Update on my back surgery stuff for the four or five of you who are following and care...

Well, since my back surgery procedure things in December, I have had some relief from the pain I was experiencing. I even had a couple of days where I felt better than I can ever remember feeling.

But overall, while things are certainly better in many ways, overall it's not been better enough, if you will, to call it resolved. I have been doing physical therapy for two full months and the pain has increased and decreased somewhat a number of times. But overall, it's still a problem - weakness in both legs, pain reaching from my back into my legs and feet, and enough pain to keep me up at night and severely limit my ability to do the regular day-to-day things I need (and want) to do in life.

The procedure that was done in December was a minimally-invasive procedure, in which the doc went inside the L5/S1 disc and removed some of the material there, which was to allow some of the bulging material that is impinging on my spine to be reduced, relieving pressure on the spinal nerves, and therefore relieving pain. Unfortunately, while it's better at times than it was, it's still a pretty serious problem.

So, the doc ordered a new MRI a couple weeks ago. We saw the films the other day. And it looks like its time to see another surgeon. At least this surgeon says so.

Unfortunately, the images are not all that good. The disc appears to have extruded more material at some point, so the problem and pain are in the same general location (same joint), and it feels and acts very much like what I was experiencing before the procedure, except that the pain moves from one leg to another somewhat regularly. I guess after 12 or so years of wear and tear, this is just not going to be a simple process.

So, off to a few more docs I go. The minimally invasive route was, I think, worth it for a first step, but now it's time to see what - if anything - can be done to better solve the problem. My current doc has his recommendations (microsurgical discectomy to cut out and remove the herniation), and we'll see what other docs think is the best thing to do.

I just finished a 6-day pack or methylprednisolone, which is a super-anti-inflammatory thing. For a couple of days, when the daily dose was high, I felt fairly okay. Now that it's all gone and all I am taking is the regular anti-inflammatory stuff, it's back to being pretty darned uncomfortable and at times pretty painful.

I don't expect to be made completely better - not at all. But it would be nice to be able to lean over the sink when I wash my hands and brush my teeth, or to be able to bend over to put on my socks and whatnot. Not to mention the fact that things like pulling weeds in the garden can't last for more than 5 or 10 minutes on a good day, and if I actually decide to pull the weeds, I'll pay for it for days.

Again, I am glad I went with the minimally invasive route first. It has helped me overall, and generally speaking I am in somewhat less pain, which is a good thing. I'll just have to move on from here and see what's the next best thing to do.

People reading this weblog in HTML format can see the banner ad above for a Mac Mini, which is linked to my affiliate registration page on Gratis Network's web site. There they present an offer to sign up for a referral account, the end result of which is to get a free Mac Mini. In other words, spread the word and get some people to sign up and you get a free machine. Each participant has to complete a marketing offer of their choice.

I know this is such a shameful, terrible thing for me to do, placing an ad on my web site and hoping people will actually click on it, that some of those will sign up for the program and choose one marketing offer from the several presented, and that ten people will actually complete one of the offers (and then do the same thing if they choose, so they can get a free Mac mini, too).

But hey, it's as much an experiment as it is a desire to get the computer. And besides, a few of the offers interested me even without the carrot of a free computer.

And I am doing this passively - I blogged about it when I first set it up, and since then it's just been an ad up there on the web page. Anyhow, being a bit of a sceptic, I thought it would be interesting to watch, and I figured I'd catalog some of my experience thus far here.

First of all, my weblog is definitely not geared toward Macs or Apple. I just don't write much about them. Not that I have anything against the Apple products - quite the contrary, in fact. I have been considering a Powerbook or Mac purchase for some time now. I won't ever switch from the PC, but adding it to my lineup of computers would not be a bad thing. At any rate, the people who visit this site are not coming here looking for Mac info or computers, for the most part.

That said, a number of people have signed up for the offer, many have not completed the whole marketing thing, and six of you out there are logged as having signed up, completed an offer, and it's showing credit for doing so. I know of at least one person who has done all that and does not show up as receiving credit for his activity, which is too bad. It's been a few weeks, too. It should work better than that, but glitches do happen - and there is a way to let the service kbow if you don't get your credit.

