ZogBlog

I've been looking to get my hands on this smartphone for some time. [My first post on my old blog on this phone goes back to August 18th, 2004].

For awhile there... I thought several carriers were going to carry it. Turns out only AT&T Wireless began carrying it sometime back in October, 2004. I've intended to go into a store to check it out, but was waiting on Cingular to take over AT&T Wireless, so I could get access to the better plans (1000 anytime minutes with rollover!).

Then I heard that the AT&T Wireless stores closed overnight... and woke up as Cingular stores the following day. Cool. I figured it was time to hit a Cingular store to pick one up.

Too bad, this was just a pipe dream... as Cingular will not be carrying the Audiovox SMT-5600. In fact current customers are stranded, and apparently are being told to upgrade to Cingular phones before they shut off the AT&T Wireless network (maybe they switching frequencies on the towers?).

Never fear, when the corporate megalopolies screw us over... an intrepid developer will rise from our ranks to spank the man, and bring power to the people.

Does anyone know of an application for OSX that will store my posts locally?

Desired features would be:

• WYSIWYG editing (with HTML view/modification)
• Auto image addition to a select .TEXT gallery, and thumbnail to big graphic link injected into post.
• Multiple .TEXT blog synch (download + upload)

Bonus features:

• Written in C# using MONO
• iLife/iApp UI

Thanks in advance! ;)

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on October 21st, 11:16p EST.

As some of you know, Check and I attended the latest partner dinner at Microsoft's Reston office last night. Here are my notes:

Presented by: Robert Sheldon (MCS Federal Developer Evangelist)

Upcoming Visual Studio 2005 editions (SKUs); expected release summer 2005:

• Visual Studio Express (< $100 - I'm guessing $20-$40; this is a limited version of VS that will come in various flavors for the hobbyist developers - Web Developer, VB.NET, etc)
• Visual Studio Team Architect (targeted at designers; will not include code editing but will include infrastructure and application modeling tools with network and design discovery)
• Visual Studio Team Developer (standard edition; will include visual Class designer, Object Test Bench, and modeling tools)
• Visual Studio Team Tester (designed for test; will include code analysis / code coverage tools, and various Test Driven Development features such as NUnit, NMock, etc)
• Visual Studio Enterprise Edition (includes all modules)
• Visual Studio Team Foundation Server (Server component that provides integrated backend technologies:
  • Distributed NUnit, NANT, NMOCK testing (Test Driven Development apps)
  • Change Management, Work Item tracking
  • Reporting (manager type progress & testing reports)
  • Windows SharePoint Services site provides new team management features
  • Project site extensions (?)
  • Unfortunately, Requirements Analysis will not be a part of this release

Cool Features of new Integrated Development Environment (IDE):

• Refactoring: modify a method name... and have VS fix all of the calls to it; select a bit of code, and extract it into a called method - all with a few simple mouse clicks.
• Edit and Continue: while debugging you can change a line of code, and then continue debugging without restarting to see the result
• Object Test Bench: instantiate a class, and test it - all from within the IDE (better yet, with edit and continue - you can edit a line of code and watch the object update itself!)
• Class Designers: Design your interfaces / APIs with visio like GUI, and then watch it build the code stubs (method/property/function declarations) for you.
• Logical Infrastructure & Solution Architect Designers: Build the constraints of your network design (firewalls, server locations in or out of the DMZ, define servers types, etc.) or build the application architecture (internal / external app interaction, ,).
• Design Discovery: the old Visio Design Discovery code is being built into VS 2005 to auto-magically build the logical infrastructure diagram for you!
• Web.Config will now have intellisense!

