Archives December 2008

In the season of the Holidays, I was tonight’s Table Topics Master at the Woodridge Toastmasters and was slated to come up with some “Quotes” from the holidays, so those contained below are the quotes which were spoke about “impromptu” this evening.

(My sources for these quotes were a random series of google queries :))

• People are so worried about what they eat between Christmas and the New Year, but they really should be worried about what they eat between the New Year and Christmas.  ~Author Unknown

• He who breaks a resolution is a weakling;
  He who makes one is a fool.
  ~F.M. Knowles

• We spend January 1 walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched.  Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives… not looking for flaws, but for potential.  ~Ellen Goodman

• Expecting the world to treat you fairly
  because you are a good person
  is a little like expecting the bull not to attack you
  because you are a vegetarian.
  -DENNIS WHOLEY:

• “I once wanted to become an atheist, but I gave up – they have no holidays.” -Henry Youngman

• “Christmas is the season when you buy this year’s gifts with next year’s money.” –Unknown

• “There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.” –Erma Bombeck

• “The Supreme Court has ruled that they cannot have a nativity scene in Washington, D.C. This wasn’t for any religious reasons. They couldn’t find three wise men and a virgin.” –Jay Leno

• This is not a time for resolutions but for setting of goals.   What is a goal you plan to set for yourself, Personally or Professionally

• Christmas is a time when kids tell Santa what they want and adults pay for it.  Deficits are when adults tell the government what they want and their kids pay for it.  ~Richard Lamm

• Oh look, yet another Christmas TV special!  How touching to have the meaning of Christmas brought to us by cola, fast food, and beer…. Who’d have ever guessed that product consumption, popular entertainment, and spirituality would mix so harmoniously?  ~Bill Watterson, Calvin & Hobbes

So, think about these and how would you respond if you’ve been put on the spot to talk (somehow) about these subjects if you were given this quote and were asked to talk about it for 1-2 minutes

Those of you who have already entered into This is the spirit of giving! Get your Vista on-! Free Giveaways! that is great! If you haven’t entered yet, go post your comment, tweet, digg or whatever for your chance to win those two books and a copy of Vista Ultimate!

The holidays are not over yet! There will be some more prizes for the winning over the next week or so, including: Another copy of Vista (32bit only), a Zune and who knows what else I have in store (Seriously, I don’t even know yet!) (Oh, and a copy of Norton 360) and whatnot!

So, go get your prize on! Comment (Here, there or everywhere) and lets make the running for these prizes a decent one! I’ll stop giving away if I don’t get any interest?!

Oh, who wants some Windows Server 2003 Enterprise 25user Cal! (I still have a bunch of those! :)) (And may have some Microsoft Exam vouchers to give away soon!)

Happy Holidays!

@cxi

Totally hijacked from Dave Bost @ The Mind of a Developer Evangelist

On December 12th, the Microsoft Evangelist team on the West Coast is hosting a (virtual) Windows FireStarter event. This is a great chance for developers to learn “straight from the horses mouth” (so to speak) guidance, best practices and tips&tricks for building applications on top of the Windows platform.

They are holding this FireStarter event *LIVE!* in Redmond, but they are also streaming it live online to the rest of the world.

This would be a great opportunity to secure a conference room for the day, post the agenda around your office, and join us live on December 12th. I’ll see if we can also open up an IRC channel or something to carry the communication online during the sessions.

Be sure to register for online participation or if you can happen to be in Redmond on the 12th, you can participate in-person. Seats are limited!

Agenda: (all times are PST)

8:30 – 8:45, Kick off, Mithun Dhar

8:45 – 9:30, Keynote/Why Vista!, Chris Henley

9:30 – 10:45, The Case of the Unexplained, Mark Russinovich

11:00 – 12:15, Building Differentiated UI Applications Using Composite WPF, Glenn Block, Bob Brumfield & David Hill

1:00 – 2:00, Best Practices for Developing for Windows for Windows Standard User, Crispin Cowan

2:00 – 3:00, Windows Security and Bitlocker, Byron Hynes

3:15 – 4:00, (Windows 7 + Windows Server 2008 R2) Teaser Session, Byron Hynes

4:00 – 5:00, Windows for everyone!

I highly encourage you check this out if any of this applies to you, especially Windows 7, Server 2008, Mark Russinovich, AppDev, Security.. any of it!

Also, be sure to check out Dave’s Blog and the Thirsty Developer, by far one of the most consumable podcasts (which just happens to be about development and architecture!)

If you’re one of those folks who likes to bleed themselves, or just stay on the bleeding edge.  You ought to check out TweetDeck v0.20.6b But this more than just this specific update, it is about TweetDeck in general, a guide of its use and also where to pull regular Releases as well as Beta Interim Updates.

For the unfamiliar, TweetDeck is a GUI Interface to manage your Twitter “tweets”.

There are a number of benefits that the client provides over using the web to access Twitter.

This little icon brings up your Tweet window, to allow you to tweet messages.

This little drop down under “Shorten” allows you to choose your favorite web shortener in order to shrink your URL’s.   If you happen to tweet a lot of content in your 140 characters, you may wan to choose something smaller, such as “zi.ma” or “is.gd” as opposed to “tinyurl” which tends to eat up a majority of your characters!

Also this little gem lets you post/upload a picture to TwitPic and have it tweet it for you right there!

This next little item helps you manage your conversations as you see them on Twitter!

What you can do then is click on the “+” on a user and add them to one of your groups!

In all, it’s really that simple to manage out your users, groups and beyond!

Though if it starts to get unbearable in your groups, you can filter with

And that  covers the bulk of it! Enough to get you started and rolling with TweetDeck, Twitter and managing your users and self so you can have a reasonable experience as you grow!

Feel free to follow me if you’re not already on twitter @CXI

Aww yea! Thanks Duncan!

I think it goes without saying, that you need to check this out! (In a stolen verbatim fashion!)

I just noticed that you can also use the coupon code “CyberMondayDeal” to buy VMware Workstation. Using the code today, and today only, will give you 25% reduction. In other words pick up VMware Workstation 6.5.1 for $141.75.

And still a few hours left on this deal, so be sure to either pick up Fusion and/or Workstation while you still can.

Thanks to everyone using these links! My kids can have a decent dinner again