Today, I was asked about the story behind my viking avatar: The avatar is years and years old. Peter Stern, a graphic designer friend of mine, put together a set of avatars for me for something (I forget what) and the viking is the one that resonated with me the most because of my Norwegian heritage, my physical stature and my general demeanor (those of you who know me have never asked why I choose a Viking avatar : ).

I’ve done a bunch of stuff related to Solitaire on my blog for some reason. I guess I’m a fan, although mostly these days I focusing my listening in boring meetings with 2048 or Border Siege (the real reason I have an Android phone).

I’ve been working at home off and (mostly) on for 16 years…

What my team does on an average Wednesday afternoon:

Last year right after the 4th of July, one of my kind readers offered to let the me and the boys help set up and set off this year’s 4th of July show in or around Portland. However, I can’t find who offered. If that kind reader is still out there, can you drop me a line? I’m sure my 60-year-old father would like to help, too. Thanks!

My mom came to visit to celebrate my 40th birthday and her 60th birthday. She and the Sells Brothers and I spent yesterday afternoon wandering along the waterfront, checking out exotic animals, ditching lame cowboy comedians and eating elephant ears. And then, to put a point on the day, we launched ourselves 100 feet into the air on a giant bungle cord machine.

Long-time readers may recall when I got an angry caller from a Vista user that had trouble configuring it the way they wanted it. They got to me because they were looking for “sales” using the automated voice attendant that matched my last name instead (“Sells”) and forwarded him to me in the middle of a 1:1 in my office. Not wanting to let a customer go away angry, I stopped what I was doing and did my best to try to help.

It happened again today, except for an angry middle-aged guy, I got a call from the sweetest 12-year-old girl you’d ever want to talk to. Her Word CD had gotten scratched and she needed a replacement so she could write a big paper due next week. I considered telling her that I wasn’t in sales or support or getting her number and calling her back (I was IM’ing with four other people at the time and I was late for a meeting), but she was so earnest that I just couldn’t turn her away.

nearly 40 years old; past his youth!
But tonight with a smile,
he swam non-stop for a mile.
First time in his life - that’s the truth!

I swam a mile when I was 17 and again last summer, but never non-stop before. I know it doesn’t compare to real swimmers (it took me 45 minutes), but I’ve been swimming for less than a year. Plus i found two meaningful rhymes for “Duluth.” I rock. : )

You may or may not know it, but I’m a big poker fan. For a while, I thought about quitting my job and being a Texas Holdem poker player. I’ve studied a stack of poker books and every once in a while, I get to be at a table when there’s a “moment” — somebody gets cocky and gets beat in just the way they deserve. I’ve been the cocky guy and I’ve been the guy that does the beating. Here’s an example with poker brat Phil Hellmuth of what I’m talking about:

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.

And so I did the only thing I could to do increase my odds — I actually played the lottery. (I blame my inability to apply this strategy for my lottery losings in the past.)

I did a little research and then went to two local Plaid Pantries to purchase the Oregon Lottery “Trio.”

I’m not a big poetry fan in general, but notable exceptions are Poe’s The Raven (especially the Simpson’s version), Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein.

However, I have to admit a certain fondness for the lowly limerick. I’ve done some composing, but the subject matter is often not something I’d want to post on my blog (“Hi, Mom!“), so when I ran into the rare clean one, I had to share:

This is what happens when my relatives get together and the wine flows freely… : )

This is hilarious!

The nice folks at Lab 49 are throwing a contest for WPF programmers.

The goal: take the financial data they provide and build a kick-ass WPF app around it.

From Mommy, Why is There a Server in the House?:

“When a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, the daddy wants to give the mommy a special gift.

“So he buys a ‘stay-at-home’ server.”

I’ve posted about ebooks before (e.g. I Hate Books). It sounds like the Amazon Kindle has some real potential. All we need is a product with enough critical mass to create a market and then we can have real competition ala the music player market.

Has anyone used an ebook reader before? I have some friends with the Sony version and they love it. Are we there yet? Does anyone have a Kindle?

I just got a box full of free copies of Programming WPF from ORA.

If you want one, post a comment on this post with a) a reason why you deserve one and b) contact info so I can follow up for snail mail addresses.

First it was the Halo 3 review (which I can’t agree or disagree with yet because I’m still stuck on level one) which a Wii zealot forwarded to me because he likes to send me links to negative portrayals of anything MS-related (like that’s a challenge to find : ), then it was the BioShock review (a game I never figured out the cool part of), then his POV on the console wars (I’m proudly a member of the frat-boy demographic!) and finally it was the Tomb Raider Anniversary review (a game I haven’t played since v1 and preferred the Apple ][+ equivalent) which had me laughing out loud.

Agree with him or not, you gotta appreciate Yahtzee’s style.

Your programmer personality type is:

I always knew that the scientists would optimize away sending the matter when all they need is to send the state:

“A team of physicists has teleported data over a distance of 89 miles from the Canary Island of La Palma to the neighbouring island of Tenerife, which is 10 times further than the previous attempt at teleportation through free space. The scientists did it by exploiting the “spooky” and virtually unfathomable field of quantum entanglement - when the state of matter rather than matter itself is sent from one place to another.” [ed: emphasis mine]

I sent the boys to the Microsoft Surface web site last night while I was in another room. I don’t believe I’ve ever heard that many

Scott came over to my house and we made up a topic (“Software: The Last Fifteen Years and the Next Fifteen Years” in two parts), but it’s really just an excuse to talk to each other and have a good ol’ time. Have a listen.

P.S. Sorry about coughing they weren’t able to edit out. Alergies…

Today, Sara Williams, ex-Developer Relations Group (the folks at MS that were allowed to speak to developers before we had blogs), ex-MSDN head and ex-Microsoftie has given birth this morning to a 5 lb. 4 oz baby girl. Both mother and daughter are doing well (and father is resting fitfully, having lost a month of sleep with the arrival of his daughter a bit earlier than planned).

However, their daughter does not yet have a name and, on the suggestion of Mr. Box, I am soliciting suggestions. If your suggestion is picked, you will be awarded a signed book of your choice (regardless of whether I wrote it or not). Have at it!

I only listen to one podcast, so casting my vote for Hanselminutes on podcast alley’s list of top podcasts was a no-brainer.

Plus, when I voted, they had a free sample for K-Y Brand Intrigue, which is apparently the longest lasting premium personal lubricant. The opportunity for jokes here is boundless, so let’s start w/ some obvious ones and I’ll send a free copy of Programming WPF to the best one in the comments:

I don’t know how many of these are actually real (my left-handed son was very disappointed to hear that he’d be dying 9 years before his right-handed brother), but they were very fun to read with the kids.

P.S. Can you lick your elbow? Tom claims to have a friend that can lick his. He’s going to be very popular when he grows up…

My superhero results:

″?Keeping up with their tradition, Don and Chris sing an inspired song for the holidays.”

Merry & Happy!

I don’t know why the MS interview page is suddenly digg-worthy after all these years, but it’s nice to be dugg:

Lord knows, I love Rory, but easily my favorite thing are his comics. However, he doesn’t do enough of them, so if you’re looking for a Rory-alternative between comics, check out xkcd. This is the one that made me realize just how Rory xkcd is:

It all started with a bet that my new marketing guy could meet his promised numbers by a certain date. Figure 1 shows me reading his results report at VSLive 2003. Figure 2 shows the audience deciding if that was good enough. Figure 3 shows him taking a pie in the face as revenge by engineers for the missed promises of marketing guys everywhere.

Figure 1: Reading the marketing results report to the audience

This one’s been around a while and just feels so true…
Sat, 10/28/2006 10:24am

From JJ5′s web site.
Wed, 10/18/2006 11:08am (what a thing to see so early in the morning…)

From left to right, Ted Neward, Rocky Lhotka, Chris Sells’s cardboard cutout and his electronic image projected to building 33 in Redmond, WA from Lake Oswego, Oregon, Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman.

but I like it.

My youngest son’s teacher found out I work at MS, so now he expects me to come into his class to teach them cool stuff. I’m happy to do that, but now I’m worried about putting together a cool 1-4 hours of stuff to do, e.g.

