Laura John's Weblog

Here, there and everywhere

Laura John — Mon, 12 Jan 2004 03:15:00 GMT

There's been a lot of moving around in the Microsoft blogging world, and in the last couple of days the dust has finally settled, and the new default home for what was once http://blogs.gotdotnet.com is now http://blogs.msdn.com. Lots of people worked really hard to make http://blogs.msdn.com a reality and I'm waving a big Thank You to all of them! I'd also like to personally thank Scott Watermasysk for his willingness to move and convert (BlogX to .Text) all of the posts for those bloggers moving from GDN to blogs.msdn.com. Even though I knew it was coming, I was surprised how "homey" it made my blog on blogs.msdn feel to see all of my old posts there, including all of the categories. Woo Hoo!

When it was announced that we'd have to move off of GDN, I felt conflicted. My posts aren't generally technical, and sometimes they're even personal (gasp!) so I wasn't sure that asp.net was the right place. Then I saw some of the reaction that posts that were considered "off-topic" got from the community at asp.net, and decided to move to http://www.geekswithblogs.net. I met Jeff Julian at PDC this past year, and we've been exchanging email since then. When he saw folks starting to move off of GDN, he sent me mail offering me a new home. I decided to take him up on it, and have been very happy at GeeksWithBlogs. Jeff totally rocks, at least in my book. Not only is there the whole GWB site, but he's also written a plug-in for Newsgator that's going to make my life a lot easier. He's also just released Dottext.Web.HttpCompression. If you're not subscribed to Jeff's blog, it's a good one. Anyway, I also created a blog on asp.net (I thought it was mostly for my archive content) and posted some to it, but my main "tech" home has been GWB. (My other blog is and will continue to be just a Celebration of Fluff ;-)

Now that blogs.msdn.com exists, though, I am going to be blogging primarily at http://blogs.msdn.com/lauraj. My home is MSDN, how could I blog elsewhere? My apologies for any confusion this has caused. All of my GDN posts have been moved over, and I'll be getting my GWB posts moved as well (and then deleting the duplicates, of course!) Like SaraW, I'll be doing some decorating there real soon.

All of the Microsoft Bloggers posts will be aggregated at http://blogs.msdn.com and I believe that Betsy is also planning a page like the current front page of GDN, which will list all of the bloggers by team or area of focus.

Thanks again to Jeff Julian and everyone at GeeksWithBlogs. You've been great.

Alerts for Microsoft Knowledgebase Articles

Laura John — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 18:31:00 GMT

Yesterday I saw a link for http://kbalertz.com on http://www.asp.net; I had heard of kbalertz before but had never visited. Last night I went to the site and was very pleasantly surprised at the functionality of the site, including the total ease with which I could sign up for alerts by email on some of my favorite MS technologies like Infopath and Windows Sharepoint Services (WSS). And then, being a big RSS fan, you can imagine my glee to find out that I could sign up for a feed of new KB articles (Infopath, WSS) -- I don't even have to get them in my email, I can just let Newsgator handle them. (And have I mentioned how great it is to be able to right click on one of those XML buttons and *poof*, I'm subscribed?) If you want to check out all of the MS technologies that you can sign up for alerts on, start here.

For you InfoPath fans (and I know you're out there, because I see the search terms in the logs!) this is really worth checking out because not only are there the standard KB articles, but there are also quite a few "How To" articles. I wish I would have found the one that talks about how to programatically submit an Infopath form to a Sharepoint Document Library before bumbling to the solution myself. It would have saved me a lot of time!

This morning when I checked my email, I discovered that they do the right thing and send all the new KB articles for the technologies you've selected in one email -- these guys are great. They have 113,070 KB summaries indexed, with more every day, and their full text search works really well. One of the bonuses for me last night, as I was cruising their site was that I found a potential answer to a niggling problem that I've been dealing with. I'm an administrator for our internal Sharepoint site, but there are a couple of things that I can't do, like rename a subweb, no matter how many times they add me to the administrator group. Frankly, I hadn't even thought to search the knowledge base for an answer, I thought it was human error. But this, that I noticed while cruising the Front Page 2003 articles, matches so closely that I'm thinking it's the solution.

Great snow pictures from today

Laura John — Wed, 07 Jan 2004 07:15:00 GMT

Tommy took some great photos of the snow today. Look at all of them, if you have time... they are all great, but the photos are Maya are Wonderful!

