Who knows windows development better than Charles Petzold? And and he thinks Windows Forms are definitely going to be around for a long time – even if there are some big gaps in the WPF version.
Charles’ post refers to Tim Sneath’s excellent post on the same topic.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Maybe just cause I’m a dope and reallllllly stubborn. [Read more …]
[A DevLife post]
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
After the long awaited beauiful dump of snow this weekend and then enjoying the great skiing in the woods, it was time to get some use from our weekday season pass at Mad River Glen yesterday. Another glorious blue sky day.
Most of these are from the chair lift as I was too busy skiing to take pictures.
Rich and I went in the afternoon and headed right to the single which would take us up to the tippy top.
This might be the oldest running chairlift in the country. It was christened in 1949 and is a landmark and a treasure of Vermont ski history. It’s the same chair I got stuck in for 2 1/2 hours a few winters ago, but they have done lots of great work on it since then.
We were excited to see some beautiful tracks in the snow below. Granted this photo is of a section of trail that was closed off so yes, it had some nice powder.
The higher you get the better the views are! You have to be willing to swivel around in that little chair though, to see them. First you start seeing awesome views of the Green Mountains behind you but then the White Mountains, further off in NH appear. The view is way better than this photo whenyou get to the top, but I had put my camera away by then.
I took this picture just for Chris Kinsman. The green blob is part of the chair. The rest is a big huge vertical rock with water ice on it. Notice all of the ski tracks going over it. This is why the slogan for Mad River is “ski it if you can”.
This is typical too at Mad River. And don’t think this is all powder. We were surprised to discover that all the new pow had been skiid off over the weekend and the whole place was just icey! We didn’t mind though. We hoped it meant awesome ticket sales for Mad River. They needed it after this dreadful season.
At the very top of the single, a great reward on a clear day – a view of the Adirondacks to the west.
This is something I have always wanted to take a picture of. The top of the chairlift is a winter wonderland after it snows.
A few more. Rich loves skiing in the trees and on this day that’s where all the snow was. I have had my magic moments of just going with the flow in the trees but mostly I just get too scared and just slide stop turn slide stop turn. Oh well. It’ somethng I need to do many times during the ski season to get my confidence back. But this was the first time I had been in the trees in over a year.
Here’s Rich taking off his boots before we headed home. The base lodge at Mad River is old-fashioned, very homey and loved by all.
When I download pictures from my digital camera they are huge. I have to open them up one at a time in PSP and shrink them. The other day, after years of doing this stupid method, Ihad a great idea. I emailed all of the pictures to myself. When outlook asks “do you want to mail them as their original size or shrink them”, I choose the “shrink ’em” option. Then I have an email with all of the attachments of the new small sizes. I don’t even have to mail them. I can just copy them from the attachment input box in the email and paste them into a folder on my computer. Sweet. Stupid to have to do it this way though. I will have to go look on my Vista box to see if there is a nice function already built in to do that.
Update:Etienne Tremblay reminded me of the Microsoft PowerToys page that has the perfect utility – ImageResizer. There are a ton of awesome powertoys.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
I am ordering vitamins online for my dogs at Puritan’s Pride.
They have a buy one get one free deal.
When you get to the shopping cart and you have selected one item, it suggests to Buy 2 Get 3 Free. If ou change your quantity to 2, then it suggests “Buy 3 Get 4 Free”. So I kept going to see where this would max out.. I ordered 3 and it suggested “Buy 4 Get 6 Free”. 4 then said “Buy 5 Get 7 Free”. I kept going up to 20, where it was now telling me “Buy 21 Get 31 Free”. I then tried 40, it kept suggesting more. I don’t eally need 102 bottles of B-50, but it was fun little distraction.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
In December I bought a pair of new flat panel monitors. I had no idea the journey I would have to take in order to replace my KVM switch functionality which is simple and inexpensive with VGA monitors. [Read more …]
[A DevLife post]
Vermont’s statewide town meetings are happening tomorrow. This is a day long event where residents of Vermont’s towns discuss and then vote on budgets and any local elections.It’s a really cool process and a great way to engage everyone in the future of their town. Here’s some info on it from the state of vermont website.
In Huntington, there is a race for the town clerk and town treasurer. There is one woman who has held both jobs for a number of years. There are two people who are challenging her, one for clerk and a different one for treasurer. Because it is so local, to me it’s pretty personal. I am friendly with all of the candidates. I am surprised to see placards for one side or the other on people’s lawns because it is so personal and a slap in the face. I don’t care if George Bush knows that I don’t vote for him. I don’t attend the same parties that he does. Rich and I didn’t wait at his house for the ambulance when Rich cracked his head open on Camel’s Hump. I won’t see him at the pancake breakfast or spaghetti dinner.
One of my neighbors has been calling me every few days but not leaving messages. I can see this from the caller id history on my phone. I know this means that they are trying to call me to tell me who I should vote for. I already got a few of these phone calls. A woman I know and like a lot who is campaiging on behalf of one side left a 5 minute message on my answering machine. Someone I didn’t know called last night who was a little more subtle – encouraging me to vote and then telling me that she supports a particular candidate and hopes I do to.
Am I turning into a curmudgeon? I dunno. But it’s definitely aggravating me enough to write about it!
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Oh I hate to say this but it’s true. When picking up my neice last weekend, her mother and I decided to meet halfway and find a Friendly’s which would be amenable to all the kids. So I used Windows Live Local to drill into the general area and then show me all the Friendly’s. There was one right in the town we were focused on. Perfect. Then I asked Windows Live Local to map it for me and give me directions. We followed the directions and ended up on the wrong side of town in a totally residential area. Rich and I drove back towards the comnercial area and just asked someone for directions. I had sent my niece the link to those same directions, so they got pretty lost as well but finally found their way.
I tried to have it locate a few other businesses that I saw when I went to the real Friendly’s, but WLL puts them all in that same person’s back yard.
For comparison, MapQuest couldn’t find the Friendly’s in West Lebanon, NH though it gives me about ten others in NH and VT. But when I typed in Friendlys (without the apostrophe), it got me there correctly. Google got it right.
To be fair, I went back to WLL and just typed in Friendly, but again, landed in the person’s back yard.
I really like the interface of Windows Live Local. Truly I do. It’s very cool, how the directions pop up and you can actually go step by step on the map even. But this next step of mapping software – the sophistication of typing in a business name and expecting perfect directions (whether from Google, MapQuest or Microsoft) is just not quite there yet. I just don’t want to get lost.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org