Pen Work

New look for Lakers

2007-09-20T15:36:00.001-07:00

After 7+ years the Laker web site is looking and feeling a bit dated. So I've begun the process of giving the site an update. Here are a couple drafts: With Facebook status With Menu

What we're watching

2007-01-10T11:38:00.000-08:00

We use a product called WebGuide a lot to remotely schedule recordings and to also stream our recorded content. One of the features is a list of what WebGuide users are scheduling.It is an interesting snap shot in time. 1) The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

2006-01-18T10:41:00.000-08:00

A great list of tools and utilities:Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool ListI use some of these. SlickRun being the one I would highlight on this list.

Quick success with XmlSerialization and RSS

2006-01-06T23:33:00.000-08:00

I have been tinkering with adding an RSS feed on the EvanAndAbby.com site the past few “free times” I had available. After very little time I can say that the site is fully setup for syndication. I have implemented the 2.0 RSS specification after completing 8 simple steps.Grabbed a sample RSS 2.0 Xml fileCreated the XSD scheme using the above Xml sample file. Saved the results locally as my rss2.

Uncle Koskie's PC

2005-12-05T17:34:00.000-08:00

I got a support call from Mike and Angie. Angie is a photographer and obviously does tons of Photoshop work. They have been getting the typical virtual memory errors on their Dell Dimension 2400 and thought maybe Photoshop was causing this. The 2400 is a pretty beefy machine so I was surprised when they told me about their issues. After looking over their system their guess pretty accurate, it

Automatically syncing my podcasts to an mp3 player

2005-11-24T20:44:00.000-08:00

While looking for a way to automatically synchronize my Zen Micro I stumbled onto the following article by Pete Kay. After reading his post and watching the step-by-step guide I had a good feeling that this solution would be very solid. Following his steps, I implemented it and have been using it now for over a week.I can officially say that I have reached my goal of setting up a situation where

The Zen of 20/15 Vision

2005-11-12T13:14:00.000-08:00

I took the leap and finally made the purchase of the Creative’s Zen Micro. I really haven’t had much time to play with it. I recently under went the LASIK vision correction procedure this past Thursday so I really have limited myself to any screen time.First, the LASIK procedure is incredible! I setup a free consolation this past Tuesday just to see if I was eligible and to also find out more

My search engine of the week

2005-11-04T08:40:00.000-08:00

I stumbled upon the following search engine by Inquisitor last night. This is a pretty cool concept that neatly uses AJAX and pushes Google’s Suggest just a bit further. At this point I am kind of sick of the AJAX hype but making web applications act more like fat client applications is a good thing.The results shown in the dropdown box lags a bit but it is in beta.

Blogs and search engines

2005-10-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Recently I have been tuning into the TWIT Podcasts. I am almost caught up to the current episode. So far each release has been very insightful. Leo Laporte is sharp as a whip and always brings a strong cast to his episodes. On one the podcasts they were talking about how search engines are handling and should handle blog posts. Most of the casts were in favor of search engines filtering out blogs

Big Blue

2005-10-05T21:31:00.000-07:00

I have started working on mock-ups for EvanAndAbby.com and have completed the first one. Not bad considering my lack of any color coordination!

Yahoo Unlimited and Winamp

2005-10-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

The Yahoo! Music experience continues to impress. I have been forever a Winamp user and until a new mp3 player comes along and absolutely sweeps me off of my feet, Winamp will remain my preferred player. I also have always stuck with the classic version of Winamp. I guess I have never seen an advantage of upgrading to the 5.x version. Until now! With the 5.x Winamp install comes the WMA plug-in

Day #2 of Yahoo's Unlimited Service

2005-09-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

So far the Yahoo’s service itself is a great buy. I am a software developer so I spend a majority of most days’ heads down either coding or writing up design documents. I have downloaded a variety of Albums. The latest from Weezer is my favorite so far.I am impressed with the ease of finding an album and downloading it. The Yahoo! Music Engine client is a bit buggy. I have had tons of error