• Cool PowerPoint stuff (wowing their classmates)
• Cool Excel stuff (doing their math homework)
• Cool Web stuff (building their own web site)
• Cool Programming stuff (writing their own PC/XBox 360 games)
• Cool Hardware stuff (programming a robot)

Posted without permission after reading it in today’s paper
Sun 10/01/2006 3:01pm

• USB SD/MMC MP3 Player + Card Reader + S/H: $18
• Kingston 1GB miniSD Card + S/H: $19 (at the time)
• Being able to listen to Teenage Dirtbag on the same device that I can use as a 1GB USB HD and SD, mini-SD, MMC, RS-MMC and T-FLASH reader/writer: $37 (duh — $18 + $19 — you thought I was going to say “priceless” didn’t you?)

The sound quality ain’t that great, but don’t criticize the dog for being off key…

The Microsoft XNA Game Studio Express (Beta) is available for download:

″XNA Game Studio Express enables individuals and small teams to more easily create video games using new, optimized cross-platform gaming libraries for Windows and Xbox 360. This beta release targets the development of games for Windows. The final version of XNA Game Studio Express will be available this holiday season and will enable development of games which target Windows and upon purchase of a XNA Creators Club subscription, the Xbox 360 as well.”

Right there next to Don Box, Jeffrey Richter

In massive writing avoidance mode, I found my way to Seth Godin (who I don’t know from Adam) doing a great presentation on stuff that’s broken at Gel 2006 (I conference I’ve never heard of) as a way to promote his site

Scott created his podcast with the idea of not wasting his listeners’ time and he’s done it. HanselMinutes is the only podcast I listen to. In fact, I prepared for a long car drive by filling my phone w/ episodes I hadn’t hear yet and listened all the way (except when I called Scott to complain about one of them : ).

Not only does Scott have a fabulous list of topics for the Windows developer, but the way he explains them is wonderful, too. I don’t know where the guy finds the time to do all the stuff he talks about; I’m jealous!

I’m a big Ted Pattison fan in general (you have *got* to hear the story where the cowboy shows up at the door in buttless leather chaps), but he’s at his best when he’s singing (or holding Don’s hand). Of course, Carl Franklin’s no slouch at singing either (I don’t know how he his at holding hands or whether his chaps have a butt or not), so you’ll want to hear them singing “Why Did Shipping Vista Turn Out to be so Hard” sttto

I’m on MySpace. Now what?

Superman Returns has some cool scenes and Kevin Spacey does a great Lex Luthor, but overall there were far too many soulful looks between Superman and Lois Lane for my taste. It’s a matinee at best.

I got my Qtek 8500 today. The bad news was that I got the French version of the manual, but that wasn’t so bad, since I wasn’t going to read the manual anyway. However, the worse news was that all of the phone menus where in French, too. The nice folks at expansys.com were quick to send me the set of menus to turn English back on, but the instructions they sent where themselves in English, which required me to do a little babelfish work to translate into French menu text, but I managed.

I’ve just registered for the Portland Code Camp 2.0, July 22-23. It’s a free conference that includes 26 developer sessions (so far), food, a party and the potential to win an XBox 360. And did I mention it was free? I’m not sure about the name (it’s being held at the Washington State University in Vancouver, WA), but other than that, what’s not to love about a local, free, developer conference?!?

And if you’re coming from out of town and need a place to crash, I’ve got a spare room. Come one, come all! Tell a friend! Register today! It’s free!

The reviews have been largely positive (but not completely), and I’m very much looking forward to my new QTEK 8500 (aka the Star Trek [STRTrk?]). Apparently I’ll be one of the first folks on the west coast to have it, which will probably destroy my book-writing productively over the weekend (I’m supposed to be working on the Avalon RTM book).

Being first with hardware is not generally something I like to do. In general, I purchase laptops and cell phones and not many of either (usually one every 18 months of either). Frankly, I’m a late adopter on hardware ’cuz I like to handle someone else’s first (no snide comments, please… : ). However, the experience with my Audiovox 5600 has been so positive and the features of the QTEK 8500 are so overwhelming (on paper) that I just had to get it ASAP. It’s really the first Windows Mobile 5 phone I’ve found compelling.

Alternate Reality Gaming sounds like fun, but I just don’t know where people find the time…

Check out the Code Monkey mp3!

Not only does Amazon.com have a traffic ranking for sellsbrothers.com (80,616 — this number sounds too high to be good : ), but there’s a web site review claiming that I’m one of the “Windows Brat Pack.” I have to associate with Anthony Michael Hall or Rob Lowe from this bunch (they seem the most geeky), but them who’s Don and who’s Tim? Definitely, Ted Pattison is Judd Nelson…

I love the internet. Where else would you see a video of a ninja answering letters about love?

Here.

I love this idea!

Live.com has a new image search which does progressive showing of images, scaling of the group and individual photos in very cool ways, but the killer feature is when you surf to the page from whence the image comes, the image is shown in full size hovering above the page. Very slick. My only complaint is that there seems to be no way to do an image search w/o first doing a normal search and then pressing the “Images” button. Still, I’ve switched from a9.com and google.com image search.

Here’s a tip — if you’ve got a deadline, don’t wander over to the Half-Life 2 comic “Concerned.” I’m a *huge* Half-Life and Half-Life 2 fan, so when I heard about it, I went right over and now that’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back (but were oh so pleasantly spent) reading all 120 comic strips front to back. Since I’ve been spending my evenings and weekends playing Half-Life 2 again (why oh why aren’t there any more good games?!?), all of the stuff in these comics is fresh in my mind. Plus, I don’t mean “comic inspired by Half-Life 2;” the guy actually posing characters and objects from the game using a Half-Life 2 mod and builds his comics out of the screen shots, adding hilarious prose. It’s like if Rory built his comics from “Stick Figure World 3D” (coming soon to XBox 360). Very highly recommended.

Why is British comedy so much funnier than ours? Check out Yesterday’s Jam.

I got my first hands on Xbox 360 demo today and I want one! Unfortunately, MS employees aren’t treated specially, i.e. there isn’t a big warehouse full of 360s for us at the MS Store. However, there is an internal mailing list filled with rapid pre and post-360 purchasers that showed me several resources to use to find 360s:

• 360 Tracker, a WinForms app to find stores in my area with 360s in stock. Will alert me via email and my cell phone as well as on my computer screen. It’s running now.
• NotifyWire.com, a web site that will filter for online sales in my price range and notify me via email and SMS. I’ve created my account.
• xbox360tracker.com, a web site that shows online sales and their in-stock status. Available as an RSS feed, so that’s a reason to run one again! : )

Wonderful things happen when I tell me kids to stop playing video games and to stop watching TV (I try to limit them to an hour of each/day). I mean, aweful things happen at first — you’d think I stuck a sharp stick in their eye. But, after the hollowing stops (and the pull the stick out), the imagination kicks in and they think of stuff to do. Today (they were home from school on MLK Day) John asked if he could write a program.

Now, as you may or may not recall (or as you may or may not care), I just moved a few months ago and I haven’t built enough shelves to hold all my books yet, so my copy of Microsoft C# Programming for the Absolute Beginner, by Andy Harris (which I’d purchased in case this day every came) was buried who knows where. I scoured every book box stacked in the closet in my office and every book box I could get to in the garage before risking an antique painting and crawling behind four matteress to dig through the one box I just couldn’t reach to find it (why is it that whatever you’re looking for is always in the last place you look?!?).

So, I read Rory’s latest comic and laughed. A lot. However, I haven’t posted it because I figured anyone who’d be amused would’ve already seen it.

And then I got a ping from a marketing friend of mine who’d seen it and wondered what I thought. Granted, he’s a marketing guy in the IT field, but still — he’s a *marketing* guy. I mean, I don’t read their bait & switch blogs, so what’s he doing reading our geek-out blogs?!?

“Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.“
–Redd Foxx

Happy New Year!