So, with six people having completed the process in the past month or so, that means four more will need to complete one of the marketing offers before I will receive the computer.

I have some thoughts about the whole process, and the offers presented. Here they are in no particular order:

• People tend to be leery of "free" offers and marketing madness (myself included), but since I actually know a couple people who received free iPods and flat-screen computer monitors by participating in Gratis' programs, I have some confidence. Plus, TechTV lends some credibility (wow that's oxymoronic, but you get the point) in this video segment.
• The survey thing when you first sign up is a little annoying because they don't make it clear it's not part of the core offer (they ask you a bunch of questions marked "optional" and you can skip them if you want, or just wait for the email to show up that gives you a confirmation link that bypasses the survey stuff - it only takes a minute or so). I get the reasons for it (this is, after all 100% marketing), and it looks like they have made some improvements, but still... You can skip it and click your email link to continue.
• There are some cool offers on there, but the ones that enticed me the most were available earlier on in the campaign. I signed up for Blockbuster Online, and I am really enjoying that, but I don't see it available there anymore. I think eFax is a great service for people who need to send and receive FAXes and don't have or don't want to deal with the paper machine - it's all electronic and portable. There's a 30-day free trial of Stamps.com on there now, and I am tempted to sign up for that one myself, it's a cool service that I could actually use.
• I have not actually heard of anyone receiving a free Mac Mini yet - anyone gotten that far along yet?

So, if you're interested in doing the same thing, or if you're in the market for an eFax or Stamps.com account and want to use their trial offers, or if you're just curious, click the banner and help a guy out.

I'll post more if/when I actually get the computer.

Ok, let's face it - the native discussion list capabilities in SharePoint 2003 are - well - they're just "okay." They do work, but are just a little too frustrating in their implementation to use in the real world.

But Serge van den Oever has posted an announcement and a link to the SourceForge site where they have put together a release of the "Macaw Discussion Board," a list template that builds on top of the SharePoint native discussion lists and improves on the native functionality big-time.

It is great that SharePoint supports discussion lists, its a pity that their implementation is "suboptimal".

The two biggest problems that I have with the discussion lists are:

• When you reply on a discussion item, you don’t see the text you are replying on
• Discussion items are displayed in the wrong order: oldest items first!

Changing this behavior is not as easy as providing a new view. Some more work is required.

We worked around these limitations more than a year ago, but I never found the time to make these modifications available to the community. Until now…

They have also provided a discussion thread view in their list template.

So, before you run off to find a third party forum/discussion program to adapt to SharePoint because the default capabilities are too frustrating, you might want to see what you can do with Macaw's Discussion Board. You can check our Serge's announcement and documentation post and download the list template.

Yesterday I mentioned the HHGTTG trailer. But there's another trailer out (it may have been out for a while, not sure?) for a film that just a few people are anticipating, as well.

Update - Rick fills us in on a new trailer about to come out: "That's a pretty old trailer. A new one comes out online 03-14, but you can see it in the theater before Robots starting 03-11, or during the OC on 03-10."

Star Wars Episode III - Revenge of the Sith opens in theaters on May 19th. A trailer is available online. Looks like it might be cool, but history has proven it's a little hard to tell with Star Wars movies. I hope it is. And I hope they don't spend too much time showing Darth Vader slowly "rising," rotating mechanically to an upright position on some metal contraption. Freakin' pull that awesome Vader-virtual-choke-hold thing on someone or cut someone's arm off or something! Armies of Wookies... Better than Jar Jar for sure... Hmmmm, this one might be cool.

When the first Star Wars movie came out back in 1977, I had just turned 10 years old. It showed for more than a year off and on (more on than off) as a matinee film in my home town. I saw it dozens of times with my friends. We were young upcoming geeks and nerds, living in the ultimate little incubator of geeks and nerds. So, it doesn't actually matter to me whether the movie is good or not, it represents coming full circle on a long journey of sorts. Well, metaphorically anyhow.

Did you know??? The original script name for the original Star Wars film (Episode IV) was "Adventures of the Starkiller: Episode 1 - The Star Wars." Sure am glad they changed that.