Loving Newsgator even more

Laura John — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 21:41:00 GMT

Once I started using Newsgator, I was pretty much hooked. When I only had my one blog on GDN, my blogging life was easy -- I installed the BlogX plugin, and posted away. Once I moved this work-ish blog to GeeksWithBlogs (thanks Jeff!) and created another blog for more personal stuff (it's still a really fuzzy line though), I couldn't post as easily from Outlook because I could only install/use one newsgator posting plugin. I posted a Lazy Web request and lucky for me, Kent responded. I've been using the plugin he wrote for a bit, and it totally rocks. Once the blogs are configured, when you post from Outlook/Newsgator, a dialog pops up allowing you to select which blog(s) you want to post to. Now I can post to my BlogX/GDN blog, my .Text/GWB blog and my MT/personal blog, all from Outlook, and if I want to, all at the same time. That left only the .Text/asp.net blog, which I'm most likely going to use sparingly, anyway.

Then, enter Jeff Julian. Jeff wrote another Newsgator plugin that, in conjunction with Kent's switcher plugin, allows you to post with Outlook/Newsgator to multiple .Text blogs. Plus he added category support! When you use this plugin, after the switcher dialog pops up, you get another dialog allowing you to choose which .Text blogs you want to post tom -- in my case it offers the one on GeeksWithBlogs and the one of Weblogs.Asp.Net. Another cool feature that Jeff added is the ability to nickname your .Text blogs, for ease in determining which one(s) you want to post to. Now I just need the MT plugin to support categories and I'm all set. Woo Hoo!

Black and White M&Ms?

Laura John — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 05:35:00 GMT

Weird. Tonight I went to the store to buy the requisite 6 pounds of M&Ms (it's a Microsoft tradition to treat your team to a pound per year on your anniversary*) and all they had was black and white. Apparently there is some sort of promotion going on - Oh Hey, check this out:

1. Throughout the country are six black and white bags of M&M'S® Brand Candies filled with ALL ONE COLOR of candies—and a winning game piece. There's a bag for each color of the M&M'S® Brand color mix (red, yellow, blue, green, orange and brown).

2. The six people who find these game pieces will each win a 3-day/2-night trip for four to Los Angeles, California, including participation in the special 1-day M&M'S® Brand event, a 2004 Volkswagen® New Beetle® Convertible GLS in a color that matches their game piece, and $20,000 cash.

Wow, guess it's a good time to have to buy 6 pounds - convertibles are so good in August in Seattle. (Well actually, I only bought 3 pounds of the black and white ones, because I dug in the Christmas discount bin and found 3 packages. So black and white and red and green for my anniversary, and 3 chances to win.)

*It's not officially my six year anniversary at Microsoft, since when I started at MSNBC on 1/5/98, I was an employee of the Microsoft-NBC joint venture. But the way I figure, it's close enough :)

Snow Day in Redmond

Laura John — Tue, 06 Jan 2004 20:58:00 GMT

Today there was a major storm in the Puget Sound area -- lots of snow, on top of ice that's formed over the last few days. I, along with quite a few of my co-workers, worked from home today. There was lots of angst, as you can probably imagine, as everyone who didn't go in tried to RAS in or use OWA. Me, I just left email open, and let mail update when it could. (I still love RPC over HTTP!) It was a slow email day, which was good; I'm making some progress on the huge number of emails I have in my inbox. As I talked with my co-workers via messenger, I realized that there was a difference here -- in other groups I've worked in, a snow day would have been a welcome excuse to slack off. My MSDN compadres are all stressed about not being able to work -- I love these guys and gals. (Well I should be more clear, some brave and dedicated souls like Kent and Shawn actually did go in today!)

During a break today my son and I played in the snow with one of our dogs. Here's a pic of Jordy catching a snowball (click on the thumbnail to see the larger image).

There are a few more of my snow photos from today at http://www.fotolog.net/ljsky.

Weather in Seattle

Laura John — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 04:26:00 GMT

I can't believe how cold it is -- I like this accuweather forecast . Don't think I've ever seen the word frigid in a weather forecast! Brrrrrrrr

Mars looks like the southern California desert!

Laura John — Mon, 05 Jan 2004 03:43:00 GMT

Luckily I'm not a conspiracy theorist, otherwise I would think that this is actually the southern California desert!

This is how I know...

Laura John — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 01:13:00 GMT

... that I'm working in the right place. It's Jan 1, Thursday night, and I've been off work since the 19th. I'm going back to work on the 5th, so a few more days off still. As my MSDN pals pop up on IM Messenger (and more and more of them have today), I have to hold myself back from bugging them (sometimes I can't, but they're very understanding). I'm excited to see them online, and even more excited to get back to work. So much fun to be had at MSDN coming up in the new year! I have lots of things that I want to accomplish on my list, but one of the first things that I'm going to check off is to get a process in place to make sure that the tech support emails that get directed to MSDN folks ALL get answered in a timely manner. Right now some get answered right away, but others don't get answered so quickly. The problem stems, I believe, from emails going to only one person (rather than an alias) and because some people don't understand the expectations. Easy problems to fix. I'm betting we'll be able to get our stats up pretty quickly. (I'll keep you posted, of course :)

