And finally getting caught up!!! Oh man, it's been a roller-coaster ride the past while but I think the worst is over (and the best is yet to come). Vista launches, SharePoint RTMs, new VMs, two sprints completed, new ScrumMaster duties on YAP [yet another project], new laptop, dogs and cats living together... mass hysteria! Tonight I'm finally ...

Several days ago I finished a very angry phone call from one of my clients. They were letting me know how disappointed they were in me for letting them down, and how I just cost them a whole bunch of money and time for nothing. They were right. I screwed up. I’ve been running my own little business for over two years now. I’ve had ups and downs, ...

Finally back in Calgary. What a horrible experience. Okay, I'm not a world traveler. I've been to a dozen or so cities in North America over the past few years speaking and presenting so I'm not a newb, but I'm also not a pro. However I do know when an airline service sucks. The last 24 hours has been just that. Suckage. Huge suckage with no hope ...

We're just finishing up the packing and all that jazz to leave for Vegas and DevConnections . As is my tradition, I'll be snapping 1.65 billion photos (1 for every dollar Google paid for YouTube) of people there, silly conferences, concealed lizards, logging chains, and various keynotes with Bil generally making a fool out of himself as he ...

Yesterday I got some message about needing an update through Windows Update so I did. Then I noticed it kindly re-installed IE7 for me. I had already installed it, but maybe I grabbed it too soon so was running a beta or something. Whatever. Go ahead. Today I cannot click on links in any application other than my browsers (IE7/FF). Nice. Links ...

Yes, today I turn the big ''4-1''. I guess it's bigger than turning the big ''4-0'' but it doesn't feel like it (although turning 40 didn't seem like it either). I'm not really sure what a 41 year old man looks like, but many people comment I don't look 40 (or 41 if you ask me that question today). Guess it's that baby face I still (kinda) keep or ...

Go get this : Then meet me on the global battlefield (although I won’t be playing North Korea). Matthew Broderick eat yer heart out.

This guide is offered as a public service announcement to help you wade through the myriad of products and technologies made by Microsoft for those in this dilemma. MS-DOS You shoot yourself in the foot. Notepad You shoot yourself in the foot because there are no options to do anything else. Microsoft Help You try to shoot only to discover your ...

We wrapped up taping the latest episode of Plumbers @ Work , our Canadian developer podcast that I do with John Bristowe and James Kovacs, on Wednesday. At the taping after bitching about how long it’s taking for the shows to get online, I was informed that our previous episode had made it up to the site (I’m always the last to know). ...

There have been a few MVP efforts over the years that I find silly. Various petitions about VB6, mass emails on unit testing, etc. There are few community “rallies” I get behind, but this is one of them. In the recent MVP cycle (4 of them every year) Jaimie Cansdale was not re-awarded his MVP status (thanks Roy! ). Okay, so what? ...

I’m down in Redmond for the next few days hanging out at the mothership doing some SharePointy stuff so I’ll be offline from email (or email responses will be werrry slow) for a bit. I’ve got about 6 blog entries that I’ve been building for the past few weeks so hopefully I’ll find time to complete them. One is on ...

I was doing my morning rounds the other day and stumbled across this site . I think I’ve been here before, but decided to plug in my name and blog to see what kind of an embarassment I could muster up before leaving for work. Here’s my results: Something wasn’t right as I know I’m on Technorati as I can go and do a search ...

The phrase always comes up. “Blame Hanselman”. Scott Hanselman is the bane of new technology, gadgets, and tools for me. Like a lemming, he mentions something cool and we all flock to it. Today he was rambling on about a new reader from the NY Times (written using WPF) that is the cat’s meow. I’m not one to normally read ...

I guess I have one rule when I’m buying hardware. It shouldn’t explode on me (unless it was designed to). I’m struggling with buying a new laptop. I have a nice Compaq Presario R4000 that I’ve enjoyed for a year or so and it’s okay spec wise. AMD Athlon 64 processor (3500+), 2.2Ghz, 2GB of RAM. However it’s a ...

Yes, just like your favorite MVP, International Talk Like a Pirate Day comes but once a year and it's today, September 19th. So go ahead, wander around your offices like a blubbering peg-leg idiot and feel free to slip in a few "argghhs," "mateys," and "shiver me source code" comments to anyone who looks like a ...

I seem to be doing software service announcements lately, but I’m just levelling out my 3rd party tools and whatnot on my laptop as I spend a Sunday afternoon catching up on podcasts and coding stuff in the background (I’m just too A.D.D. to be doing one thing at a time). Recently I’ve been struggling with my RSS feeds, ...

Just downloaded the latest version of Newshound , an add-in for Microsoft Outlook that lets you read and reply to usenet newsgroups in your Outlook client. They’ve updated it to work with Outlook 2007 and I just tried it with the Technical Refresh released yesterday. Here’s the results: Works great and the thread in newsgroups seems to ...

As the Ricky Bobby of the SharePoint world (too bad Matt, it’s sticking now even if nobody gets it) I receive a lot of weird emails. And then there was this: Hi <<NAME>>, My name is [REMOVED], and I'm a recruiter with [REMOVED]. I came across your resume in our system, and I thought I'd try to touch base because I wanted to talk ...

I think I've finally caught up on emails, RSS feeds, newsgroups, and work since my departure into the Canadian backwoods (note to self: never go anywhere without a good internet connection again, ever). I found an interesting piece of spam this morning in my inbox: William Shatner trilogy Captains Glory sometime next second Vulcans Soul Exiles ...

I try to keep Life 1.0 in a somewhat organized chaos. When it comes to my computer, there are a lot of things on it (source code, programs, documents, etc.) and there are a lot of things it keeps eating up from the internet (feeds, favorites, newsgroups, emails). That’s a lot of stuff to manage. So when it comes to trying to manage it all, ...