If you are not a regular listener of .NET Rocks!, you should checkout the recent episode done (in part) with Scott Guthrie. He discusses a lot of the very interesting things coming down the pipeline for .NET developers.

If someone likes to blog, they probably blog most about what they are spending their time on. That has certainly been the case with me. Of course, I do spend a lot of time in tech. I do, after all, program for a living. But most of my programming as of late has been pretty typical asp.net programmer stuff, so not much to talk about. Instead I've been blogging almost exclusively on my other blog, Archaic Christianity. That's mostly because almost all of my free time has been focused on subject matter more relevant to that blog's audience (which is probably still quite small).

However, I am getting into more interesting techie stuff right now. Have you spent any time with ASP.NET MVC? I have for the last couple of days, and it is very interesting. I've already started gathering my thoughts on it so I can share. Maybe I can start doing that soon.

But, in general, I'm keeping myself very busy. The addition of a new version of myself named Samuel has kept me a little busy, though he is surprisingly low maintenance. His arrival made me miss the last NDDNUG meeting. I should be there next time. The last chat looked pretty interesting.

Anyway...later.

I have decided to split blogs and move my biblical studies related work to a new site, ArchaicChristianity.com. The blog is now basically functional and I have some book reviews up. I will continue to blog technical and personal thoughts here on this blog. When my biblical studies work crosses into the world of technology, you will probably see posts in both locations. If there is anything particularly important, I may crosspost that as well. But, in general, I think it is time for me to split my work.

If you have any questions, thoughts, or suggestions, please drop me a note.

It's sad, but I've met a number of these guys. I've even been some of them at one time :)

Real Technology Heroes

Thanks for the link, Robert!

Good news for me! Late last week I had some new x-rays of my foot. As it turns out I don't have a broken foot at all, just soft-tissue damage. I was getting skeptical of the broken foot theory when I realized earlier in the week that I could put some weight on the foot. That seemed a little odd...

So now I've moved on to one crutch while putting some weight on my right foot. I can walk without a crutch, but it still hurts quite a bit. Thankfully, I can also drive. The movements needed for driving cause me no pain. I even made sure I could slam on the brakes if need be. No problem. The only negative in this is that I won't be able to work from home anymore :(

That's sorta what I said the other night when I fell off a ladder (while painting) and cracked the bone in my right heel.

So now I'm on crutches. Most of the pain is gone, unless I try to stand with any weight whatsoever on my right leg. I don't. I also now own my very own pair of crutches. This is the first bone I have ever broken/cracked (that I know of...longer story). How are you guys doing? Broken any bones lately?

Two nice things have come out of this, however. First, there are all sorts of chores I don't have to deal with at the moment. Whoopee! Second, and more seriously, I've gotten quite a bit of reading done in the last few days. Reading is the only thing that this bone crack hasn't affected negatively so far.

I finished two books. First was Steven Krug's Don't Make Me Think. I liked it a lot. It gave me some really good ideas for, at the very least, improving this blog. I highly recommend it. The second was Goldsberry's The Writer's Book of Wisdom: 101 Rules for Mastering Your Craft. I enjoyed it and it seemed to have some good advice. I think this book is more directled at novelists than others, but to a very novice writer a lot of the advice made sense. If you've got a few extra bucks, go ahead and pick it up. It is pretty cheap and is a very fast read.

I bought a new book this last Friday called Lucifer's Hammer. I'm 437 pages out of 494 done. Great book so far. It is a fiction book, so if you need some fiction, pick it up. I got it for $10 at Half Price Books. Thanks for the recommendation, Edward!

These tests that we take to see what operating system, superhero, or whatnot are really a waste of time. But I sometimes do them anyway. Most of them I avoid because I don't find them interesting, but when I saw one on which ancient language I was, I just had to try it out. Of course, if they would have stuck me with ancient Ethiopic or some random dead language from ancient Australia, I would have definitely ignored the results. After all, wouldn't I be a language that I at least find interesting? As it turns out...I am. And what am I? Linear A!

At least I'm not Older Futhark like Jim Davila. However, I am apparently very much like Charles Halton, whose blog I had never seen before.

The things I will do for free stuff...for example...

I have a weakness when it comes to free stuff, especially if it comes in one of three categories: food, books, or geek gear. For example, occassionally we'll have to stay late at work to support a release of our website. This is not all that fun. Usually it involves doing nothing, but we have to stick around just in case. All they have to do to make me completely happy is to buy me dinner.

It really shouldn't make me that happy. If I were to go home I would be able to eat a meal that costs very little, somewhere around $3 for my portion. Buying me a meal, even if it costs the company ~$7 does not make up for the time I "lost" by having to stay late. I'm salary, so they don't have to pay me anyway. Sometimes I stay late, sometimes I leave early. Who cares, because I get paid for doing my work, not working exactly 40 hour weeks. But back to what I was saying. The extra time I am spending at work, in terms of how much I get per hour if calculated in such terms, is not anywhere close to $3 an hour, or even $7 an hour. So it's not like they're really compensating for "lost" time. But you know what...it doesn't matter. If I get a free dinner I'm as happy ampersand on a query string. That shouldn't be true. There must me something wrong with me.

