Oh thank heaven! I'm very pleased with the result, but I'm sure that there are plenty of people that would debate it - especially the 'not annoying' part .

I am 15% Idiot.

I am not annoying at all. In fact most people come to me for advice. Of course they annoy the hell out of me. But what can I do? I am smarter than most people.

Take the
Idiot Test
@ FualiDotCom

Thanks, Greg, for pointing me to this.

What: Portland Code Camp v1.0
When: July 23 & 24, 2005
Where: Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, Oregon
Web: http://pacwest.ms/codecamp/pdx/1/

There’s a new kind of software event coming to town. It’s called Portland Code Camp v1.0, a weekend of software developers talking to software developers about software development. No marketing, no fluff – just code. It’s the weekend of July 23rd and 24th at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. It is a mini-conference and it is totally FREE.

Code Camp is a community-run activity, and we have a number of local area user groups participating in organizing and running the event. So far we have over 50 sessions in the works, in 10 broad tracks, including security, game development, database, XML, web and client development, and much more.

We receive support from Microsoft and other companies, but this is certainly not a Microsoft technology-only event. We welcome topics and attendees from all backgrounds, disciplines, and skill levels. Sessions range from informal “chalk talks” to presentations. If you are a software developer or interested in the field, then Code Camp is for you.

All of the presenters are volunteers, and we welcome you to present as well. If you’ve never presented before, then Code Camp is perfect place to give it a try. Not only will you be among friends, but there’s also a special pre-camp event Friday evening with a Tips Talk for New Presenters lead by renowned speaker Scott Hanselman.

Portland Code Camp v1.0 is attracting presenters and attendees from throughout the region and from several states. And the small, intimate size means a lot of opportunity to meet and interact with a lot of exciting people. Code Camps have been very successful on the east coast, and we are thrilled to be hosting the first Code Camp west of the Mississippi River.

For more information, visit our website at http://pacwest.ms/codecamp/pdx/1/.

To reserve your space, register for Portland Code Camp v1.0 by join our Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/codecamp_pdx.

If you are interested in presenting a session, email stuart.celarier@ineta.org.

See you at Camp!

This probably demonstrates how forgiving I am when watching movies. It seems I’ve only missed eight of them, though.

[Most recently from: http://www.knowing.net/PermaLink.aspx?guid=8a3fac3a-6041-4fe9-b13e-d06e8d748b98]

Italicize the ones you've seen and Bold the ones you actually liked.

1. Titanic (1997) - $600,779,824
2. Star Wars (1977) - $460,935,665
3. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (1982) - $434,949,459
4. Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace (1999) - $431,065,444
5. Spider-Man (2002) - $403,706,375
6. Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, The (2003) - $377,019,252
7. Passion of the Christ, The (2004) - $370,025,697
8. Jurassic Park (1993) - $356,784,000
9. Shrek 2 (2004) - $356,211,000
10. Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) - $340,478,898
11. Finding Nemo (2003) - $339,714,367
12. Forrest Gump (1994) - $329,691,196
13. Lion King, The (1994) - $328,423,001
14. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (2001) - $317,557,891
15. Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, The (2001) - $313,837,577
16. Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones (2002) - $310,675,583
17. Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983) - $309,125,409
18. Independence Day (1996) - $306,124,059
19. Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) - $305,411,224
20. Sixth Sense, The (1999) - $293,501,675
21. Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980) - $290,158,751
22. Home Alone (1990) - $285,761,243
23. Matrix Reloaded, The (2003) - $281,492,479
24. Shrek (2001) - $267,652,016
25. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2002) - $261,970,615
26. How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) - $260,031,035
27. Jaws (1975) - $260,000,000
28. Monsters, Inc. (2001) - $255,870,172
29. Batman (1989) - $251,188,924
30. Men in Black (1997) - $250,147,615
31. Toy Story 2 (1999) - $245,823,397
32. Bruce Almighty (2003) - $242,589,580
33. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) - $242,374,454
34. Twister (1996) - $241,700,000
35. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) - $241,437,427
36. Ghost Busters (1984) - $238,600,000
37. Beverly Hills Cop (1984) - $234,760,500
38. Cast Away (2000) - $233,630,478
39. Lost World: Jurassic Park, The (1997) - $229,074,524
40. Signs (2002) - $227,965,690
41. Rush Hour 2 (2001) - $226,138,454
42. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) - $219,200,000
43. Ghost (1990) - $217,631,306
44. Aladdin (1992) - $217,350,219
45. Saving Private Ryan (1998) - $216,119,491
46. Mission: Impossible II (2000) - $215,397,30
47. X2 (2003) - $214,948,780
48. Austin Powers in Goldmember (2002) - $213,079,163
49. Back to the Future (1985) - $210,609,762
50. Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me (1999) - $205,399,422
51. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) - $204,843,350
52. Exorcist, The (1973) - $204,565,000
53. Mummy Returns, The (2001) - $202,007,640
54. Armageddon (1998) - $201,573,391
55. Gone with the Wind (1939) - $198,655,278
56. Pearl Harbor (2001) - $198,539,855
57. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) - $197,171,806
58. Toy Story (1995) - $191,800,000
59. Men in Black II (2002) - $190,418,803
60. Gladiator (2000) - $187,670,866
61. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) - $184,925,485
62. Dances with Wolves (1990) - $184,208,848
63. Batman Forever (1995) - $184,031,112
64. Fugitive, The (1993) - $183,875,760
65. Ocean's Eleven (2001) - $183,405,771
66. What Women Want (2000) - $182,805,123
67. Perfect Storm, The (2000) - $182,618,434
68. Liar Liar (1997) - $181,395,380
69. Grease (1978) - $181,360,000
70. Jurassic Park III (2001) - $181,166,115
71. Mission: Impossible (1996) - $180,965,237
72. Planet of the Apes (2001) - $180,011,740
73. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) - $179,870,271
74. Pretty Woman (1990) - $178,406,268
75. Tootsie (1982) - $177,200,000
76. Top Gun (1986) - $176,781,728
77. There's Something About Mary (1998) - $176,483,808
78. Ice Age (2002) - $176,387,405
79. Crocodile Dundee (1986) - $174,635,000
80. Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992) - $173,585,516
81. Elf (2003) - $173,381,405
82. Air Force One (1997) - $172,888,056
83. Rain Man (1988) - $172,825,435
84. Apollo 13 (1995) - $172,071,312
85. Matrix, The (1999) - $171,383,253
86. Beauty and the Beast (1991) - $171,301,428
87. Tarzan (1999) - $171,085,177
88. Beautiful Mind, A (2001) - $170,708,996
89. Chicago (2002) - $170,684,505
90. Three Men and a Baby (1987) - $167,780,960
91. Meet the Parents (2000) - $166,225,040
92. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) - $165,500,000
93. Hannibal (2001) - $165,091,464
94. Catch Me If You Can (2002) - $164,435,221
95. Big Daddy (1999) - $163,479,795
96. Sound of Music, The (1965) - $163,214,286
97. Batman Returns (1992) - $162,831,698
98. Bug's Life, A (1998) - $162,792,677
99. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (2004) - $161,963,000
100. Waterboy, The (1998) - $161,487,252

