That King Charles Spaniel (English Toy Spaniel) itching and scratching isn't allergies
Jan 30, 2007
*** Update March 6th (+1 month after surgery): **It’s been about a month and Bambino is doing amazingly well. The first couple of weeks were very shaky, but in the last week, we’ve seen him remarkably improve. He’s gained back his interest in playing with toys, he’s regained his energy running around the house and he even jumped on the couch for the first time since before the surgery. The difficulty here is that while he may have his energy back, we still need to watch him and keep him confined for at least another four weeks.…more
Windows Developer Power Tools Book
Jan 26, 2007
Still catching up on old email, but I did want to post that Windows Developer Power Tools was published last Friday, congrats to Jim Holmes and James Avery on pulling together a great collection of tools (170+ and over 1,300 pages). I personally authored the Visual Studio Express Chapter so I guess I can consider myself a writer now, and frankly I’m in good company in the book with Rob Howard, Sara Ford, Adam Nathan, and many others contributing.…more
Personal Note to Joystiq: There is no Coding4Fun Wii60 Conspiracy
Dec 20, 2006
Some of you may have seen the recent Joystiq post “MS gift guide suggests Wii controller”, also linked to here and here quoted below. _Ever since Peter Moore made his famous statement ostensibly _[_encouraging people to buy a Nintendo Wii_](http://www.joystiq.com/2006/05/11/microsoft-befriends-nintendo-in-fight-vs-sony/)_, the _[_Wii60_](http://www.wii60.com/)_ ideal of Nintendo/Microsoft solidarity has become something of a phenomenon. The idea of the the two companies cooperating against Sony has persisted despite few public signs of any sort of alliance.…more
What Random Stuff do you have in your office?
Dec 14, 2006
After spending three years here, our team is moving from Building 42 to Building 17. I really liked Building 42, besides being more modern, the 42 dwellers seem to be much more in-touch. For example, Bldg 42 housed many well-known bloggers like Chris Anderson, Soma, Scott Guthrie, Don Box, among others, and I frankly don’t know any Buiding 17 bloggers (give a shout out if you see this). My only complaint about Building 42 was the damn COM+ lab with whom I’ve battled way too many times with contuously-beeping power surge hardware.…more
Sara Ford shows off the Scrolling LED Belt Buckle
Dec 13, 2006
Last week, Clint published the Coding4Fun Holiday Gift Guide 2006 and I spammed some internal Microsoft aliases that I thought would be interested in the list of presents. Long story short, it turns out that our own Sara Ford happens to be the proud owner of one of our picks for the top 10 presents for developers, the Scrolling LED Belt Buckle. Of course, I had to ask Sara to bring it in and show it off, so here’s Sara striking a Karate pose wearing the Scrolling LED Belt Buckle.…more
Successfully Installed Windows Vista Ultimate
Nov 16, 2006
As a dogfooder who tried Windows the Vista Beta, man has this product come a long way. Kudos to the Windows team for dramatically improving just about everything in the product. Here’s some key things to remember: Backup your files - Always good advice, but don’t forget to export your IE Favorites and your OPML blog roll from your favorite blog reader before starting. My PC: Dell XPS M170 (pre dual-core), 2GB RAM, 80 GB Hard drive.…more
MicroSpeak: Lightswitch Shift
Nov 02, 2006
Lightswitch Shift: A unit of measurement for how long your workday is, defined as at least 14 hours. The terminology comes from buildings in the Redmond campus which use energy saving features whereby office lights will automatically go off between 9pm and 7am. A lightswitch shift refers to an employee that started the work day before 7am and stays past 9pm because during that time employees must go outside their office and hit a main lightswitch to re-enable their office lights to turn on and stay on in increments of two hours.…more
The Hobbyist Renaissance at Microsoft
Aug 10, 2006
Updated to include Windows Home Server which is now public Updated list to include XNA Game Studio Express which is now public Updated list to include Flight Simulator X which is now public This post has been a long-time coming, and the thoughts have been germinating in my mind since 2003 that I thought I would write them down if nothing else to get this off my ever-growing to-do list.…more
Follow up stories - 2004, 2005, 2006
Jun 27, 2006
**July 2004 - **The Seattle Air Conditioning Lie - Another summer, another big increase in the number of blog hits for people searching on “Seattle Air Conditioning”. Yes, with high’s in the 80’s, Seattle is beautiful outdoors, but muggy as hell indoors. There are, of course, those that continue to perpetuate the myth (you know who you are, sweating in bed at night, miserable yet too proud to admit that you’re miserable).…more
I *Love* Maker Faire
May 01, 2006
Kudos to Dale Dougherty, Phil Torrone, Dan Woods, Sherri Huss, Katie Dougherty, Louise Glasgow, Bre Pettis and the rest of the O’Reilly team for a “phenomenal” Maker Faire. The total attendance was a whopping 20,000+!! That’s huge! The thing that really struck out at me was the sheer diversity of the attendees and their projects, from basket weaving to clothing-refashioning (Daryl Hannah) to robotics, to electronics to music and robo-art. To paraphrase Dale’s words, “all of these different activities are tied together by the inherent human need to create”.…more