Gonna be a busy week. I'll be in San Diego visiting a family friend starting on Thursday, and won't be coming back til Monday night. Looking forward to it - he joined the US Navy a while back, and he's stationed on a nuclear powered aircraft carrier (the USS John C. Stennis), so I will get to see what a floating city looks like on the inside. That will be fun. 5,000 crew on one ship - amazing!

I also have lots of planning to get done at work on a pretty big project we are trying to get wrapped up. Need to get that one done before the next ones start. Luckily, the next few won't be quite as monstrous, but one thing is for sure: There's more than enough on the horizon to keep all of us very busy for the foreseeable future. It will be nice to (hopefully) turn some of it down a notch, though. I'm ready for a bit of a break.

On top of that I am working on plans to extend a deck off my porch at home and to get a garden planted. My neighbors and I are going to work on the gardens together, it looks like, which will be fun. Gardens are certainly a lot of work, but that's the kind of work I don't mind doing - the kind that yields results you can actually (literally) get your hands around. the biggest risk is the deer that roam around here, so I am thinking some sort of fence is in order. I thought I might even try the human hair trick, although I have heard mixed reviews about whether it really works, and now I am doubtful. There's always technology to do the trick if need be. Apparently that one also works on Moose. Well, in that case I guess I need me one of those eh? Nothing like electricity to solve a problem. Or you can just spray.

Anyhow, I am looking forward to the trip to California, both because it will be good to see a friend and because I can certainly use the break in my hectic routine, which these days pretty much consists of work and church stuff and then more work. So - it will be nice.

Hmm. That was pretty random.

Ok, so this is stupid and lame. I can accept that. But it's interesting.

Well, I suppose it should be comforting to know that my site (an thus me in turn?) is more good than evil. The results of this highly-scientific study are:

Bike? CHECK!!  Video Camera? CHECK!!  Sheer Cliff? CHECK!!  Parachute??? Uhhh...

Oh my my my my my.. It hurts sooo bad just to watch. Can't say I didn't warn you.

Note to self: Make sure parachute's properly rigged before riding off cliff.

I've been wondering exactly what happened to the Mars Spirit rover's computer when it crashed on Mars (the computer that is, not the rover). Now I know. Cool read (especially for geeks), and if you think about how they fixed it - and how far away that thing is... I'd have killed to have seen the pocket protectors flying out of the mister-random-computer-troubleshooter-guy's shirt just as he realized what the problem was and as he flew down the hall to tell his fellow scientists.

Realizing you can fix a radiation-hardened R6000 CPU from Lockheed-Martin Federal Systems with 120 Mbytes of RAM and 256 Mbytes of flash, mounted in a 6U VME chassis, with custom cards that interface to systems on the rover, running Wind River Systems' Vx-Works version 5.3.1 operating system, used with its flash file system extension? And all from 35 million miles away?

Priceless.

I decided I should set up a stats program and see who's visiting this web site, what's being read, stuff like that. Granted, one day's worth of stats are not much to go on, but there are some interesting things that came out of the first day or so of statistics gathering.

First is the search phrases that people typed into their favorite search engine (Google is by far the most common one used to link to my site in the stats) and then clicked through to find this site:

created with microsoft office onenote	28	63.6 %
greg hughes	4	9 %
xml office 2003 bill coan	2	4.5 %
word documents have no teeth	1	2.2 %
twins portland oregon	1	2.2 %
how did the united states get oregon	1	2.2 %
spinning tires ice hill blog	1	2.2 %
onenote tab .net control	1	2.2 %
acer c300 problems	1	2.2 %
houses sold on deer island oregon	1	2.2 %
onenote blog	1	2.2 %
ie toolbar visual studio	1	2.2 %
open in new window ms04-004	1	2.2 %

“twins portland oregon????” Hmmmmmm.... ;-)

Keywords list:

office	30	14.8 %
onenote	30	14.8 %
with	28	13.8 %
microsoft	28	13.8 %
created	28	13.8 %
greg	4	1.9 %
hughes	4	1.9 %
oregon	3	1.4 %
xml	2	0.9 %
coan	2	0.9 %
blog	2	0.9 %
bill	2	0.9 %
2003	2	0.9 %

Fascinating stuff, really. Other interesting figures that amaze me (not):

• 14% of the people who viewed the site added the page to their favorites (I have no idea how this gets logged, but I guess it does). 
• I'm indexed by a whole bunch of search engines - many of which I never heard of.
• A lot of people who view my site content do so via the RSS feed. Only one or two people appear to be syndicating the site via the Atom feed.
• My OneNote blogging entries are popular, and people are also clicking on the OneNote .one and .wma audio files.
• I am nowhere close to reaching my bandwidth usage limit, so if you need a site hosted and you happen to know me personally, feel free to ask - I have a reseller account and so far I don't charge my friends. :-) Oh, and you can use your own domain name or piggyback on one of several I have registered. And if you want to register one, you can do so here for only $10, and the customer service is at least ten times better than [cough cough] Verisign/Netsol [cough hack cough].