Oh my goodness... Google has done another one of their amazing things. They took that Keyhole technology they bought and packaged it even better. Oh, and it's FREE!

You can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the whole freakin' planet! And of course, just click and drag to move around a particular geography.

A view of our house from the south:

Just Too Cool!!

I was always a bit fascinated by how the viewscreen on the Enterprise could show images from locations where there were no cameras. Come on, that will never happen, right?

Don't be so sure. Not only do we have several ways to acquire imagery other than simple optical means, Nissan is developing a means to put an optical 'camera' fifty feet above your car to show you what obstacles may be nearby.

Via Mike Elgin's Raw Feed:

Cameras mounted at the front and rear and on both sides take pictures of the surrounding road surface, which are synthesized by an image processing technique into one view that is shown on a central display. The system is especially helpful when parking, enabling the driver to steer easily and precisely into a parking space. It also eliminates any fear of running over the neighbour’s prized belongings or posts or animals or anything else for that matter.

How could I have forgotten to send my congratulations last week to Scott?!? It appears that there is a new Hanselman in the works!

Just so you know, Scott, I have a lot of Uncle Experience .

I got this out much too late this month, but darn it, I'm going for it anyway. We sort of had a June PND while visiting in Orlando for TechEd earlier in the month, but I realize that one shouldn't count that against the local tally.

With that in mind, here we go:

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Mall food court
When: Thursday, June 23, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: 'Cuz it's Summer!

Be There and Be Square!

That was unexpected... at least to me. If you go grab the most recent version of the MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search (ugh!), you will get the new Tabbed Browsing interface months before IE7 is released.

The bit I like best is the ability to save a group of tabs as one set. The shortcoming here is that there is only one set of "My Tabs" and you overwrite it by saving a new set. I want shortcuts to multiple groups of tabs.

Anyway, if you are still using Internet Explorer, check it out!

Daverci, the company I'm working for, is building software to better connect institutional pharmacies with the long-term care facilities that they work with. I was amazed by the amount of paper that is shuffled in that business.

With the work we are doing, much of that paper can go away . This will help assure that residents in these facilities get the correct medications at the correct time.

I saw an article this morning describing, at a high level, the work we are doing really well. U.S. Pharmacist (everyone has a magazine, don't they?) ran a blurb titled Medication Management System Is Targeted to LTCs.

As was implied, I've spent the last week+ in sunny/storming Orlando for TechEd. Unfortunately, the wireless was not working for the first three days and I gave up by that point. That could have been better, but overall, it was a great experience.

I've got emails/blogs under 800 and will be having many things to say on here this next week.

Okay, not only does the concept sound worthy, but the banner ad is just too funny! Here's my plug for the RDs' GrokTalk.net event at TechEd:

Take a few moments out of your busy TechEd schedule to stop by!