DISCLAIMER: Obviously, this completely violates George Carlin’s copyright, but I purchased the $80 CD box set and it wasn’t on there, so I feel like I’m owed. Also, the audio is in RealMedia (.rm) audio format, whose player may have been the world’s most aggressive piece of mainstream software before spyware became a plague to rival locusts and frogs falling from the sky, but a quick batch processing pass with GoldWave on the one computer in my network with a RealMedia audio codec installed and I’ve got the MP3 version. Finally, this is completely work unsafe and you shouldn’t even think of looking at this web page at work, let alone listening to the file in question.

I can’t believe that after all these years, I still find George Carlin’s Incomplete List of Impolite Words amusing. It makes Tom Green’s Pet Names for Genitalia seem like a poem you’d write on a mother’s day card. For your grandmother. On a dialysis machine.

80% of the email I get about my Microsoft interview question site (which, 2.5 years into my MS career, nobody has yet forced me to take down) isn’t very fun, e.g. asking for the answers (which I don’t give) or fairly pedestrian stories (“I got asked some regular questions but didn’t get hired.“).

This one, though, is definitely worth posting. Enjoy!

As an engineer, I appreciate the efficiency of combining the criminal and civil trials into one. Plus, if it weren’t for

This is how you tell the marketing guys from the engineers… : )

Private email forwarded by Adam Denning

Because Michael Weinhardt has ported it to Windows Forms 2.0 and ClickOnce, now Wahoo2! is available on your Start menu whether you’re connected to the internet or not. Enjoy!

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 9/10 correct!

That is all.

Check out the new feature in Vista that allows MS developers to feel your pain when a crash occurs in a very real way.

Sure, sure, Alan Cooper and Anders Hejlsberg are keynoting, but I’m the “with” at this year’s Redmond, WA Patterns & Practices Summit 12/13 - 12/15. I don’t yet know what that means, but maybe if I’m enough “with it” in Redmond, it’ll lead to “with-ness” in Sydney or Oslo (hint, hint… : ).

I decided to go a little meta for this year’s XML DevCon:

10. Top 10 List of Top 10 List of Top 10 List Ideas (a little too meta)

I just found the most awesome site: http://grouphug.us. So far, this is my favorite

“More and more people I know know more and more people I know.” –Melissa Sells

Here.

An Esquire magazine author hires not one but two Indian assistants and outsources practically everything but watching TV to them. By the end of the article, he’s outsourced writing the article. I don’t know if it’s true, but it is funny (and scary).

A story about how the world would be if MS never existed.

I come from a world where I had a Mac at home and a Unix box at work, giving me the best of both worlds in the late ‘80s. After that, I got a job at Intel programming Windows 3.1 and wondered why the hell this piece o’ crap ran most of the world. 15 years later, I’m a happy Windows user and programmer. Did I change or did Windows?

Aha! I finally figured out where I know Shepherd Book from and I now understand the references to the fact that he wasn’t always a Shepherd. At one point, when he was much younger, Book was Det. Ron Harris from the 12th precinct in Los Angeles! I believe the low point in his career was in episode 135 and 136 (a rare two-parter) where Harris turns a low-budget pornography investigation into a major motion picture

IMDB: “8.4/10”

Oregonian: “A-”

These light sabers look very cool. It’d be nice to give my boys something that they could fight with that didn’t break in 5 minutes (of course, I might need one, too, just as a backup…).

The new Nintendo control looks *very* cool…

You have to love a bunch of geeks willing to publish a video of themselves doing a parody of an N’Sync song, including the dance moves. Nice!

[via Mr. Anderson]

Doug and I will be giving the following talk at the PDC this year:

“Are you tired of lackluster user interfaces and bit-dropping communication infrastructures that don’t work together? If so, then you’ll want to see the magic that Doug Purdy and Chris Sells can wield when they build a couple of smart client applications using Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. In this talk, you’ll be astounded and amazed by the power and simplicity of Doug and Chris, plus they might show you some WinFX, if you ask nicely.”

Between the new job, the new house and the book, I haven’t had nearly enough contact with my local nerd friends. I’m starting to experience nerd withdrawal symptoms! Come to the PND next Tuesday and ask me about MDD, my PDC talk or how Jeff Richter and I were recently blamed for IDisposable.

If you love Fight Club (who doesn’t?!?), then you’ll love the rest of the Fight Club rules

Here.

Ian and I submitted the final manuscript for Programming Avalon, Beta Edition, on July 13th (right on time, I’ll point out). Since then, the O’Reilly folks have been working overtime to fix my prose (I’m not a big fan of editorial guidelines or templates). As part of that process, they sent Ian and me a 400+ page PDF file for us to check. In the process, I submit changes to the manuscript, Ian argues about the ones with which he disagrees and then I argue with his arguments. It’s great fun.

At least that’s the message I’m getting from the 2nd episode of the Channel 9 guy’s trip across country to the PDC (I’m not saying that’s a bad message — it sure beats the whole

but it’s fun anyway…

[Scoble]

I read Old Man’s War today (no better way to avoid writing than to read). I enjoyed it very much. I’m off to check out the author’s web site

Rich is tired of me blowing off the local nerd events, so he set up something he knows I can’t stay away from: an afternoon showing of Fantastic Four. I’m an FF fan from way back (every time Don signs his emails ” ’nuf said ” I get a little tingle of nostalgia). I’m been loving the Ultimate Fantastic Four trade paperbacks (that’s what adults call comic books that have been collected into a bigger, more expensive book).

I don’t have much hope that this movie will be any good, but the Brothers Sells and I can’t not go. Feel free to join us! Rich has picked the 12:25pm showing on Saturday, July 9th, at the new Century 16 Cedar Hill Crossing theater that I love, just to make sure there would be no way I could say “no.” Plus, I’ll be deep in the throes of finalizing the Avalon book chapters that day (along with every other day this week — what a way to burn vacation days), so any excuse to avoid the writing will be good. Come one, come all!

I can’t believe nobody* blogged about this today! Isn’t this the beginning of most sci-fi horror movies?!? By the end of the movie, all of the scientists die and only one good-looking male/female pair are left, having barely averted the Apocalypse (no one every expects the Apocalypse…). Since I identify with the scientists and barely know anyone good looking enough to survive, I’m not so sure reincarnating dogs into zombies is such a good idea…

*by “nobody” I mean “nobody” I read, of course — I sure it was all the news amongst the “dear diary” set : )

The channel 9 guy starts on the road to the PDC. Random fun (1 of 3).

This one made me laugh out loud:

The boys and I went to ROTS on the 2nd night and our local theater had some auspicious guests that I made stand around while my son took the picture (neither of them asked to be in a similar picture, btw : ).

A: The reason I gave for wanting to cancel an extra credit card.

I bet they don’t have that reason in their script! : )

See IanG, my Avalon book co-author in crime, talk with Ted Neward about WinForms, Avalon and .NET. Nicely done.

I just realized: Lucas took us through the entire 6 film series and we never got to see Yoda fight with Darth Vader! What’s with that?!?

P.S. I like that “Vader” is in my spelling dictionary. Lucas changed the world.

I have no idea where the “Studs from Microsoft” video came from or how old it is and I had to download it first before playing it, but it was totally worth it to see Bill Nye as a ’softie and to watch those women run for their lives instead of facing the possibility of dating any of us. : )

[via jj5 (would doesn’t like people to know he exists, let alone link to him…)]

I am a Gauntlet Adventurer. I strive to improve my living conditions by hoarding gold, food, and sometimes keys and potions. I love adventure, fighting, and particularly winning - especially when there’s a prize at stake. I occasionally get lost inside buildings and can’t find the exit. I need food badly. What Video Game Character Are You?

 

I’m sure you’ve heard the news and read the specs and you might even have seen the celebrity-ridden MTV special. Now, see what it’ll really be about

I was searching with the boys this morning and found this:

My sons and I (and my 11-year old boy’s “date!!!“) all enjoyed Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I know it didn’t have much in the way of decent dialog or acting, but when compared to the other 5 in the series (especially episodes I and II), it rocked. I’ve only seen it once, but right now it’s tied for first in my mind with A New Hope (I know some snobs like The Empire Strikes Back best, but I still love the feel of the first one).

Also, I liked Unleashed a great deal. Not only did I enjoy the fighting, but I really enjoyed the relationship between Danny and his new family.

Here.

