So why have I been so silent lately? Mainly because I've been working every free moment on a new venture from Tourney Logic: PayItSquare.com. It's one of Brian's ideas, and we stood up the site in less than 2 months - mainly because of all the work Brian put into it.

Anyway, have you ever been responsible for collecting money for an event, such as a basketball tournament or group gift? It's always a pain because either the person isn't around when you want to collect money, or they don't have any money on them. Well, PayItSquare.com solves that problem! You create group payments, enter people's names and email addresses, and we take care of the rest - we send them an email letting them know they owe money to you, and we allow them to pay with a credit card or using PayPal. We can even track payments made offline, so you can use the site to help with those too!

It's very Web 2.0-ish - lots of AJAX, simple, clean UI, etc. It's been a lot of fun seeing this come from idea to fruition, and tonight it all came together! Go check it out and let us know what you think!

Technorati Tags: PayItSquare | PayPal

Scott Watermasysk has a few great tips for ASP.NET?that have already come in handy for me. I especially like the last two - 301 redirects and fully qualified URLs. I've used them both in the past couple of days.

Oh - and the repeater tip? I wish I would have had that (and followed it) a month or so ago. In the process of skinning a couple of sites, I had to convert all of my GridViews to Repeaters so I could get a flexible enough skin. From now on, repeaters only here!

Technorati Tags: ASP.NET | Tips

The weekend before Vista's official launch, I decided to take the plunge and install Vista. My old XP installation was giving me some issues (for example, a process would randomly shoot to 100% CPU utilization until I killed it for no reason) and it was time to reload anyway, so why not move to the latest and greatest?

I just got the Vista disk for my MSDN subscription, so I decided to install Vista Ultimate on my Dell Latitude D820, and I have to say I was honestly suprised how smooth everything has went and how it's going so far. Granted, I don't do any development on my main machine - it's all done in virtual machines, so all I really needed to be up and running was Outlook, FeedDemon and Virtual PC, all of which work perfectly.

There were a few programs that I had issues with - Quicken wouldn't install updates at first, but after shutting it down, Vista recognized there was a problem and asked me if I wanted to run it at a higher level of access by default, and once I did that, it works fine.

The only other major headache I had was bluetooth. The bluetooth on the D820 works out of the box, but not for everything. I ran into the same problem on XP, so I knew where to go for what I needed - the Toshiba bluetooth stack works very nicely with the Dell 350 bluetooth chip. There's a beta available for Vista, but it caused my machine to blue screen twice in a couple of days, so I uninstalled it for?now, and reverted back to using the built-in drivers.

Overall, I've been happy so far - Aero is very pretty, and everything seems snappier.

I almost forgot one cool finishing touches. Before I upgraded, I backed up my "My Documents" folder, and when I went to copy it back, it told me it was going to move all of the content from My Music, My Pictures, My Videos, etc, to a higher level folder for that since Vista now puts pictures, videos, music and documents at the same level. It's always the little things!

Technorati Tags: Vista | Bluetooth

Erik Lane was kind enough to tag me for the whole Five Things sensation that has been sweeping the blogosphere, so here's my list:

1. While in college, I met my wife online. I'd never had a girlfriend before that either, so she was my first (and last). I found her on AOL during winter finals week in '97. We chatted for a few weeks, and it turned out we had a class 3 doors down from each other on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We eventually bumped into each other, and the rest, as they say, is history.
2. I'm a HUGE Detroit Red Wings fan. I haven't missed watching at least part of a?game in over two years. I have a TiVo in anchor mode that we don't have a use for anymore - except to record Wings' games. I'm watching a Wings game right now. Having said that, I've never actually been to a Wings game. I've had a few opportunities, but have always had something else going on that prevented me from being able to go. Tonight is actually one of those - we got offered free tickets, and had to turn them down because we already had plans.
3. I rarely get more than 6 hours of sleep a night. I used annoy my wife when we first got married because I had to have My 8 Hours every night! Then I started traveling, and couldn't make myself go to bed in a hotel room. The more I traveled, the less I slept. Eventually, it worked it's way into my life at home too, and now, I am rarely in bed before 1:00 AM and, since I have 2 young kids, we're usually up by 7:00 AM. Somehow, I survive!
4. I didn't get my first computer until I graduated from high school. I graduated in '95, and got it as a graduation present - it was the first computer in my house, and I was scared to crack it open to do anything with it - I even paid someone to install RAM in it, because I didn't know what I was doing. I've gotten over that, having built the next three computers I had. I didn't write my first computer program until the second half of my sophomore year?in college - unless you count the football simulation I wrote for my TI-85.
5. I prefer rap music. Not so much anymore, but I was huge into rap music - I had a 600 watt amp with 2 12" JL Audio subs in my car right up until my senior year of college - and only got rid of it because I fried my amp by bridging it to 1 Ohm (that's bad if your amp doesn't support it, which mine didn't). You could hear my car coming from down the block. The best part: now, I listen to podcasts 80% of the time I'm in the car, and the rest is Bob & Tom or ESPN Radio. Those 12" subs wouldn't do me much good now!