If you do - time to clean up and rake in the prizes. Microsoft has a contest running for businesses that can tell a great story about how Windows Server 2003 addresses challenges and makes a difference in the real world. It's the Windows Server 2003 Challenge, and the prizes are pretty sweet, so if you have a story, give it a shot! I'd enter, but they already wrote a case study about ours, so we're not elligible. Be sure to read the complete rules, too.

... To be eligible for judging in Round Two, online entries must be received no later than 11:59 PM PT on March 28, 2004 (07:59 GMT March 29). Multiple entries from the same person will be disqualified. By entering the Contest, you agree to allow a Microsoft representative to contact you regarding potential Solution Brief/Case Study development and reference opportunities.

Okay, I have been asked this a zillion times now - each time by people who for some reason that escapes me think that *I* would know anything about .NET, what it is, how it works, etc.

I'm not completely ignorant on the matter - I do understand the concepts, architecture, how it all fits together. But I am definfitely not a programmer, and beyond the basics of describing what it is, I can't help much.

In fact, I was at a conference earlier this week along with a bunch of other corporate IT-leader types, and one thing that surprised me was how few knew what .NET is (other than the fact that its something their systems are built on and their developers talk about in gobbledygook secret code language all day long). I suppose the fact that the crowd at the conference was all upper-level and executive management types allowed the people there to come out of their shells a little bit, and to openly ask the people around them what the heck this .NET thing is, anyhow (without fear of some developer rolling eyes, I guess :-)).

Now, I always figured it's good to know these things ahead of time, but when some of the Microsofties I know started bringing people over to me so I could explain .NET ... Well, you get the picture.

Of course, what people need is a good, clean, concise explanation of the technology in layman's terms, not programmer-speak, and not more than a couple of minutes. As I recently noted when I wrote about “What is XML?” it's not always what you know, it's more often than not what resources you can find and how you use them.

Anyhow, point is that these days, when I am asked “What the heck is .NET anyhow?” I like to point people to a web page that Microsoft recently put together which - for the first time - provides a very brief, concise and easy to understand overview of the basics of the “What is .NET?” question. Check it out here.

There's more to it than what's on that page, but the links get you to the next level of detail (and they keep it simple at that level, as well, which is good).

Collaboration solutions from Microsoft have changed significantly over time. The newest offerings can be a bit overwhelming if you have not been following their release over the past several months (and part of the blame for that goes to Microsoft for not doing the most effective job of making people aware through their marketing, IMHO... The television commercials are “cute“ but don't actually tell anyone anything about the new products, so unless you've gone looking for the new technology proactively on your own, you're not too likely to be aware).

But the advertising is not an indicator of the quality of the actual products - these are some really powerful tools. A quick article over at MSDN sorts out Microsoft's collaboration technologies, and provides a basic, decent and not-too-deep view of where it started and how it got where it is today. It also helps make some sense of what's here now and how it can be effectively applied.

Make no mistake: The way of the future has been seen, and this is the path. If you have not invested in some sort of collaborative technologies, it's worth a look - you can get a lot for a relatively small investment, and the next age of computing applications will - I am telling you now - be centered around mobility and collaboration, the two technologies these new products are taking to the next level right now.

My friend Scott Hanselman will be on the .NET Rocks! show (an internet radio broadcast for those who are one with this thing they call .NET) tomorrow (Friday) morning at 9am Pacific Time. This should be fun:

Scott Hanselman takes on ASP.NET - LIVE!
February 20, 2004

He's back and he's pissed! Not really, but we've always wanted to say that. Scott Hanselman talks with Carl and Rory about the following:

* ASP.NET
* Declarative Programming
* "Word Documents have no teeth"
* Client Side Validation
* Code Generation - CodeSmith
* Caching
* Performance Counters in ASP.NET
* Perf Testing
* "A caste system for APIs"
* other ideas: blogging trends, usenet, google, toolbars, future interfaces,
* where he's speaking this quarter....
* DevDays
* Whidbey

As always, Scott lays his "must-have" tool list on us.

Microsoft has finally come up with a web administration interface for SQL server (as pointed out to me by our trusty developer, Travis, earlier today). I have these conflicting thoughts about the product (which is not unusual for me. Oh, and since it's free, is it really a product?)

First of all, it's about time they did something like this. Having to load a copy of Enterprise manager on every PC you want to work from is more than just a slight pain. It sucks. So, on that level, great news - It does a lot of the things you would commonly do in Enterprise Manager.

On the other hand, from the perspective of security and running secure apps on a business network, I have to say that when I read this, I get a little nervous:

There are two versions of the SQL Server Web Data Administrator Tool. One runs under IIS and the other runs under a Microsoft .NET open source web server named Cassini. For more information on Cassini and source code please go to...