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Subscription Service

2005-09-29T20:02:00.000-07:00

Total: $59.88 per yearYou will not be charged for this service untilOctober 06, 2005I decided to take the plunge and check out a music download service. If things go well for the next 7 days my plan is to look further into Creative’s Zen Micro mp3 player. $60 per year ($4.99/mo) is pretty tough to beat considering the cost of CD’s at BestBuy or any other retailer plus there tax and or shipping

Mentally Sweating

2005-09-21T19:06:00.000-07:00

Odd how things occur, sometimes, just as planned. Right after I got done reading the following post on being mentally lazy, a perfect example happened right before my eyes.A co-worker of mine, we’ll call him Stan, was working on a production defect. Of course he has BA’s, application support and management all breathing down his back while he tries to correct this defect. Sure, solving it and

MSDN webcasts and your MP3 player

2005-09-20T10:46:00.000-07:00

Not sure how an MSDN webcast compares to a podCast but it certainly would be a nice feature to listen to these in my off hours. I read a blog that talks about getting the webcasts and listening to them on an mp3 player.I guess I first have to find myself an mp3 player. I am really interested in the Zen Micro by Creative. Is it worth the financial hit? So far I can’t make myself pull the trigger.

The Return of Little Mac

2005-09-16T09:48:00.000-07:00

Props to the Mjd blog for pointing out this pretty funny film on “Little Mac” from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out Nintendo game. Punch Out was one of my favorite games we played while growing up. Being Little Mac and destroying your opponent who was 3 times bigger then you was so rewarding. Just hearing the music from the game makes me chuckle.

A Potato Cannon and a Toyota Corolla

2005-09-14T10:30:00.000-07:00

I saw an article in one of my favorite sites today. The site is Make and it is the online version of there magazine. I follow their RSS feed and there is always something of interest going on. I dream of the day when the kids and I can take on some of these DIY tech projects.Anyway, one of the articles posted today is on Potato guns. It is an improvement on the PVC/Hairspray version that we have

Earl Weaver Uncensored

2005-09-14T10:27:00.000-07:00

**Disclaimer: If you have sensitive ears please do not listen to the following.Here is a snippet of the Earl Weaver show in Baltimore while he was managing the Orioles sometime between 1968 and 1986. I have always heard and read about the filthy mouth some MLB managers have or had.Being an amateur ball player for close to 15 years, I have heard a lot but no one puts it as plainly as Earl “bleepin

Downloadable Tech Shows

2005-09-12T10:57:00.000-07:00

More and more downloadable “Techie” shows are starting to appear. I found a list of some of them today. I have kept an eye on a couple of them like The Systm and The Broken and obviously Channel 9. So far all are very well done and very informative. I really skip the gamer shows since A) I am not a gamer B) The G4 channel is terrible and I don’t want anything remotely close to it.Well, at least

Spam comments in my blog

2005-09-12T05:53:00.000-07:00

The comments on my last post disturb me. I knew what the comments were as soon as I saw more then one. I certainly don’t expect comments since most people don’t find anything here too inspiring and I really do not promote my blog so comments will be far and few between.Who are these people who waste everyone’s time, including theirs. They write scripts that find new blog posts and then spam the

Hello from Microsoft Word

2005-09-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

Hello from Microsoft Word 2000! Yes this blog was created, spell checked, grammar checked and posted all inside of word. No copy and pasting. No other word processor program like w.bloggar was used.This new plug-in from blogger.com takes your word document and uploads it to your blog. Very cool stuff. Certainly no reason now to not consistently blog, right!?! This is certainly of interest to me

Big weekend!

