Archive for May, 2005

Yesterday was actually a nice sunny day in St. John’s, Newfoundland. After nearly 3-4 weeks of extremely heavy fog and rain…we had sun.

Shane and I went to our fave fishing spot for a few hours after work. It was heavenly! Never caught anything mind you but I really didn’t even mind. It was just great to get away from the real world for a few hours and watch the sun go down at what has come to be one of our favorite spots on the Avalon. If I didn’t have to be at airport at 5am we probably would have stayed longer.

I’ll try and post some pics when I get home.

Found this gem over on Jeff Sandquist’s weblog. It’s a new portal initiative called Bitman’s Place that is targetted at exposing children / youth to the fundamentals of technology. A great starting ground for those budding little techies we all know and love. I can’t wait to show it to my niece.

Jeff has included a url that allows you to join up. Great stuff guys – way to keep things interesting for everyone!

http://www.bitmansplace.com/Login.aspx?ReturnUrl=/&Invitation=NTV8NzMyMDg1ODUzfGJ0V05XSWpSU2NabjdRSEM3WEg5VzNubTRvUT18SXZhbnwy

OK so he hates it when I draw attention to it…but surely after the 7+ years we have been together he should really know better.

Happy Birthday to the only guy cool enough to share a birthday with Bob Dylan…oh yah and that of a former queen too I guess. That one gets us a long weekend each year so we can’t forget about it.

Looking for more teasers for the new Xbox 360 – Microsoft has a pile of videos available for download here. The files are rather large so it may take a while if you are on a slower connection.

The minimum requirements for viewing high-definition (720p) videos are: Microsoft Windows XP, Windows Media Player 9 Series, a 2.4 GHz processor or equivalent, 384 MB of RAM, a 64 MB video card, 1024×768 screen resolution, and a 16-bit sound card with attached speakers. For more information and to test your system compatibility, visit www.wmvhd.com.

Thanks to Chris Lanier for link.

It was only a matter of time before we started to see how the two systems stack up against each other. Major Nelson has a comparison on his weblog of the 2 systems in a 4 Part series.

Read it here.

Also see his weblog for some other great E3 coverage including blogcasts & photos.

Note that you can also see a comparsion done by IGN on their site.

My niece Samantha is turning 13 today. I am amazed at how she has grown up over the past few years. Not only is she an awesome big sis to her brother Arnold (no other can make him laugh the way she does) but she is a pretty awesome gal overall.

I am quite proud that everyone calls her my own personal “mini-me”. Happy Birthday buddy!!

Thanks to Shane for my kickin new Xbox 360 skin. I knew it wouldn’t take him long to start rolling with the SharePoint posts.

Xbox 360 is now a reality. Sign up for updates and watch for content at www.xbox360.com.

Wow! Last week I had the strange experience of blushing while reading a post on one of my fave blogs. Julie Lerman said that I was her nomination for a Team99 candidate. Team99 is an initiative being set up by Robert’s team for Longhorn. Again let me say WOW. Coming from someone as active in the community as Julie is – I was extremely touched.

So this is the point where I am supposed to act cool and say something to the effect of “Pfft as if I’d agree to do something like that” or perhaps “I MIGHT consider doing it against my own will…but only because I want to prove yadda yadda”. Yep I suppose that would be the cool way to respond…

Well this is where the real me comes out. Frankly I have no problem admitting that I would absolutely love to be selected for such a group. Why? Well there are 100 reasons but they all essentially come back to the fact that I have passion for the technology. I choose to evangelize Microsoft products because I believe in them. But the fact that I am passionate also means that I want more and I won’t ever settle for status quo.

I want better features and improved usability in all the tools I use. I want to eliminate ineffective processes and the duplication of efforts throughout organizations. I want people to focus on what they are good at doing and simply use the tools in a manner that is as natural as breathing. Believe me I have a list of SharePoint features I want to see in the next versions a mile long. Same with Windows…same with Xbox (not far now woot) and so on.