Pretty much everyone I'd tag has already been tagged, but since this is also being posted internally at NuSoft, I'm tagging everyone there.

I almost forgot to get this out there - I made the Thursday pick, then forgot about the rest!

• Cleveland vs. Pittsburgh (-6.5) (37 O/U)
• Atlanta (-4) vs. Tampa Bay (37.5 O/U)
• Baltimore vs. Kansas City (-3) (36.5 O/U)
• Buffalo vs. New York Jets (-4) (37.5 O/U)
• Indianapolis (-1.5) vs. Jacksonville (44 O/U)
• Minnesota vs. Detroit (-1) (40 O/U)
• New England (-4) vs. Miami (37 O/U)
• New Orleans vs. Dallas (-7) (48 O/U)
• New York Giants (-3.5) vs. Carolina (39 O/U)
• Oakland* vs. Cincinnati (-11.5) (39.5 O/U)
• Philadelphia (-1.5) vs. Washington (40 O/U)
• Tennessee (-1) vs. Houston (43 O/U)
• Green Bay vs. San Francisco (-4.5) (44 O/U)
• Seattle (-3.5) vs. Arizona (46.5 O/U)
• Denver vs. San Diego (-8) (41.5 O/U)
• Chicago (-6.5) vs. St. Louis* (41.5 O/U)

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds

?I obviously missed posting results last week, so I'll consolidate them into one post. You'll have to look for the summary numbers at the very bottom. I'm starting to actually get some nice winnings - a little over $200 so far! It's not much (less than 4%), but it's something! Oddly, just picking O/U (which is a complete guess every week), I'm getting almost a 14% return. If that continues, that's pretty good, considering the season is only 1/3 of a year long! In other news, I'm now even picking against the spread!

Let's start with Week 11:

• Atlanta 10, Baltimore 24 (-4) (41 O/U) [P: $4.76, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $23.85]
• Buffalo 24, Houston 21 (-2.5) (36.5 O/U) [P: $11.50, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $11.50]
• Chicago 10 (-7), New York Jets 0 (37.5 O/U) [P: $3.13, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $3.13]
• Cincinnati 31, New Orleans 16 (-3) (51 O/U) [P: $15.00, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $34.09]
• Indianapolis 14 (-2.5), Dallas 21 (48.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Minnesota 20, Miami 24 (-3.5) (34 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• New England 35 (-7), Green Bay 0 (44.5 O/U) [P: $3.85, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $22.94]
• Oakland 13, Kansas City 17 (-9.5) (36 O/U) [P: $1.90, S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($18.10)]
• Pittsburgh 24 (-4), Cleveland 20 (37.5 O/U) [P: $5.56, S: $0.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $14.65]
• St. Louis 0, Carolina 15 (-6.5) (44 O/U) [P: $3.57, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $22.66]
• Tennessee* 31, Philadelphia 13 (-13) (43 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: ($10.00)]
• Washington 17, Tampa Bay 20 (-3) (33.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: $0.00, O/U: $9.09, T: ($0.91)]
• Detroit 10, Arizona 17 (-2) (45.5 O/U) [P: $7.41, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $26.50]
• Seattle 14 (-4.5), San Francisco 20 (44.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• San Diego 35, Denver 27 (-2.5) (42.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• New York Giants 10, Jacksonville 26 (-3.5) (39 O/U) [P: $5.41, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $5.41]

Results Summary

• Picks (this week): 10 - 6 (62.50%) - Winnings: $2.08
• Spread (this week): 9 - 5 (64.29%) - Winnings: $40.00
• Over/Under (this week): 9 - 7 (56.25%) - Winnings: $11.82
• Total Weekly Winnings: $53.90

Now, Week 12:

• Miami 27, Detroit 10 (-3.5) (41 O/U) [P: $6.67, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $25.76]
• Tampa Bay 10, Dallas 38 (-12.5) (39 O/U) [P: $1.67, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $20.76]
• Denver 10, Kansas City 19 (-1.5) (38 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Arizona 26, Minnesota 31 (-6) (38.5 O/U) [P: $3.70, S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: $2.79]
• Carolina 13 (-4.5), Washington 17 (36 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• Chicago 13, New England 17 (-3) (36.5 O/U) [P: $5.56, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $24.65]
• Cincinnati 30 (-4), Cleveland 0 (43 O/U) [P: $4.76, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $4.76]
• Houston 11, New York Jets 26 (-6) (39.5 O/U) [P: $3.85, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $2.94]
• Jacksonville 24 (-4), Buffalo 27 (35 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• New Orleans 31, Atlanta 13 (-3) (47.5 O/U) [P: $13.00, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $32.09]
• New York Giants 21 (-3.5), Tennessee 24 (44 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Philadelphia 21, Indianapolis 45 (-10.5) (44 O/U) [P: $2.13, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $21.22]
• Pittsburgh 0, Baltimore 27 (-3) (38 O/U) [P: $6.90, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $25.99]
• San Francisco 17, St. Louis 20 (-5.5) (45 O/U) [P: $4.00, S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: $3.09]
• Oakland 14, San Diego 21 (-14.5) (43.5 O/U) [P: $0.83, S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($19.17)]
• Green Bay 24, Seattle 34 (-9) (45 O/U) [P: $2.22, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $2.22]

Results Summary

• Picks (this week): 12 - 4 (75.00%) - Winnings: $15.28
• Picks (season): 115 - 61 (65.34%) - Winnings: ($38.17)
• Spread (this week): 9 - 7 (56.25%) - Winnings: $20.00
• Spread (season): 85 - 85 (50.00%) - Winnings: $0.00
• Over/Under (this week): 11 - 5 (68.75%) - Winnings: $50.00
• Over/Under (season): 103 - 69 (59.88%) - Winnings: $246.36
• Total Weekly Winnings: $85.28
• Total Overall Winnings: $208.19

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds

?Once again, I'm late - and I obviously picked the Baltimore / Cincy game ahead of time, considering it's wrong. At least I got the rest done on time! Barely.

Two nice match ups this week - kind of odd for week 13 really. But at least we have two! First up - Giants versus Cowboys. Two teams heading in completely opposite directions. Eli Manning looks horrible lately, and their offense is falling apart, while Dallas and Tony Romo really seem to be clicking - Parcells should have pulled that trigger sooner!

Next up - Seattle against Denver. Alexander should be much better than last week, where he only managed to get 200+ yards after coming back from an injury, and the Broncos are another team who's switching quarterbacks - but this'll be Jay Cutler's first start. I'm surprised this took this long. I could have told you that Plummer wasn't the quarterback of Denver's future a while ago - like when he was still with Arizona! Luckily they have a running back factory to churn out rushing yards! Adding a deep threat to the field can only help their running game, so this should be a good move for Denver.

• Baltimore vs. Cincinnati (-3) (41.5 O/U)
• Arizona vs. St. Louis (-7) (46.5 O/U)
• Atlanta vs. Washington (-2) (38 O/U)
• Dallas (-4) vs. New York Giants (43.5 O/U)
• Detroit vs. New England (-14.5) (41.5 O/U)
• Indianapolis (-8.5) vs. Tennessee (48 O/U)
• Jacksonville vs. Miami (0) (36.5 O/U)
• Kansas City (-6) vs. Cleveland (36 O/U)
• Minnesota* vs. Chicago (-9.5) (36 O/U)
• New York Jets (-1.5) vs. Green Bay (42.5 O/U)
• San Diego (-7) vs. Buffalo (43 O/U)
• San Francisco vs. New Orleans (-7) (45 O/U)
• Tampa Bay vs. Pittsburgh (-7.5) (41 O/U)
• Houston vs. Oakland (-3) (36.5 O/U)
• Seattle vs. Denver (-3) (40 O/U)
• Carolina (-3) vs. Philadelphia (37.5 O/U)

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds

They're very late, but you'll have to trust me that I made the Thursday picks before the game!

• Miami vs. Detroit (-3.5) (41 O/U)
• Tampa Bay vs. Dallas (-12.5) (39 O/U)
• Denver vs. Kansas City (-1.5) (38 O/U)
• Arizona vs. Minnesota (-6) (38.5 O/U)
• Carolina (-4.5) vs. Washington (36 O/U)
• Chicago vs. New England (-3) (36.5 O/U)
• Cincinnati (-4) vs. Cleveland (43 O/U)
• Houston vs. New York Jets (-6) (39.5 O/U)
• Jacksonville (-4) vs. Buffalo (35 O/U)
• New Orleans vs. Atlanta (-3) (47.5 O/U)
• New York Giants (-3.5) vs. Tennessee (44 O/U)
• Philadelphia vs. Indianapolis (-10.5) (44 O/U)
• Pittsburgh vs. Baltimore (-3) (38 O/U)
• San Francisco vs. St. Louis (-5.5) (45 O/U)
• Oakland vs. San Diego (-14.5) (43.5 O/U)
• Green Bay vs. Seattle (-9) (45 O/U)

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds

Is Indy / Dallas the premiere game this week? I guess you could also look at Chargers / Broncos, but I'm going with the first one. Not a very compelling match up to be your top one for the week, which is an argument for the latter - it's at least a divisional rivalry!