Oh Boy. This should be interesting. At our company, we will need to test this and have the security guys look at it before we allow it to be used - especially considering the sensitivity of the data we deal with in SQL databases.

But, for working with non-critical data in SQL databases and doing some basic database administration, it's pretty sweet stuff.

For some people, I am completely certain it's important to make sure certain types of email attachments never make it through the email client to the end user's machine. But I am - after all - a technically-savvy person (and I can spell savvy), so I want (well, actually need) to be able to receive a lot of the kinds of files that Microsoft Outlook seems to think I shouldn't be able to get at.

Enter OL2K2SEC (an Outlook 2003 version is also available, for all you acronym decoders who have not yet clicked). Sure, you could edit the registry, but frankly I have better things to do with my time, I deal with too many computers, and I might need/want to enable someone else to do the same thing on their computer (and I am leary to direct most people to edit their registries). Not for everyone, to be sure, but great for those who need it.

I had the privilege of spending the past few days at Microsoft for a set of sessions and meetings for IT execs, and while I can't comment about any specifics of what was presented there, I can say that it was a worthwhile venture. Nice to see that even a massive company of 52,000+ employees can make a real effort to be customer-focused and to reach out to the hands that feed it.

I also had a chance to catch up with a few “Microsoft-ies” that I had not seen for awhile, and for whom I hold a great deal of respect. One thing that always amazes me (given the size of the company) is the fact that Microsoft hires a lot of really smart, quality people. From my local rep (who is a truly good guy) on up to the big-wigs I get to speak with from time to time, it's a consistently high-caliber bunch of people who have a contagious passion for what they do.

Nothing earth-shattering to report, but I can say that it's always good to meet others in the field, to get out and see how other companies do their jobs, and to take that information and mold it into a useful tool you can use to critically review the way you do things. It's entirely too easy to fall into proverbial ruts in this business, and doing so means either falling behind in your career technically, or becoming careless and risking career damage as a result. A job like mine - where you're responsible for maintaining systems at a consistent state of high-availability, ensuring the network is fully secured, and making sure people have what they need to do their jobs, all while keeping costs as low as possible while at the same time improving services - is stressful enough. In my case, our company's employees, those who are shareholders, our customers, and about 25% of the online banking population in the United States all count (either directly or indirectly) on our company doing a good job in these areas. No need to hammer nails into our own coffins, and so a continual, honest review of the state of things ensures we stay out of that rut.

One really cool thing I got to do was paying a visit was the Center for Information Work's Office of the Future - a conceptual office if you will, where they showcase some of the ideas they are working on for placement in the market over the next five or so years. It's all cool stuff, has been publicized in the media quite a bit in the past, and it's a lot like the concept cars you see at the auto shows (the actual car never makes the streets and chances are it doesn't even run, but parts of it show up in other real vehicles down the road). It was a fun, interesting and eye-opening hands-on experience. One thing's for sure - we still have a long way to go in the world of computing!

I'm not one to tout tools developers would use (since I'm not a developer myself), but it just so happens that SourceGear released a new version of it's Vault version/source control server while I am in the process of evaluating it. For those who are wondering what source- and version-control means, well you can skip this. But if you are a user of VSS or CVS or similar (especially VSS), you know what I am talking about.

SourceGear Vault is a version control system for Windows developers, with full integration into the Visual Studio.NET environment. It is implemented entirely on the .NET platform, and uses SQL Server 2000 for its repository storage.

Vault is the only version control system designed specifically to offer a seamless transition from Visual SourceSafe. SourceSafe repositories are imported with no lost data, including history.

The user interface resembles SourceSafe Explorer, and all SourceSafe features are present, including Share and Pin.

And from there the improvements become quite apparent. Face it, VSS sucks as a version/source control product for more than a couple people - It's outdated, limited in capabilities and really is doing more these days than it was ever originally intended to do.

But they can explain it better than I can, so go here and check it out. There's also a list of what's new in this version. Looks nice. I'll have to give it a try.

EDIT: Price reductions announced, and single-user edition is - get this - FREE.

Ever had a problem with always losing your status bar in IE6? I got tired of always  having to turn it back on, so I went on a search. I found a number of similar solutions to the problem. This one worked. From MVPS.org by way of KC Lemson:

If your status bar disappears when opening a new IE 6 browser window:

1. With (only one) IE open, click View, select: Status Bar
2. Right-click on IE's Toolbar and select: "Lock the Toolbar"
3. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the close button (upper right)
4. Open Windows Explorer, click View, select: Status Bar
5. Right-click on Explorer's Toolbar and select: "Lock the Toolbar"
6. Click Tools | Folder Options | View tab
7. Click the "Apply to all folders" button.
8. Hold down the Ctrl key and click the close button (upper right)
9. Open IE to any page, right-click on a link and select: "Open in New Window"

Verify that these Registry entries exist:

• HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main
  • "Show_StatusBar"="yes"
  • "Show_URLinStatusBar"="yes"