Wow

Look at the prices that apple charges for WWDC07. I would have gone on my own dime but it's just too expensive, too bad we aren't a mac shop I could have talked my boss into paying for me.

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Music

I just "obtained" a copy of Less than Jake's album "In with the out crowd". There are only horns in 3 songs... this is not the band that wrote "Johnny Quest thinks we're sellouts". Oh well pretty good album, they are planning on touring with Reel Big Fish and Streetlight Manifesto this summer. I'm excited to say the least.

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Beer

I went to Brewsters here in Edmonton. I had the Bow Valley Brown Ale (good) and Greg had the River City Raspberry Ale (not my taste just okay). They have a barely wine I want to try one day. I might just buy two bottles try one that day and save one for another day.

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I have a little work to do before going to buy OS X for Sirina's old computer

I dream about puzzle quest

Beer School

Well I was listening again to my podcasts (instead of working?) and I thought I'd do the homework for "Beer School: What's in Nico's Fridge?". I bought myself 4 cans of Kilkenny, (9.$$ at Superstore Liquor store). Carried them home (not very gently) I opened the can and tried very hard to ignore the fact that it sounded like a mouse had just died in it (Thanks Motor). After I cleaned up the mess it made on my counter, I poured myself the glass you see to the left.

I had accidently left the beer on the counter for an hour therefore it was at room temperature. I thought, "What the hell. Isn't that the way it's supposed to be served?". So I sat down with dinner and drank it up.

I thought it tasted awesome, totally nice aftertaste, very creamy, all around excellent. This morning when I went looking to see where the stuff was brewed (Ireland) I noticed that on the can it says: "Serve Ice Cold". I'm going to try one tonight and see what it tastes like, but I don't believe that it will be as good as it was at room temp.

Anyway...

..back to the homework. I donned my safety glasses (not really) my protective gloves (wouldn't even know where to find them) and grabbed my certified scissors (from the stationary isle at Wal-Mart) and cut into the can to get my widget. After washing the head off of the can and widget I took the picture to the right.

It was a very simple round white plastic ball. There is a small hole in either end and it's glued together in the middle like a cheap plastic toy might be. Not nearly as cool as I thought it would be.. oh well. I tried to take some close up pictures of it but it just was too white and they came out really bad. Maybe I'll play in photoshop and see if I can't get them looking a little better.

Thanks Beer School, for giving me a whole evening of entertainment.


PS. John left a comment on the site which I thought was awesome, thanks John for taking the time to respond I await your next show with baited (not really) breath.

The can left no marks

Ahhhhhhh!

It has been crazy at work, today the exchange server broke (no one's fault just bad luck) and consequently broke my Events application. Events app in and of itself was hurried and did not go as well as I would have liked. Oh well live and learn, I will do better next time and manage my time better and manage the expectations better.

I've been listening to a podcast called Beer School. As a good Canadian this is a topic that is near and dear too my heart. I've enjoyed the show for the most part however the show with the bartender in it was annoying...

I am looking seriously into a Mac pro I think I will get one in the next month or so. I'm kinda waiting for dual quad core processors. But I think it will be better for me than building a machine of my own.

Anyway I sould go back to work. Enjoy your day.

The twitter it consumes all!

I'm back

All 0 of you must be excited I'm making another post. This one will talk about gadgets and macs and podcasts.

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Gadgets

I've had my Sennheiser HD 280 pro headphones for a while. These are some amazing headphones, I'm no Alex Lindsay(sp?) so I wouldn't know good sound from fart noise, but these give some amazing sound quality. They sound good with everything I listen to, Rock, punk, Johnny Cash, everything. The only complaint I could see people having is when I listen to what little rap I have, I need to turn up the volume very loud to get any hits from the bass.

I love them, I would buy them again if this set broke, and for the price I can't say that it would break me.

I have to go now as I timed this post poorly but I will try to get back tomorrow and finish up.

Have a nice day you bastard!

Again with the Errors

I'm still stupid, I still need to learn the order in which ASP.net renders a page. Always! I mean always! Make sure that if you are assigning data to something (anything) that you check that it is NOT a postback. You can not only get strange thing happening with data containers you just get annoyed and frustrated.

Anyway I'm off

Everything in Moderation

Maybe I'm Behind the Times...

... or maybe I'm just lazy but I've gotten into podcasting of late. I see it as an excellent way to deliver opinions and comments via the web. I also see it as a breeding ground for stupidity and I hope that Apple is keeping tabs on what makes it onto their iTunes store.

I've enjoyed a podcast called "Macbreak Weekly" (do a iTunes search) . I find the people on the cast are interesting and have a lot of useful things to pass onto the users. Leo and Alex are excellent hosts and I think that although it is a long podcast it's something I can listen to and work at the same time.

