The Acer got SP2’d when I cleaned it up to return to mhy client. I am going to install some of their custom software on it just to see how things go.

My Compaq EVO which I use solely for Whidbey work just got SP2’d and yes, Whidbey still opens up <g>

I have yet to do my Toshiba which is onthe last beta already although I’m a little more hesitant as I’m doingn some of my real development on this tablet.

Then of course is my real development box – my money maker. I’m just not emotionally ready to do it yet.

Last will be Rich’s computer, which is still on Win2000 because we have to go buy a new scanner first (that hpscanjet 5 won’t work on winxp)

I first spotted it via Ali’s blog. Looked at the picture – it’s pretty pretty pretty and my first question was – so is it a tablet? Sure looks like one. Especially considering there is no keyboard in the pretty picture. But alas. It’s just a pretty computer. Evan Feldman totally cracked me up in his post about it.

Though I have to say the dvd drive is pretty cool! I currently don’t have a dvd drive on my Toshiba tablet because it doesn’t come as part of the package that I got.

The funny thing is they market it like a big ipod. All the chatter on the page is about storing music and watching movies and surfing the web. Nothing about using applications.

Very odd. But very stylish, indeed.

It was a drag to have to draw a hot spot and create a hyperlink on each and every state. But now it’s done. My sister is very happy, as her website now has an interactive map to find stores that sell her product. There are over 750 stores, most in the u.s. so this makes it a little easier! Not bad for a 2 1/2 year old company. Yeah, Jill.

Here’s the website: www.katiesbumpers.com, which is mostly done in Frontpage with some asp and also some web service interaction with her stores database and an asp.net application that lives elsewhere.

I am really looking forward to getting the WSE 1.0 stuff in one of my production apps moved up to WSE 2.0 so I don’t have to deal with the problem caused by the difference in time on client and server boxes.

Here is a link with the info on this contest.

I had to do a little decision making in the last few weeks as I started focusing on my little app. I am just not satisfied with it yet, so I had to bag it for a while again

Winning $100,000  :    +$100,000! (and believe me, that would be like a dream!)

Completing my commitments to clients, conference organizers and publishers: Priceless

I sent out an email to my vtdotnet list this morning – about 250 people.

I have received “back” a copy of the email about 30 times — from me and to me — with this message on the bottom

You *all* know what this is about. Having to answer any computer related question no matter how far it is from what we really do for a living. “My computer is slowing down, should I reformat the hard drive?”, “popups popups everywhere!”, “I just deleted *all* of the pictures from your sister’s wedding. What do I do?”

One solution I had thought of was to partner with another geek and trade family tech support – so when your father calls and he’s mad at his computer, you won’t take it personally.

Leon Bambrick (SecretGeek) and Scott Hanselman have a much better, pro-active idea. Which is to take ownership of your families backup, virus protection etc. plans – really by just reminding them periodically. Sounds easy enough. Check it out.

by way of Don Kiely, an explanation from Aaron Stebner who was on the VS Setup team at the time the decision was made – if you are curious. I definitely was. I like Aaron’s comment on being asked this question so frequently:

of course, in the mails from internal devs I have to remove the expletives from the question also….. 

These are the guys who came up with asymmetric encryption, aka RSA encryption — (I’m learning a lot about this topic at the moment). In 2002 they won the Turing award, which is the like the nobel prize of i.t.. I would be neglect not to point out that this award was given to Alan Kay in 2003. Kay is the creator of Smalltalk 🙂 as well as a pioneer in object oriented programming.

So far, I’ve only seen positive feedback on today’s Longhorn announcements by .net developers in the blog space. I am not referring to any Microsoft employees, but regular developers. From what I’ve read, developer feedback had a role in this decision. Biggest gripe was waiting for enough “longhorn capable boxes” on the market to make developing Longhorn (as planned) viable anytime soon. This will now change.

update – finally seeing some WinFS mourning. I can commiserate with you guys. I didn’t have anything planned (so I can wait) …just excited about the possibilities of it.