Category Archives: General Stuff

I’m at the MVP Summit this week, and Computerworld’s Eric Lai has written a background piece on the MVP program that’s pretty interesting (and no, I’m not saying that just because he quoted me!) For example, I didn’t know that the original set of MVPs were mostly FoxPro developers. Check it out here.

Back to the grind after a wonderful holiday break. OK, I admit it; it wasn’t a break from work, except for the few days I took off around Christmas. However, it was a big change in our routine since David didn’t have to get up at zero-dark-thirty to catch the junior high bus, and that made a big difference.
Santa (or, more properly, the section 179 fairy) brought me a couple of new gadgets that I’ll be writing about. Stay tuned.

Original poem by Michael Marks:

The embers glowed softly, and in their dim light,
I gazed round the room and I cherished the sight.
My wife was asleep, her head on my chest,
my daughter beside me, angelic in rest.
Outside the snow fell, a blanket of white,
Transforming the yard to a winter delight.
The sparkling lights in the tree, I believe,
Completed the magic that was Christmas Eve.
My eyelids were heavy, my breathing was deep,
Secure and surrounded by love I would sleep
in perfect contentment, or so it would seem.
So I slumbered, perhaps I started to dream.
The sound wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t too near,
But I opened my eye when it tickled my ear.
Perhaps just a cough, I didn’t quite know,
Then the sure sound of footsteps outside in the snow.
My soul gave a tremble, I struggled to hear,
and I crept to the door just to see who was near.
Standing out in the cold and the dark of the night,
A lone figure stood, his face weary and tight.
A soldier, I puzzled, some twenty years old
Perhaps a Marine, huddled here in the cold.
Alone in the dark, he looked up and smiled,
Standing watch over me, and my wife and my child.
“What are you doing?” I asked without fear
“Come in this moment, it’s freezing out here!
Put down your pack, brush the snow from your sleeve,
You should be at home on a cold Christmas Eve!”
For barely a moment I saw his eyes shift,
away from the cold and the snow blown in drifts,
to the window that danced with a warm fire’s light
then he sighed and he said “It’s really all right,
I’m out here by choice. I’m here every night”
“Its my duty to stand at the front of the line,
that separates you from the darkest of times.
No one had to ask or beg or implore me,
I’m proud to stand here like my fathers before me.
My Gramps died at ‘Pearl on a day in December,”
then he sighed, “That’s a Christmas ‘Gram always remembers.”
My dad stood his watch in the jungles of ‘Nam
And now it is my turn and so, here I am.
I’ve not seen my own son in more than a while,
But my wife sends me pictures, he’s sure got her smile.
Then he bent and he carefully pulled from his bag,
The red white and blue… an American flag.
“I can live through the cold and the being alone,
Away from my family, my house and my home,
I can stand at my post through the rain and the sleet,
I can sleep in a foxhole with little to eat,
I can carry the weight of killing another
or lay down my life with my sisters and brothers
who stand at the front against any and all,
to insure for all time that this flag will not fall.”
“So go back inside,” he said, “harbor no fright
Your family is waiting and I’ll be all right.”
“But isn’t there something I can do, at the least,
“Give you money,” I asked, “or prepare you a feast?
It seems all too little for all that you’ve done,
For being away from your wife and your son.”
Then his eye welled a tear that held no regret,
“Just tell us you love us, and never forget
To fight for our rights back at home while we’re gone.
To stand your own watch, no matter how long.
For when we come home, either standing or dead,
to know you remember we fought and we bled
is payment enough, and with that we will trust.
That we mattered to you as you mattered to us.”

When I get super busy, the first thing to go is the Xbox 360; the second is this blog. That explains my relative silence. I’m trying to finish up a large project at work before the end of the year; last week I was in Seattle and Toronto, plus we had a major power outage in Redmond that slowed my progress down considerably.

Plus, let’s not forget, it’s the Christmas season! That means lots of evening time spent wrapping, shopping, going to chorus concerts, and so on. I have a couple of book reviews to post, but I probably won’t get to them for a few days. In the meantime, Merry Christmas to all!

Last year, I made a bet with some folks over at Ed’s blog:

@5: I’ll take that bet, Bill. I’ve got $20 that says MS will only ship 64-bit production versions of E12 (although they will probably ship test / demo versions that run on 32-bit hardware). If I’m right, you pay Habitat for Humanity in New Orleans $20; if you’re right, I’ll pay the $20 to a charity of your choice. In fact, I’ll take up to 5 identical bets. Ante up!