2005-08-27T07:27:00.000-07:00

Well out big weekend has just begun. The kids are just wrapping up some breakfast(Waffles and Donut balls) before we begin our day.Evan askes this morning when he woke up, "Are we going on the trip today Dad?" Tomorrow we head out to the Minnesota State Fair in the early AM. We will the start making out journey to Kansas City. We are planning on taking in a couple of Twin baseball games and take

Flickr

2005-08-27T06:26:00.000-07:00

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Talk is cheap

2005-08-24T11:30:00.000-07:00

I got a chance to look at the next Google adventure. I have not downloaded the beta install for all the obvious and typical reasons. I also don't know anyone else on this network. I assume this will change soon enough.Just looking at the screen shots I like the nice easy, simple look and feel. I don't want lots of tabs, ads and other distractions that are currently in place for Microsoft's

Why smart people go bad

2005-08-14T20:36:00.000-07:00

Here is an interesting essay that covers why and how to overcome individuals who defend bad ideas.I have always found the philosophy of human behavior very interesting. How people react, think, make decisions and interact with others all depends on a couple things, the environment in which we are surrounded and human nature. The second part of this, human nature, is what really intrigues me. How

Terrible QB's

2005-08-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

I saw this article list on the mighty mjd sports blog.Dreadful, Dreadful stuff.I didn't know Joe Kapp and Joe Namath had such horrendous seasons...Mark Malone is/was an NFL analyst on ESPN. Certainly fits the "those that can't, teach" saying. I remember Malone playing, he was B.B.(Beyond Brutal)

CSS and Me

2005-08-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

I am spearheading an effort at the office to familiarize and standardize our group on what CSS can do for us. Sure most of us know the basics, using it for "a" tags or font styling, but CSS can be so much more. Well, at least that is what they tell me or what I am reading. For now I want to start with the basics. Setup a guideline for our group to use when constructing web apps. This guideline

Name in pictures

2005-07-15T10:22:00.000-07:00

I found this site that takes your name and creates a collage.All I did was place the following in my blog: Create Yours!

mp3 Jukebox for the office

2005-07-01T11:30:00.000-07:00

We are doing some team development on a couple projects going on at work. It is so much more effective to have all of your development team in one location. But I'll save that topic for another day.What I really want to get to today is the Jukebox we have setup at work. Since we are working at a team we need constant communication so headphones don't really work. On the other hand, there are

My first PC

2005-06-06T21:03:00.000-07:00

Ah yes...The IBM PCjr. What a machine!Here is a picture of a the boot screen.Although we mostly played games on it, there were times when we would actually be productive. Alone with the PCjr came a BASIC/BASICA programming book. It was a tutorial of different things you can do with the language. I have not seen the book yet but did find a picture of the Cartridge that allow you to do some extra

WOOT WOOT

2005-06-03T06:04:00.000-07:00

I just partook in my first woot purchase. It was for the Remington Titanium Shaver with Smart Cleaning Dock. Fathers day present. Impressive! I saw the item, clicked on the "I Want" button, signed up for an account and submitted the order in less then 5 minutes. I have been watching this site for about a year now. Some pretty amazing deals.--------------------------- Remington Titanium Shaver

If I were a gamer...I am Mario.

2005-05-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

I am Mario.I like to jump around, and would lead a fairly serene and aimless existence if it weren't for my friends always getting into trouble. I love to help out, even when it puts me at risk. I seem to make friends with people who just can't stay out of trouble. What Video Game Character Are You?

Book List

2005-05-14T19:40:00.000-07:00

I am always interested in seeing lists of top selling/highly praised books. I found the list below on another blog site. I don't know what it is based off of but it is a nice list of books I would someday like to read. My only concern is that The Lord Of The Rings is not listed. Again, I don't know what the list is based off of but any list should certainly have that works in the top 5.#1 The

FireFox on Steriods

2005-04-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

ipkonfig.com has posted a nifty tutorial about making Firefox faster.

