on the sidelines watching everyone else get to have fun with .NET, so I'm leaping back into the fray. It's about time.