Today Microsoft released Exchange 2007 to manufacturing, which I’d say counts as “shipping” it. As I predicted last year, they’re only shipping 64-bit versions; there will be a limited-use 32-bit version that is not licensed for use in production, but MS hasn’t announced how or when they’ll make it available. By my lights, that means that Ed, Mike Lazar, and Bill Buchan each owe the New Orleans chapter of Habitat for Humanity $20.

Wow, so much to write about and so little time to do it in! I’ll be blogging less than usual for the next week or so. This is mostly due to the fact that I have a large project due by month’s end that I don’t want to slip, combined with the happy news that my new upstairs office is ready for me to move in. First, though, my existing office needs a good Thompson Deep Clean, which will take time in itself. Not to mention that my birthday gifts included both Viva Piñata and Gears of War, both of which could suck up a huge amount of free time. Then there are the basement ceiling panels I have to put up once I move out… and the Ohio State-Michigan game on Saturday… and so on. Thus, don’t look for a huge volume of posts here for the next little while.

I’ve made some long-overdue changes to the blog layout and categorization. You may or may not have noticed, but:

• the categories are now streamlined to better reflect what’s actually in them
• the Google ads from the right sidebar are now gone, since they were basically just an annoyance
• the RSS syndication info in the “about” block of the right sidebar now works
• the monthly archives are gone, replaced by a list of category archives

I still have a number of other things to tweak, but this is a good start.

It’s been a tough two or three weeks here, at least for computer hardware.

First, I flattened my trusty ThinkPad. Ryan Femling, my coworker, says you can easily go two or more years without performance problems on a stable Windows install. He’s right; I got just over three years out of the install, but for some reason, the machine had decided that it would permanently disable both its wireless card and its onboard Ethernet port. That made it, if not useless, much less useful. There wasn’t anything wrong with the hardware; some combination of Windows patches and software installs/removals apparently whacked the driver. A clean install using IBM’s recovery partition certainly fixed things up.

The next weekend, I came back from Michigan to find my only x64 machine (an Athlon 3800+ in an ASUS A8N) was beeping every two or three seconds. All the fans spin up normally, but the machine just sits there and won’t POST. I haven’t started diagnosing it yet.

Two nights ago, our electrician was here doing some work. He had to take down house power, so I cleanly shut down all my servers. When the power came back on, my primary file server wouldn’t boot. After a little troubleshooting, I found that the video card was at fault; after I removed, cleaned, and reseated it, I was back in business. Coincidentally, Windows maven Ed Bott had the same problem two weeks ago, and his post is what reminded me to check the video card first, so I’m passing the tip on.

And another thing, which I originally forgot: I lost a 16-port network switch early Wednesday morning. It was making a cool frying-bacon sound when I came downstairs; this is annoying since it’s the link to the ground floor of the house. Until I replace it, no Internet in Arlene’s workroom.

Thanks to Technorati, I just found that Walter Glenn has a blog; with characteristic modesty, he hasn’t been plugging it anywhere, so I found it through searching for links to my own blog! Walter and I first worked together on an MCSE guide for Exchange 5.5 back in 1998 or so. He’s a great guy and knows a ton about Windows and Exchange. His blog is focused on simple tips for making Windows easier to use– check it out.

Arlene and I got our free iPod nano units from KeyBank’s promotion today. I was expecting a 1GB unit because that’s what the ad promised. Instead, though, they shipped me one of the brand new (as in, introduced two weeks ago) aluminum 2GB models. I’m delighted! That’s way nicer than I expected. Now, if I can just get Key to send me that debit card I asked for…

On Friday, I posted that I was starting to experiment with Naturally Speaking. The results are in: here’s my first post written using NS.

Continue reading →

I just bought Dragon Naturally Speaking and was eager to try it, then I had second thoughts: what if it doesn’t work well with Office 2007? I installed it anyway. Unfortunately, despite what Marc says, in my initial tests performance was quite poor. This may be because I was running it in Parallels on my MacBook Pro. However, other people seem to be pleased with its performance in Parallels. I’m going to try it on the Thinkpad tonight and see if it’s any better. If not, back to Amazon it goes.