I while back Sourcegear was giving away this t-shirt. The only requirement was that you put a picture of you up on your blog wearing the shirt with a link to Eric Sink's blog. Because I have some insane fixation of free stuff in the geek gear category, I will do embarrasing things to myself, such as posting a picture of myself on my blog to get it. And, by the way...I REALLY like the shirt!

Do I need to see a psychiatrist? You decide.

I have to agree with Jason on this one. A lot of the ALT.NET stuff I am seeing in the blogs and whatnot just seems foolish to me. There are a number of great tools or ideas in the list, but the approach is just silly. Roy gives a disclaimer of "I don't necessarily agree with the list here" and says he will post his thoughts later, but either way he is fanning the flames of thinking in trends and not thinking of what is actually best. I get this same feeling all the time when I listen to agile people. I usually end up agreeing with most of what they say, but they are so often too filled with zealousy that they have forgotten that you can still complete projects just fine without agile. Though I do think a more agile approach would often work great in development work, it is the attitude that is annoying.

Problem two with this list: who considers all this "hot". The bloggers? They make up a very small percentage of the programmers out there. Most of the programmers I run into are completely oblivious to what is happening in the .NET blogosphere. Even if that list is representative of the .NET blogging community (and I think only partially so), we are still dealing with a small minority of the population.

We are supposedly an industry of intelligent people. We have to be smart to deal with all this programming stuff, right? At least semi-smart? If so, let us pick technologies and practices with our head. Let us be able to look through the popular, the trendy, and whatnot, and apply all this in a much more sane manner. That's what they pay us the big bucks to do.

The other night I was sitting with my family at the table and there was a fly that kept flying around. My daughter kept going on and on saying things like "Goway Bug!" (trans., "Go away bug!"), and asking over and over, "Hur mommy?" (trans., "Will the fly hurt mommy?"), "Hur daddy?" (trans., "Will the fly hurt daddy?"), "Hur Nanner?" (trans. "Will the fly hurt Jonathan?"), and "Hur Abby?" (trans. "Will the fly hurt me?"). She likes to cycle through the list of everyone at the table when a bug comes flying around.

It was at this point I sprung into action. Remember that scene from Karate Kid when Daniel grabbed a fly with chopsticks? Well, I was sitting there and the fly flew behind me. As the fly came back around I used what must have been my spider sense as it flew from behind my head, reached out, and in one attempt grabbed the fly out of mid-air, thereby saving my family from further anguish.

No, it wasn't luck. I'm Spidermaninja.

Fear me. 

Hello. Long time no blog. But I won't dwell on this...

So I've been busy lately. As faithful readers, you know I've been in a fight to the death with my fence. Well, along with my fence I've pretty much worked over my back yard. The key benefits of this are that my children have a better place to play, I have privacy again now that I have a fence, and I have a sunburn. I'm sure there's something positive about that last one.

Anyway, I have done practically nothing related to tech at home for several weeks. I have had a reskinning/redesign mostly done ready since before then, so I decided to go ahead and finish it up. Now it is here. I would LOVE to get your input on it. Still probably needs some tweaking. It has been pretty thoroughly tested in FireFox 2.0.0.3 and someone in IE 6. If you are using another browser and see something odd, I'd like to hear about it. Like the new look?

Last night was the monthly meeting of NDDNUG. It's always fun to see and chat with my geek friends. It also doesn't hurt to get free pizza and t-shirts. Woohoo! The meeting topic was OOP 101. The presentation was pretty good...but I think I've covered that stuff before :)

A terrible storm made its way through during the meeting. This storm was just the excuse my fence needed to defeat me once again...

So several months ago the bases on a couple of posts to my 10'-ish high privacy fence decided to rot out. As a temporary measure I put in some stakes and tied some ropes. In an attempt to more permenantly fix this, I put in a big metal pole and put it in cement. Aha! I've got that fence now. Nope. It pulled the metal pole and cement out of the ground. My fence was beating me. Me vs my fence...0 and 1.

Last night the wind blew down my fence. My fence had beaten me again. My feeble attempts could not keep it standing. 0 and 2.

So last night, around 9:45, in the rain, I had to clean up a 30ft stretch of fallen fence. One end had broken into two smaller pieces and were moveable. The largest piece, though, was about 20 ft of wood.

My initial plan did not succeed. I happened to be wearing my Transformers shirt, so I attempted to transform into a construction vehicle of some kind to help me move this fence. It didn't work, but that's no surprise. I had an Autobot symbol on my shirt, and we ALL know that it was the Decepticons that had the nice construction vehicles, the Constructicons. They were awesome, especially when combined together. I hope they show up in the meeting this summer. That would be great. But I digress.

Option two was to move this with my intensely manly muscles. The solution, as it turns out, was to attempt to fold the fence. It sounds strange, but it actually worked. As I tried to fold the fence the wood would give way and it would break. So I broke the fence up and moved it all back in to my yard. I don't think my neighbor would have enjoyed keeping it in hers.

So, in the end, I was not able to keep my fence standing. I lost. A sad day. 

