There and Back Again : Miscellaneous

I’m Moving…

hdierking — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 20:47:06 GMT

Well, kind of. One of the things I’ve realized as I’ve watched the traffic patterns for this blog is that you good folks come here more out of interest for stuff related to MSDN Magazine (or actually, thanks to the long tail, developer certifications). That, combined with an invitation from a community of folks that I both highly respect and also consider to be friends outside of work, has prompted me to move my more technical-style posts over to the CodeBetter community. You can find me there at http://codebetter.com/blogs/howard.dierking/. I’ll continue to post magazine-related topics here and may actually expand that a bit (if you’re looking for certification topics, please check out Gerry O’Brien’s blog) – but if you’re interested in what I have to say with respect to software design and coding, please update your links to my new home at CodeBetter.

Office Moves Can Be Frustrating…

hdierking — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 23:02:05 GMT

Especially when you were unaware that apparently, you’re being moved to China.

Oh yea, and did I mention we had a baby?

hdierking — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 10:14:05 GMT

In my last entry, I mentioned that I was back in the office because of the recent events in the economy. Even with that, I realize that I’ve been pretty sluggish with respect to blogging – probably uncomfortably sluggish for those of you waiting on my to review your article submission.

But really – I had good reason! On January 24th, my wife and I welcomed Sarah Katherine into the world.

Now, I’ll get right on those article submissions…

Does Anyone Else Find the Humor Here?

hdierking — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 18:52:52 GMT

Creepy, Creepy...(Shiver)

hdierking — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 07:20:42 GMT

This really weirded me out - I kept moving my mouse around the screen so that she wouldn't look at me...

http://cubo.cc/

You Always Hope...

hdierking — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 06:32:54 GMT

That your kids will find what you do for a living somewhat interesting. As you can see, I don't think I'm going to be that lucky...

When Poor Quality Control is Just Plain Funny...

hdierking — Tue, 25 Dec 2007 21:24:00 GMT

Anyone that I went to high school with will find extra humor in this. This moment of Christmas humor is brought to you by Pottery Barn.

Random Question...

hdierking — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 20:44:05 GMT

Since I discovered that I can keep my laptop powered during the 5 hour flight between Seattle and New York, I've been able to do some programming again!! And naturally (well, maybe not naturally), that got me thinking about...music.

So the question: what do you listen to while programming?

For me, the list consists of bands like Chemical Brothers, The Crystal Method, Rage Against the Machine, NiN (older stuff) - and sometimes the random classical Indian music (I play a little tabla and I'm a huge Zakir Hussain fan).

The Coolest Thing About Flying First Class

hdierking — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:24:10 GMT

So I finally earned enough frequent flyer miles to qualify for Medallion status on Delta. One of the benefits of the program is that you are automatically upgraded from coach to first class if there are available seats. For my latest trip to New York, this was the case. And I discovered the single coolest thing ever about flying first class. It's not the larger seats, free movies, or upgraded meal - oh no! It's that your seat as an AC adapter built right in - which, for me, meant that I could use my laptop for the entire trip!

In hindsight, I wonder as to whether this may be more an indictment of my laptop's battery...

Oh well, totally cool nonetheless!

Turing Complete Text Messaging??

hdierking — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 02:40:11 GMT

I live vicariously through people with great senses of humor and WAY too much free time...

http://blog.notdot.net/archives/32-LOLCode.net-Now-your-LOLCats-can-use-the-CLR!.html

LOL^2!

Disabling the Annoying Toshiba Menu

hdierking — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 21:25:14 GMT

Do any of you have a Toshiba laptop? I have a Techra M5, and today I finally got annoyed to the point of looking up how to disable this moronic system menu.

Now I can move my mouse again without fear of accidentally bumping the top of the screen.

Microsoft Bellevue Office - What a View!

hdierking — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 21:20:36 GMT

I had a meeting yesterday at one of Microsoft's newer office spaces in downtown Bellevue. Microsoft has the top 15 or so floors of a 28 story building right in Lincoln Square (translation: lots of great places to hang out/eat). Here's one of the coolest aspects - the cafe is on the top floor - and comes complete with an open-air observation deck. Here's the view from the top.

Ode To Teachers: Dennis Phllips

hdierking — Fri, 05 Oct 2007 19:30:15 GMT

As you may or may not know, Friday, October 5, is Worldwide Teacher Appreciation Day. As such, I would like to quickly pay special tribute to my high school biology teacher, Dennis Phillips. Mr. Phillips had that special quality that enabled him to push me past the limits of both my comfort zone and my abilities while simultaneously providing enough encouragement so that I did not give up. The expectations he had of his students was analogous to those of a college professor - yet he gave his classes a restricted amount of freedom - thus enabling his students to actually meet those expectations. In sum, he taught me to learn how to learn very early on in my life, and I can't imagine that I would be where I am today had I not studied under him. So Mr. Phillips, if you've gotten web-savvy since I last saw you and you're reading this, cheers!

On a completely unrelated note, I never could get VS 2008 to install, so today I reinstalled VS 2005. I forgot what it felt like to be utterly amazed watching SP1 take over 2 hours to install. I may never uninstall VS 2005 again simply to avoid the pain of having to reinstall!

I Love M.I.T.!

hdierking — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 01:42:31 GMT

I've always been a big supporter of the school. Several family members went there, I considered Sloan for business school, and I still follow the research coming from the school - particularly the media lab - pretty closely. However, the greatest reason to love M.I.T. is not for their renowned faculty or their cutting edge research - it's for their pranks!

New Windows Live Writer

hdierking — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 21:23:45 GMT

I just installed the beta for the new Windows Live suite of applications - which is basically just a bundle of many of the apps that you've probably been using for a while. I'm kind of ambivalent to applications like Live Mail mainly just because I don't have a pressing need for it (though it is really nice to have a smart client for Hotmail), but as a part of the install, I got the new version of Windows Live Writer - and I have to say - I totally dig it. A couple of things that weren't in my previous version that are new in this one are:

Create new categories in the "Set Categories" control
Set the publishing date for deferred publishing

I'm sure that there are some other cool things, but these are 2 that I really needed and am glad to see in the latest version.