May 7, 2005, 10:00pm EDT (08 May 2005 02:00:00 UTC)

East Campus Courtyard, MIT

42:21:36.025°N, 71:05:16.332°W

(42.360007,-071.087870 in decimal degrees)

The brothers Sells and I will be attending the 7:35pm showing of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy on Friday at the Evergreen theater at highway 26 at the 185th exit in Hillsboro. I plan on being at the theater around 7pm.

Everyone’s welcome to join us. I’ll buy the popcorn!

It starts slow, but the ending is totally worth it!

Here.

OK, the Omega Speedster is cool (very cool), but it doesn’t compare to this masterpiece:

It may be that this review, saying how terrible the Hitchhiker’s Guide move is, is actually funnier than the movie itself. He starts here:

“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie is bad. Really bad. You just won’t believe how vastly, staggeringly, jaw-droppingly bad it is. I mean, you might think that The Phantom Menace was a hopelessly misguided attempt to reinvent a much-loved franchise by people who, though well-intentioned, completely failed to understand what made the original popular - but that’s just peanuts to the Hitchhiker’s movie. Listen.”

In case you missed it yesterday, Don Box and Andrew Layman, two of Microsoft’s top thinkers, proposed a means of increasing XML performance by looking into areas of technology outside the core domain of XML

“I first heard about it at a Seattle area Starbucks. I mean, I was just like sitting there drinking my Venti no-whip triple shot soy latte and I looked over at this dude sitting next to me who was working on a laptop and I saw something on his screen. So I said “Dude is that the new version of Eclipse?” and he said “No, it’s Visual Studio 2005 Linux Edition″. Then he typed a few lines of code and created an Indigo service that runs on the Apache web server. I was like “Dude!” and almost spilled my latte.”
–Anonymous Seattle Youth

“We still believe that Java is a strong language for development. However, we will no longer continue to build on that technology preferring instead to move developers to .NET.”
–Anonymous Sun Representative

I’m sure you’ve heard the uproar about “saving VB6” by now. Since I’m not a member of the VB programmer community, I don’t feel qualified to judge them, their tools or their plight.

However, I am a charter member of the COM community, so when I hear about Microsoft’s plans to halt the support for IDL, I get burning mad! Save IDL! Sign the petition! Viva la IDL!

Scott and Rory do it again.

Betsy Aoki, the matriarch of GotDotNet, sings a song of GDN Blues. And not only did she write and sing the song (with a surprisingly good voice for a geek), she also had a hard time getting it published across all GDN servers, further illustrating the point. Recommended!

Between ”

OK, the first TechEd video from Scott & Rory (”A love story

Here.

What could possibly be better than a snippet of the old Super Friends cartoon with dialog from the movie Office Space? Life is good. : )

[via Shawn Morrissey]

Here.

My #2 son, Tom, is apparently on the road to independent consulting… Mama’s, don’t let your babies grow up to be computer boys…

Here.

Scott Hanselman IM’d me this Onion piece and I just had to share it. I don’t want to spoil it with quotes; just read it and tell me if you don’t die laughing.

Here.

On the left, you see Lt. Uhura with her wireless Bluetooth headset (although I’m not sure of the made and model). On the right, you see me with mine (the Nextlink Bluespoon AX). I’ve waited all my life to be as cool as the folks on Star Trek and now it’s finally happened! I’m ready for my replicator, transporter, tricorder and Holodeck now…

Here.

To avoid intimidating people, I generally don’t wear the tight shirts in public, but Dax Pandhi captures my hidden muscles perfectly! : )

I’m updated SolFX to use DrawingBrushes instead of Canvases and to use a much simpler card back, so performance is much improved. In fact, it’s so much improved that I’m starting to think about other things that it needs…

I can’t really improve on this: ”

Jason Olson recently interviewed for an SDE/T position (Software Development Engineer in Test) at Microsoft and although he didn’t get it, he provides some words of advice for folks about to interview for the first time.

If you’ve got .NET 2.0 and the Nov. ’04 Avalon CTP, click here to play my scaling, vector-based, WinFX version of Solitaire. Features include lovely scaling of the cards as the window resizes, real-time drag ‘n’ drop of the cards, sol-like card stacking, ClickOnce deployment and the source. The performance in this version is much improved because I’m re-using DrawingBrushes and a simplified card back. Enjoy!

In honor of Rory Blyth’s birthday, Jim Blizzard has posted a Haiku. I’m not so cultured as Jim, as I could only manage a limerick:

There once was a lad named Rory,
who told many a bawdy story.
He came right out,
like an orgasmic shout,
spreading mirth in drum-beating glory.

I don’t know what Amazon is doing — except possibly trying to stimulate blog entries — because I could detect no advertising in there most recent home page movie short, “Tooth Fairy,” but I did enjoy it.

Here.

This is what Don Box’s 12-year old son thought a good last minute costume would be when trick-or-treating the Indigo halls of Microsoft suddenly seemed an imperative. I guess this is the consequence of having a life-sized cardboard cutout readily available…

This is what Don Box’s 12-year old son thought a good last minute costume would be when trick-or-treating the Indigo halls of Microsoft suddenly seemed an imperative. I guess this is the consequence of having a life-sized cardboard cutout readily available…

It started off innocently enough. I corrected Tom when he tried to put down words like “pils,” “Rome” and “trool,” even giving him a letter or two to help him make his words (he’s only 9, after all, and this was his first game of Scrabble). Then, I ran out of ideas and we needed long words to get into the empty spaces, so I put down with “faxer” (someone who faxes). After that, it was all down hill into “roddy” (someone with a lot of rods), “naped” (the flip of hair across your forehead), “soapic” (very soapy) and, my personal favorite, “oifbath” (good for sores on your skin), all the time fighting to keep a straight face.

However, when I busted Tom for putting down “zin” (“double” in “Tom language”), he started pointing the finger at “trux” (Latin for multiple vehicles), looked it up in our unabridged Webster’s (I’ve got to get rid of that thing…), called his mother to double-check and the whole thing came falling down around my ears. My visions of Tom in his 30s calling me from a party complaining that “glev” wasn’t actually a kind of rock have been dashed.

(I couldn’t possibly explain. Click the picture…)

I saw this in an email from John Mason in PSS today:

“Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place.  Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it.”
–Brian Kernighan

I’m not going to move, but I couldn’t help printing out the test…

Selling the books and comics you’ll never read again:	$1479
Conducting *2* garage sales and selling the play structure the boys don’t frequent anymore:	$2552
Finding your wife’s 6-month old pay check in a pile of papers:	$1640
Regaining the use of more than the front 2″ of every drawer and cabinet in the house:	priceless

Today at Casa de Sells we completed a 9-month long whole-house Clean Sweep, literally touching everything we own and deciding whether to keep it, sell it or trash it. We didn’t actually remodel anything while our stuff was on the lawn, but the whole place seems much bigger since emptying the things we no longer used out of the house and completely filling a 2-car garage before hauling the stuff off to Powell’s book store (they buy as well as sell) and conducting not one but two giant garage sales in two separate neighborhoods. The $5671 we earned along the way was just found money (especially Melissa’s paycheck… : ).

According to this survey, my personality type is The Black Knight: “Your distinct personality, The Black Knight, might be found in most of the thriving kingdoms of the time. Your overriding goal is to win. You approach each task or situation as a contest to be won strategically and efficiently. Because you can control your feelings, it is not unusual for you to charm, as well as successfully delegate tasks and responsibilities to the more emotional types. You are often concerned with what’s in it for you. You seldom involve yourself in activities where you can not foresee a reward for your investment or effort. On the positive side, you can be analytically empathic and logically persuasive. On the negative side, you may be unemotionally manipulative as well as impulsive. Interestingly, your preference is just as applicable in today’s corporate kingdoms.”

The title is certainly cooler than “Scullery Maid,” but the text makes me sound like kind of an asshole… (not that I’m arguing, mind you, I’m just surprised that a computer program can pick it up so readily : )

I don’t care who or what you are, male or female, rich or poor, heterosexual, homosexual, pansexual or Rory, you should go and see Shaun of the Dead. I went to a sneak preview tonight and it’s the best movie I’ve see all year. Absolutely hil-laugh-your-ass-off-larious.

