Category: Catchall

Dear Parent-Spammers, Sibling-Spammers, Friend-Spammers, etc.,

If you really loved me, you wouldn’t have every e-mail message on auto-forward.  Instead, you’d evaluate the content of the message, maybe check out its claims, and discard the crap.  To wit:

1. There is no spider lurking under toilet seats that will bite your rump.
   
2. That isn’t a computer from 1954.  It’s an entry in a Photoshop contest.
   
3. Mars was closest to Earth in 2003.  That was two years ago.
   
4. Starbucks says they love our troops too, and I need caffeine, so I’m still stopping there.
   
5. Everyone’s kidneys are safe.

You can check any of these out at www.snopes.com.  Please do so.

Additionally:

1. I know it says it’s from your bank, but it’s not from your bank.  Trust me, delete it.
   
2. Don’t open the screensaver.  Ever.
   
3. Microsoft does not send updates via e-mail.  Never have.
   
4. If I don’t personally deliver it on a CD, you shouldn’t install it.  If you do install it, and weird stuff starts happening in the middle of the night, don’t call me.  I’ll hang up on you.  You have been forewarned.
   
5. You are far from the first person to send that to me.
   
6. I have two dogs.  They are cute.  I do not need any more photos of cute dogs, especially ones whom I do not even know.  I especially do not need several megabytes of photos and/or video in a single e-mail message.
   
7. No one from any third world country has any amount of money for you.
   
8. You can’t get off their mailing list, and asking them to take you off only makes it worse.
   
9. You, and 50 million others, have been specially selected only because they have your e-mail address.  It’s not real, just delete it.

So please, before you mash that Forward button, think about what you’re about to do.

rich

Your IQ Is 115

Your Logical Intelligence is Above Average Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Above Average Your General Knowledge is Exceptional

Ken LeFebvre, our Evangelist/Champion of some flavor, is dust in the wind again.  Today is his final event in Bethlehem, PA.  Ken was the guy who originally sowed the seed of BADNUG, and helped get us pointed in the right directions at the very beginning.  I know we’ll miss you, Ken.  Now that you have some free time, how about presenting at BADNUG?  We are right on the way to Ohio…

Last night was probably the worst Buffet show I’ve ever seen (this made 7 or 8 for me).  To start with, it took over an hour just to get through the gates at PNC Park (arguably the best stadium for baseball).  A spokeswman was quoted in an article in today’s Post Gazette saying the crowd thronged the entrances just before the show.  I’m not sure where this woman was between 4 and 6, but that crowd was huge long before “just before the show”, and PNC’s pathetic crowd moving ability was partly to blame.  All the tickes were printed saying enter at the home plate entrance, and PNC made absolutely no effort to indicate the left field gates were open.  Next year, go back to Starlake (our outdoor amphitheater, similar to Blossom or Ravinia, although much larger than Ravinia), who can actually move a crowd.  Numerically, the show was a sell-out, but there were a lot of tickets for sale before the show.  Because of the way the stage was placed in the park, none of the far outfield seats were sold.  Even though there were seats on the field, the total crowd in attendance shouldn’t have been siginficanly more than a sell out Pirates game, and PNC should have been able to move the crowd better.

Speaking of stage placement, Jimmy was some 400 feet or so from where we were, and looked like a little green bug.  The video monitors were delayed, so the show looked like a bad Godzilla overdub on those.  $100 tickets were way too overpriced to watch a little green bug, or a big head out of sync with the band.  There’s no lawn mojo in cramped stadium seat rows, so dancing with the wifeys was just about out of the question.

Finally, why does a guy who has over 20 albums need to make half the second set covers of other songs?  We could have done without an OK cover of a lousy James Taylor song that was the inspiriation for your worst book.  Part of the second act was so slow that the best part was watching the River Patrol move all the boats away from the Clemente Bridge so the after-concert fireworks could be launched safely.

Jimmy, go back to Starlake and play your own music.

100 years ago today, the movie theater was born.  The first modern movie theater opened this day in 1905 on Smithfied St. in Pittsburgh, entertaining thousands (96 at a time) for a nickel.  You can read more about it at http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05170/522854.stm.

Another Pittsburgh movie tradition is coming back this week also.  George Romero’s Land of the Dead opens this week, premiering Wednesday in downtown Pittsburgh.  Romero’s first movie, the original Night of the Living Dead, was filmed in a cemetary and farm in Evans City, just a little south of where I live, and premiered in downtown Pittsburgh.

My new ASP Alliance article has been published:

Codesnip: Redirecting a User to a Specific Page with Forms Authentication

In most cases, when using Forms Authentication, redirecting a user to their originally requested page, or default.aspx, is the desired action. However, there may be times where you want to redirect a user to a specific page based on role membership, or to enforce a password change, or for some other reason. This codesnip will show you how to do so.

Examples are for both ASP.NET 1.1 and 2.0.  Read it at http://aspalliance.com/684.

Microsoft Learning has extended its Second Chance program, where you get to retake an exam if you don’t pass it the first time.  There is some qualification and you need to register for the second shot before you take the exam the first time.  Find out more at http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/offers/2ndshot/.  Better hurry–the offer is only good until Aug 31!

As long as you’re taking the exams, get your Microsoft Discount Exam Voucher and Practice Exam Bundle.  The voucher is $106 from Amazon, saving you $19 on the test itself, plus you get a free practice exam.  The vouchers are only good at Pearson VUE centers, so make sure you’re near one before buying the voucher.

Best of luck on your exams!

From SearchEngineWatch:

Want to meet local bloggers in your area? A new service from Blogdigger pinpoints bloggers by their physical location in the United States, with coverage soon to be extended to cities throughout the world.

…

Like other local search services, Blogdigger queries have two parts: your search terms, and a location, which you enter as a city/state combination or by using a zip code. Search results are sorted by relevance, with probable hits found within a 20 mile radius of the city or zip code you specify in your query. You can change the distance to 5, 10 or 100 miles, and also re-sort the results by date rather than relevance.

A sidebar shows a map of the city with a list of other blogs operating from that area. If you enter a city name or zip code with no other search terms, your results will show all blog postings associated with that area.

Pretty cool, but searching for several terms related to development in my ZIP code failed to find either myself or Eric Kepes (who lives about 20 miles away).  So I added my feed to Blogdigger at http://www.blogdigger.com/add.jsp, and added the GeoURL headers to my blog also.

We’re all familiar with MS’s “marketecture”, and its coopting of whatever buzzwords are hot in the newspapers at the time of announcement into strange acronyms.  Generation X gave us “ActiveX”, the Human Genome Project gave us “Windows DNA” (WTF?), and the Internet gave us, well, Dot Net.  MS is also famous for its creative names for everyday items.  For the beginner, here’s an introduction to Microsoft speak, as deciphered by an outsider:

Microsoft Term	Real Life Translation
Guide	Book
Resource Kit	Big book with a CD
Book	Guide published by someone else
Software Development Kit	Guide, downloadable as CHM file only
Help file	Confusion
Code Sample	Don’t do it this way, but here’s some code to make you happy, unless you program in the other language
Demonstration	Useful information in between technical difficulties
Level 100	Lots o’ Powerpoint Slides
Level 200	Less slides, some code samples (see above)
Level 300	Fewer slides, some code samples, and some demos (see above)
Level 400	One slide for the cover, and one slide to introduce 60 minutes of code samples and demonstrations

I am seriously of the opinion that Microsoft’s marketing group stands much bigger in the marketing world than MS’s programmers do in the programming world.