December 2004 - Posts

It was an eBay kind of Christmas...
I wound up purchasing many items from sellers on eBay this Christmas. It was awesome! I got a fantastic deal on my new Franklin Planner, and my wife's Sonicare toothbrush.

What I recently discovered is that eBay has a developer program.

I signed up on online (it's free), and downloaded the Windows SDK. It's been fun to pick through the sample code and look around. I think I'll go build a small app for fun......
Posted 28 December 2004 02:07 PM by eking1013 | no comments
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Have you seen MSN Desktop search yet?
Here are some useful tidbits:

Link HERE

-Eric
Posted 27 December 2004 01:39 PM by eking1013 | 2 comment(s)
Bought a new toy....well.......sort of.
When it comes to laundry, I'm lazy. No really...I am. I admit it. My wife and I have had a constant small battle for years over the laundry. For some reason you need some kind of friggin degree to correctly wash and dry a load of my wifes clothes. As for me, I throw all my stuff in the washer, wash it, dry it, DONE. ABC, 123, DONE. It's that simple. Ironing? What's an iron? I never use the thing.

Anyway, our washer and dryer both died about a month and a half ago. So for a short interim solution, we were taking our clothes to the local laundry mat. HOLY COW! That crap is expensive! The owners of that joint are making a killing! When we realized that we had spent about 1/5 the cost of a new washer, we decided it was time to go shopping.

For the sake of making laundry easier, and because I like big toys, I talked my wife in getting the mac daddy of dryers. Mainly because it was the floor model, and we got a great deal on it. We nabbed the Maytag Neptune with Drying cabinet. Check it out:
Pictures here.

You can hang your clothes in the upper cabinet, and dry them wrinkle free. Need to refresh a shirt and get the wrinkles out? Just throw it up into the cabinet, and viola! There is a bottle in the lower chamber that you can fill with water that it uses to add the right amount of humidity. It also has these mesh shelves you can use to lay a sweater, hat, or even shoes on to dry. I'll be home all day Wednesday just waiting for the guys from Best Buy to show up with our delivery................

Washer? Oh yeah. We picked up an LG front loading washer.
Picture here.

Even though the buttons are on the front, it is safe from our toddler. You can't open the door during operation, and the controls havea a child lock feature. Cool stuff........
How sad is it that I'm looking forward to doing laundry this week?

UPDATE:

I just realized by looking at the picture of the dryer that is has two funny buttons for the upper drying chamber. ("Add Fragrance" and "Remove Odor") That's hillarious!! I guess remove odor is perfect for the single guy (you know who you are) who may have only "worn that shirt once or twice" and you just want to "remove the funk" from it. :)
Posted 20 December 2004 08:37 AM by eking1013 | 5 comment(s)
OK Microsoft, what's the deal????
Earlier this year, I was given a ViewSonic V37 PocketPC as a gift. I decided recently to break it out of the box and start using it. I realized that it is running the 2002 version of the PocketPC OS. OK. Hmmmmm..... No problem. I guess I'll just have to upgrade this thing.

Let me see.....

I'll just run out to MSDN Subscriptions and look for the latest OS.........oh..................hmmmmm.............it's not here. I wonder why that is?

OK. I"ll just run over to the ViewSonic website and see what they have to say about it.

Hmmmmmm.............ah.............it appears that back in 2003, they offered an upgrade to customers for a very limited time. And apparently I am now out of luck. Gee Thanks!

OK. On to door number 3. I'll just email one of my regional MS buddies and see what he has to say about it...........

FINALLY!!!!! YES!!!! He was able to put me in contact with someone who could help me out! Wahoo! Why was this such a painful process? Why does this model work this way? Is there not a certain set of hardware standards that all PocketPCs must meet? Could there not be a standard OS upgrade for these things? Why does Microsoft push that off onto the manufacturers to deal with?

So anyway, there is a CD headed my way in the mail with the PocketPC 2003 upgrade. But guess what? Now there is PocketPC 2003 "Second Edition". Oh boy......here I go again......

What would it take for Microsoft to offer OS upgrades to any PocketPC user who wanted it? If someone wants to install Windows XP on theirPentium or Pentium II, they are certainly allowed to do that. But it seems that in this arena, it is the equivilent of forcing someone to purchase the latest Pentium 4 based PC if they want to run the latest Windows OS.