• Atlanta vs. Baltimore (-4) (41 O/U)
• Buffalo vs. Houston (-2.5) (36.5 O/U)
• Chicago (-7) vs. New York Jets (37.5 O/U)
• Cincinnati vs. New Orleans (-3) (51 O/U)
• Indianapolis (-2.5) vs. Dallas (48.5 O/U)
• Minnesota vs. Miami (-3.5) (34 O/U)
• New England (-7) vs. Green Bay (44.5 O/U)
• Oakland vs. Kansas City (-9.5) (36 O/U)
• Pittsburgh (-4) vs. Cleveland (37.5 O/U)
• St. Louis vs. Carolina (-6.5) (44 O/U)
• Tennessee* vs. Philadelphia (-13) (43 O/U)
• Washington vs. Tampa Bay (-3) (33.5 O/U)
• Detroit vs. Arizona (-2) (45.5 O/U)
• Seattle (-4.5) vs. San Francisco (44.5 O/U)
• San Diego vs. Denver (-2.5) (42.5 O/U)
• New York Giants vs. Jacksonville (-3.5) (39 O/U)

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds

Is Iny trying to avoid the undefeated tag? Beating Buffalo by one point? For a team on the scale of the Colts to only beat a team on the scale of Buffalo says two things: First, parity is working, and second, that should count as a loss for Indy! I guess you could say the same thing for Baltimore over Tennesse and Denver over Oakland. And oh yeah. What happened this week? Atlanta, Minnesota, Jacksonville, K.C. and?New England all losing to inferior teams. Of course for me, all that translates into a net loss of $100. Ouch!

• Baltimore 27 (-7.5), Tennessee 26 (38 O/U) [P: $2.86, S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: $1.95]
• Buffalo 16, Indianapolis 17 (-13) (45 O/U) [P: $1.33, S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($18.67)]
• Chicago 38, New York Giants 20 (0) (39 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Cleveland 17, Atlanta 13 (-7.5) (41.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Green Bay 23, Minnesota 17 (-5) (39 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($30.00)]
• Houston 13, Jacksonville 10 (-11) (37.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• Kansas City 10 (-2.5), Miami 13 (40 O/U) [P: $12.00, S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $31.09]
• New Orleans 31, Pittsburgh 38 (-4.5) (45.5 O/U) [P: $4.35, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $4.35]
• New York Jets* 17, New England 14 (-10.5) (39.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: $10.00, O/U: $9.09, T: $9.09]
• San Diego 49 (-1.5), Cincinnati 41 (47.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• San Francisco 19, Detroit 13 (-6.5) (44.5 O/U) [P: ($10.00), S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: ($10.91)]
• Washington 3, Philadelphia 27 (-7) (43 O/U) [P: $3.13, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $3.13]
• Denver 17 (-10), Oakland 13 (33 O/U) [P: $1.90, S: ($10.00), O/U: ($10.00), T: ($18.10)]
• Dallas 27 (-7.5), Arizona 10 (43 O/U) [P: $3.13, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $3.13]
• St. Louis 22, Seattle 24 (-3) (44.5 O/U) [P: $5.88, S: ($10.00), O/U: $9.09, T: $4.97]
• Tampa Bay 10, Carolina 24 (-9.5) (37 O/U) [P: $1.82, S: $10.00, O/U: ($10.00), T: $1.82]

Results Summary

• Picks (this week): 7 - 7 (50.00%) - Winnings: ($33.61)
• Picks (season): 93 - 51 (64.58%) - Winnings: ($55.53)
• Spread (this week): 6 - 8 (42.86%) - Winnings: ($40.00)
• Spread (season): 67 - 73 (47.86%) - Winnings: ($60.00)
• Over/Under (this week): 6 - 8 (42.86%) - Winnings: ($26.36)
• Over/Under (season): 83 - 57 (59.29%) - Winnings: $184.55
• Total Weekly Winnings: ($99.97)
• Total Overall Winnings: $69.01

Technorati Tags: NFL | Picks | Odds