Anyhow, check out the Episode III online trailer, and enjoy. But if you're into this stuff and don't mind getting sucked in for a few hours, there's also a bunch of cool videos about the making of Episode III available here, and some concept art used in the making of the film can be seen here.

Gaping Void has some pretty darn funny (and yes, somewhat racy at times) cartoons. Business card cartoons. Funny. You. Click. Read.

One of the best books ever is about to be released as a movie. It opens in theaters on April 29th.

Attention businesses of Earth: We hereby call for all businesses to close their doors for one day to allow all workers to see the film on opening day. Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Trailer: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy 
(note: huge smooth QuickTime file -see below for options)

The official film web site (with more trailers in different formats and other cool stuff) is here.

This is going to be AWESOME.

Many have linked to the videos, but I am going to link to Steve, who summarizes the goodness about what exciting and interesting things Microsoft is doing with IIS in v7.

Read Steve's comments and check out the two videos (nearly an hour of interviews with Scott Guthrie of Microsoft talking about the future - IIS7 and ASP.NET.

From Steve's comments:

• The continued focus on making IIS a great platform upon which people can build additional infrastructure richness and of course great applications. This is achieved by modularising the platform and documenting the APIs of the standard modules and allowing new modules to be easily created.
• The second is that with IIS a raft of the most common open source applications are going to be provided, and integrated,  from forums to blogs, another really great move.

Good stuff.

Buried deep in a press release that mentions several announcements about various SQL Server releases and enhancements are details about an item many may find useful. Later this month Microsoft is releasing new reporting packs for SQL 2000 Reporting Services aimed at Great Plains and Internet Information Server (IIS).

The IIS one in particular catches my eye:

The Microsoft SQL Server Report Pack for IIS Logs is a set of 12 predefined report definition files that work with a sample database of information extracted from Microsoft IIS log files. The SQL Server Report Pack for IIS Logs allows users to monitor Web site statistics including visitors, page views and bandwidth for various time periods and geographic regions, to get more insight into their Web site usage. Users also can leverage the 12 sample reports as templates for designing new reports, and the database can be populated with individual data using the Log Parser included with the IIS 6.0 Resource Kit.

Cool. Not so sure about using the log parser (which, by the way, was recently updated), but I can think of a few things I would like to try to do with this one. Looking forward to the release. Links when they're available.

From Microsoft, news announcing SQL Reporting Services SP2, which will include two web parts for SharePoint 2003 that can be used for displaying reports in the SharePoint portal or site:

Along with security and product enhancements, SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services SP2 will include two SharePoint® Web Parts, which enable users to explore and view reports located on a report server through Windows® SharePoint Services or SharePoint Portal Server. The Web Parts will make it easy for customers to build business intelligence (BI) portals with SharePoint that include Reporting Services reports. This, in turn, will give their end users access to their enterprise information from one seamless interface. SP2 also will support a rich client-side report printing experience directly from Microsoft Internet Explorer, so customers can quickly print their reports by clicking on a single button.

Good move. One of SharePoint's strongest points is that it can act as a "one-stop-shop" for finding, aggregating, viewing and using information across a company or organization, usable by both individuals and groups. The more web parts are made available to do this kind of thing out of the box, the better. It should be a requirement for any Microsoft business product, I think, and other companies should follow suit.a

I bought a HP DeskJet 5850 from woot.com a week or so ago (if you're not familiar with woot.com, check it out, but I warn you now - it's an addition).

The printer arrived and was waiting on my doorstep last night. It's a decent photo printer, on par with the 7760 model I have used in the past, but it has one thing the 7760 lacks - built-in networking support.

And the DJ5850 not only has ethernet support, it has wireless networking hardware built right in.

All printers should work like this. I just pulled the printer out of the box, powered it up, stuck the cartridges in, set up the software and drivers on my laptop, and within a couple of minutes the printer was live on my wireless network, and I was printing borderless 8.5x11 photos that look just like they came from a photo lab.

Now I can stick this printer anywhere in the house I desire and print to it over the network from any computer I want.

Nice.

