I've found myself in this situation over the past few months.  Not just because I've been so slammed at work for the past month, but also because I just have too damn many feeds in my aggregator. 

No, I'm not keeping up with your blog.

I would like to. I really would. I like it and I like you.

But we're now well past the point where any of us can keep up with all the blogs worth reading from the people worth keeping up with. Even with an aggregator.

I just can't do it any more.

 Just in case you hadn't noticed today (I hadn't until reading Overdo's post), there is a new rich text editor for Spaces.  I have to say that it looks pretty nice.  Good job Spaces folk!

~tod

Quote from Scott 

Spaces releases a new rich text editor

6 years ago (in my first round in MSN), I created a rich text editor for MSN Groups and Hotmail that eventually made its way onto Spaces. That editor has served us well and perhaps is the oldest javascript code still on the web in wide-spread production.  Today, I am proud to announce that we have retired the old RTE in Spaces.

The new and improved RTE offers all the existing functionality plus:

1. Better WYSIWYG in Internet Explorer. You are now editing your message in the theme of your space.  Try using a theme with the semi-translucent background images and see how it bleeds through the toolbar
2. Support for fonts, paragraph style, and font sizes
3. Default to single-spacing for new blog entries
4. Background (IE only) and foreground color
5. Search hyperlinks (IE only)- Select some terms, click the magnifying-glass like toolbar button and a search link is created for those terms
6. You can specify "No Follow" when inserting hyperlinks (IE Only).  No Follow is very useful when you want to link to another site but do not want that link followed and indexed by search engines.
7. Cut, copy, and paste on the toolbar (no need to remember those keyboard short-cuts)
8. Complete toolbar customization.  You can modify the toolbar options and they will be saved for the next time you edit (same machine only)
9. HTML Mode - I am also proud to announce the official retirement of the Edit It.  You can now switch the editor in HTML mode and type HTML directly
10. And, drum-roll please - FireFox support! You now get the RTE functionality in FireFox (minus the true "theme-ing")

For you HTML-ers out there, we also updated the HTML filters to support many more tags. You can now create Tables, <H>eaders, and more when in HTML mode. 

Enjoy! and keep the feedback coming.

So I finally saw Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith yesterday.  Overall, I was really impressed and think they did a pretty good job of wrapping things up.  I won't go into too many details since this subject has already been covered in many, many other places, but suffice it to say that I give it a "thumbs up."

I do recommend watching Episode 1 and 2 before seeing the third one.  There were several things I missed or just plain didn't remember from the first one that helped me understand the second and third better.  Heck, I hadn't even seen Episode 2.  The first one was so bad that I never bothered to check it out until now. <shrug>

~tod

Today was the big day.  My first big project as a dev released to production and it went relatively smooth.  We hammered out most of the bugs and features in the last week of testing, but of course there were a few last minute 'feature requests' from our management and PM.  I suppose that's to be expected, but it really kind of irritated me at the time...what can I say, lack of sleep, too much work and trying to meet a deadline can make a guy grumpy.

Pros:

• I really enjoy coding. 
• It's such a cool feeling to 1) see something work that you created from scratch and 2) see other people appreciate it.
• I'm learning a LOT about C#, VB, ASP.NET and SQL.

Cons:

• Long hours.  I didn't keep exact track, but with the lone exception of Father's Day I've worked every single day (at work or from home) for the past three weeks.  I estimate about 75-80 hours each week.
• Under-estimating the time frame required for a project.  Not a good thing when you get halfway through and go 'oh crap.'

Thanks to Emery for bearing with all of my questions and having patience when I asked the same thing more than once (a personal pet peeve of mine)!  Thanks to Terry and Brent for giving me the opportunity to find out how much I enjoy development and believing in me enough to let me take the chance on their team!

What now, you ask?  Well, I still have some stuff to wrap up with this project.  Some UI and SQL stuff specific to our teams.  Once that is done I have some training scheduled, a vacation to celebrate my 8th wedding anniversary and of course there are several projects lined up.  And there's the thrill of going back to normal life...a 45 hour work week, working out at Gold's Gym, playing with my daughter, hanging out with family on the weekends, playing Xbox, watching TV in bed and enjoying life.  I like normal...especially my version of it!  :)

~tod

ps: for those of you who don't know, RTW = release to web.  I'm not sure if that's a MSFT specific term or not. <shrug>

For those of you familiar with Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, here's his latest skit interviewing the morons, umm I mean people, who blindly supported MJ during his trial.  Freakin hilarious!  Don't get me wrong, I believe in a fair trial and the policy of 'innocent until proven guilty,' but to blindly believe someone is innocent just because they're a celebrity is f**kin idiotic.