My HTPC

2005-04-01T19:41:00.000-08:00

Some of the fruits of my labor started to show up today.This morning Abby needed to go down for her nap. So I took her downstairs away from the action (it is Evan's Potty Training Weekend) so she could settle down. She quickly feel asleep, giving me sometime time to catch up on my HTPC recordings. I am in the early stages and am currently previewing Showshifter. So far it is unreal and I can do

Spring Training Boxscore

2005-03-24T15:18:00.000-08:00

Actual Spring Training Twins score posted on:http://minnesota.twins.mlb.comI will assume a change is coming.|Listening to: [Connecting] http://216.12.162.54:8000 - - [Connecting] http://216.12.162.54:8000 - (0:-1)|

Snowplowed by Email?

2005-03-06T19:49:00.000-08:00

Interesting article touching on the topic of effective email usage. It talks about the software engineering side of work. Interestingly enough, I found I am already doing a few thing recommended in the article. I really find myself only check email when "I have time too". I often hear, "Did you get my email". In total embarrassment, I usually admit "No". I guess I feel a little better about only

News of the Day

2005-02-24T19:11:00.000-08:00

Moss traded to RaidersI am still having a hard time believing this is true. I will believe it when I see the jersey on his back. Moss is so good when he is good but so bad when he is bad. Keep him interested and he will set all-time records!|Listening to: 40 ([radio.wazee] modern alternative rock (www.wazee.org)) - Franz Ferdinand - (0:-1)|

New Blog

2005-02-22T19:08:00.000-08:00

Micheal Gillespie , a colleague of mine, has started a blog of his own. I spend a couple years working at a former company of ours on a software application. After reading his first post, I am reminded why it was hard to keep up with him but also why I learned so much from the experience. I hope he posts often!|Listening to: Wheel - John Mayer - Heavier Things (5:32)|

News of the Day

2005-02-21T20:28:00.000-08:00

News of the Day:Pitchers and Catchers Report to Camp today.

Basic Application Functionality

2005-02-21T20:06:00.000-08:00

I though I would start to throw together fundemental elements of a typical web application.Basic Application FunctionalityAny web application written internally or brought in that will run in our production environment and support by the Web Development Group should meet the below requirements. Not meeting any of these requirements can cause issues to our production environment or will severely

NHL Cancels Season

2005-02-19T22:08:00.000-08:00

News of the Day:NHL officially cancels the 2004-2005 season.

2005-02-18T19:41:00.000-08:00

News of the Day:Teen accused in Rocori High shootings pleads mental illnessThe teenager accused of killing two students at Cold Spring Rocori High School in 2003 has pleaded not guilty by reason of mental illness, his attorney said at a pretrial hearing today.Phrase I will never understand "not guilty by reason of mental illness".|Listening to: Gasoline (EnergyRadio.FM - Energy X) - Seether -

w.Bloggar and what is playing in Winamp

2005-02-18T07:03:00.000-08:00

Cool winamp plug-in.|Listening to: She's So Fine - The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Axis_ Bold As Love (2:40)|

...Forgot the link

2005-02-18T06:29:00.000-08:00

Here is the link to the w.Bloggar tool.I actually stumbled upon this tool while using RSS Bandit. I have recently started using RSS Bandit as my news reader and am liking it a lot. The sweetest feature it provides is the ability to sync you blogs with another machine. This means I can keep up with my blogs all day at work and then upload my feeds to a configured server. Then when I get home I can

Hello From w.bloggar

2005-02-17T20:00:00.000-08:00

My Hello World post from the w.bloggar tool.

My South Park Character

2004-12-10T20:35:00.000-08:00

Way to fun to pass up...and Kenny is still alive.

Fun with Photoshop. Color in Grayscale and Image Editing.

2004-11-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

The past couple of days I got to work on editing some pictures using Photoshop. It certainly is something I love to do when a challenge rises. Being a software developer I really struggle with visual, color coordinated tasks. A blinking cursor at a command prompt is pretty enough for me. So I always try and push myself to be more creative. Removing a person from a photo. Some friends of ours

Winamp dead!