Another one of these "solution needed for the workplace" type of blog entries. First, I know - putting nearly 100,000 items in a control might suggest an alternative method, but accept that it's the right solution for the moment. There... don't we feel better?

Now, the situation is that I need to populate a listing type of control with between 80,000 and 100,000 items. Honestly, I would have gladly used a combobox or a listbox, just as long as it provided some means to come up quickly.

It surprised me that creating the collection of items could be so quick yet populating the control was so slow. But, I've come to accept that fact and went searching for a control that was a bit 'smarter' about its contents.

What I found was a Virtual ListBox implemented on vbAccelerator.com. It fits the bill well for my needs. The only thing to add to it is the ability to accept keyboard input to quickly move to items in the list. That is on the docket for next week .

Some time ago, I was asked to devlop some reports for a little tracking application I'd written for my employer. In my past life, I did a lot of this work (heck, it was my job!) and feel pretty comfortable using Excel to twist my numbers around in all sorts of Pivot-y ways.

What I hadn't done is to create pivots that were conditional and customized. I suppose, with further exploration, I'd find reasonable ways to accomodate my needs from within Excel, but I had a moment's epiphany - why not just build the proper pivot query in SQL to begin with?

I know I had seen it done, but never took the time to find out details. So, with this new thought, I did a bit of exploring - Duh! That's easy! Simply count conditionally for each column.

So, for posterity's sake - and my own future needs - here follows the basic structure for doing a pivot table with a SQL query (Counts number of items for a given number of weeks prior to current):

Saw an interesting article up on The Code Project suggesting eleven Tufte inspired 'concepts' that could be incorporated into future versions of Visual Studio.

I'm not completely sold on all of the ideas presented, but what a great exercise to see published. Having an article like this and seeing the resulting discussion can really help open one's mind to what might be possible.

I subscribe to several e-newsletters. One of these is PCWorld's Tips & Tweaks by Steve Bass. The ironic thing is that I read it less for the tips or the tweaks and more for the "Dig This" asides he puts in.

Last week, (May 18th), one of the links was the following:

Dig This: I love imaginative and creative sites, and Billy Harvey's is super cool. (And no, I don't find his music or demeanor particularly interesting. But the site's design? Zowie!) Click around and you'll see what I mean. [Thanks, Brad.]

 It's wonderful to see such an innovative site for self-promotion. I wish this fella well!

I try to resist this sort of thing... especially when it's this silly, but my results were just too compelling. I am surprised by the accuracy of this one . Plus, I always loved Defender!

Just to keep you really busy, we have our PADNUG meeting on the 25th, the Visual Studio Team System Technical Training on the 26th, and TechEd starting in less than two weeks. Shortly after that, we will be looking forward to the first Northwest Code Camp

In the mean time, I want to remind you of what we have planned for the May PADNUG meeting. Many of you have now met Jason Mauer at various functions from PADNUG meetings to Nerd Dinners. His knowledge ranges from databases to DirectX.

Jason promises some extra special swag, too .

I just finished a chat with Gateway trying to find out what resolution their laptops were available in. The representative told me 1,024 x 768 and I asked if there was any other options available.

First, he or she tells me that it would require a larger display. Uh, no, just more pixels... "HP and Dell have them," I pointed out. Then, I'm told that they just 'support' that resolution, not that the display is that large - even though we have these very computers and screens at work.

I left a 'negative' review of the experience with them with the following comment:

I'm shopping for a new laptop computer. One thing I consider important for the development work I do is a lot of pixels. First, it appears that you have no more than 1,024 x 768 resolution - my three year old HP has 1,400 x 1,050. Obviously, I'm not willing to downgrade. Second, your rep didn't seem to believe higher resolution screens existed. Please view the chat log for details.

I have had a soft spot for Gateway for years... it has now hardened.

A few months ago, I started thinking about the next laptop I would purchase. I have had my current one for about three years now and have been pretty darn satisfied. It's a HP Pavillion that I got custom configured through Best Buy. It was a really good deal and has worked well.

Well, one of the compelling features when I got on this machine was a higher resolution screen - 1,400 x 1,050. As I'm shopping, a 'must have' feature for me is resolution at least equal to or greater than what I've grown to love on this machine.

I was thrilled to see that Costco was doing the HP Configure to Order on their website. I had my 'perfect' machine scoped out and was just waiting for a little bit more technology to come around (and memory prices to drop a bit) before I popped for it.

What do you know? I'm ready and they no longer offer the high resolutions!

Looks like Michael Dell is going to become just a bit more wealthy.

Jason Olsen has done it... he has left the safety of GeeksWithBlogs to venture out on his own blogging trek.

Congratulations Jason! I'm sure we will see all the more content from you and I think you will enjoy using the dasBlog software. I'll be looking forward to reading your crazy content and humorous anecdotes.

Now, Jason, go into your configuration and choose "Use Post Title for Permalink" so that you get the cool, clean linkies :).