Voodoo
In my current position I usually code a few hours per week max. You can always tell when I am coding because I end up talking to myself, muttering death chants, you can smell smoke rising from my area, hear me throwing bones, and basically practicing all around voodoo. My co-workers must think I'm a nut. When I listen to lectures by computer gods such as Donald Knuth I get swept away in a vision of the grand wizards creating realms of mathmatical magic. But I have come to realize that my reality is much more saddistic. I loath the idle machine. I want to bend it's will using my various code torture techniques. Like sitting idle computer? I DONT THINK SO! You will do what I say and I will train you! ;-)
.Net Installer
On a serious note gInstall Corp has released their Ghost Installer for .Net. As I have been looking for a good installer for .Net this couldn't have come at a better time. Check out the comparison to the other products. Looks nice. I'll post my findings once I download the demo.
Bliki
Martin Fowler's new blog (rss) brought to my attention SnipSnap, a Bliki (integrated blog and wiki). I look forward to playing with this as I use Twiki currently for a small knowledge base and I also use this blog. Combining the two would be nice.
So I just started a business with a partner and we plan to release a .net based product, a component, within a few months. We expected to join Microsoft's Partnership program to enjoy the perks, but mainly for the MSDN Universal subscription and VS.Net that comes with it. Given that both my partner and I are MCPs we could have signed up as basic MS Partners for $1400. But the new Empower program (http://members.microsoft.com/partner/isv/empowerFAQ.aspx) seems designed specifically for small ISVs like us. For $750 we can get access to
Up to five (5) software licenses for:
Microsoft Windows® XP or 2000 Professional
Microsoft Office XP (Premium or Developer Edition)
One (1) software license and up to five (5) Client Access Licenses (CALs) for:
Microsoft Windows 2000 Server (Standard or Advanced Edition) or Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft Exchange 2002 Server (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft SQL Server 2000 (Standard or Enterprise Edition)
Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server
MSDN® Universal Subscription (Development & Testing license)
MSDN Online Managed Support Newsgroup (English Only)
Not bad. That's a hell of a lot of stuff for just $750. I probably sound like a shill for MS, but I was just stoked because this will save us a few grand in software costs for the first year. And as they say - money saved is money earned. Especially on our tiny out-of-pocket budget.