Here.

I’m in-the-middle-desert unavailable this week @ Burning Man. Wish this open-minded but sheltered Midwestern boy luck. : )

I really enjoyed listening to Charles Petzold on the most recent episode of .NET Rocks. It was wonderful to hear about an entire part of Windows history when I didn’t even know that it existed (I never heard of Windows ’til version 3.1). I was also surprised and honored to hear that Charles was familiar with my book (or the sales numbers at least : ).

BTW, I’m a huge Richard the Toy Boy fan. He’s got such a radio voice and entertaining manner that he should do the radio thing professionally (hopefully I’m not embarrassing myself because he’s already a professional and I don’t know it : ).

“At the Albertville winter Olympics, condom machines in the athletes’ village had to be refilled every two hours. And in Sydney the organisers’ original order of 70,000 condoms went so fast that they had to order 20,000 more. Even with the replenishment, the supply was exhausted three days before the end of the competition schedule. (For the record, athletes who were in Sydney report that the Cuban delegation was the first to use up its allocation.) Salt Lake City in 2002 went even bigger: 250,000 condoms were handed out, despite the objections of the city’s Mormon leadership.”

“There’s a lot of sex going on. You get a lot of people who are in shape, and, you know, testosterone’s up and everybody’s attracted to everybody,” says Breaux Greer, a shaggy-blond Californian who competed in the javelin at the Sydney Games.”

That’s quite a nice fortune. My lucky numbers were 7, 12, 15, 36, 39 and 21. With the “

Channel9 did what I was unable to ever get done: filmed some of the interview process. It’s not an actual interview, but Gretchen Ledgard and Zoe Goldring, both Central Sourcing Consultants at HR

Here.

This is what happens when night shifts happen to good nurses.

I’ve spent the last 8 months driving me wife to get rid of a ton of her stuff so that we could use more than the front 2 inches of every drawer, cupboard and closet in the house (of course, it’s her stuff that I find to be extraneous : ). Yesterday, while she was on her 2nd night of working 3 12-hour night shifts in a row, I sent her the following email (yes, that’s just the kind of nerd that I am):

Rory has posted his MSDN speaking schedule. I’m already signed up for the Portland, OR talk on August 26. I can’t wait to hear Rory regale us with “a demo-packed afternoon” where I will “gain valuable insight into .NET development.” Plus, we get “a sneak peek at what’s coming in ASP.NET 2.0!” What could be better? Come one, come all!

I can’t tell you how much I loved Doom. I’ve probably played all of the Doom games back-to-back all the way through a half a dozen times over the last decade. And I was so excited about Doom 3, but David’s right

If you ignore Rory on IM, you get fun stuff like this:

Rory [Shut up] says:

I’m hanging out at the O’Reilly’s Open Source Convention today (downtown Portland) and I’m planning on bringing as many fun out of town open source geeks as I can to the Portland Nerd Dinner tonight

Here.

Crappy Carl is giving away a crappy top-of-the-line Tablet PC to anyone that crappy fills in his crappy survey (and they don’t even have to listen to his crappy show to crappy win!).

I’ll be bringing “

Brad Smith writes:

“I just found your site. I love it!!! It is now a regular read for me.

“I read ‘The Human Side of Microsoft’ post on your site and had an idea… What about getting a bunch of people to list what car they drive (or what they used for transport if it is not a car). Aussies tend to be a bit car crazy and you can tell a lot about a person by how they get around!! :-)

“Just an idea…. Take it easy mate.

“Brad Smith
”Canberra, Australia”

Microsoft stunned investors yesterday with the announcement that they were distributing 75 billion in cash because they had run out of things to buy. According to Microsoft CFO John Connors “With the acquisition of Lookout, we’ve crossed every single item off our shopping list. Frankly, there’s just nothing left to buy.”

(more)

Ah, the bittersweet memories:

“Maybe you have heard some of the stories about the [DevelopMentor] Brains? Brian Randell delivered a VSLive conference talk in a bath robe. Don Box delivered a conference talk in Amsterdam naked from the waist down. Chris Sells, not to be outdone, agreed to pose completely nude for an advertisement in a technical magazine whose readership is 95% male.”

A friend of mine sent along a whole set of questions he was asked for an SDE/T (Software Design Engineer in Test) position at Microsoft. I love the one where you implement MAKE

I got a sneak preview of this last week and absolutely loved the Channel9 tour of the Microsoft Research hardware and social software labs. The bit with the inventor of the laser printer, who works for MS

When I was but a wee Windows lad, my heroes were Charles Petzold and Matt Pietrek. I learned Windows 3.1 programming from Petzold (along with everyone else) and learned to love what was going on underneath from Matt. Plus, not only did Matt write Windows Internals (the title and style of which would inspire my own Internals book), but he also wrote a monthly column for the Microsoft Systems Journal, which I would lovingly read cover-to-cover every month.

So, when I went to speak at my first conference and Matt wanted to talk to me about something, I was on cloud 9 (not to be confused with Channel9). I wondered what obscure technology that I’d most recently written about on the DCOM mailing list that had caught Matt’s eye. What deep COM or ATL issue did he want to take up with me? I had arrived!

Carl Franklin posts a fun segment from Michael Feldman’s Whad’ya Know? radio program where 32-bit to 16-bit thunking is discussed.

Apparently someone has an early copy of Visual Studio 2005 and has stumbled onto the big feature we’ve been saving for an important keynote.

Here.

The one where I write two computer programs, neither of which do as well as the two librarians they’re up against (damn librarians…).

Earlier this week, BradA asked the community for feedback on the guys that work for him (it’s review season again at Microsoft). Adam had this to say in response:

“I’m waiting for the first blogger to suggest that we should let the development community choose when we go to the bathroom. Is there no internal process that doesn’t benefit from ‘community involvement’?”

I was doing my periodic t-shirt down-sizing and have gathered a couple dozen t-shirts that I thought I’d donate to my local geeks instead of to my local Good Will (who just don’t seem to appreciate them). The pile includes a bunch of DevelopMentor t-shirts, including some of the vintage COM Is Love t-shirts (although I’m keeping Essential Marketing and I’m With CAFEBABE). I’ll bring the t-shirts to the June 29th Portland Nerd Dinner.

And if you’re attending the PND, don’t forget to ask me for the letter I wrote to the CEOs of AOL and CompUSA. It made Rory repeatedly gasp in amazement.

If you hit the Microsoft-Watch web site often enough (it’s been on 3 of my last 4 visits), you’ll see my smiling face as a giant banner ad. Hell, I don’t even put my picture up on my own site (well, except this one

I’m still laughing about this one…

Here. I can’t get the video possibilities

sttto Milkshake by Kelis

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

I know you want it;
the thing that makes me,
what the geeks go crazy for.
They lose their minds..
the way I whine.
I think it’s time:

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

I can see you’re on it.
You want me to teach thee,
techniques that freaks these boys.
It can’t be bought;
it’s just my marketing wrought.
(Track-back if you’re smart)

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

Oh once you get involved,
everyone will look this way, so,
you must maintain your charm;
same time maintain your click-through,
just get the perfect link.
Feed what you have within;
RSS is cheaper than ink.
The geeks pick up your scent.

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

la la, la, la, lah
Post it up.
la la, la, la, lah
The geeks are waiting.

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

My web log brings all the nerds to the yard,
and I’m like: “mine’s better than yours”.
Damn right, it’s better than yours!
I can link you, but I have to charge!

Sellsville…

The old Sells Mansion…

The problem with fame in the IT industry is that when someone dreams about me, it’s a dude

Here. So far, it’s provided the information required for two of my Orkut friends to wish me a happy birthday. Other than that, I haven’t found a use for the site, however…

Don Box always used to say that COM Is Love, although I’m pretty sure he’d agreed that we’ve long since given up COM

I get to read all of Eric Sink’s pieces before we publish them, so I got to follow the link to the trailer for Commedian before you guys did (although the movie’s been out for 2 years, so you had a bit

I just talked to the 2 cars filled with 5 members of the MSDN Content Strategy team on a road trip down to the Portland Nerd Dinner

As my friend Steve puts it, according to Google

As much as I love the Friends show for it’s portrayal of unconditional love (as a geek, people loving me no matter what I do is appealing), I have to admit that it works best on a backdrop of few money worries (Monica’s apartment is worth $6000/month?!? No wonder I don’t live in NYC…). NPR’s Mike Pesca opens up my eyes to the lies and hypocrisies (hyprocrisi? [see? geek!]) in the Friends theme song and is hilarious about it.

