When: Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
Where: Rock Bottom @ State & Grand
When: 6PM

Last day to get out before the entire Midwest descends on our fair city for the holiday shopping season.

Bear down!

Virtual Server has been free for a while now; however, some folks prefer Virtual PC. Well, my friends, that too is free now. Come on down!

How did we ever live without virtualization software? 

I can't imagine who might run this site. Can you?

I'm a Firefox guy. The only reason I use it instead of IE is that it feels faster. Seriously.

I find it incredibly annoying that the only websites I frequent that require IE are those run by Microsoft. I've nothing against IE (I've never had the malware problems), but these websites disrupt whatever I'm doing. Most times I'll just avoid the site. A good example is the MSN Video portion of MSN. Occasionally I'll click a link leading to a video, at which point I'm told that I can't watch it in anything but IE. This is odd since 1/2 of the emails I get link to funny videos on websites that do let me watch them in my browser of choice. Instead of launching IE and watching the (advertiser-supported) MSN Videos I simply move on. I've got too much stuff to do to be inconvenienced by this.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised by the following error message. The site doesn't support Firefox -- but they're working on correcting it. It's a problem, and they're fixing it. Bravo!

Is it a show about Oprah's butt, or is Oprah judging others' butts? I'll never know.

Do you know where your data is? If you've been involved with software at any point in the past two decades, chances are it's in a database. It would seem silly to put data, especially frequently changing data, into code.

How about those business rules? Business rule engines haven't been around as long as databases, but times are a-changin'. Imagine a world where the folks that come up with the rules can enter them, test them and even deploy them without having the development team so much as lift a finger. Costs are signifigantly lowered, deadlines are met, everyone gets bonuses and is promoted to figurehead VP positions.

Interested? Please stop by and check out our webcast next week:

Rules for Enterprise Agility: Webcast, March 15th, 11am CT
IT architects, application developers, business analysts and process owners will learn about best practices for rules-oriented architecture and application development, and how business rule engines can provide substantial benefits in consistent decision making, increased revenue and decreased operating costs.

Featured speakers include industry analyst and veteran application development expert Dr. Adrian Bowles, and Larry Buettner, CIO of Wheels, Inc. and a member of ComputerWorld’s 2006 list of Premier 100 IT Leaders.More information: http://www.inrule.com/Event_Info.aspx

I've had the Olympics on every day since Arrested Development went off the air, and I've found that the most consistently entertaining aspect has been the commentary of Mr. Dick Button.

I don't know much about the guy, other than he skated in the 40s and 50s (not his 40s and 50s). One thing I do know is that he is not easily pleased. He doesn't like the scoring system, the skaters are uninspiring, their choice of music is dull and so on.

A quick bit of research led me to the Dick Button Drinking Game. If you're going to catch any figure skating, do yourself a favor and grab some friends and a keg of beer. You'll need it.

I've uploaded a minor update to Snippet Compiler. I also put up an Add-Ins page with the following samples:

• Web References
• Folder Browser
• Settings ToolBar
• Snippet Repository
  

If you've yet to be sold on the Internet, grab a seat and your favorite pointing device. My good man Ryan sent me a link to what is undoubtedly the Internet's Killer App: The Beer Mapping Project

Chicago's map is a bit limited -- my neighborhood alone has over 450 bars -- so get on it. It takes a village, comrades.

God Bless America!

Won't you join us for some holiday cheer?

Place: Rock Bottom @ State & Grand in Chicago
Time: 6PM

Please note that this is next Thursday, December 15.

I'll be giving away another JetBrains .NET Action Pack, consisting of ReSharper and dotTrace licenses (one each).

Happy Holidays!