Cool features of ASP.NET 2.0

• Defaults changed from GridLayout to FlowLayout
• Defaults changed from code-behind to inline (though a tab still separates it in the designer)
• <asp:GridView >, DataGrid deprecated (though supported) and replaced with a BETTER datagrid. More info.
• <asp:DetailsView/>
• Master Pages!! Finally you can theme your site, and see it reflected on all pages at design time - without any additional code on the individual pages... just link your master page! More info.
• <asp:Region/> control
• <asp:Wizard/> Building workflow on a page, handle next/back, step1->n workflows easily now, simple XML allows you to reorder the steps if necessary, example.
• <asp:TreeView/>, more info.
• <asp:Menu/>, more info:
• <asp:Login/>, new authentication control
• Membership and Role Management Service: built-in support for managing user credentials (usernames/passwords) and role groups
• Personalization Service: enables you to define, save, and retrieve profile properties associated with users visiting your Web site. You can use the Personalization Service to permanently store user profile information without writing any data access code
• Site Navigation Service: You can represent the logical structure of a Web site by creating an ASP.NET "Whidbey" SiteMap. You create a SiteMap simply by creating an XML file that represents the relationships among all the pages in your application. Alternatively, you have the flexibility of retrieving a Site Map from a custom provider such as a database or content management system.
• <asp:SiteMapPath/> control with a SiteMap to automatically generate a bread crumb trail for your application
• <asp:WebPartZone/> and <asp:WebPart/> allows you to build a custom portal-like drag & drop UI (presumably in conjunction with the personalization service)

For more info, please see the new ASP.NET 2.0 Developer Center on MSDN.

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on November 1st, 8:11p EST.

Late last year, I went to the Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles. On the roster of things I was interested in: Monad.

Monad is the next generation of Command Prompt (shell) for Windows, sometimes referred to as MSH (pronounced MuSH, I believe). Details have been sketchy, but the word is that shell scripts will be fully object-oriented and should be capable of leveraging the OS in ways VBScript (the former method of shell scripting) could only dream of... \

At the PDC, there wasn't much to see... and I don't remember the bits (DVDs with Longhorn Alpha, Whidbey B1, Yukon B1) having Monad. So I waited until the Microsoft Management Summit 2004 to see a brief titled: Monad, The Microsoft Shell (or something close to that). Unfortunately, it was canceled. When I asked why, I was told by one of the Microsoft presenters that Monad just wasn't ready to be demo'd. A few months later, I found I could download it and test it out myself (which I never did).

Anyway, Jeffrey Snover has taken the time to explain just what Monad is in a Channel 9 video titled, Microsoft's Monad Explained (courtesy of Neowin).

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on , 8:25p EST.

Michael Lehman says: Programmers are an Endangered Species, Hah!

All I can say is... in the government good programmers are few and far between. Most are barely more than HTML jockies who still don't understand CSS. I'm probably better than most... and I'm a far cry from an expert. The problem is you need a clearance to work in many government positions - which means our jobs aren't going to be outsourced to India anytime soon.

Many programmers in the commercial market have got a different situation. But is it really that bad? I don't really know, but I'm watching that space... because that's where the really good programmers are - and where I want to be. Forget this clearance crap. I need to be able to take a laptop and a cellphone into work. :)

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on October 30th, 12:01p EST.

There I was hiking over some rock formations in Colorado with my girlfriend (already you can tell its a dream). The feel of the sun, and the light breeze were intoxicating. Even though I'm looking out over a beautiful landscape and a spectacularly orange sunset, I can't seem to get my eyes off of her. I study her face... nose, cheekbones, ears, and I even see the hint of a smile line forming.

Screech!!! Snapping out of the daydream, the metro train screeches to a halt. Monday mornings are always difficult for me, and seeing her now as we stand waiting to reach our stop - makes it even more difficult. I remember our vacation as if it was yesterday, which is pretty close - because we just flew back to DC yesterday. Continuing to take her in, I remember fondly how romantic and relaxing it was.

I close my eyes, in part because I'm tired... but also to savor the memories. Standing so close to her now it's as if we were still there. I open my eyes and once again look at her. We've been together for some time, and she has become very important to me. What's odd is that her hair is dark brown - almost black... even though I've always dated blondes. I never thought this was on purpose, and always said that I preferred brunettes. It just never worked out that way.

I close my eyes again, thinking of her hair... and it takes me back to the sunset, and then on to that hole in the wall hotel. As we had waited for our keys, I remembered looking around... and then just out of the corner of my eye, my memory zooms in on a reflection in the rounded mirror right above her head. Her hair is blonde in the reflection. Huh? That's not right. Perhaps my mind is playing tricks on me. Her hair has always been dark-brown or black. So why do I remember a blonde reflection?

