Jury Duty Today...

Ventura Superior Court

Doing Jury Duty today... I asked to serve today, as opposed to waiting for my group number to be called, hoping that Friday would be a light court day. We'll see...


Update #1 6/24/2005 @ 6:29 PM PDT:
I was almost on a jury, but was excused by the plaintiff's lawyer. I was first off the island... What does that say? LOL

It was a little funny. I made my somewhat strong feels known about an issue to be raised in the coming trial and I think that sealed it.

The plaintiff's lawyer asked a general/jury-wide queston, "Does anyone have a problem with..." You know the kind of question that get's knods or slient approval? Where everyone just kinds of looks at everyone else?

Well I did have a problem with it, so I slowly raised my hand (who likes to the first/the only one?). And the lawyer asked for how I felt. SUCKER! After I finished a little venting, he asked the question, "Does anyone else feel this way?"

Now a number of other potential jurors also spoke up. "I agree with that guy..." or "Like the gentleman behind me said..." or "Yeah, I don't like it either..."

So I started a little juror revolt. lol... It just took someone to speak up first.

It was no surprise that I was the first excused. Oh well, I did my civic duty and I am proud that I did so...

ShellExView v1.12 Released

ShellExView v1.12 - Shell Extensions Manager For Windows

New for 1.12:
"New shell extension types: InfoTip Handler, Shell Link, Structure Storage, MetaData.
Multiple shell extensions with the same CLSID are now displayed in separated entries.
Added support for Windows XP style"

Past Post XRef:
ShellExView v1.11 - Shell Extensions Manager For Windows

Using Threading to Build a Responsive Application with Visual Studio 2005

Using Threading to Build a Responsive Application with Visual Studio 2005

"Summary: Building multi-threaded applications is easy with the new BackgroundWorker component in Visual Studio 2005, and it allows you to create interactive applications with minimal work. (11 printed pages)

...

Introduction
One of the most powerful features introduced with Visual Basic .NET was the ability to create multithreaded applications. Many Visual Basic developers did not take advantage of this newfound power because of the complex nature and challenges for developing a multithreaded application. ..."

This is one of the things I'm looking forward to in VS2005/.Net 2.0. With multi-core chips being standard items in the coming years, multi-threaded apps will not be an extra but a must.

Sure, you can do it in .Net 1.0/1.1, but it takes too much plumbing and it's too easy to screw up your winform vs worker thread communication, etc. I want to code business related stuff, not basic infrastructure stuff (well sometimes I like doing that too, but you get the idea)...

Los Angeles Earthquakes on Google Maps

Los Angeles Earthquakes on Google Maps

LA area earthquakes mapped via Google Maps... now that's a cool Google Maps hack.

Patterns and Practices Community Beta Launched

Patterns and Practices Community

Looks like GotDotNet is getting some TLC. The Patterns and Practices Community beta has been launched, which provides a portal for all P&P related workspaces on GotDotNet (GDN).

Also the Enterprise Library Workspace is now also beta testing a new home.

It's nicer than the old GDN one. It now feels more like a real portal than before...

How to clear the Isolated Storage.

Isolated Storage: How to clear the Isolated Storage?

"As part of the .NET Framework 1.1 SDK there comes the Storage Administrator Tool (storeadm.exe) which helps you view and clean the Isolated Storage. ..."

I use isolated storage pretty often for user app settings, etc. Sometimes I need to nuke them all through for testing purposes, etc...

So this is a handy tip.

Power Collections 1.0 Released

Wintellect - Know How - Resources - Power Collections

The cool uber collection library for .Net 2, Power Collections, has reached 1.0. Think of these as the collections that time (err, I mean MS) forgot...

Check out the online doc's here for more details.

Now all I need is for VS2k5 to ship... :/

Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

ComputerZen.com - Scott Hanselman's Weblog - Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List

About everyone in glog-space (geek blog-space... ;) is posting links to Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List, but I want to be able to find it in the not so near future, so here's my post on it...

If you've not seen this list, then stop reading right now and check it out.

You're still here?

SCC Dispatcher - Transparent SCC Provider Switcher

SCC Dispatcher - transparent SCC providers switcher

"SCC Dispatcher is a program that transparently switches different SCC API providers. Maybe you know or even use the SCC Switcher utility, which is delivered with distribution packages of SCC Proxy products. SCC Switcher is a nice registry modification tool, which requires restart of the IDE to apply changes. In contrast to SCC Switcher, SCC Dispatcher is a tiny SCC API proxy, which enables switching on SCC API level. It initializes multiple providers in parallel and then, after it determines which provider is really needed, redirects all communications to that provider. This allows implementation of transparent switching. In other words, you don't have to check which provider is active now. You can just launch the IDE and open the project. SCC Dispatcher will automatically choose the correct provider for you. ..."

Now that's cool... Great idea.

I'd rather be able to set the source control provider at the project level, but this looks like the next best thing.

Instead of switching SCC provider before launching VS (say via SCC Switcher), SCC Dispacther, acting as a proxy, will let you change providers at runtime.

If you have a couple SCC providers (VSS & TS & Vault & SVN, etc) then this is something you might want to take a look at...

(via The ADO Guy - SourceControl Dispatcher!)