Bill Gates is stepping down from his day-to-day duties at Microsoft to focus more on his charitable work:

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2006/jun06/06-15CorpNewsPR.mspx

Microsoft Announces Plans for July 2008 Transition for Bill Gates

Working full time at Microsoft through June 2008, Gates then will continue as chairman and advisor while increasing Foundation efforts; Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie to assume expanded roles

Well, I've officially entered the Geeks with Blogs .Net game design contest. Why do I need to win this? Well, my last console video game was a Nintendo 64 Super Nintendo.

Yes, really.

Stop laughing. I can kick your butt in Donkey Kong Country. I think I even still have a framed Blockbuster Video game contest prize around here somewhere.... that'll impress the chicks, eh?

Anyway..... I'm going to be using C# express, mostly because the majority of my experience in VS2003 is in VB.Net. Should be a good experiment--we'll see if I can endure the case sensitivity long enough to put out an actual product...  :)

While some other contestants are planning elaborate card games or drawing sophisticated diagrams, I'll be taking a slightly different route:  similar to the sample file, Escapa, I'll be taking some simple but fun and addictive web-based games and replicating them in .Net. That way I can scale up to however many individual games I'm able to kick out in a month.

Here are some of my current favorites I am hoping to replicate:

• Chaos Theory - My all-time high score: 135
• Animal Maze Maker - Extremely frustrating, yet addicting just the same. High score: 3850
• Cursor Catcher - Similar to escapa, but much more annoying
• Chopper Challenge - Slightly more complex, but similarly addictive

If I get a chance, I'd like to even build a simple website using ASP.Net that lets users upload their scores onto an online high scores list. Should be an interesting challenge.

So what web flash games are you addicted to?? (remember, simple and addictive.)

 

I'll definitely be all over Jeff's announcement of a GWB game design contest. Prize is a XBox360!!

Now I just need to decide what game to do...

Classic arcade game?
Remake of a popular flash game?
Puzzle game?

Take a dive into DirectX?
Stick with Winforms?

Any suggestions welcome!

You have got to go check out these documents just posted by Microsoft on their press release page. My favorite quote: "In short, the Statement of Objections claims Microsoft has failed to create Technical Documentation that the Commission did not read, and for which no competitor has sought a license, all to address a problem about which no customer has ever complained."

They don't have a live video feed from Steve Jobs' keynote, but according to some sites reporting from inside the keynote, Apple just announce availability of Intel-based iMacs, shipping today.

Also announced the new MacBook Pro, an Intel duo Core replacement for the Powerbook. Dual processor, 4-5x faster than its predecessors, and the “fastest notebook ever.”

For a live report of the keynote main points, see http://www.macrumorslive.com/web/ or http://engadget.com/2006/01/10/steve-jobs-keynote-live-from-macworld-2006/

I'm sure it'll also be up on www.apple.com and virtually everywhere else in mere moments....

Update: MacBook Pro can be ordered now, and will ship in February. Spec sheet on the two models:

The apple store is back open, and more pictures and details can be viewed here.

Scott Kuhl has a post that talks about some of the problems associated with a blog “main page” like here at GeeksWithBlogs. There are other problems, though, when you subscribe to a main feed through an RSS reader. I subscribe to several Main Feeds, including blogs.msdn.com, weblogs.asp.net, and geekswithblogs.net.

Your Microsoft license key is tied to the organization name that you enter when installing CRM. Good reasons for this, of course. This would normally mean that to install a development server without having to purchase a new license key, it needs to exist in an independent domain. (Because the CRM Organization Name is used to create the Active Directory OU.) ...

Mark Pearce describes how to debug a .Net Windows service from Visual Studio: To do this, you need to emulate what the Service Control Manager (SCM) does when it starts your service — in other words, invoke your service’s OnStart method. In VB, this looks like: ...

One of my favorite recent blogs is Jensen Harris' excellent blog on the Office 12 user experience. As a former (and still occasional) instructor, I am very interested to see how they've re-thought almost the entire user interface for the next version of Office. I wasn't fortunate enough to get picked for the Beta 1 for Office 12, however. (Actually, its worse than that. I didn't even bother to sign up because I thought the Beta 1 would be available to MSDN subscribers. Oops.) I was very in

Hello World! I've been lurking around the blogosphere a little too long, and have a bad habit of posting long rambling discussions in other peoples' blogs. I guess I finally need a place to place my OWN rants and comments. I'll be making posts about...