Have you seen Atlas?

From the site:

"Atlas" is a free framework for building a new generation of richer, more interactive, highly personalized standards based Web applications.

Windows Live Development Center

Windows Live Development Center launched today.

Cool Business Card

Attached to an e-mail I received from the Director of Marketing Communications at Intellext (Product: Watson) was a business card. Different than most, it actually showd her chat availability. I was curious enough as it showed "Online Now" that I clicked on it. It took me to a chat room. It showed that she was currently away, so I simply left a message that the business card was interesting.

She replied that it was a "living business card" created by Revation, the company that is behind their live chat feature.

NCAA Tournament Scores

Looking for scores? You can check out Fox's NCAA Tournament Interactive Bracket

Sick

I was sick today, but the doctor gave me three prescriptions and sent me on my way. Some kind of infection on my tonsil, coupled with a nasty headache and bad allergies. I am already beginning to feel a bit better.

VW GTI Mk V

Kind of a cool interactive site to configure your GTI.

Microsoft Office Assistance: Introducing OneNote

Microsoft Office Assistance: Introducing OneNote

Microsoft Office Training: OneNote

Microsoft Office Training: OneNote

Onfolio RSS Reader

The feed reader within Onfolio has a nice interface. The interface seems to fit the look and feel of many of the Live items. In use it is similar to Bloglines in some respects. I have not had a chance to use it much yet, but in comparison to Bloglines I don't believe it keeps the info on the server such that if it were to be used from multiple machines you would have to subscribe and manage on each machine.

Screenshot: Deskbar

Screenshot: Deskbar

Onfolio by Microsoft looks to be a competitor for Watson, except there are some differences.. I was surprised the BlogThis feature allowed one to select another service other than MSN Spaces.

There is so much stuff on the technology front going on it is hard to even begin to keep up.

Tornado Warning

We had a tornado warning this evening in Jefferson City. Luckily it did not hit us. Others across the state were not so lucky as there have been some fatalities as a result of some of the storms today.



There is still a lot of storms crossing the state. Click on the image below to see the locations of National Doppler Radar Sites.

The arm is good.

Well I would say that my arm is probably about as good as it is going to get. I was able to play volleyball and it didn't fall off. It didn't hurt anymore after playing volleyball than it normally does, so I would say that is a good thing. It still hurts some at times. It just depends on how much it has been used and how I bend it at times. Just one of those things you have to live with I suppose. I'll probably let it go like this until and if it gets to bad to stand.

It was fun getting to play volleyball again. We took 2 out of 3.

The muscles are a bit sore. You just don't go jumping around in normal everyday life like you do in volleyball.

Gateway Portable

I called Gateway again today around 5pm to check on the progress of my portable. They said that a tracking number had been issued, so I got the tracking number and went online to look it up. It showed that it had been signed for by our receptionist at 8:51am. Gateway put it in the name of our main tech rep shown on their account, but I was able to track it down quickly enough. Yeah. No more 1024x768.

Cheap competition in the router world?

Interesting article in InformationWeek.

Office Live Basics

Well I signed up, so now I guess it is time to wait the 4-6 weeks to see if I get a 25 digit key.

MSN

Have you seen all of the features with MSN?

Earthcomber

Interesting. To bad I don't have a device to really try it out with. Which reminds me, still waiting on my portable to get back from Gateway. I called yesterday and they said there hadn't been an update on the ticket for a while so they would send an e-mail to get it updated and to call back in 24 hours. Called this morning, 24 later, and they told me it didn't show any updates and that I actually needed to wait 48 to 72 hours. Oh well.

First Test

Tomorrow night will be the first test of my arm back on the volleyball court. It is a lower league than what I was playing on before breaking it, which should be a good one for finding out if it is up to the challenge.

Employee Leaving

I have an employee leaving. I don't know which I dislike more, losing a member of our team or trying to find a replacement.

I have been fortunate that this is only the third employee I have lost since our group began around six years ago.

The first left when the group was formed as they did not like the reorganization. The second left as they retired. This one is an individual looking to move on in their career. I totally support someone wanting to advance, but do hate loosing good employees. She will be an asset to the agency she is moving to. Now I need to find a replacement.

I now find myself in one of those situation you hope won't happen. We have a highly visible system where the primary is having surgery and two days later will be the last day for the employee that is leaving. The employee that is leaving is the backup on the system. Always exciting.

Breaking Benjamin Video

I think the use of screens to make video surrond the band 360 degrees is pretty cool.

MS Access and "file contains no data"

I mentioned that we are working with 18 million records on one project. This data which was extracted from the mainframe makes a nice little 3.3GB text file. Trying to link to it via MS Access I kept getting an error stating "file contains no data". Seems like there would be something in there since it was taking up the 3.3GB of disk space. When connecting via the MS SQL client it connected without issue allowing one to setup how to import.

Bye Bye Novell

We have been moving to a single solution for network servers. We are moving towards Active Directory from a Windows NT/Novell environment. Needless to say one wants to plan this out well. From the user vantage point there doesn't appear to be a big payoff. They could store, share, and print files before. It might make it more manageable, but getting there has had its share of frustrating moments. Of course, the network group has been locking down permissions at the same time, so occassionally something stops running, printing, etc..

I believe one of their next projects is moving from Exchange 5.5 to Exchange 2003.

Busy Busy

We have many projects going on at work right now. One that isn't necessarily the biggest, but at the moment is taking a concerted effort by many to try to meet the March 31 deadline is an online app using forms authentication with SQL server. The server guys are doing great getting an environment in place for us and the developers are working hard as well. Having the deadline looming and working in the .NET environment without any formal training does make it stressful for them as well.

The only plus is that as mentioned it is not a large app. The biggest part is probably getting the forms authentication setup in the environment.

The app will basically provide a search interface for 18,000,000 records. These records are currently only updated once a year.

There are a lot of other apps we are working on that are just as important, but no absolute deadlines drawn in the sand as with this one.

Hopefully we'll get the developers some good .NET training soon.

My days have definitely been filled.