So what else have I been doing? Well, I've been reading some books, one on Greek constituent structure, and one on web design. Reviews coming soon.

Also, I just released alpha 3 of Thrius, but only to a few people. There is still quite a bit to do still. Will have some screenshots up when it is a little more fully baked.

So in junior high I had a horrible art teacher. I remember one day where she lambasted a drawing I had done. It hurt. I haven't really done a lot of art related stuff since. Well, a couple weeks back I picked up drawing again. At some point I'm going to move on to painting, but for now, drawing is enough. So far I'm pretty happy with a reproduction of a bust of Plato and a few drawings of the Tick :). Maybe I'll post some photos at some point. I need more ways of driving traffic away ;)

Have you used Quizlet? I just started using it yesterday. It's a nice replacement for flash cards. I've been a big user of flash cards in the past for vocabulary especially (who knows how many flashcards I made for Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic). Now I'm trying an online solution. It has the expected flashcard functionality as well as some nice quizzing features. The user interface is pretty responsive as well. You can definitely see where he got all ajaxy. If you're a flash card user, this seems like a pretty good site. And it's free.

So I've been keeping pretty busy lately. One of the things I've been doing is truck shopping. My old truck needed repairs costing in excess of the truck's value, and it was 10 years old, so I decided to move on. Now I've got a brand new Toyota Tacoma! Love it so far.

Microsoft has some free training in Dallas May 3. See here for information. I'm signed up. Let me know if you're going so we can chat.

There are geckos in my house. Not one of them has offered me cheap car insurance. Now I'm upset.

Sometimes you just get really busy. A task I'm on has taken up quite a bit of my time and has beaten down my spirits for the last few weeks. It's really mostly the latter. In every project I've seen there is good code, mediocre code, bad code, and really horrible code. I've spent the last few weeks in some of that really horrible code. It's the kind of code that makes you wonder what drugs they were on when they wrote it. It's the kind of code that makes you want to change careers. It's the kind of code that makes you wonder if Scott Guthrie would have heart attack if he ever saw it.

But it is mostly over now. My spirit is recovering, and I can get back to reading, blogging and side projects.

On that note, I updated my reading list. So I have gotten some reading done...

Any of you web geeks out there been to Refresh Dallas? Me either. I'm going to check it out tomorrow night. If you're going, drop me a note.

I was in the drive through at Crispy Creme the other day and noticed that they now have whole wheat donuts. Does this strike anybody else as ironic, odd, or at least slightly off?

I got my first bonus at Match, so I decided to get something that I've been wanting for some time...an uber monitor.

 And there it is. It is the 24 inch 2407FPW Flatpanel monitor. In a word, magnificamazingafantasticatistic. I now have quite a bit more screen real estate. It may be hard to tell, but on the screen I have both Visual Studio and Expression Blend open at the same time...that's really nice.

This also gives me more room on the desk, which is nice. A feature I wasn't expecting was that the base swivels, so I can change the orientation of the monitor. A nice feature when viewing some pictures.

Anyway, happy valentines day to me!

I continue to get a sporadic spray of comment spam, usually for pharmaceutical sites it seems. I'm still manually reviewing them all (so that doesn't take much time), but it obviously working. No more comment span.

I bought a new iPod yesterday. It is a 30 gig model, black and sleek. I have been using an iPod mini now for at least two years. It has served me well, but the battery stopped charging completely. That obviously makes it much less useful. I would have had to start bringing an extension cord with me to the gym. I wonder how long it would have taken the staff to notice and say something...

I like it mucho. It is thinner than my old mini, but probably close to an inch wider. This makes the screen much more readable, so that's fine. It is also color and plays video, two more things that the mini did not do. It only cost me $25 more than the mini did when I bought it way back, so that's not to shabby either.

But I have two not quite so positive comments. First, I don't like the feel of the wheel as much as I did with the mini. You have to press harder to get it to respond. That's going to take a lot of unlearning. Also, it didn't come with a electric socket charger like my mini did. Apparently they don't come standard anymore. Seems a little cheap. The only way to charge it is through USB...unless you happen to have a wall charger left over from when you had a mini :)

Overall, a big improvement. I'm glad I got it. I briefly considered moving to the Zune, but since I didn't actually know anybody who had one, I didn't want to try it. Maybe one day. 

Funny something for geeks.

If you ever want to use vmware, here is an online utility for creating virtual disks and config files. I found it very handy...

Funny. Watch it.

I added a couple new pages to the site. At the advice of a friend I am now keeping a running list of everything I read. It can be found here.

Also, a credits page for the images and code I use on the site that do not originate from my own work. It can be found here.

I also added a link to my aStore. I like the idea of the aStore, but navigation is horrible. Not sure what I can do about that other than write my own :)

So one of my coworkers found an image generator for putting arbitrary items on Colbert's "On Notice" board. It can be found here.

He was nice enough to put me on notice.


This is, of course, now my wallpaper at work.

And on a related note, with a 5-1 vote, Merriam-Webster declared the Colbert-coined term "truthiness" to be the word of the year. Congratulations, Colbert!