If you're not familiar with Triumph, be warned that he uses foul language, sexual inuendos and many things considered in bad taste by the uptight right-wingers.  More than likely if you're reading my blog you don't fall into that category. 

~tod

Check out windflower912's Space for a really cool way of listing your blogroll.  I'm willing to bet this is one of the javascript bugs being exploited (as Overdo has described), but I've honestly just been too damned busy with work lately to really read about it.  Heck, I'm so behind in my aggregator that it's looking like a big job to do all the catching up I need to.  :-|

Anyway, I can't read anything on windflower912's blog (some really nice pics tho), but you get a "thumbs up" from me for the nice blogroll implementation!  Not too mention I'm even in his blogroll...people other than Ines and Chris really do read my babbling. 

update 6.17.05 - Loadmemory claims that windflower912 copied his work.  I'm not going to take sides (especially since I can't read anything on either site), but simply want to give him props for the work.  Inès asked for the code and it looks like she got it from Loadmemory via SirThinks.  Thanks for sharing people!

~tod

This implementation is crap.  There, I said it.  It's crap...crap...crap...crap...crap!  I gave this a very honest try and I just can't handle it anymore.  If this wasn't made by MSN it would have been uninstalled after 30 minutes of use, but I gave it even more leeway since I work for the division.  Disappointing...

See my previous post for my list of pros and cons and add to the cons that it seems to make IE even less stable.  Since I started using IE with MSN Toolbar's tabbed browsing as my primary vehicle for web surfing I've had more IE crashes and system problems then I ever did with Avantbrowser (which also has it's fair share of bugs, but is pretty stable).  Ugghh!

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is just a _very_ buggy v1 and they're working their butts off on an enhanced, stable v2 to be released soon....here's hoping.  

I'm going back to Avant until IE7 comes out!

~tod

In case you didn't know, the latest MSN Toolbar release includes tabbed browsing.  This works with IE5 and IE6.  I used it all day yesterday and here are my thoughts...

Pros:

• There are tabs! 
• Able to save a group of sites/tabs to My Tabs.
• Able to open my last set of viewed tabs.
• Seems pretty stable, I haven't had any crashes like Chris refers too.
• I'm able to view Spaces photo albums now within tabs (albums don't work in Avantbrowser).

Cons:

• Opening a new instance of IE instead of a new tab - when links are hard coded to open a new browser window (admittedly, something I have personal issues with, but that's a rant for another time) they are opened in a new instance of IE instead of just a new tab. 
• Same goes when you right-click on a link and select Open in New Window (my preferred method of opening new windows...I want control of how my browser acts).
• Cannot close tabs by double-clicking.
• Cannot customize mouse/tab actions.
• Switching between tabs is not 'seamless to the user' and causes IE to flicker like when you switch apps (i.e.: going from Outlook to IE) as if the screen is being reloaded.
• When switching tabs, you can briefly see another IE instance open up on the taskbar.  WTF?
• Cannot save different groups of tabs, only 1 group of sites saved in My Tabs.
• There are a few quick-keys for moving around tabs, but limited when compared to competitors.
• <edit> IE's place on the taskbar moves to the bottom (I put my taskbar on the right side of my monitor running vertically...the standard taskbar setup would put it to the far right).  This is irritating as hell for me because I have so many programs open I always open my first few apps in a specific order so I know right where to go for them.  Outlook, IE, Messenger, VS.Net and then whatever comes up next.  I realize it's anal, but I hate it when this order gets f'd up.

My overall impression...  It's nice to have the complete functionality of IE with tabs (finally!), but this feels, looks and runs like a beta.  It's comparable to Avantbrowser and Maxthon versions from a few years ago.  The product seems stable enough to use every day, but it's very, very feature poor when compared with it's current competition. 