I got this email from Brian Jepson, one of my favorite DevCon speakers (he ran his PowerPoint slides by clicking on his cell phone!), and I just had to share it:

“My stepson got a 99 on his driving test today–I think the blue Sells Brothers t-shirt that he’s so fond of (the one I got at the XML SellsCon that he immediately swiped from me) gave him that extra boost of skillz and confidence…”

I think David meant this as a good thing, but it sounded scary to me… : )

Here. At least, if this isn’t Rory, it sure reads like Rory

You are a GRAMMAR GOD!

If your mission in life is not already to preserve the English tongue, it should be.
Congratulations and thank you!
brought to you by Quizilla

[ed: I took out all the links in this post because apparently there are links on this site that dump adware on your machine and some of my readers have been bitten. My apologies. If you must go to the site, here’s the link, but on your head be it: http://quizilla.com/users/BaalObsidian/quizzes/How%20grammatically%20sound%20are%20you?/]

If you’re looking for my wife, Melissa, her email address is msells@sellsbrothers.com. Her email is pretty reliable now, so send her some! It makes her so happy…

My brother-in-law and sister-in-law, Joel and Beth Howie are online again. Drop them a line.

Tracey Friend is an MS recruiter and she called to talk to me about some stuff I’m working on that could attract some fresh meat (and she also told me some stuff that sent shivers up my spine, but that’s another story : ).

Tracey was very friendly, just like all of the MS recruiters that I’ve met. In fact, MS recruiters are getting so friendly, that now HR is blogging. What’s next? Giving away the source? : )

I’m constantly amazed at man’s (and woman’s) ability to solve problems. Truly.

Don “XML” worked a little PhotoShop magic on a poster for a movie that I loved growing up (it was one of two record albums I had and I listened to it over and over and over):

When I’m having fun with the Sells brothers, I like to tell them that I don’t have two boys, but rather one boy and one redundant backup in case one of them needs “erasing.” I have never told which of them is which, however, ’cuz I like to tortune them (hey! I paid for ’em!)

I would if Chris J. Sells in Beaverton, OR or Chris D. Sells in Dallas, TX is the redundant one…

According to the The Gematriculator, sellsbrothers.com is 50% evil. Nothing about “genius” is mentioned…

[via Ryan Farley]

Here. Rory does it again. : )

Here. I did remember the rest of the cow branding story from last night’s Portland Nerd Dinner: -I’m embarrassed to admit that it was I who paid the cowboy $2 to eat the newly harvested cow testicle -A few months later, Cal sent me a copy of the Klamath Falls Herald and News featuring a visit from

Here. This caused me to laugh

Here. I *love* the idea that militant usability experts are scraping terribly designed web sites to present the information in a more pleasant way. Can’t you just see Alan Cooper in a beret? : )

Here. As much as I love the site, I’ve only made two contributions to CodeProject.com. Reading the comments about one (”.NET

Eric Sink claims to be the ”.NET Redneck,” complete with cardboard cutout:

Alan Cooper’s 14-year old son rapping about his Dad.

Marty Cooper [marty @ cooper.name]
Stolen on 7/13/2003 from Alan’s USB hard drive when he mistakenly put it into my computer

10. WS-IrishSpring: for scented, more pleasing SOAP packets

9. WS-UPS: for sending SOAP packets in real envelopes

Brad Abrams make Jeffrey Richter and me stand in front our of “software legend” stand-up cut outs yesterday so that he could take a picture. I’ve already gotten crap from my new team at MS for being one of these guys. I assume it’s the shock and awe… : )

Here’s the SellsBrothers Beaverton Area Little League team looking very serious. Notice the SellsBrothers logo on the hats. Having your own company definitely has it’s perks. : )

This is a recipe that I sent in for the O’Reilly title “Gastronomy for Geeks”. It was handed down to me by my grandfather at our cabin on the lake. He was into manly food that sticks to your rips and left the more delicate dishes to my grandmother.

Ingredients

People often ask what is meant by Marketing. Perhaps the following analogies will help clear it up:

• You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say, “I’m fantastic in bed.” That’s Direct Marketing.
• You’re at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says, “He’s fantastic in bed.” That’s Advertising.
• You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day you call and say,” Hi, I’m fantastic in bed.” that’s Telemarketing.
• You’re at a party and see a handsome man. You get up and straighten your dress. You walk up to him and pour him a drink. You say, “May I,” And reach up to straighten his tie brushing your breast lightly against his arm, and then say, “By the way, I’m fantastic in bed.” That’s Public Relations.
• You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says, “I hear you’re fantastic in bed.” That’s Brand Recognition.
• You’re at a party and see a gorgeous girl. You talk her into going home with your friend. That’s a Sales Rep.
• Your friend can’t satisfy her so he calls you. That’s Technical Service.
• You’re on your way to a party when you realize that there could be gorgeous women in all the houses you’re passing. So you climb onto the roof of one situated in the middle and shout at the top of your voice, “I’m fantastic in bed!”. That’s Spam.
• You hear about women like this but never meet one. That’s False Advertising.

Created by unknown
Contributed by Asaf Shelly
Thu 2/13/2003 6:50 AM

Chris took the quiz and was pretty darn happy with the results, because at at least he’s not Windows ME…

Which OS are You?

Stu Halloway, conference speaker, respected author of Component Development for the Java Platform as well as many 5-day short courses and CTO of DevelopMentor, pronounces his name like this (I found it hard to believe myself…)

Starts on October 21st and runs for several days. Hits home.

10. You start using URIs to address real envelopes while paying the bills
9. You use XPath to refer to family members
8. You can’t understand why nobody thinks that SOAP is “simple” anymore
7. You try to determine what portTypes your spouse exposes
6. You don’t have any trouble expanding BPL4WS
5. You prefer to write code to find something on Google
4. You ask for vanilla instead of doc/lit
3. You purchase the “Infoset” license plate for your car
2. You challenge people to say “UDDI’s UUIDs” 10 times fast
1. You no longer see the angle brackets, “just blond, brunette, redhead”

Reasons from Aaron Skonnard, Tim Ewald and Chris Sells
Presented at the Web Services DevCon East
Thu 10/10/2002, 8:55am

Sorry it took so long to judge the entries, but I was overwhelmed. That’ll teach me to host an international, pan-galactic, cross-universe coding contest. : )

Grand Prize Winner and Best Developer Tool: Stoyan Damov

Sorry it took so long to judge the entries, but I was overwhelmed. That’ll teach me to host an international, pan-galactic, cross-universe coding contest. : )

Grand Prize Winner and Best Developer Tool: Stoyan Damov

Midnight to Midnight, August 30th, 2002

Brad Abrams, Lead Program Manager on the Microsoft .NET Framework team, said something that inspired me the other day. He was being broadcast along with Chris Andersen (another lead PM) on The .NET Show on the topic of Understanding the Framework. Brad and Scott spent almost the entire show talking about how the various benefits of .NET, e.g. productivity, reliability, security, backwards compatibility with Win32 and COM, being able to recompile your C++ code in managed mode to use and expose .NET components without changing any of the code or losing noticeable efficiency (apparently they didn’t ship until they could do this with Word), the consistency and universality of the Framework Class Libraries, and on and on, all without mentioning “web services.” He did say that .NET was hands down the best platform for doing web services, but even if you’re not doing web services, .NET enhances your programming experience across the board for the existing kinds of applications and components that you’re developing now. Normally I’m not into this kind of hyperbole, but in this case, I absolutely agree with Brad and wish that Microsoft would push these features for things you’re doing right now as well as web services for the future. Microsoft, in their interminable marketing wisdom, has completely undersold the rest of .NET, at the expense of developers the world over, still stuck in the old unmanaged world.

sttto Centerfold by J. Geils Band (http://www.80smusiclyrics.com/artists/jgeilsband.htm)

Yes, he walks, yes, he talks!
He’ll be your Code Complete!
That ATL instructor
Sure could put ‘em in the seats.

