Wintellect  

July 2004 - Posts

I took my P-51 to the family reunion this past weekend intending to fly it on a long runway and get some video. What is it they say about best-laid plans? The plane never got off the ground due to major engine problems. I sent the engine back to the manufacturer Read More...
I'm taking Friday and Satruday off to attend my wife's family reunion in Columbia, TN. It just so happens that Columbia has an awesome R/C club with a 500-foot runway--perfect for that P-51 beast that I fly. So I'm packing the 'Stang and all my gear in Read More...
I reached a milestone yesterday when I finished rewriting the labs for my new ASP.NET 2.0 course to run on build 40607--the build that went out to the public as beta 1. This morning I wrote a fun new demo for the course's introductory session--a demo Read More...
I dreamed about work all night, so rather than fight it, I got up and got back to work revising the labs. I spent all day yesterday wrestling with a problem arising from a late-breaking change made to ObjectDataSource. Finally got the error resolved last Read More...
I spent the weekend in lab hell. I was almost finished drafting the labs for Microsoft's ASP.NET 2.0 course when I learned that 1) the beta I received from them isn't the official beta after all and differs from the public beta in several respects, and Read More...
I wasn't that excited about ASP.NET 2.0's new site navigation infrastructure until I discovered security trimming. Security trimming enables site maps nodes to be selectively shown and hidden based on the role or roles that the requestor belongs to. For Read More...
Joy! The British Open is on TV this morning. Better yet, Tiger Woods and Greg Norman tee off in a few minutes. I'm going to leave the TV running and watch them work their way around the course as I work on Lab 6. Every year I say I'm going to attend next Read More...
My brain is totally fried. I finished Lab 5, and it's ultra-cool if I do say so myself. Gonna knock off now and eat take-out Chinese while I watch last night's Amazing Race. One the one hand, I'm hoping I can survive the death march to course completion. Read More...
President Bush was in town yesterday visiting nearby Oak Ridge National Lab. My wife and kids positioned themselves along the motorcade route and waved American flags as the president's limousine sped by. Bush had to leave town on a backup plane due to Read More...
I spent a long day working on Lab 4 today and making revisions to Labs 1, 2, and 3. The day started at 5:30 a.m. when my home office phone, which has an extension in the study next to the bedroom, began ringing. Turned out it was some #^$!#*&! moron Read More...
Forms authentication is amazingly simple in ASP.NET 2.0. Not only does it manage user credentials and roles for you, it also provides controls for logging in, creating new users, e-mailing lost passwords, and more. It even maps requests to roles, something Read More...
An old friend from my PC Magazine days sent me a link to this short but funny video . How would you have handled it had you been the guy in the video? Read More...
And then there's this video of two R/C planes colliding in mid-air , set to the tune of Pat Benetar's “Invincible.” Read More...
These R/C jet guys are serious. If you don't believe it, check out this video of a scale-model F-14 Tomcat being put through its paces in France. Drool drool. Read More...
I'm reading a terrific book right now: The Case for a Creator by Lee Strobel. It lays out a compelling and very scientific case that mankind--indeed, the universe as a whole--is the product of thoughtful design rather than happenstance. It brings in evidence Read More...
I put the finishing touches on Lab 2 late yesterday afternoon and then decided to take a brain break. I went flying with a friend who had a brand electric new plane he wanted to try out. It flew beautifully, and I took an electric plane of my own: Great Read More...
As an R/C airplane enthusiast, I sometimes hang out in the discussion forums at www.rcuniverse.com . One of the things you'll find there is crash videos. Check out this video of guys toasting their expensive gas-turbine R/C jets . Hurts just to watch.. Read More...
Whew! I've completed a draft of the slides and demos that go with my ASP.NET 2.0 course, and I just put the finishing touches on the first of nine labs and turned it over to my reviewers. I'm exhausted, but now's no time to think about burn-out because Read More...
Will somebody please write a tool that dumps a SQL script that not only creates a SQL Server database, but recreates its content as well? I spent hours yesterday writing a similar tool, but it works with one specific database, not ANY database. It's a Read More...
John Robbins and I were chatting the other day and agreed that it's not just spammers and virus writers that are threatening to render e-mail unusable these days: it's also the network admins who configure mail servers to send bounce-back messages informing Read More...
There it is, folks: Jeffrey Richter's SECOND BLOG ENTRY EVER! Read More...
I'm stoked because tonight is the premiere of Amazing Race 5 . I like reality TV because it's mindless, and I need something mindless after working all day. Amazing Race is fun because of all the cool places they visit. Richter doesn't know it, but I Read More...
I didn't know Jeffrey was such a Rush fan. One of my favorite albums of all time is Rush 2112 . I still have a vinyl copy of it I bought in high school. It's one of the few albums or CDs that I like every song on. Another is Michelle Branch's The Spirit Read More...
I received the RTM bits for the upcoming Whidbey beta yesterday and installed them last night. This morning I installed the documentation. Save for a glitch that required me to modify the docs' Setup.ini file, the install went smoothly. The build process Read More...
I'm in crunch mode right now writing a 3-day ASP.NET Whidbey course for Microsoft. The due date is less than three weeks away, and while I've written a ton of content over the past two months, a lot of work remains to be done. It doesn't help that I'm Read More...
Burt Rutan and crew made history last week with SpaceShipOne. A friend sent me a link to a cool online slide show documenting the event. Check it out. Read More...
Like a lot of folks, I hate spam and despise the low-lifes who send it. I sometimes fantasize about getting my hands on one of the people who flood my in-box with junk mail. Read about what happened to one gentleman who had a run-in with one of the country's Read More...
Blogging is so popular these days that it's hardly news when someone starts a new blog. John Robbins, Jeffrey Richter, and I have resisted blogging because 1) everybody's doing it, and 2) it seems more than a little vain to assume that others will care Read More...