Another one that Scott Kurtz suggested is: 43Folders it's short and gives good hints on how to do work and get things done (something I need).

My favorite podcast (one that is woefully out of date) is Penny Arcade's "Downloadable Content". It is explicit so watch the volume at work or around children but it gives you an excellent insight on how the two guys work together and make one of the funniest (arguable) comics on the web.

Try some of these out you may even like them.

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I installed Office 2007 on my work machine yesterday. Other than some initial hiccups (PocketPC related) it has made a very positive impression on me. I love the new look for the TODO list in Outlook. Things seem to be easier to find and they have done away with most of the menus in favor of a tabbed environment. I'm going to work with it a bit more but I think Microsoft has won me over.

Now all they need to do is release it for the mac and I'll be a happy camper.

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Two posts in one week, don't you feel special.

That is all number one!

Long Time No Speak

Hello Everyone, again it has been too long since I've posted here. I thought I would do a quick rundown of things that I have obtained in the past few months and give you all my impressions.

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XBOX 360 vs. Nintendo Wii

I have rarely been on the "NEXT GENERATION" bandwagon, I can remember working for my dad for 2 weeks during the a teacher's strike in Grade 12 to save up for the PS2, and that was basically the last time I've bought a gaming system (the DS doesn't count everyone should own one). So when Greg (my Friend) bought me a XBOX 360 for my housewarming gift and Sirina bought me a Nintendo Wii for Christmas I was able to finally compare two next gen systems on my own.

The Wii is certainly novel, Wii sports and Zelda: The Twilight Princess, are the only games I own but both have provided me with all sorts of excitment. I must admit I sometimes imagine looking at myself as I play a round of golf or win a fight in Boxing and think "I look like a moron" but the system is interactive and fun. The xbox on the other hand, has little to no interaction (moving left with your car doesn't help you go around the corner, I promise) but is still quite fun. The wireless controllers on both systems make me very happy and the fact I can turn on the systems without getting up makes me even happier.

I think that right now as we speak the XBOX is the better system in regards to games. I love that I can download game demos and try before I buy on the XBOX. I haven't looked that hard on the Wii but I'm pretty sure I can do that for that system as well.

Another difference is that to set the wii up on the internet all I had to do was enter my key for my internet connection and I was done. The XBOX needs attachments (it does come with a 5ft CAT5 cable) which would be less of a problem for me if my router wasn't 100ft away. My peev about the Wii was the fact that it did not come with component cables, instead I have to convince my TV ever 30 mins or so to goto full screen (I know it's my Tv's fault not the Wii), other than that both systems are simple to set up and take up a minimal amount of space on the TV stand.

Both menus are pretty intuitive (for me) and I've had little to no trouble figuring things out. The cost of XBOX live ticks me off but seems to be a necessary evil. Again I haven't explored as much with the Wii but I assume there is some sort of price associated with playing online.

I'll keep playing both systems, take for instance last night: I played NHL 07 for a couple games and then played Zelda until I cleared the Faron woods of twilight. I think the wii will bore me first it seems more of a novelty than anything. However if Nintendo and Co. can turn out good titles for the Wii I should have no problem enjoying the system. However, the XBOX will hold my attention more because Greg has one and we will be playing Co-Op and Multi quite a bit.

Anyway that's my spiel about that.

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I think I'll leave it at that I'm supposed to be working after all.

The twilight scares me.

Now Remember...

If you are developing a Button Event or an Event of any kind and you have data that loads in the Load_Page Event. MAKE SURE you have either:

if not Page.IsPostBack (for vb.net)

or

if (!Page.ISPostBack) : for C#.net

I'm still dumb!

Holy sheet

It has been a long time: no one...

Since we last spoke I've gone to the Streetlight Manifesto concert, I moved into my condo, I obtained an animal from the local humane shelter and I received my Sumo in the "mail".

Lets get started:

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Streetlight Manifesto

BEST CONCERT EVER!
These guys are amazing they have a tonne of energy on stage and really sound awesome live. Then two of the horn players came out into the "pit" during RBF. I said hello and thanked them for an awesome show but they were pretty high and listening to John from RBF, so they probably didn't care/notice.

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New Condo

It's a nice place, Sirina (who has graciously agreed to live with me) has some pictures up on her blog.

I have one gripe it's that the heat seems like it is always blasted it's constantly 25 degrees (thats Celsius) in our place.

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Animal

His name is Hamlet he is Feline and was really docile for 2 days and is now a terror that tries to break into the garbage. But he's so darn cute, Sirina has pictures.