What's the deal?
Posted 17 December 2004 01:00 PM by eking1013 | 17 comment(s)
Easy Come, Easy Go........ (sung as "Bye Bye Mr. MVP Guy"....)
It was too good to last.....

Alas, Microsoft has revoked (actually just "not" awarded) the MVP award to me again this year. Oh well. I guess it wasn't meant to be. I figured receiving it last year was a fluke anyway.

Actualy...........................I'm not the only one............................

Originally,  MVP awards were given to people who spent time in public newsgroups answering questions for other end users. MS wanted  to reward these folks for their "free technical support" of their products.Viola! The MVP program was born. So that's basically the way it was for several years, until last year. Apparently somewhere, somehow, the "powers that be" decided to expand the program a little and include some of us folks who don't participate in the newsgroups, and work out in the community through user groups. (hence INETA) So many of us INETA folks were given MVP awards for 2004.

Well...................run things ahead to one year later..........

Things are different now. Apparently feelings have changed, and the work that we do with .NET user groups doesn't quite make the cut for being awarded the MVP this year. When I sat down the make out the list of accomplishments in the community for 2004, I was amazed at how much had occurred throughout the year, and how many people I had managed to touch. It certainly dwarfed anything that I had done in 2003 for the .NET community. I was quite proud of the list. But the things on my list don't show up anywhere on the MVP renewal checklist. Oh well. No big deal.

It was certainly neat to be rewarded for our hard work this year. But it certainly isn't why we do it. We do it because we like interacting with people, and promoting the spirit of community. And looking back, it is probably for the best because once we were all in the program, it was as if they didn't really know what to do with us anyway. So I guess I'll just keep rockin' along and doing what I do.

-Eric.
Posted 13 December 2004 04:20 PM by eking1013 | 2 comment(s)
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*sniff* *sniff* It was a nostalgic weekend.....
My brother and I made a quick trip to the local used book/CD/DVD shop and I came back with "Breakin' 2 - Electric Boogaloo"

Trailer: http://www.mgm.com/video_window.do?formatid=1801&videoid=841   (Did you forget what Ice T was doing before he was playing detective on Law and Order SVU?)

Movie Info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086999/

Yep, I spent 10.95 to own this baby on DVD. The year was 1984. Michael Jackson's Thriller was breaking records, and parachute pants and breakdancing were all the rage. I was in the fourth grade, and remember the kids at school who had the parachute pants and bandanas.

Think this story is isn't bad enough already? Here let me top it off for you with this: After I watched the movie, I headed out to ebay and bought this:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4056324877

Yep, it's the soundtrack to "Breakin'" the original movie, on 12 inch vinyl. Can't wait till it arrives.


Posted 06 December 2004 10:30 AM by eking1013 | 1 comment(s)
Chalk up one for the good guys in the SPAM wars!

Way to go Lycos!!!

http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/internet/12/02/anti.spamvigi.ap/index.html

From CNN:

" MADRID, Spain (AP) -- At the risk of breaching Internet civility, Lycos Europe is offering computer-users a weapon against spam-spewing servers: a screen-saver program that automatically hits the offenders with data to slow them down. "

Posted 06 December 2004 06:45 AM by eking1013 | 5 comment(s)
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WAY to GO!! Congratz to Chris and Julie!
It personally warms my heart to see this:

From Bill Evjen's Blog:

"The International .NET Association (INETA) has appointed two new board members for a three year term. This brings the board membership to seven people. The two new board members are: Julie Lerman, who leads the Vermont .NET User Group. Chris Pels, who leads the Boston .NET User Group."

Having worked with Julie and Chris for the last year and half in user group relations, I can tell you that no one out there does a better job of championing the causes of .NET user groups. It will also be nice to have 2 people from our committee on the board. Either this is "hot off the press" news or they've been keeping a secret. I was in a conference call the other day with these 2 and they didn't mention a thing about this. Sneaky Kids!


Posted 02 December 2004 12:02 PM by eking1013 | 1 comment(s)
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Looking for a job?
Microsoft is still hiring.

If you want to move to Redmond, nows your chance.
Posted 02 December 2004 10:17 AM by eking1013 | no comments
Forget Grease! Blog is the word! -- From CNN....
"BOSTON, Massachusetts (Reuters) -- A four-letter term that came to symbolize the difference between old and new media during this year's presidential campaign tops U.S. dictionary publisher Merriam-Webster's list of the 10 words of the year."

Full Article Here.


Posted 01 December 2004 09:41 AM by eking1013 | no comments
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