As noted below, last year, we happened to choose the same date for the first Portland Nerd Dinner of the year. Is there meaning in this?

Wow! Talk about ironic - we had our first Nerd Dinner of 2005 on January 12, too. But, to mix it up a bit, we've moved the 12th to a Thursday this year instead of a Wednesday. I'm sure you will all appreciate the change.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Lloyd Center Food Court (Third Floor; typically, straight out from Billy Heartbeats - 2039)
When: Thursday, January 12, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Because it's a whole new year!

Be There and Be Square!

http://nerddinner.com/blogs/portland/archive/2006/01/08/15973.aspx

I found out recently that my nephew, Jeff, is selling his beautiful home in Carnation, Washington. It's a 2,870 square foot custom built home with one of the most fabulous kitchens around. Darn reasonable drive for any of you Microsoftees out there .

The description from the Coldwell Banker site:

Custom Northwest Design with unique features not found in other area homes. The gourmet kitchen will delight you from the copper countertops to the travertine sink. The island features a riverrock front,log footrails, and accent lighting. Top of the line appliances/cabinetry. Open floor plan with the great room featuring a floor to ceiling riverrock fireplace. The upper level bonus room overlooks the great room below. First floor master suite w/double headed shower(s) & 6' antique clawfoot tub.

He's just one block from Lake Joy (link, but an annoying cursor) and a wonderful community.

I think it's a shame that he's selling it, but his job has moved farther north and he figures he can build a new one much closer.

I found this idea from Michael Swanson's blog inspiring. Carry a stack of cards with you to let people know when a bit of kindness has found its way to them.

Now, I'm all for providing such deeds anonymously, but there are two important reasons to hand out this card:

1. Allow someone to know that good things can happen to them and that one just did.
2. Motivate one more person to provide a good deed to another.

Hey, enough people started doing this daily, we might just have a problem wiping the smiles off of everyone's faces. Give it a try!

I'm sure I've seen this picture somewhere before, but I just get such a kick out of it. Via Warner Crocker's blog and from The J-Walk Blog, we get to see what happens when air traffic controllers are not paying enough attention.

(It's okay kids, it wasn't the real Santa.)

p.s. We finally got around to watching The Polar Express tonight... wow. Somewhere between Miracle on 34th Street and It's a Wonderful Life, we really enjoyed it.

Inspired by Marc Hedlund's Wishlist Wishlist, I started thinking about my disappointment with Amazon's Recommendations feature. I was going to leave a comment, but I realized that it was going to be too long and just enough off-topic that I should write my own entry.

I really want to like the Recommendations on Amazon. I continue to add ratings and data to the system in hopes that one day it will provide me valuable recommendations that I can use. But so far, it seems to be getting worse.

How do they recommend "Titanic (Special Collector's Edition)" because I rated "Airplane - The 'Don't Call Me Shirley' Edition"? Why on Earth would this be considered legitimate? And "Vanishing Point" because I rated "Boiling Point"? Is this based on both having the word 'point' in the title? It would seem.

And Amazon, because I like some TV shows doesn't mean I like all TV shows. You don't have to 'recommend' every television series that makes it to DVD to me now. Oh, and here is a great one: my wife is interested in picking up "Seven Faces of Dr. Lao" (a wonderfully weird movie with Tony Randall and Barbara Eden... check it out) so we added it to the Wishlist. Now what do they recommend? "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," a Dr. Seuss adventure.

I suppose I'll keep updating information on occasion in hopes that when they do eventually fix it, it will have been worth it. But my patience wears thin.

First, I hear about this thing a month ago from Scott's blog entry. Then, a few weeks ago, Jesann mentions the game. Finally, I notice over my coworker Jim's (Meyer) shoulder (after hours, of course) a Sudoku board on his screen. I had to ask... and of course, he was writing it.

I asked when he was going to post it up for the world to enjoy, but it was not his intention. After a bit of chiding, though, he was willing to let me post it for him. The .zip file includes source code and the binary result along with a short description of what led to this. It begins as such:

Well, as a Goof one sunday afternoon my sweetheart and I flipped through a puzzle book and (finally) caught the SuDoku bug. After trying a few games - the first being quite a time waster - I began to itch for a hueristic to solve them. We compared thoughts on how each of us were solving them, and formulated an idea. We applied it to all the puzzles we could find and although it was slow to do by hand, it worked. 

Then - perhaps backwards - we read the flood of web pages on the subject. We learned the buzzwords, algorithms, postings on what makes a computer generated board and human-generated boards appear different, etc. It was great fun. Oh yeah, and we played lots and lots of online versions of the game. Some were very pretty, and others were simply focused on the game and minimally anything else.