I'm disappointed.  The tabbed browsing arena isn't mature by any means, but it's definitely past the 'everyone beta testing' stage.  This feels very rushed and incomplete.  They should have done a better job matching (or hey, even out-doing) the stuff that the competition apps are capable of.  Right now, it's more like "oh, what a cute little product you have there Sparky, come talk to me when you develop something that grown-ups will use."

~tod

I don't have time right now to go into the details, but suffice it to say that I just spent 38 very-painful-minutes-I'll-never-get-back on the phone with HP/Compaq's customer support.  Arrgghh!

I have a broken Compaq laptop.  They have a customer support center.  Seems like a match made in heaven doesn't it?  Well, they make it a match made in hell.  I will never, I repeat never, purchase another Compaq/HP personal computer.  If only because their support is so f**kin miserable!  :(

~tod

I just noticed this post from Overdo in my RSS reader.  Tabbed browsing has been snuck into the MSN Toolbar!  The comments in Chris' post don't sound overly-impressed, but I'm installing it now to play around with it...

Download

Quote

Overdo's Land of Nothingness: MSN Toolbar now comes with Tabbed Browsing

Working at Microsoft isn't the glory story of yesteryear.  My stock options aren't going to make me a millionaire...in fact, I don't even think they have a positive value right now.  My stock grants aren't going to allow me to retire early and pursue my dream of being an author living on a Mexican beach.  My salary isn't so astronomically high (although I have no complaints) to where I can afford 3 homes, a super-size SUV, 2 sports cars and a yacht.  You get the picture. 

...but...there are certain perks that come with working for such a high profile software company...we often have the ability to obtain some of the latest hardware on behalf of fulfilling our job requirements.  On Monday, I ordered a brand new Toshiba Tecra M4 tablet pc. 

Let me tell you, the specs on this thing are unreal!  2 GHz Pentium M processor, 1 GB 533 MHz SDRAM, 14" SXGA TFT screen, NVidia GEForce 128 MB, 80 GB (5400 rpm) hdd, integraged wireless 802.11a/b/g, Bluetooth and a host of other things I thought were cool.  Suuuuwwwweeeeeet!

So, why was I able to order this little monster?  The short story...my current laptop (Dell Latitude) is at it's end-of-life (3 years). 

The long story...  A few weeks ago our admin, Wendy, came into my office to let me know that my laptop was at it's end-of-life and asked if I needed a replacement or a new desktop.  My current machines are not state-of-the-art, but I've added RAM where necessary and am able to run Outlook, several instances of IE, 1 or 2 instances of VS.NET, messenger, a few remote desktop sessions, SQL query analyzer, SQL enterprise manager, a few cmd prompts and Media Player 10 with very few noticeable slow downs.  Trying to be the fiscally responsible employee that I think I am, I told her "no thanks, ask me again next year."  She said "ok" and that was that.  A few weeks pass by and Monday arrives.  Wendy walks in to my office and says "I need you to order your new PC today or tomorrow so it's included in the current year's budget."  Of course, I reminded her about our conversation a few weeks ago and she said that we have the budget and management wants us to use it.  Go ahead, twist my arm to pick out a cool new toy, ummm, I mean tool. 

A quick word about our admins.  They are one of the most important pieces in our employment puzzle!  They know all the crazy sh!t that you might not need very often, but when you do...you need it yesterday.  They make sure that you have what you need to do your job and we all know how miserable a job can be when you don't have the right tools.  Suffice it to say that you want to be nice to your admin!  I'm damn lucky that I've worked with a few awesome admins.  Wendy, you rock!

~tod

Another interesting week...

• create your own south park caricatures (g.uk) - 1st result!
• http://weblogs.asp.net/jkey/ (t)
• just another sde (g) - 1st result! a mozilla user looking for me
• microsoft sde starting salary (g.pl) - umm, ok?
• microsoft xbox sde on site interview (g)
• msn space in spanish (m.jp)
• south park caricatures (g)
• sql concatenate list (g) - the how2 entries generate a lot of my traffic...hope they're helping
• xenon singapore (m)

~tod

Tony Schreiner talks about tabbed browsing on the IE blog...how it works and how it was implemented.  Some interesting stuff in there.

I can't wait for this!  :)

~tod