There isn't much time to ponder it, because we have arrived at our stop. Somehow, I'm deeply disturbed by this memory... I'm not sure why, because it had to be a trick of my memory. Yeah, that's it.

Getting in to work is like getting in to Fort Knox. There are 3 checkpoints - each requiring different credentials, cyphers, or remote monitoring facial recognition. For some reason, after the initial guard desk my coworkers and I have to take stairs down below ground level to reach the first cipher. On the way there are (3) baseball-sized hoverbots that identify us using a fairly sophisticated facial recognition algorithm (if this is failed, we are cut down by the hoverbots' high powered lasers. Once we punch the number into the cipher (15135), we are greeted with another winding hallway that leads to a turnstyle requiring a badge-reader, and the 2nd guard desk.

At work all day I can't help but think about her hair. Why do I remember her reflection as blonde, even though her hair has always been brunette?

Various inconsistencies start to appear in more of my memories. Some thing's are just not adding up - and I need answers. Somehow talking to my girlfriend doesn't feel right. So I begin to talk to my friends, some of whom have experienced the same things - bits and pieces that just don't seem to add up. We're not sure what it is, but the general consensus is that it's related to our job somehow. Our jobs just happen to be silly-stupid-high secret research into memories. Specifically enhancing/extracting memories that can be stored and played back. Ostensibly this is for determining who a murdered persons' killer was... we just extract the memory, play it back, and bingo! There's your killer.

We're all very concerned that our research may have somehow been turned against us, so we decide to enter work after hours to get to the bottom of it. The front-desk guard could care less, but the hoverbots will identify us and call the guards, (vs. kill us because we already work there)... so we'll have to avoid them somehow. Perhaps a little stealth and shadow walking? The bots are not to sensitive to light, and the lights are normally out at night. Unfortunately, they are sensitive to sound. Finally, the second guard is always a pain in the ass and will be our biggest challenge. How do we get around him? Someone mentions a solution - though I can't remember the specifics (social engineering perhaps?) - and we decide the time is right to get our answers. So off into the night we go.

The first guard barely notices us as we walk past. [It sounded like he was taking a nap.] The hoverbots appear to be stored in their respective alcoves with the hall lights mostly off. As we begin to sneak past them, one of them notices me and begins to power up and extricate itself from the alcove. My three compatriots recognize the sounds and begin to sprint for the stairs, sliding down the long metal ladder-like column down all 3 floors to the cypher locked door.

I begin to make a sprint, but think wiser as more sound will surely gather the attention of the hoverbot. So I take the to the shadows and slowly, quietly make my way to the stairs. Miraculously, I make it to the stairs. Sliding down the ladder identifies my location and with hoverbot on the way I plead to my friends to open the cypher locked door; and naturally they are so nervous they keep screwing up the cypher.

WIthin seconds of being identified, and shortly before the hoverbot would have called the guards... they finally enter the cipher, and we rush through the door.

Phew! That was close. Now the really hard part. Convincing the second guard that we must be allowed into to continue our research - despite the late hour.

I wish I could say we were successful. As my friends were hauled off to places unknown, the lead guard sets me aside. He informs me that he was quite aware of my memory discrepancies - as I have shown an amazing propensity in the past to break through the false memories. My eyes bulged... in the past... they've done this to me before.

The guard continues with the story of my blonde beauty who, unfortunately had to be terminated due to my last mission failure. Terminated? My blood wasn't boiling over the blonde because I could hardly recall her - she was nothing more than mists of my mind now. A vague, scattering of memories among the stronger ones implanted about my love for the brunette. I should be upset over her loss, but my mind fixated on one very important detail. My last mission.

I'm not an agent. I'm not even particularly big, or well trained in martial arts (if you've seen me, you know that my 5'8" frame is nowhere close to intimidating). How could they have felt that I was the man for the job... let alone thought I could accomplish it? Failure should have been an assumption, but I had little time to mull this over as he continued to offer me a deal.

Because of my incredibly strong mind (the traditional memories don't work), the company must motivate me through other means. Turns out I'm a romantic, and that has been my hook.