He could teach like no one else
No one could ever stain
The memory of that DM guy
Could never cause me pain

Years go by, I’m lookin’ through a codin’ magazine
And there’s my DM buddy on the pages in between!

CHORUS:
My blood runs cold
My memory has just been sold
Instructor is the centerfold,
Chris Sells is the centerfold
(Repeat)

Shipped me code ‘bout ActiveX,
While I was thinkin’ about GenX
IUnknown, IDispatch,
He could teach ‘em all

I was shakin’ in my shoes
Whenever he flashed those baby-blues
Something had a hold on me
Whenever Chris passed by

That book and cool code samples
Too magical to touch
To see him in that photograph,
Is really just too much!

CHORUS

It’s okay I understand
This ain’t no never never land
I hope that when this issue’s gone
This memory will TOO be gone

Take your car, yes we will
We’ll take your car and drive it
We’ll take it to a motel room
And leave you there, in private!

A part of me has just been ripped
The pages from my mind are stripped
Oh no, I can’t deny it
Oh yea, guess I gotta try it!

CHORUS

Copyright (c) 2002 Anonymous. :-)

Ted Neward [tneward@JAVAGEEKS.COM]
private mailing list
Tue 7/30/2002 2:06 AM

My friend and fellow DevelopMentor instructor, Craig Andera, is not only enormously dedicated, but is very interested in pushing the envelope on post-dot-bomb advertising space. When he heard that he could make money on each “hit,” Craig started spending a lot of time in bars and other seedy areas around town.

Craig Andera [candera@ALUM.MIT.EDU]
Thu 7/11/2002 7:53 AM
internal mailing list

sttto “Mamas Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys” by Willie Nelson

Chorus:
Mama don’t let your babies grow up to be computer boys
Don’t let them keyboard and drink at Starbucks
Make ‘em be doctors and lawyers and such
Mamas don’t let your babies grow up to be computer boys
They’ll always stay home and they’re always alone
Hackin’ is all that they’ll love

Computer boys ain’t easy to love and they’re harder to hold
And they’d rather give you some code than diamonds or gold
Star Trek communicators and pocket protectors
And each night begins a new day
And if you don’t understand him and he don’t ignore you
He’ll be addicted to porn

Chorus

A computer boy loves shiny new gadgets and four-donut mornings
High-speed connections and trackballs and NeverWinter Nights
Them that don’t know him won’t like him and them that do
Sometimes won’t know how to take him
He’s not wrong he’s just different and his brain won’t let him
Do things to make you think he’s right

Chorus

Chris Sells [csells@sellsbrothers.com]
win_tech_off_topic@yahoogroups.com
Wed 5/22/2002 10:55 AM

First, the poem itself (there are many versions, this is just one):

<> ! * ′ ′ #
^ ” ` $ $ -
! * = @ $ _
% * <> ~ # 4
& [ ] . . /
| { , , system halted

In English, this reads:

Chandu Thota
Fri 5/10/2002 10:31 AM

• Here’s an industrious clock.
• Here’s a flocking clock.
• Here’s one using a browser-independent DOM to achieve Flash-like effects.

Ron Neely sends his favorites:

Chris Sells
Feb 2, 2002 8:02pm

This page is dedicated to the game of Wahoo! – a .NET application meant to be invoked from a .NET client across the internet.

If you’d like the ClickOnce version (for .NET 2.0), click here and (after clicking a few more times), an application that looks like the picture on the right will appear.

If you like Tetris and you’ve got .NET installed, check out Wahoo.

Grandma says that all US Sells are related from the original Sells that came across on the boat after the May Flower.

My father pointed out that my boys are not, in fact, the original Sells Brothers (and that we must be related, as the originals have his haircut).

TimT said:

od oy dp,ryjomh ;olr yjodz
[d. dpttu. gomhrtd pm yjr etpmh lrud
//yo,

Sung to “Shaft” by Isaac Hayes <http://www.shaft-themovie.com/soundtrack/track01.mp3>

Who’s the man with tongue-in-cheek
that’s a code machine to all the geeks?

(Box!)

A friend of mine stumbled over this in the Microsoft source code:

//  Function:   RunCommandEx
//  Synopsis:   runs the given command in the current session, more robust
//				than RunCommand
//  Arguments:  none
//  Returns:    S_OK if success
//  History:    October 3, 2000 - created [name withheld to protect the guilty]
HRESULT RunCommandEx(LPCWSTR szCmdLine) {
	DWORD dwTry = 0;
	HRESULT hResult = S_OK;

	// try run command 3 times at most
	while (dwTry<4) {
		hResult = RunCommand(szCmdLine);
		if (hResult!=E_FAIL) {
			// we succeeded
			break;
		}
		dwTry++;
	}
	if (dwTry==4) {
		ATLTRACE(L"COuld start the command even we tried 4 times\n");
		ASSERT(FALSE);
	}
	return hResult;
}

“Steal this song right off my page.” You can find it at http://www.ferncrk.com/jittin.html. Use only in well ventilated area. Do not expose to open flame.

Stuart Celarier
Tue 11/27/2001 3:41 PM

Made you look!

(if you don’t know what I’m talking about, check here)

In a recent interview with Barbara Walters, Bill Gates was asked how he felt about Ted Turner’s one billion dollar donation to the United Nation. This is what he had to say:

“Certainly, my giving will be in the same league as Ted’s, and beyond. … During my lifetime, you know, the money will be given away.”

WARNING: Do not follow this link if you don’t want to see me naked!

TechEd Barcellona, Spain 8/15/2001

---

Chris riding The Incredible Hulk roller coaster in FLA in 2000. Notice the “COM is Love” t-shirt. I really wanted to say something funny or ironic in the title of this picture, but words failed me. Got one?

King of the Code

Sung to “King of the Road”

Platform for sale or rent
who cares where all the others went
no more pointer, pushes, pops or peaks
I ain’t got no memory leaks
I wrote ten lines of C# today
I was more productive than yesterday
I’m a programmer of mean by no means
I’m a king of the code

I feel sorry for those guys at Sun
DOTNET has got them on the run
But when I hear Scott McNeally whine
I say stick your VM where the Sun don’t shine
Most folks agree VB DOT NET
Is the best version of Java that we’ve seen yet
I’m a programmer of mean by no means
I’m a king of the code

You C guys think all this stuff is new
A friendly runtime that hides the goo
I’m a VB guy, better watch out for me
’cause I’ve been writing managed code since 93
Database code’s busted — no time to cry
Patch it all to the newest API
I’m a programmer of mean by no means
I’m a king of the code

New waves they come and go so fast
COM was love, but love don’t last
If COM was love than what’s DOTNET
It’s love without the cigarette
DOTNET will be here till we all get bored
Then we’ll throw it away and invent DOT-ORG
I’m a programmer of mean by no means
I’m a king of the code

Wild Side

Bill G came from Seattle WA
Spread .NET across the USA
Plucked out pointers on the way
Shaved ref counting - started sporting GC
He said Hey babe take a walk on the wild side
Hey babe take a walk on the wild side

Chris Sells never once threw one away
In the end, he had to pay and pay
An object here, and object there
Memory is the place where they say
Hey Chrissie, take a walk on the wild side
I say hey babe, let’s going back home and finalize

And the .NET girls go
Do do do do do do do do do do
do do do do do do do do do
doooooooooooooooo ah
 
The musical stylings of Francesco Balena

Jon Flanders came from out of the heartland
With ASP he’s was everybody’s darling
But he never lost his head
Even when they told him COM was dead
I said hey Jon, take a walk on the wild side
I believe they call it Interop-O-cide

Brian Randell came and hit the streets
Hoping .NET would bring inter-language peace
He hates it when those bigots say
C#’s for work, VB’s for play
I say hey Brian, take a walk on the wild side
It’s curly braces that make your code bonafide

My friend Don Box, he’s just coding away
Though he was James Joyce for a day
Yeah I guess Don’s pretty smart
But he mistakes his code for art
I say Hey Don, take a walk on the wild side
You’re just a liquor salesman, it can’t be denied

And the .NET girls go ….

