So here’s a new scam: Apparently a number of people are hi-jacking blog posts or – in this case – my entire blog and re-posting the SAME UNCHANGED content under their own blog. For example check out this post on my blog: http://www.west-wind.com/weblog/posts/10246.aspx#675653 And then this post on this dickhead’s blog (not linking the entry to perpetuate this bullshit so copy it into the...

Really? I can only imagine what the packaging must have looked before “Now”. This bugs the shit out of me. Why do manufactures have to waste resources like this? This packaging for 3 lousy memory sticks is gel plastic and is the size of a 8x14 piece of paper. What the hell for? Marketing? You think people will actually stop and go – gee, look at that nice packaging? Wasted resources, increased...

You might be wondering why the level of postings on my blog has dropped a bit in the last couple of months. For the last nearly 3 months I’ve been involved in a major home renovation of my house here on Maui and it’s taken a lot of energy, even though I wasn’t doing the work myself. But there are a decisions to make with contractors running around constantly making noise and living with torn up...

Here on Maui electricity is rather on the pricey side and as my household here is hitting the 10 year mark a lot of the household appliances are starting to limp or downright fail. It’s getting to be time for replacements. As I do so I started to pay attention a little more to energy usage of the components. So a week ago I picked up an electricity usage monitor as an exercise in better...

Just got a funny picture from the Gorge Hood River from last summer that I’d thought I’d share. It’s one heck of a wipeout: I remember this day and this wipeout on a backloop in particular – the board just  got away from me as I slipped out of the footstraps. I went one way (down) and the board went another. There are a couple more pictures in this sequence as the board gets backwinded in...

I'm finally getting ready to install my new Server and after some back and forth and testing on Windows 2008 I decided to go ahead and bite the bullet and go with the 64 bit version of Server. I've had mixed feelings about installing 64 bit given that I have had exactly zero experience running under 64 bit. I've not really seen a compelling reason on the desktop to run a 64 bit OS especially...

Woo hoo. I rolled over the magic 1000 Weblog post mark last night and didn't even notice until today when I was about to post another entry. Looking at the site this morning I realized the big fat triple 0's showing up on the Post count. It's been a little unceremonious I suppose - it's pure luck that I noticed since I rarely look at the actual post or comment counts these day. Heck I don't even...

It's been a long summer of fun out of the country for me. Some time off, some time away from the 'usual' and a time to go a bit lighter on work and time in front of the computer - just what the doctor ordered. Now it's back to reality and the catching up which invariably is left behind by 3 months of physical absence and putting off some work related stuff. The time off's been well spent. As I...

I do most of my business with credit cards and while I realize that the CC companies and merchant banks are making a killing off my sales with merchant percentages, the convenience of having credit card processing fully automated to the point that I often have to do absolutely nothing other than review orders is well worth the extra expense.Credit card processing (or PayPal processing for that...

Somebody called me a 'Guru' in recent conversation and I was well a bit embarrassed. What the heck is a guru or what makes one think of somebody else as a Guru?

Ok, I'm afraid to take out my Amazon Kindle in public now. I just got back from dinner here in Geneva and I was literally swamped by the entire staff of the Italian restaurant trying to get a look at the thing. First there were a few shy glances, then one of the waiters came over and practically demanded to look at it. I even got a free beer out of it for letting him play with it for a minute...

So I recently started using Twitter (I'm RickStrahl in case you want to follow me). Late I know - Twitter's been around forever, but when I first heard and thought about Twitter the first thing that popped into my mind was "So what?". The concept of getting blasted with small disconnected messages detailing the minutiae of life of other people didn't sound terribly appealing to me. I'm still not...

So I broke down and got myself an Amazon Kindle reader last week before I left for an extended trip to Europe. I've been reluctant to spend this kind of money ($399) on an electronic reader, but since I'll be spending a good deal of time on the road this year in Europe I thought it'd be a good idea to stock up on reading material before I hit the road and not have to deal with keeping stacks of...

Since I travel around with a spare SATA drive all the time anyway (one too many 'surprise' drive failures) I finally decided to put that spare drive to use as a backup device by using a USB to SATA cable. Handy and maybe enough for me to ditch the shitty process of DVD backups.

The next two weeks are going to be hectic. It's this time of year again, and I'm packing up home and hearth to go on my annual migration back to the West Coast. Except this year there will be a not so little European detour... The next couple of weeks will be especially hectic though. I'm getting on a plane in a couple of hours to fly back to Portland as I usually do this time of year. But this...

I'm both a consumer and a publisher of Google Adsense advertising on the Web and even though Web advertising makes me some money by publishing ads on this blog and in a few other places around this site, both publishing and providing ads feels like a bit of black magic over which I have only a tiny bit of control. Buying Advertising But let's start with the part that really gets my goat, which is...

So as I'm sitting here working on a project I'm realizing that the information that I'm actually pulling up from my head is getting to be less and less, and information that I'm drawing on from old code I have sitting around from other projects or documentation, blog entries is becoming my primary knowledge source. Am I getting senile or is this just a way to be able to deal with the myriad of technologies that we are tasked to work with these days. There's just not enough room to store it all 'up there' any more...

Having gone through easily 50 registration screens in the last few days, reinstalling applications on my new box got me to once again thinking about registration codes in applications. Somebody last week asked me as I provided them with a software key with Help Builder - what's this - this isn't a...

I configured and updated a brand new machine last week and overall the process has been pretty smooth and painless. But once again I'm reminded how silly Windows' scattering of files all over the place really is. I installed the new box on Monday. It's now Saturday night and I'm still picking up a...

Just got through Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and man what a fun ride this book has been. Not really sure how I ended up with this book in the first place - it's really not the sort of thing I usually read as I usually chew through Sci-Fi or non-fiction, but this is one hell of a ride that made...

Thought I'd share a really silly developer story here. A while back I built a scheduler application for ASP.NET which checks a POP3 mail box and looks for certain content. The app just pulls all messages and deletes them as it finds them (optionally) and forwards them to another email address with...

Honk, if you think this is windy!

The things I do to a USB key...

Seems like more and more component vendors are getting agressive with their use of copy protection schemes. While I can understand some need to protect software some of this has gotten to the point where the software becomes such a pain in the ass to test and use that the copy protection/registration scheme is enough to scare off potential customers.

I've been tagged and so here are a few things you might not know about your's truly...