Having passion for a particular technology does not mean that you are blind to ways it needs to improve. It just means that you share the vision. You can see what the potential really is and you are happy to help others see it as well.

Just call me a Natural Born Evangelist.

The excitement is really starting to build over the Xbox 360 reveal taking place this week in LA. MSN has pics of some of the glam people that attended one of taped events. I know you are probably wondering why you didn’t see my pic there. I guess my invite got lost in the mail.

Also for us Canucks there is a contest on CTV as part of the countdown. Basically once a day you receive a text message with a question. For each answer you send back, you receive a ballot for a draw for a Samsung Digital TV or MP3 player. A reasonable award for having to stay up till 2am to watch the freaking launch I guess. I’ll be travelling so I’ll be wide awake anyhow I am sure.

And of course there are tonnes of stories on the leaked specs and pics that have made their way to the Net. All and all should be an exciting couple of months leading up to Christmas. Stay tuned…

Only a few days left to get your tests completed for round 1 of the Last Developer Standing contest. So far everyone I have talked to regarding this contest is loving it. And as someone who works with a user group that has every level of skill from total beginner to guru – I love that this contest offers a little something for each of them.

For the beginners – this contest offers great free training with a chance to win one of the awesome instant prizes. For the gurus – this is an amazing opportunity to show the Nation (or world for that matter) that you have the skills. Oh yah plus the chance to win $25,000.

Adam Gallant is posting up a storm over on his weblog with tips and tricks for developers that have entered the contest – or maybe are just starting to get their feet wet with .NET.

Adam has also had a great series of posts on Team System lately as well. Great to see him blogging so much these days. Can’t wait to Screech him in on his next visit to the Rock – been a long time coming!

Let’s face it, there have been more rumors going about on the next gen Xbox system that most of us can stomach. The hardest thing about rumors is they usually have no basis of fact and create all kinds of panic amongst those that can’t tell the difference between truth and speculation…can you say “hard drive” and “backwards compatibility”?

All that aside, things are really starting to heat up in anticipation of May 12th when the folks from Xbox will be unveiling the real thing. Finally something other than “I can neither confirm nor deny blah blah blah”.

But for those of you still looking for early sneak peaks that have been neither confirmed or denied – you may want to check out IGN’s compilation. I suspect that this FAQ list will be one to watch over next few weeks.

Happy Anniversary to my friend John Porcaro on his 15 years at Microsoft. Very impressive! I can’t imagine what an exciting ride it must have been. But I am sure there will be lots of great things to come as well (*cough* May 12th *cough*).

John’s an awesome representation of the type of people that make Microsoft great. He goes out of his way to reach out and help customers and is very passionate about what he does. All the stuff that makes a difference in this crazy world we live in. Congrads John!

Been slow blogging period for me. Like I said in one of my last posts, I have been writing up a storm at work so I haven’t been feeling must like writing for the rest of the time.

One of my fave posts from this week came from Jeff Key who posted a simple but very useful tip on avoiding having your SharePoint documents (or any web based location) open in the browser. I ran into this previously on a project working with many CAD files and I couldn’t remember how to do it. So for anyone else having that problem – please check out Jeff’s post.

Wow! After months and months of nagging – it happened. Shane has finally started blogging. Mind you he has had many websites over the years that in my opinion served to be exactly what blogs are today but that is another story.

Shane is a graphics / css guru and has been doing web design & development for over 10 years. He’s won a tonne of design awards over the years and has recently taken a liking to SharePoint. Who can blame him right? So expect to learn a thing or two about SharePoint customization from his blog.

He is the guy who designed our corporate site which happens to be a SharePoint site. As well he did the site for our .NET User Group which is also SharePoint. He also put a great deal of effort into SharePoint Nation which is the user group site we will be launching VERY VERY soon. But I am guessing once he starts in with his blog you will get to see lots of his stuff. In fact I give him a few days and he will have that MovableType stylesheet demolished.

So please welcome yet another SharePoint blogger to the family. Shane will also be at Tech Ed this year too so for those of you meeting up with us for the SharePoint gathering, we will see you there!