Like any good Microsoft SDE/T, one of the testers on my team just haaaad to learn more about the contents of the mysterious box . Model # in hand, I googled "beer +BC-1206" and eureka! It's a Sanyo BC-1206 Beer Cooler .

Shortly after posting Just Add Beer , a large brown box labeled, “Beer Dispenser -- Do Not Drop -- Assembled in Mexico” appeared in the hallway outside my office. Spooky.

On an average day, I receive between five and twenty meeting requests. I decline most of the sched+'s* that I receive with such haste that occasionally, I find myself digging through my Deleted Items folder looking for a just-deleted invite that caught...

Laura made an appearance and testified at the weekly meeting of the Redmond Planning Commission (PC) earlier tonight, well, yesterday now, and shared some great thoughts with us about our ongoing review of the Land Use chapter of the City's Comprehensive...

Rich explains how to allow multiple checkouts on a per project basis in Visual SourceSafe. When you set Multiple_Checkouts to Yes in your SRCSAFE.INI or SS.INI file, you enable the Copy-Modify-Merge collaboration model that is often associated with CVS...

Any grocery store employee in the vicinity of Microsoft main campus in Redmond can tell you that Microsoft developers dig M&Ms . We can't get enough of the tasty little treats. And when there are no more chocolatey M&Ms available :-( we buy whatever...

Now this is inclusive politics. IMO, WikiWiki is the most democratic social computing medium. The Green Party of Canada goes a step beyond political blogs: They let their members work on their policies for the upcoming elections using a Wiki platform...

In documentation, structure and organization are imperative. The most basic element of any organizational scheme is the parent-child relationship, which enables writers to create topic maps and readers to find answers to their questions quickly. Most...

Sorry, I don't think one exists yet. The more I use WikiWiki though, the more often I find myself typing CamelCasedWords in Outlook emails, Word docs, and code files in Visual Studio. And every time I do so, I sit there for a split-second looking at the...

Using Visual Studio extensibility, Dr. Ex explains how to trap file rename events in Solution Explorer so that you can cancel the event if it happens. Dr. Ex --whoever you are-- Subscribed .

In 10 Rules for Corporate Blogs and Wikis , Nick Wreden over at MarketingProfs.com writes a few things that really make me wonder if he's been reading my blog. BlogJa Vu. Nick, you out there? Demonstrate your domain omniscience and tell me haven't been...

Join us this Friday, April 16 at 9:00-10:30AM PST (GMT-8) for a live demonstration of several new and improved source code control integration (SCCI) features in Visual Studio “Whidbey”. Click here to register for the Webcast. Bonus: By...

Are you a hardcore debugger: a kernel-mode, device driver-writin' stud? Do you avoid chrome-plated GUI and your mouse at all costs? If so, you can stop right now. This post isn't exactly for you. At the other end of the spectrum, if you're one of the...

Milbertus shares his initial impressions of the Community Technology Preview (CTP) drop of Visual Studio and notes that, “ You can also turn off source control integration altogether (finally), and set up the keyboard shortcuts to emulate different...

“Durch Training wird man stark,“ literally means, 'Through training, one will become strong'. Figuratively, it means, 'Practice makes perfect.' Both my German and my ASP.NET are getting weaker by the day. I need more Training. Enter Christoph...

Stowe Boyd comments on gated online communities and managed growth by way of Clay Shirky and Rusty's recent posts on the subject. Gated communities like Raindrop Wiki and managed, or human pace, growth mechanisms are inevitable. I myself was recently...

To add a folder and all of its subfolders and files to a SourceSafe database quickly and easily Drag the folder from Windows Explorer and drop it into SourceSafe Explorer. In the Add Folder dialog box, click Recursive , enter a comment in the...

For the two people who read my blog who haven't already seen it, Scott Swanson , a PM on my extended team in Microsoft Visual Studio, is soliciting user feedback on a potential redesign of the help toolbar in Visual Studio Whidbey. Josh offers his thoughts...