I got a nice little treat in the mail today.

Andrew Connell, who is one of five or six (I think) CMS MVPs, has been very kind to me. A couple of months ago, partly as a result of some minor information I threw his way, he asked me if I had an MSDN subscription, which I didn't. He told me that as an MVP, he got a few subscriptions to give to people he deemed to be "Development Influencers" and apparently I've fooled him enough into thinking I am one!

Seriously though, this afternoon, I got my invite from him. It's a very cool little brushed metal card with a website on it, which I immediately went to and entered the code. My MSDN subscription information is on the way, and I'm very excited!

I'll post some more information about it once I get the kit in the mail, but I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Andrew now!

Technorati Tags: MSDN+Subscription | Andrew+Connell

Lately, Dave Burke has been creating mods for Community Server at a rapid pace. His most recent one puts his blogroll online, which reveals who's in his "Buds" list - yeah, I'm there! Just like he's on mine.

Anyway, here's a few other CS mods and info he's got up:

• CAPTCHA
• CoComment integration
• Technorati Tags
• ImageBlockTags

Or, just check out all of his Community Server posts!

Technorati Tags: Dave+Burke | Community+Server | Blogroll

First, let me say that I love my DVR. I rarely watch live TV, and when I do, it's mainly because it's just on in the background. Even then though, I still use the ability to pause live TV, or, when I turn on the TV, being able to go back to the beginning of whatever is on. My box guarantees that I can go back 15 minutes, but there was breaking news the other day as we turned on the TV, and we were able to go back about 2 1/2 hours to see the start of it.

Anyway, as the hockey season is winding down, I'm running up against a dilemma. So far, I've recorded all but one Detroit Red Wings game and watched it later that night or the next day. That's 77 games that typically take 2 1/2 - 3 hours to watch down to 1 1/4 hours - 1 1/2 hours with overtime and a shootout. And yes, the extra 15 minutes to watch Pavel Datsyuk in a shootout is definitely worth it. Even with OT and the shootout, though, no game has gone over three hours - it's only scheduled to run 2 1/2, but I can set the recording to go over a half hour without issue. Right?

Right. Until the playoffs start, which happens in a couple of weeks. Then people realize that overtime shootouts are just a clever gimmick to keep butts in seats during the regular season. In the playoffs, there's no gimmicks needed. I vividly remember being at a night club around 12:30 or 1:00 when Yzerman scored over the goalie's shoulder against St. Louis in triple overtime in '96. Or Igor Larionov's triple OT game winner against Carolina in '02. No other sport's overtime is as exciting as hockey's, strictly because it is a fast-paced sudden death match. Yeah, the NFL has sudden death, but there's issues. Baseball is sudden death if you're batting as the home team. Basketball is timed. College football comes close - those get pretty exciting, especially once you have to go for two. But how many sports do you see where they can basically play another game to decide the outcome? Not many.

But that's a problem if you're recording a game. That's potentially six hours of recording time. Do you check after three hours, and if the game is still on, just pick up in OT? Why can't we get a smarter DVR that would have a little more intelligence about when programs actually end, and get that info in real time? Obviously, if a game started at 8:00 PM, and your DVR is still recording at midnight, then you have a pretty good clue that it's in OT, but there's not much you can do about that - at least when you start watching it, you'd know you got it all!

Technorati Tags: Hockey | Sports | DVR

If you're a sports fan and have never heard Frank Caliendo do his impressions of John Madden, GWB, and Jim Rome, here's your chance?(direct MP3 link - couldn't find a permalink).?He's on the latest Sports Bloggers Live show, and is absolutely hilarious. He gets all of his characters (which are numerous) all talking to each other, and it's phenomenal.

I first heard Frank on the Bob & Tom Show, but their show is either live or for pay, so this is the first time I've seen it available for download for free, so I figured I'd point it out.

Technorati Tags: Sports+Bloggers+Live | Frank+Caliendo | John+Madden | Jim+Rome

RossCode Weekly #042?- 04.05.2006

Once again, I tweaked the sound a little bit. It sounded like the mic was a little hot, so I bumped it down from where it's been. Let me know?if it helps.?Signal to noise: 37 stories in 30 minutes. Still better than a story a minute, so I'm happy.