2004-11-11T06:48:00.000-08:00

Sad day in the audio world.

Feedreader - RSS Reader Application

2004-11-07T20:33:00.000-08:00

I must say, I am quite impressed. So far I have relied upon only a couple different plug-ins to keep up with my RSS/ATOM feeds. IntraVnews, an Outlook plug-in, and Desktop Sidebar is a must have for people with plenty of screen realistate. The advantage of both of these apps is that they are always running on my Desktop anyway so why not add a plug-in to post my news feeds too. This weekend I

Cleaning up my web host

2004-10-16T21:51:00.000-07:00

What a pain in the arse! All I wanted to do was clean out some old files/directories before uploading a new .Net app. The only way I can get to my files on my host is via FTP. This seems fair, FTP does all I need to do anyway. Well, little did I know I have some nasty hidden Front Page Extension directories scattered throughout. Since these files are name "_vti_cnf", when you try and delete its

Review: The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)

2004-10-14T20:37:00.000-07:00

A very hard book to set down. I wrapped the book up late last night(1:30am). I just simply could not put the book down. I enjoyed the whole story as Dan Brown tied his informative "facts" with his fictional story. While following an American Symbologist and a French cryptologist as they tried to solved the mysteries of the Holy Grail and discover why members of the Priory of Sion secret society

Life on the campus today!

2004-10-07T13:57:00.000-07:00

I found my way to a blog produced by a student attending Stanford. He talkes about the CS class he is enrolled in and how it has video feeds for each lecture. I checked out the classes site and sure enough, each lecture is stored and can be streamed to your PC. The availability of class material is pretty impressive. All slides, assignments and lechture notes are available in the Online Classroom

A couple more books

2004-10-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

I was fortunate enough to get my hands on a copy of The Da Vinci Code yesterday. I have been waiting patiently for a friend to finish reading it. Each time I ask the friend says, "Oh, I haven't started it yet!". *ug* I guess I will shelve Sick Puppy until I have completed it. I am already into the third chapter and so far, have not been disappointed! I also got my hands on The O'Riley Factor.

Price of Security

2004-09-30T11:44:00.000-07:00

Have you ever thought about the price we pay for security. Maybe we avoid thinking about it so it doesn't drive us completely mad. Being involved in the I.T. world I guess I am more aware of security but I rarely stop to think about the cost. Everything from the locks on your car doors to the firewall configured on your home network router. Time, money and resources have been thrown at making

Live from the iMac

2004-09-22T19:49:00.000-07:00

The wireless adapter/gateway did arrive today. I must say it is a great piece of hardware. It is a D-Link DWL-810+ and is very easy to work with. I am impressed with the amount of information posted on D-Links site. I first hooked it up to my WinXP Laptop and configured it. I followed the setup instructions and it walked me through the whole process. I then un-plugged it and walked out to my

Wireless Adapter for iMac

2004-09-22T06:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, my subject line contains the word iMac. I am not a Mac type of person but my curiosity has driven me to it. My brother and his wife recently purchased a new Dell (Yes! Another conversion to the PC) and they had their old iMac (OS 8.6) sitting around. He offered it to me and I just couldn't resist. I spend most of my time using Windows. I have tinkered with Linux a bit but just don't have

Successful install of SP2

2004-09-21T21:22:00.000-07:00

I finally got to do a fresh install using my Windows XP boot CD containing SP2. I must say I am blown away! The install was very easy and I didn't even notice I updated to SP2 until I actually looked at the Properties on "MY Computer" once the install was done. The install seems solid. SP2 certainly adds a lot more security features and warning messages when it finds that you might be at risk.

Nifty Windows Tool - Sidebar

2004-09-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

...and it's free! Plenty of skins and add-in components also available. Here is a screen shot of my desktop with it.

Great Blog!