And the .NET girls go
Do do do do do do do do do do
Do do do do do do do do do do
Do do do do do do do do do do
Do do do do do do do do do do
Do do do do do do do do do do

Nothing comes between me and my technology…

All pictures courtesy of Jason Whittington’s most excellent PhotoShop skills.

See the parody by Ted Neward inspired by this picture.

• Your weekly beach volley ball matches are between teams named ‘Proxies’ and ‘Stubs’.
• You read ‘ATL Internals’ while waiting in line for the next ride at Universal studios
• You are locked outside your house without your keys and the sticky note at the door reads ‘CoLockObjectExternal’ when your wife gets back.
• You ask your bank if they can send your monthly balance statements in XML format.
• You return your neighbor’s telephone call saying it was an interapartment callback.
• You ask your cable television company if they support Channel Hooks.
• You decide to do some detective work by night and call yourself the IMallocSpy.
• Your kid asks you what a female Ox is called and you reply OXID.

Aravind Corera
Originally written for IDevResource
Private Email

A programmer who coded in C
decided he hated GC.
“It’s bogus” he said,
“I keep track in my head -
and always remember to free!”

Jason Whittington [jasonw@develop.com]
Private Email

A parody of Eddy Poe’s “The Raven”

Once upon a platform tired, while my code was stranded, mired in a pool of leaky pointers running up the mem’ry load, while I started to debug it, suddenly I screamed “Oh f*** it!”, and decided to just chuck it in the hallway guest commode.
Then discovered: managed code.

Read all about it…

Rohit Khare
Posted There: Fri, Aug 2, 1996 20:27:42 -0400

I spoke at a college last week for a friend of mine who’s an adjunct professor (Cal Caldwell). During the talk, one of the male attendees bolted , but on his way out, trusted sources say that, when sighting a young coed whom our our bolter was clearly interested in engaging with in some way, he said, “Hey! Do you know who’s in there? Chris Sells!” Clearly this young man was misguided in his attempt, but I’m glad to hear that someone thinks that using my name will help in attracting members of the opposite sex. It’s never worked for me… : )

In Japan, it is said, the impersonal and sometimes unhelpful Microsoft error messages have been replaced with Japanese haiku poetry. Maybe in the next upgrade to our Windows…

Your file was so big.
It might be very useful.
But now it is gone.

The website you seek
Cannot be located, but
Countless more exist.

Dear MFC::CString
You were such a beautiful thing
I miss you so much
CComBSTR is painful to touch
WTL may restore my churning (out string manipulating code).

Phil Beck
ATL Mailing List

There is no vacation when I am doing COM.
Some go through very well, but stuck are some.

I don’t go to parties, so I feel I am IUnknown.
People talking to me, those days are gone.

Brother has a complaint, that I don’t callback.
Which kind of apartment he has, I don’t check

Portland, OR, August 8, 2000 According to an article appearing in tomorrow’s Wall Street Journal, DevelopMentor has developed a new technology for creating software applications. Attached is a photo of this technology in beta test at DevelopMentor’s Portland Satellite office. DevelopMentor’s device is attached to a user and using the latest LFM technology it auto-generates complete software applications. Evil Genius, Chris Sells, DevelopMentor’s Senior Programmer, co-invented the technology with their Security Guru, the Prince of Darkness Keith Brown. Says Sells; “[our] new technology holds great promise for future generations of code warriors.”

Cal Caldwell
Private Email

• The family pet dies. The best explanation you can give the children is “Fluffy’s reference count finally reached zero.”
• You’ve mailed more than three written petitions to the city council of Enumclaw, Washington requesting that the town prefix its name with an ‘I’.
• Your wife has a rather irritating habit of QI’ing you for IMowsTheLawn, despite the fact that for years you’ve been returning everything from E_NOINTERFACE to RPC_S_SERVER_TOO_BUSY.
• The best thing about the new generation of wireless internet devices is that you will be able to receive the DCOM and ATL mailing lists from almost anywhere.
• Part of your IPO research strategy involves calling the company’s engineering manager on the phone and demanding a detailed explanation of apartments and threading.
• The party you threw to celebrate the introduction of asynchronous RPC calls in Windows 2000 was significantly more expensive than your wedding reception.
• Last Summer’s family vacation to Redmond, Washington.
• All those emails you’ve sent to Chris Sells trying to convince him that “ATL Internals” would make a really great movie.
• Although it is humorous, there are a couple of items in the “Signs you’ve hired the wrong COM developer…” list that you can’t help but view as personally insulting.
• On your laptop there exists a half-completed manuscript entitled “The Tao of COM”.
• You refer to your Social Security Number as your GUID.

Tony Toivonen
DCOM Mailing List

Jeff Smith
Thu 2/10/2000 12:07 AM
Private Mail

> ––-Original Message––-
> From: Russ Huffman [mailto:russ@DEVAUTHORITY.COM]
> Sent: Thursday, January 20, 2000 8:39 AM
> To: ATL@DISCUSS.MICROSOFT.COM
>
> Don’t we already have a “bunch of programmers who have no
> idea about how the underlying systems work”? I think they
> are called VB programmers… ;)

I hate to break this to you, but I’ve met a lot of VB programmers trapped in the body of a C++ programmer. Unfortunately, many development shops place a lot of peer pressure on people to reject their yearnings to stop using semicolons and memory allocators. It’s sad, but VB programmers today are where US Blacks were in the 30′s and gays were in the 50′s. We have yet to see the “Rosa Parks” or “Stonewall Riots” for VB programmers.

BTW, I have been preparing a keynote address in case I am ever asked to keynote a VB-friendly conference. If you want to look at a draft, go to http://www.develop.com/dbox/dream.htm [ed: MLK’s “I have a dream” set to VB music]

…I have been to VB7. I’ve seen the promised land. I may not get there with you…

DB

PS: Last time I checked, all programmers have selective ignorance. I know nothing about 3D graphics. I know a lot about COM. VB gets under people’s skin because one can be ignorant of computer architecture and ASM and still
get a lot done.

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets,
Still I sat there, doing spreadsheets:
Having reached the bottom line,
I took a floppy from the drawer.
Typing with a steady hand, I then invoked the SAVE command
But got instead a reprimand: it read “Abort, Retry, Ignore.”

Was this some occult illusion? Some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices Solomon himself had never faced before.
Carefully, I weighed my options.
These three seemed to be the top ones.
Clearly, I must now adopt one:
Choose Abort, Retry, Ignore.

With my fingers pale and trembling,
Slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee
Finally I pressed a key — 
But on the screen what did I see?
Again: “Abort, Retry, Ignore.”

Still Life with Aggregate

Built using online Lite-Brite.

Jason Whittington
Private DevelopMentor Mailing List

I just like the idea of a computer singing… If you’ve seen 2001, you’ll recognize the tune.

Contributed by Liliya Yakupova:

• Keeps referring to interfaces as “Thingies”.
• Insists that migrating to NT5.0 is a bad idea because the going rate for a rental-threaded apartment is $640.00 a month plus utilities.
• Comes into work one morning dressed as a cowboy and claiming to be “The new marshaller in town”.
• Wants to know how to tune his TV to the “RPC Channel”.
• Stands up in design meetings, grabs his crotch, and proclaims “Yo! Marshall this! Am I right?”.
• Names one of his interfaces “IKnown” and claims that any object that doesn’t implement it is doomed to eventually fall victim to a “COM Identity Crisis”.
• Spends 2 hours in front of a whiteboard trying to prove that by taking the integral of the GUID generating function, one can discern the total surface area of the application’s UI in pixels.
• Pronounces GUID as “gooeey dee”.

P.S.

Here’s a picture of the t-shirt that Microsoft produced for their 1999 Dallas TechEd that leverages Tony’s idea without giving him credit, asking him permission or even notifying him. You lawyers should be able to support you in your retirement with this one, Tony!

If the things on this page haven’t been enough for you, check out Mr. Bunny’s Guide to ActiveX.