Intro - 0:00
Download this episode -?29:46 /?14.3 MB
Subscribe to RossCode Weekly

Previously On RCW - 1:29
Memeorandum-powered baseball news
TiVo Series 2 upgrade is no more; Series 3 Lives

News & Views - 3:28
Google launches Google Related
Google and Clear Channel partner for web search
Microsoft on Malware: Just reload
MSN Local adds send to phone capabilities
MSNBC.com offers free mobile news
Halo 3 in March '07
C|Net rolls out College Live
Del.icio.us rolls out import tool
AOL changes their name
Apple and Gmail celebrate birthdays

The Cold Wars - 12:18
Boot Camp allows Intel Macs to boot windows
Microsoft makes Virtual Server free
Mapquest launches voice assistant for your phone
Studios agree to do DVD-Download Simul-Release, but only for PC viewing
Time Warner Cable and Comcast will take wait and see approach for Server-based DVRs
NBC Universal offering shows on demand for Comcast subscribers
First HD-DVD ships in Japan
Netflix sues Blockbuster
PS3 price revealed
30Boxes adds TV listings
Create your own search engine with Alexa
Google adds paid ads to Local maps
Google Base taking shape

Odds & Ends - 22:52
April Fools round-up
Scoble to Google, Zawodny to Google, Matt Cutts to Yahoo
Amazon to release all employee's IM addresses
MSN Search spoof
Microsoft to release Vista with a Linux?Kernel
Opera Models
China?buys Google
Google Romance
Channel?9 and Coding4Fun?stuff
Wikipedia's listing of April Fools Jokes

Bonehead of the Week - 27:37
[Placeholder for winning team] Wins The NCAA Championship!

Outro?- 28:56

Contact / Feedback
weekly@NOSPAM.rosscode.com
206-424-4729 (4RCW)

Production Notes
Background music provided by Chronos (Introvert 4) and the Podsafe Music Network.
Hosting of RossCode Weekly is provided by OurMedia.org.
Would you like to sponsor RossCode Weekly? Contact me at sponsor @ rosscode.com.

Technorati Tags: RCW | Podcast | Google | Microsoft | Yahoo | Technology | News

Dave Donaldson has come up with a new twist on Test Driven Development?(slightly NSFW).

I wanted to come up with an April Fool's post this year, but I decided against it because the best I could come up with was this:

60% Of Windows Vista Code To Be Rewritten

But apparently, that's already been done.

Oh well. Maybe next year.

That's the question that The Hockey News asked a player from every team in the NHL. The Red Wings and Senators each got nine votes, so that's (according to the players on the inside) the most likely Stanley Cup match up we'll see.

But that's not my point. I wonder why he?answered anonymously?

Colorado Avalanche
Detroit: "I think you'd have to say Detroit." -- Anonymous

Of course, Dan Cleary from Detroit said Carolina. Detroit versus Carolina isn't exactly a rivalry on the ice, but Mike Ilitch and Peter Karmanos are, in the business world.

I don't really use categories like they probably should be used anymore. I started out doing it "right" but then I started blogging with an offline tool, which doesn't allow me to manage my categories, so if I want to use a new category, I have to go out and create it, then post using my offline tool. The idea of blogging for me is that I can write something up quickly and post, and be done with it. The two step process doesn't work for me - I'll fit it into an existing?category! Hence the reason I have more posts in "General" than any other category.

Combine that with tagging, and all of a sudden, categories seem relatively useless. I'm not the only one who's saying this. Kevin Briody asked the same question recently (prompting my post), and I completely agree with him. I still use my categories because...well...because they're there. When I started a technical blog at GeeksWithBlogs back in June, I didn't even bother setting up categories, relying on tags to organize my information.

So, my question is, does anyone use my categories? If they went away, would you even notice? I used to have feeds by category, but those are gone (except RossCode Weekly, but that's a different story) now, so I don't think anyone is using those anymore. Maybe I could use a few high level categories and allow subscriptions to those to seperate out technical and sports content. Would that be useful? Or should I just kill categories altogether?

Removing the categories would free up space on the left sidebar. Which reminds me, if you're an aggregator user, you may not be aware that the site has been redesigned - not totally, but a pretty good makeover.? It just feels cleaner to me. Plus I finally figured out a good way to make quotes and code snippets look good online, so that's why you've been seeing more of those.

Technorati Tags: Categories | Blogging | Tagging

Microsoft introduced what they are calling Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services, which is a lot like what they used to offer under the name FrontBridge. It's basically a way for small companies (such as Tourney Logic) to get the benefits of Exchange, but without the server and maintenance costs.

But again, that's not the reason I'm writing this. Before we were acquired by NuSoft Solutions, I had a pretty good handle on everything that Sagestone did. Now, being part of a larger company that has multiple offices, I have an idea of most of what we do, but obviously not as good a handle as I did in the past. This is one of those cases. I saw this press release before I saw the post on The Unofficial Microsoft Weblog in an "ego feed" for NuSoft. After reading through the press release, NuSoft is one of the companies listed as partners who'll deliver hosted Exchange, right alongside companies like AT&T, Sprint and TELUS.

I think we're slightly smaller than those guys though!

Technorati Tags: Microsoft+Exchange+Hosted+Services