Sound of Music, Rocky Horror style

Laura John — Thu, 01 Jan 2004 12:56:00 GMT

Last Sunday we went to see The Sound of Music, with a twist. It was billed as a "sing-a-long". The movie is one of M's favorites, so I took a chance and got tickets for the three of us to go as one of her Christmas gifts. It wasn't until Sunday morning that I dug in detail to find out what it was about... and was surprised to read that this particular Seattle tradition involved props and a costume contest, in addition to the songs being subtitled. "Uh oh," I thought, "this might turn out to be a bust." (And, having been surprised before at a midnight showing of Rocky Horror, "I wonder if I need to dig out my umbrella?") But we trundled over the lake for the event, and it was all kinds of fun.

As we approached, I was surprised to see a large crowd outside the theater -- I had assumed that it would be lightly attended given that I had been able to get good seats just 3 weeks before Christmas. As we walked in, we were handed a small goody/prop bag. We got our snacks and proceeded to our seats. As we looked around, we saw a few people in costume (well, it seemed like they were in costume, but you never know in Seattle), some people in dress up clothes, and everywhere in between. The 5th Avenue Theater is glorious, and there's lots to look at while you wait. Finally, the MC came out and walked us through the use of the props in our goody bag, as well as coached us on our role as the audience. Bark when you see Rolf, the telegram guy (since he treats Liesel like a dog), say "Ahhhhhh" when you see Greta, hiss for the baroness, and boo at the Nazis. As he talked, people in costume started lining up along the wall near us, and then it was time for the costume contest! There were lots of Marias, of course, and nuns, but the best costumes (at least in my opinion) were generally the more obscure ones. My favorites were the tuba guy (from the puppet show), the bowing lady (from the festival, played by a teen who had the hair, but most importantly the bowing, down perfectly) and a young girl of maybe 12 or so, who looked just like the baroness, with a cigarette holder, the attitude and everything!

After the contest, and a few last minute instructions, we were ready to see the movie. If you remember the opening, there are about two minutes at the beginning that pans scenery, coming closer and closer to where Maria is standing. As she came into view, everyone yelled "There she is!" and we were off on an experience that is sure to become one of our Christmas Traditions. I loved being able to sing along with every song since the words were on the screen, and was surprised at some of the words (not being a die-hard fan) like flibbertigibbet (we even had a card for that one in our goodie bag) -- who knew? All week I've had the songs running through my head, causing me to occasionally burst out with "How do you solve a problem like Maria?" or "I am sixteen going on seventeen" or even "High on a hill was a lonely goatherd". Rodgers and Hammerstein were quite amazing (separately, too, but especially together), weren't they?

Sound of Music Sing-a-long is a traveling production. Check here to see if it's coming to your town.

Visualizing RSS feeds

Laura John — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 12:28:00 GMT

Catching up on my reading, and saw that Steve Makofsky, of furrygoat.com fame, has been working on visualization techniques. I found the image in this post pretty interesting. I can see that one of the feeds is Chris Sells, but my eyes gave out trying to see the rest. It's very cool the amount of information you can represent with color, size and quantity. Heh. Wonder what Scoble's would look like?

Telling us about problems

Laura John — Fri, 02 Jan 2004 13:03:00 GMT

There are a bunch of folks at MSDN who read a wide range of blogs (and quite a few of us who have blogs, as well). Sometimes we run across someone who is having trouble with some aspect of MSDN, which they've written about in their blog (for example, Steve Malofsky's library problem and solution). Whenever I read something like this, I always follow up with the author to try to get the problem resolved. While I can't speak for everyone at MSDN, I think this is mostly the norm with the wonderful folks I work with. Unfortunately, my blog reading habits are erratic -- blog reading generally comes last on the list of inputs for me, so a post might be pretty dated by the time I get to it. So, if you run across something that's not working quite right at MSDN, please feel free to email me about it and I'll try my darndest to get it to the right person to get it resolved. My email address is lauraj at microsoft.com.

Test post 12/30 number 2

Laura John — Tue, 30 Dec 2003 13:57:00 GMT

This is the second test post. Should go to Celebration of Fluff and my new/current workish blog.

Test Successful, and Kent totally rocks!

Laura John — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 18:12:00 GMT

Woo Hoo, Kent has written a Newsgator plug-in in response to my lazy web request. It allows me to post to any or all of my various blogs (as long as they're different plugins). This is a bonus, since all I was hoping for was to be able to switch between the posting plugins, but lucky you, now I can cross-post!

Testing, Testing, 123

Laura John — Mon, 22 Dec 2003 17:59:00 GMT

This is a test post. It should go to both http://www.geekswithblogs.net/lauraj and http://blogs.gotdotnet.com/lauraj.