March 2003 - Posts
My search for the best .NET TreeView control is finally over. No offence to the ASP.NET Team, of course, but this control supposedly handles all browsers, not just IE. XML TreeView does it all. I could use XSLT to transform my RSS feeds into a really slick little navigation system. (hint: be looking for this very soon). At only $20, it fits in very well with the way I do business.
I'll be blogging more in the next day or so. I know I keep saying that, but I've been very busy with my new laptop and a really cool project I've been working on. Lots of exciting things are coming down the pipe. Gotta run...
Wanted to give you guys the link to download
VMWare 4.0 Beta2. This is the latest build, and it's easy to get access to. Why my phone number was a required field, I'll never know, but who cares? It's pretty cool. I'm going to install it tomorrow.
I read this morning that my hometown and current residence, Mesa, AZ, is the nation's 19th safest city. Right on. I'm sure it has nothing to do with the large Mormon population in the city tho ;).
Now for my rant. I hate driving. I'm sure you do too. I've been wondering why the French call us arrogant, and now I have the answer. Our arrogance and self-centerdness is best displayed in the way we drive. I watched an individual switch 3 lanes on the freeway without signaling once. Last I checked, the turn signal was a courtesy instrument, to inform other drivers of the course of action you are about to take.
Now, I've failed to use mine before, but 9 times out of 10 I use it as a courtesy to others. I would hope that others would offer me the same courtesy. Frankly, most people just don't give a damn about anyone else but themselves.
The other driving this that just really cheeses me off is this. If your a resident of the metropolitan Phoenix area, you know what I'm talking about. On the Loop 101, just north of the Loop 202 interchange, traffic merges from 4 lanes to 3. At the same time, people are merging onto the freeway from the McKellips on-ramp. This creates quite a bottleneck in the morning commute (nearly 20 miles for me). Now, usually the 4th lane clears out fairly soon before the merge, which you would think is an intelligent move.... get out of the way before you are forced to. Well, some really nice people decide that they are sick of the slowdown, and pull away from the lane 2nd from the right into the merge lane, only to race a sum total of 5 cars ahead, make everyone else get out of their way and get back into traffic. GRRRR.
I hate driving. Now I understand why CEOs have helicopters. No one cuts you off in a helicopter. I understand why the French think we're arrogant too. If that was all that I saw of a country I'd hate them too.
The army is using dolphins to hunt for mines in the Gulf. How frickin cool is that? Something out of SeaQuest. Worried about AlQaeda addtack divers Fear not! Deploy the sea lions (no, not sea monkeys).
I've seen some pretty cool military stuff today. Can't share it for obvious reasons, but I can say that the military in the next 10 years will be more "geeked-out" than you can possibly imagine. Pretty cool stuff.
I saw a fantastic article today that really says it all. I'm not going to spoil the fun... just go check it out.
This time CNET.com comes through with it's own misinformation. I just read an article on
RSS, and I was amazed at some of the valuable resources that were completely overlooked. I love CNET (read: I have yet to be paid), but some times it amazes me what makes it to "print". This is not an attack on the author of the article nor anyone else, I'm just pointing out a trend.
Scoble, always the one in the know,
posts his take on what .NET is. My response: good answer. I hope Steve Ballmer was listening.
Yahoo reports that
Al Gore has joined the board at Apple Computer. Who better to help the company then the guy who invented the Internet ;).
It amazes me how far off base Sun's CEO is. A few quotables:
"Viruses are a feature of .NET" - Really??! I didn't see that on the back of the box....
".NET runs only on Windows" - Funny, I guess Mono to him is just a really nasty infection, and Ximian is some kind of ape.
".NET is a joke." Don't even get me started on what the punchline would be.
"It's mankind versus Microsoft." - OK, this really burns me up. These words are nothing more than a bitter, jealous person who wishes that he could be what Microsoft is. Since he's not, he's going to do whatever he can to make himself feel good, at the expense of everyone else. Is Sun as active in the developer community as Microsoft? I don't know for sure, but probably not. Does Java have a mobile runtime that can target over 200 different handheld devices out of the box? Not really. When was the last time I used a Java product (not javascript)? About 6 months ago. When was the last time I used an MS product? I'm using one right now. When was the last time Sun did anything innovative? Can't answer that, because I'm not very informed about Sun. Microsoft? I'm working in OneNote right now.
All and all, I'd say that Scott McNealy has a rather nasty case of penis envy. My advice: drop your whiny crybaby lawsuit and innovate something already.
UPDATE: I agree with Drew: very FUD-like.
I saw this outstanding article on adding a control to the toolbox programmatically. I'm DEFINITELY going to have to take advantage of this.
Many things have happened over the past few days. Thankfully I will have time to blog about them later this morning.
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