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Sumo

This thing is gigantic, it just about didn't fit in the car and it takes up a tonne of room in the living room.

I have 2 complaints about it:

1.The colour is nothing like I thought it was from the website "tangerine" really means highway vest orange.

2.The material isn't cloth it's nylon (which they do advertise and I should have read) but it makes me very staticy. I hate that!

Anyway other than those two little things it's an awesome chair and worth the pennies I spent on it.

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There

My gigantic pillow is more gigantic than yours

Very Interesting

I thought that this thread deserved a mention. Since I can imagine most people call their login pages Login.aspx. That causes problems in asp.net 2.0 as

<%@ Page Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/master/default.master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeFile="Login.aspx.cs" Inherits="Login" Title="Untitled Page" %>

will try to inherit the Login Control class instead of your code behind class.

Very interesting...

I'm behind

I shall live in comfort

It has been ordained. Mine is Tangerine, I wish i had seen or sat on one of these before, that would be nice, but I'm sure they rock as they come highly recommended.

Just thought I'd mention it. Still haven't taken the picture of the tickets yet. I should add that to my To Do list.

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Update: I just got an e-mail saying it is going to be delayed by 1-2 weeks :( Oh well that's not so bad.

It's Friday Again

I find myself with the urge every Friday to talk to nobody on my blog. Anyway this week has been hectic I have been working furociously on my project at work and finalizing the deal with the Condo. I'm excited about moving out, and stressed out because until yesterday the mortgage and stuff had not gone to the lawyers.

Anyway that is all boring stuff (not unlike my .net posts ;) ) I wanna talk about gadgets now. See, when I first got my job I ordered a new PDA because my old palm was starting to act a little wacky and I had just got a new shiney expense acount. So on the advice of our tech guy i got the HP IPAQ rx1950. It is a good machine it keeps my contacts and my calendar in one accessable place and it syncs up with Oulook so that all my stuff is managed with one program. However, the guys accross the hall (including the tech guy from whom I took the advice) just got the Blackberry Pearl. Because I am a technophile and a jealous person I yearn for one of those shiny machines to call my own. Unfortunatly I'm afraid the IPAQ will need to quit on me before I can justify the exspense on the staff account.

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I have recently procured 2 tickets to what I consider to be the concert event of the Century. I wish I had my camera so I could take a picture of said tickets but alas I will simply be forced to link to a website describing the unbelievable line up about to desend on my humble city.

Up up and away!

I hate and love all at the same time

This has made me happy and sad all at once. See I need the help to make a repeater work in my code, but it's fairly complex and I'll actually have to do work to implement it. I'm way too lazy to be happy about work I have to do.

Anyway the repeater is going to be cool, but I can't take all the credit. The webmaster actually did most of the coding, I just cleaned up and implemented business rules. Maybe one day I'll post it.

Microsoft in all their wisdom ignores a known bug like this, but are perfectly happy to release IE7 as a mandatory update... Hmm those two points seem to have nothing in common. I must learn this English language shtuff.

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I started a post about Active Directory authentication and got most of the way through but I never got it finished. Maybe if I get this control working I'll finish it up today.

And he's off!

EDIT: I ended up using this instead of the solution I posted earlier. The problem with the other solution was that I had no way to check if the radio button was had been checked or not. However, if you want a completely useless way to get mutually exclusive radio buttons in a repeater or a datagrid then the other solution works.

The reason the radiobuttons don't work within the templates of the datgrid or the repeater was because asp adds control specific strings to the groupname of the radiobuttons. This means when you add an asp:radiobutton tag to the repeater or datagrid item template they are NOT muttually exclusive.

YAY! I never got around to finishing up the post about AD authentication. Maybe on Monday.

I've succumbed

I've decided posting my thoughts on the internet might be meaningful. This means all of the internet "hype" about blogs has finally pressured me into action.

I'll not promise updates and I'll only post things after I've done my mediocre (at best) job of editing them. I'll put code on here and show you issues that I have solved, hopefully without getting into trouble with the boss. I'll also point out neat things I stumble across on the intertron.

hmmmm now lets get down to business.

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The battery on our phone couldn't be worse. Honestly, that whole you get what you pay for cliche is true. We got our phones for free and now they are performing like they were meant to be free.

That was mostly just a warning for anyone who is thinking of getting a new cell phone.

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These are potentially the coolest controls I have ever seen for .NET. To make it even sweeter they are releasing these soon. Thankfully the boss put money in the budget just for such an occasion. The school bought both packs (webchart and web.ui) on my recommendation.

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phew! Hopefully there will be more. Feel free to e-mail me if you stumble across this for some reason, I'm always happy to get mail.

I should be working