I’ve always liked the Mac vs. PC ads. They’re clever, they make me laugh and I like both actors (Accepted is very under rated, IMO). Of course, I actually prefer my PC running Windows to a Macintosh (I had a Mac IIcx back in the day), I prefer Vista to XP and I’m a Microsoft employee, so I don’t have any trouble seeing the exaggeration, but there’s always a kernel of truth, which is what makes them funny. The part that kinda annoys me is that Apple seems to be claiming they have no such problems, which is, of course, not true.

The Mac vs. PC ads I understand: they’re meant to put down the PC by having the PC guy look like an idiot, leaving the Mac guy to seem non-threatening and therefore better by comparison.

On the other hand, I can’t say I understand the latest Windows ad with Jerry and Bill. I did enjoy it, however. Not only did Bill seem much friendlier and more approachable than I’ve ever seen him, but the image of someone in the shower with their shoes and socks on made me laugh, as did the image of Bill wiggling his butt in a Deep Throat sorta way.

And the commercials are having an effect: they’re being talked about and folks are interested in the next one. How often do you hear about folks looking forward to a commercial? That in and of itself is an achievement.

Get ’em while they’re hot!

I've been using Word for a long time and my fingers knew where the commands were that I used even though my brain didn't. Most of the those commands I've mapped to the new Ribbon-enabled Word without a problem, but sometimes I still search. For those times, the Office guys have put up a cool tool that shows me where the new version of each command is located in the new Word. Enjoy.

I don’t know if it’s legal or not, but if you use DVDFab with the Mobile option set to XVID video + MP3 audio (both supported by the XBOX 360 if you have the latest updates installed), you can rip the movie from your DVD (no menus, extras, etc) onto a network share (I use my Windows Home Server box), scroll through them on my XBOX 360 and play them back with a/v quality high enough that I can’t tell the difference (and I don’t have the quality cranked as high as it goes by any means).

Each movie takes roughly 1GB, so I can get all of my DVDs stored for the cost of two weeks’ worth of lattes (although I’m really just using the spare space on my 1.4TB of WHS storage). Plus, since I’m still in the 30-day trial period of DVDFab, if I hurry, I could rip them all for free (although for the $40, DVDFab Gold is definitely worth the price). It generally takes about 45 minutes per movie, so I’ll be flipping a lot of DVDs during the next 30 days and I haven’t bothered to figure out how to get DVD metadata, e.g. cover art, etc, but other than that, the experience is a wonderful one. In fact, since I hate going through all the previews and menus, just picking the movie from a list and having it playing immediately is a better experience that a DVD in many ways.

The only thing that could make this better is if WHS or Windows Media Center Edition had this feature built in. I’m guessing I’m breaking some laws by doing this, but to me, it sounds like fair use. I’m backing up the DVDs that I already own to a HDD. The fact that I can watch them without getting out of my couch doesn’t change the fact that the DVDs are right there on my shelf, purchased fair and square.

Oh, well, if the police want to come for me, they know where I am. : )

I gave a talk to the Digigirlz yesterday and it was a blast. It was 25 high school girls that were on the Microsoft campus all week learning various technologies to promote women in IT. The girls are nominated by their teachers for aptitude and attitude and these girls had both in spades.

Vijaye Raji and I were giving the talk, me primarily the pretty front man while he drove the slides, typed the code and made sure I didn’t get things very wrong (he knew the environment and the language far better than I). We were teaching general programming basics using a variant of BASIC that was especially well suited to new programmers. We spent two hours showing them how to do turtle graphics and how to write a game (Pong) all from scratch and we all had a blast doing it.

And these girls were sharp! I’m used to pacing material for rooms of adult software engineers, but I didn’t have enough. I had to take feature requests from the audience and figure out how to implement them on the fly while they followed along, programming their own versions of the game as we went. They were hands on the whole time and eventually I enlisted their help to tell us what code to write. Mind you, this was a language they’d only learned minutes before, but they didn’t have any trouble at all.

They laughed and asked questions and answered my questions and were engaged the whole time (well, most of them — some were seduced by the siren song of the high speed internet connection : ). I figured I was doing OK when one of the girls asked me if I ever thought about being a teacher.

“Naw,” I said. “I hate kids…”

They didn’t buy it… : )

My youngest likes to record video, but has been doing so on busted equipment and doesn’t have anyone that knows what to do with it once he’s got it. His birthday’s coming up and I’d like to get him a DV camera and sit down and learn a piece of editing software that folks recommend so I know he’ll be able to do cool things with the resulting video.

Does anyone have any recommendations? Is the video editing software that comes with XP any good (that’s what he runs on his laptop)? How about the one that comes with Vista?

Thanks!

After 3.5 years, my team’s work in Microsoft’s Connected Systems Division will finally see the light of day! Here are the related talks we’re giving at this year’s PDC:

• “Oslo:” Managing Software + Services Applications
  Presenter: Oliver Sharp
• Hosting Workflows and Services in “Oslo”
  Presenter: Ford McKinstry
• “Oslo:” Customizing and Extending the Visual Design Experience
  Presenter: Florian Voss
• A Lap around “Oslo”
  Presenter(s): Chris Anderson, Don Box
• “Oslo:” The Language
  Presenter(s): Don Box, David Langworthy
• “Oslo:” Repository and Schemas
  Presenter(s): Martin Gudgin, Chris Sells
• Extending Windows Workflow Foundation v.Next with Custom Activities
  Presenter: Matt Winkler
• Workflow Services
  Presenter: Ed Pinto
• Windows Workflow Foundation: Futures
  Presenter: Kenny Wolf

When I was a teenager, some kids were sneaking out to get drunk or have sex. I was sneaking into my parents’ record collection to listen to George Carlin. Unfortunately, unleashing my version of his brand of humor on my peers was one of the things that kept me from being invited for parties or sex, but I still dearly loved the man and was very sorry to hear that he passed away yesterday.

Certain situations still trigger George Carlin responses whether I want them to or not; he is permanently lodged in my brain. And of all the things he’s done, his incomplete list of impolite words is stuck in there furthest (*not* safe for work!).

I’ll miss you, George. Give whatever all-powerful being you run into in the next life a piece of your mind about the state they’ve left us in here on Earth.

Update: a very NSFW GC highlight video series.