Jeremy Wright has posed a weblog entry discussing ethics and blogging. It's an interesting start to what should be (and needs to be) an ongoing conversation.

Jeremy starts with a discussion of the premise that bloggers are not ethical.

My take? It's very simple in my little world and point of view: Honesty, authenticity, objectivity and credibility are qualities that all people should strive for, regardless of their profession or avocation. It's not so much about the blogger vs. the journalist - these qualities apply across the board. It's about doing the right thing, and doing it the right way. It's about responsibility.

I've been both a journalist (several years ago) and a blogger. Ethics has been central to every job I have ever worked in: Journalist, police officer, security professional.

I get Jeremy's points, and agree with what he says in large part. There are, however, certain minor points with which I disagree (surprise, surprise, heh). I don't believe ethics was born of capitalistic need (early ethics was a Greek endeavor, and only a couple of ethical views like Marxism and social ecology are actually tied to economic or financial systems), and I tend to disagree with the idea that applying journalistic standards to blogging doesn't work. Rather, I think it can work - but that there's more to both sides of the equation than just journalistic standards, and that trying to oversimplify the discussion or pigeon-hole any aspect of it is a mistake. It's always tempting to try to divvy up different behavior characteristics and assign each of them to their own neat little groups, but it's never that simple.

Jeremy offers his own opinions and positions, and they are certainly worth reading and will hopefully start readers thinking about what ethics means to them in terms of blogging and publishing information in general:

"At the end of the day, the only thing we as creators of the written word have is that which our audience gives us - their eyes, their ears and their minds. And to violate that trust is the cardinal sin of everyone who values the written word. Be they blogger, journalist, poet or playwright.

"So protect your words, protect your readers and honor the trust you have been given. By doing so you will be the best journalist or blogger you can be."

Jeremy's article can be found here. Read. Comment. Write. Converse.

EDIT: Blog Resource has more comments here, as does Fifteen Seconds. And more yet - A Blogger's Code of Ethics, over ay Cyber Journalist.

From Yahoo News, an article about the first National Education Summit, where leaders from across the country are gathered to discuss what can be done to improve education.

Bill Gates had something to say about the situation, and I think there's a good chance he's absolutely right:

The most blunt assessment came from Microsoft chief Bill Gates... He said high schools must be redesigned to prepare every student for college, with classes that are rigorous and relevant to kids and with supportive relationships for children.

"America's high schools are obsolete," Gates said. "By obsolete, I don't just mean that they're broken, flawed or underfunded, though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean our high schools - even when they're working as designed - cannot teach all our students what they need to know today."

(via Slashdot)

The other day, I was attending a conference in Redmond at a big ol' software company that is based there. I had the opportunity to catch up in person for a few minutes with Omar Shahine, who happens to work at that company, and who also just happened to be in the area that day (he actually lives and works in a different state, so it was a cool coincidence).

Omar is one of the principal people currently driving hard developing dasBlog, which is the weblog software I use here. It's an ASP.NET application and it's pretty darn cool.

Anyhow, it was great to meet Omar, even if just for a few minutes. It's funny how you "meet" people online, but never actually see them in person. I always like it when I can talk face to face with someone.

It's amazing to me how the world - and how we meet and interact with the people in it - has changed. It truly is a big small world we live in.

Oh, and Omar - it was great to meet you!

If you use the Firefox web browser, you need to get the latest release, v1.0.1, which contains a number of security-related bug fixes that are important to patch.

Here's what's new in Firefox 1.0.1:

• Improved stability
• International Domain Names are now displayed as punycode.
• Several security fixes

Download your preferred language version from here.

Press release is here.

If you use Photo Story 3 from Microsoft, now you can add a plug-in from Sonic to burn your story directly to DVD - useful if that's your targeted media.

Photo Story 3 brings your digital photos to life by making it easy for you to create professional-looking slideshows. Now, with the Sonic DVD Plug-in for Photo Story 3, you can save your favorite memories on DVD to share with family and friends. Making your own DVDs is just a click away with this powerful plug-in. Get more information on the Sonic Web site and download the plug-in for $19.99 US.