Alerts. And to MSN Instant Messenger no less – in fact, thanks to MSN, you can even send them to your mobile phone. MoDaCo has had this for a bit – it’s supplied by MessageCast and is free to Blogs – I’ve found it handy… when something new comes in, I get a popup alert on IM. When I heard it was free, I said “neat,” and added it here. So look for this image 
at the bottom of each page or this one 
in the menu. Click either and it will help you set up the alert; and of course, a Passport is required!
Continue reading New Blog Feature
Category Archives: GeekStuff
Rory Sighting!
In another chapter from “How Small is the World, Really?”, Rory stopped by my office this afternoon! After a quick mini-tour of my building, and stopping into see some other blogging type peoples, he went off in search of more places to try out his spiffy new ID badge… it still amazes me the number of different places that gets me into, including my building – after three months I still can’t get over where I work now and almost half expect it to reject my badge some day. one thing that was amusing to us both was seeing each other in Redmond, seeing as we’ve both traveled through OR and CT to get to WA… a small world indeed.
Harmony H688
I’ve had a Sony System Commander (AV-2000 – an older model) for years, but I hardly ever use it. I got it to be a replacement for all of my other remotes, and while it was quite versatile, I never felt that good about using it all the time. What I found was that I used my TiVo remote for TV and TiVo/Cable, and if I used another module, I would grab the Sony. All of that changed when I got the Harmony H688 universal remote: I have just one remote now.
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Rare Programming Rant: Cross Thread Access in Whidbey
It’s not very often that I have something to Rant about that’s also Geek-related, but we’ve got a winner, and it’s all about Whidbey and the .NET Framework 2.0. It’s probably a good thing for application security, but from a programming point of view, I feel hog-tied. Oh, and if you’ve never heard of Whidbey, skip this Rant – it’s not for you!
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It’s Beginning To Look Like Christmas?
Doom 3. Halo 2. Grand Theft Auto 5. *w00t!*
Continue reading It’s Beginning To Look Like Christmas?
Microsoft Watch: Rory Edition
MSDN has a new weapon at its disposal: Rory. Guess he had to, after stealing all that bling-flair from Chris Sells :)
Reloading… MT, an iPod, and Me
I’ve re-installed MT on this server… I was hoping to see some speed improvements, but I’m not very hopeful. I’ve also nabbed one of those the new iPod, even though my old one was only half a year old, and that caused me to reload iTunes. And then there’s me: having to re-re-re-re-re-install more OS’s at work more times than any mortal should and having to survive three different attempts are importing my data back into the server… it’s been a long week already.
Continue reading Reloading… MT, an iPod, and Me
Just When I Least Expect It
I’ve been diddling with technology for over two decades now… I’ve seen the span of 4.77MHz to 4GHz in CPU speed. Hell, I can recall when I was shocked that Promise put a 286 chip on their caching IDE controller for 486-based machines. After a while, you begin to think that nothing technical will make you go “hmm” much less knock you out of your socks. Well, slippers in this case, but the effect was the same: I am simply amazed.
Continue reading Just When I Least Expect It
The Last Blog Post
No, not the last one ever – truth be told, this is the first “live” post that I’ve done in a while. The last few entries have been lounging around in the My Drafts folder and it’s been easier to post them (finally) than it was to write about new stuff. Now, however, I’m back online and getting back into the habit of being online!
Continue reading The Last Blog Post
Only @ Microsoft
I’ve been playing foosball for a long while now. I picked it up while I was working for Symantec; since then, whenever I join a new company, I always lobby to have a table brought in for “in house” entertainment value. Besides, most people like to play it and it’s relatively inexpensive (as far as gaming tables go). Interestingly, Building 5 already had a foosball table in the 2nd floor “lobby”, where people can play during lunch and after 5pm – why the time limits? The table – and the players – make a good deal of noise that used to carry to a near by conference room, so most people only play after 5. What’s so strange or unique about this?
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Innovating For the Lazy iPod’r
iPoding: LoadPod, the service that rips your CD collection into your iPod so that you don’t have to, has added local service in several new areas…
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Happiness Is…
Happiness Is: feeling a surge of joy at seeing your main/home computer for the first time in ten days. OK, so it’s considered Happiness for a Geek, anyway. Extreme Happiness Is: the joy of having delivers arrive at your workplace three hours earlier than they originally thought they’d be there. Anyone expecting a deliver can empathize with that feeling. Of course, seeing as I forgot what I packed in two of the other boxes that arrived today, I’m also basking in that “I got a package!” giddiness that comes with mail ordering items.
I’m just hoping my Teva’s are in there, because I’m sick of socks.
Yeah, What He Said…
Steve offers a commentary of being an SDE/T at Microsoft (and makes some points that I myself have made recently)…
Caller ID, a Painful Thing?
I called my sister the other night because I had to ask her something that was too long to type through email, and I accidentally dialed the wrong number. My cordless phone has a numeric display on the handset, so I saw that I was a number off, and I hung up before it got through the first ring. Fifteen seconds later, my phone rang.
Continue reading Caller ID, a Painful Thing?
Spam to Email Ratio
Mark this one in your record books, folks: I’ve gotten two emails, from family and friends today (and yesterday for that matter), for every one piece of Spam that I’ve received. Of course, I have a Spam filter through Outlook and my ISP has a Spam filter on their server, so any junk mail that does make it to the Inbox is pretty slick, but still, this is bizarre. I haven’t had more personal email than junk mail for well over five years. You’d think there was some change coming in my life or something…
Just thought I’d share the joy of non-Spam email indused glow!