2004-09-15T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here is a great example of why Blogs are neat! This guy was a "guest groundskeeper" at a Seattle Mariners baseball game. Take Me Out To the Ballgame

Virtual Server 2005

2004-09-15T11:06:00.000-07:00

Interesting tag line that management will have a hard time arguing against.

what a day!

2004-09-13T20:05:00.000-07:00

Kind of a good day/bad day. Good: I successfully used the Restore functionality in XP. It actually worked without a hitch. Bad: I used the Restore functionality in XP. I had to revert back to last Friday. The really bad news is it even replaced some of my code files.

Streaming Internet Radio on your Pocket PC - GSPlayer

2004-09-12T20:48:00.000-07:00

If you have a Pocket PC with WiFi, this is a must have! Just plug your Pocket PC into your audio receiver and you now have your entire mp3 music collection and ShoutCast stations at your finger tips. Here is a tutorial to help you out.

Boot CD for WinowsXP and Service Pack 2

2004-09-09T21:49:00.000-07:00

I found an interesting tutorial on creating a boot disc containing WinXP and SP2 all on one CD. Since I am just about to re-build my machine it will come in very handy. The instructions are very good and it walks you through the whole process."This makes the whole Windows installation run considerably faster."Sweet!

Reminders of hurricane pictures

2004-09-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

All the news about the past and present Hurricanes, Frances and now Ivan, will always remind me of a couple pictures I got from a 2003 Hurricane. I can't remenber the name but I remember there was extensive damage to the east coast. Click to see larger versions.

intraVnews - Feed Reader & RSS Aggregator for Outlook

2004-09-08T20:37:00.000-07:00

If you are running Outlook XP or above this is certainly a plug-in you must check out. It certainly changes the way you search the net to stay informed. I have not added many different news feeds yet but the ones I have I really enjoy. The info I am getting back without doing any work on my part is sweet. I have a few Technical feeds; Slashdot, MSDN, CNet News. ESPN feed handles my sporting

BTW...A State Tourney Team

2004-09-06T20:26:00.000-07:00

This is this years Laker ball team. I couldn't be more proud of this bunch of guys. We gutted it out and over achieved well past *everyone's* expectations. Certainly a season and a bunch of guys I will not soon forget.

Time Entry

2004-09-06T20:17:00.000-07:00

I just got done entering my time for last week. It is due by noon on Monday but the Boss wants it done by 8am Monday(Tuesday this week since it was Labor Day weekend). In all fairness I have no problem with that. He has to get his approval done ASAP so he can move on to bigger and better things. I just hate the process of getting it entered. Right now we have no tie-in with our project list of

Live from the iPaq

2004-09-06T14:49:00.000-07:00

Just checking out the features when posting via a PDA. Very limited in the font/style features. No spell checking. ugh! ...but the ability to post at all is neat enough.

Soggy ride home

2004-09-05T20:20:00.000-07:00

A monsoon is currently going through the state of Minnesota. It was a long drove home from Camby. It was a very fun day. The kids played and we had a great meal. Steak, shrimp, scallops, garlic potatoes and corn on the cobb. Yep, never a food shortage at either of the Grandparents places. I recently rebuilt my iPaq. I have an older one but have the expansion pack w/ a wireless card. I toyed with

Rain

2004-09-05T06:10:00.000-07:00

I woke up last night to the pounding noise of rain. In a panic, there is always always a question I ask myself still to this day. Did I leave my ball mitt outside? I guess it is something left over as a kid. Rarely did a day go by when I didn't play some catch with one of my brothers or at least throw the ball against the chicken barn wall. I guess most people (adults) think: - Are my car

Humm...The Journey Begins

2004-09-05T00:00:00.000-07:00

This isn't my first attempt at getting a blog going. I formerly developed my own blogging application and hosted it on my own site, www.epudd.com. I built the blogging tool to allow a friend of my to journal his experiences while spending a few months over in Australia. The epudd.com site is now dead. I just can not seem to keep up with maintaining my own personal site. I am a web developer by