He offers the hook again. The brunettes life, or I accomplish the mission. Strained, tired, and feeling like a trapped rat. I accept the mission. As long as this is for her...

It turns out that the mission is murder. Kill a General that works for the president, or lose my girlfriend. The mission is a blur, but somehow I find myself outside the general's limo pulling a neo-esque ass-whooping on his guards, and ultimately twisting the general's neck until I here a slight popping sound. Mission accomplished. The getaway is less elegant, but I escape nonetheless.

They trapped me to do their bidding. I have no idea who that general was, or for what purpose I was forced to terminate him. For now, my girlfriend is safe.

But for how long? Fade to black.

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on October 11th, 11:22a EST.

I was just reading the main feed, when I came across Dan Crevier's post on CMD.EXE. He points out some of the UI and functionality idiosyncrasies. I decided to on the subject.

This has always bugged me to no end. I too looked at the console alternatives - and found them sorely lacking. I'm waiting on Monad, and was greatly anticipating the talk that was scheduled to occur at the Microsoft Management Summit 2004. It was canceled at the last minute however, so I'm still waiting to see just what it brings.

You can change the color of the text and background, but the fonts are limited... and while the transparency thing is cool, the old UI really bugs me. . I've had long conversations with an MCS employee I work with (Jon Gross), and the excuse he provided (though I don't believe it) is that the UI is built into CMD.EXE and therefore the system-wide UI is ignored. What?! That's ludicrous.

Microsoft has largely ignored the command line for the last decade. The big mantra has always been build it into the GUI, CMD.EXE is irrelevant. Many of the most advanced features of UNIX are barely seen without delving into the shell (my favorite was csh).

I remember when I switched from Novell/Solaris 2.6 to Windows NT. The hardest thing to swallow was that there were no Hard Links. I've argued this for years (in fact it's one of the few arguments I won with Jon Gross), Virtual HD mounts into a root level folder (with the separate physical drive mounted in a subfolder) is not a hard link, in fact its obviously more related to a UNIX mount then anything else. Hard Links (coupled with long file name support) could have greatly reduced the anguish of DLL hell YEARS ago.

I'm glad that Microsoft is doing Monad (probably championed by the MSBUILD team), I just hope that bundled with WinFS... that it brings a true console to Windows.

For more info, Keith Devans (via google) links to the .NET show video about Monad.

// steve

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on October 14th, 10:38p EST.

I've always argued how important a UI is... and have made some progress with my coworkers.

A UI must be functional, and look REALLY good. The better it looks the better the reviews/customer feedback will be. Unfortunately this is often overlooked by even the most seasoned programmer. A programmer that I really admire (in fact I often say that I learned C# back in the b2 days by stepping through his code) once said that he use to make the mistake of working to hard on the UI and not enough on the feature set.

While I agree in part with that sentiment... you should never ignore the UI by giving it no thought at all. That's just bad design.

So, it's good to see that other people agree with me. In Shipping Software & Broken Windows, John Lawrence. He says:

If software looks bad, then it sends a message about the quality of the product underneath.

I whole heartedly agree. Micky Gousset over on his Team System Blog says:

One thing I have found though, is that appearance is everything. I can have all the functionality working perfectly, and it does everything the customer wants, but if I have not prettied up the final site, they are always very negative towards testing it. However, if I have prettied up the site, even if have the stuff on there does not work, they are always more positive toward the application. Go figure.

Although I don't think appearance is everything, it is more important than many developer's would characterize it. A comment to the Shipping Software entry points out a possible flaw in this theory:

I'm afraid we have the opposite problem - if it looks great, the customers (and sometimes the management) tend to assume that all the code behind the UI is done. Having the germ of something that works is great for the coders' morale, but you get a boatload of "what do you mean it isn't done yet?"-type questions.

Yep. Make sure the functionality is there, but don't forget the UI at EVERY stage of development. The earlier you think about the UI, the easier it is to implement, or change as the web/win forms evolve.

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on October 3rd, 12:08p EST.

