Daily Archives: November 4, 2005

Task Manager – Can’t Close it?

Just Rambling

Have you ever accidentally double clicked on the task manager and lost all means of closing it? I did this the other day and could not for the life of me figure out what had happened to it and where the control bar went and what to do to make it go away! Somehow, I managed to double click on it again in my frustration and realized what was going on.

As far as I can tell, it is impossible to close the task manager once you have done this. But really all you need to do is double click on it again and the control bar comes back and all is normal again.

I can’t understand why this would be a “feature”. It’s awfully confusing.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Another view of South Africa

Travel

Very coincidentally, there is an art exhibit by Vermont artist, Sally Linder, from her visit to South Africa in 2002 that is on display through the end of this week. I read about it in Seven Days and  went to see it a few days ago. We passed by some of the tin house shantytowns at 60+ miles per hour as we went from the bustle of the airport to the fantasy of Sun City (with it’s not so fantastic past). Sally Linder went to South Africa and straight to the shanty towns as part of the Ark of Hope project. She visited the well-known Soweto and two other towns, Zandspruit and Diepsloot where she met and painted portraits of the residents and their life there. Although I am very excited by the potential of what I saw at TechEd, what she shares in her paintings and words reflecting her experience there is a reminder of how far there is to go. My hope is that the impact of the developer community in South Africa benefits all of South Africa’s citizens and this only builds on my desire to work more closely with the SA Developer community, which began while I was there.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Conferences and my social life

Connections

One of the things that I am looking forward to at DevConnections in Las Vegas (besides the conference, besides the sessions and besides to my return to Coral Reef where I Kathleen Dollard and I ate 3 nights in a row last year…) is seeing my friends that I only see from one conference to the next. Although I’ll definitely miss Alex Homer and Dave Sussman (and didn’t see them in October as i didn’t go to the MVP Summit), there is a whole host of friends and people who I admire and really enjoy a chance to chat with, who are speaking at Connections (too many to list) that really make these events extra special. Take a look at the speaker list for VSConnections, ASPConnections, SQLConnections and the special 20th anniv C++ Connections (which is bringing together the C++ elite – many academics as well as practioners).

This is of course only enhanced by all of the conference attendees as well. Last spring, I had a great time hanging out at the INETA booth in the exhibitors hall and helping people find user groups in their area or even encouraging them to start one! Getting a chance to “expand” on the sessions is also great – there is only so much you can cover in the time frame of the sessions – and it’s fun when people are interested in digging further into a particular area over lunch or a beer or just hanging out in the common area.

When it gets close to time to leave home, leave my beautiful little state, leave my pets and hubby behind, I start getting sad and wondering why I have chosen to do this. But as soon as I arrive at the conference hotel and am immersed in the buzz of so many people with the same passions as myself, there is no question as to why I am there.

One new entry to the Connections conference is Charles Petzold who is going to talk about ink as a new medium for developing applications. You should have seen Charles doing his tablet pc talk last winter at Windows Anywhere. It was a rare opportunity to actually watch him think as he demonstrated how one experiment led him to another and then another. I sure hope his talk is not scheduled at the same time as any of mine.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org