[So I've been single for about 6 years. During that time I've dated ONCE (admittedly though, Kristen was one hot cookie). So it comes as quite a shock that I would dream of marriage.]

Anyway, there I am... getting married. She has short, light blonde hair (just touching her shoulders I believe, but it's pulled up in the dream), is probably 5'9" (I'm 5'8"), and is (naturally) the hottest women I've laid eyes on (duh, it is a dream). I don't remember the protocols, but apparently I've bought her a gift, and I want to give it too her today. But we are getting married tomorrow, and she has been sequestered away by her friends. I, and my friends attempt to get the gift to her... but none of her friends will accept. They tell us that I need to give it to her personally. Ok, no problem - except I won't see her until the wedding.

Anyway, I'm Biking (it's good exercise, try it) along the road when one of my buddies drops off the new Mazda 6 (this is apparently the gift to my new bride), but now I've got to park it. So I get in (leaving my bike on the side of the road), and drive into this parking lot so that I can hopefully park it in front of her apartment. After I park it, I'm walking back to my bike when she steps out of the building with her friends (she hasn't seen the car yet). Gawd, she's so beautiful. Her and I pause for just a second, drinking each other in; then her friends rush her off to an adjacent building.

I shrug it off, and continue walking back to my bike (which is less than 50 yards away at this point) because she doesn't want me to see her until tomorrow... when I see these two girls making off with my bike! "Hey!! You! Thief!! That's my bike!!" I start running after them, but they both have bikes and I'm on foot. I chase them for perhaps a 1/4 mi, but they are gone.

Fade to black.

Originally posted: ZogBlog::road less traveled, on September 29th, 9:04a EST.

Years from now, I'm working in US intelligence and am the world's foremost expert in , on-call 24x7 for the times when my country needs me.

We (the human race) have been experimenting with new engine technology and have been exploring the solar system for years. Some of the real high-tech stuff has allowed us to venture outside of our solar system and return. The tech is working, but the power for these systems doesn't allow for interstellar travel just yet. All we can do is move into the starlanes, and back.

Anyway, our super-secret research vehicle mounted with said engine while on a routine pop out of the solar system encounters another ship. Our very first encounter with Aliens. Our ship approaches them cautiously, attempting to communicate and offer up gwannap-weep ninnibon (see Transformers: The Movie for more info on the universal greeting). Unfortunately for our intrepid explorers, they blast them out of space.

As you can imagine, we had been monitoring them back on earth (my guess is with several relay stations in between each with varying levels of autonomy. This sends the entire intelligence community (not sure why NASA wasn't involved, but maybe 9/11 causes all funding to be diverted to intelligence - and NASA was pulled into the intelligence orbit) into a tizzy. This is where I come in. Blissfully unaware, I get the page just as I'm trying to get my SUV (now aging rapidly) towed away. I arrived at my SUV in a truck that I picked up to last until the repairs on my SUV were completed. I quickly place everything (personal affects) back in to the SUV that I had been diligently removing (to place in the truck) - and attempt to push the SUV off to the side of the road.

I of course need permission to leave this longterm, as that's apparently what's about to happen. The pager that went off is my deep space pager... and I could potentially be sent off to our Pluto research station (this could take weeks, even with the new engines ;). An old Navy friend happens to live there and has no problem with me storing the vehicle (he must know something about the importance of what I do).

Into the truck I go, exiting the neighborhood. As I come upon the beltway (I'm guessing I was just east of Burke, VA), on the entrance ramp, a woman stops me, asking for a ride. She's cute, but I have to get to DIA(?). I apologize profusely (why? I dunno.) But she is insistent, racing to the other side of my truck (which has magically transformed into my SUV). I start to take off, and she just runs alongside, pleading with me. At one point, I'm up to 25mph. She has to be in a sprint, but she seems completely unaware of the speed. Apparently, her dress gets caught in something... and it is ripped quite badly, but she is un-deterred as she spins with the rip (I'm apparently watching my rear-view mirror)... and the dress comes right off. This reveals...

... a slip that just looks like another dress. This one is black with some sort of large flower pattern on it.

That's when I woke up. Unfortunately, I didn't get to save the human race.

Maybe tomorrow night. Haha.