Finally, we thought a fun project might be to employ both our skills (designer/programmer) on a project of our own. Our idea was to make a windows Sudoku game to give to our family as a holiday gift. We will be putting in visuals and sounds for a full game, but for now we started with a meager board, no alpha support in the drawing, no sound, and other gaps.

...

This should allow you to waste several hours. Oh, and just in case you don't already know it, the rules from Web Sudoku:

The rules of Sudoku are simple. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square.

Have Fun!

[UPDATE: Jim's got this game posted now at http://sudoku-koubou.com/. He's doing fairly regular updates, too.]

Why would I post that?

As a Public Service Announcement, of course. I was looking at my logs today and noticed that someone(s) had visited my blog site after searching for "Hillsboro Store Opening Costco.com" on MSN Search. Not the strangest thing I've seen, but I must say, I am looking forward to this new store.

Finally, we'll have a Costco within a reasonable drive from home that sells gasoline. In addition, it's slated to be one of the largest Costco in the world* larger (largest?) of their stores in Oregon. This means even more goodies to tempt oneself with.

Now, for anyone else that wanders this way looking for the store, it will be opening on November 17 and will have treats being served early (~8:30, as I recall). It's at the corner of Northeast 48th and Cornell (1255 NE 48th Ave, Hillsboro, Oregon 97124) in Hillsboro, just a tad east of the airport. If you follow the link to the Google map, you'll note that the property was already clear when the picture was taken - that's a McDonald's right at the corner.

Hope you enjoy!

[*Oops! I didn't realize how big this store really is! It's HUGE!]

And it sure feels good! Mind you, I got numbers over 13Mb/second, too.

To celebrate Jason's return, we're going to have a great big Nerd Dinner this week! Looks like Mr. Sells will be joining us, too, to hear some thoughts on Model-Driven Development. To top it off, we'll do everything we can to get Scott out one more time before he enters the world of Parenthood. 

My gosh it's been too long. I'm not even sure if I know where the malls are any longer.

In celebration of Mahku's return from the Skywall Realm, We need to have some serious make-up mall food, sooo...

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Squaremall Realm (a.k.a. Washington Square Mall food court)
When: Thursday, November 10, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: To Celebrate Mahku's Sabbatical!

Be There and Be Square!

This should be fabulous!

I know many of you know Scott from his very popular blog. What you may not realize is that he is a, "self-declared "Energy Star" person." Hey... I know Scott and he's a likable guy and provides a wealth of knowledge for the local .NET community. I never knew what a risk he was taking until reading The Raw Feed this evening:

Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius are great for saving money on gas. But when you drive one into a tree and need to be extracted with emergency "Jaws of Life," your car can fry a fireman with its 500-volt electrical system. So Hale Products has come up with a special "Jaws of Life" that protect rescuers from being BARBECUED.

I'm sure glad Scott hasn't parked his Prius into a tree yet or he may have already had his funeral pyre.

Thanks to Mr. Sells' Entry*:

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

*Don't worry Chris, I'll tutor you.

The Nigerian government and Microsoft Corp. signed an agreement Friday calling for the software company to help law enforcement break up crime rings that use the Internet for fraud and theft. [1]

Not well publicized is how this came to be. Unknown to most, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates, received the following (condensed) email from the government of Nigeria soliciting his and his company's assistance.

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET'. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.

WE ARE TOP OFFICIAL OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN CRACK DOWN OF SCAMS INTO YOUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA. IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS BUSINESS WE SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE TO ENABLE US TRANSFER INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR CRACK DOWN.

...

WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING THIS BUSINESS WITH YOU AND SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENTIALITY IN THIS TRANSATION. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE RECEIPT OF THIS LETTER USING THE ABOVE TEL/FAX NUMBERS. I WILL SEND YOU DETAILED INFORMATION OF THIS PENDING PROJECT WHEN I HAVE HEARD FROM YOU.

YOURS FAITHFULLY,

DR CLEMENT OKON

The rest will be history!

[1] Computerworld, October 14, 2005 (link)

I've been using the 'natural' keyboards for several years now and find them absolutely wonderful. One thing that has disappointed me, though, is the lack of 'reverse slope' on the most recent versions of these keyboards. That problem has been solved!

Me wanna!

I'm hoping that Costco will have this soon. Heck, maybe they already do. I knew I needed to go over there for something this week.

I had an incredible nerd week last week.

Tuesday, we had the monthly Portland Nerd Dinner. Turn out was great and the conversation just kept going until the Mall was closing. Chris wasn't able to join us as one of the Sells Brothers was celebrating his birthday, but those that were there couldn't get enough.

Oh, and Portland finally has a LEGO store ! I got my souvenier block!

Wednesday brought the PADNUG meeting. I was looking forward to seeing Ted present again after Code Camp, but it ended up being particularly fun. Scott made an appearance and the banter between he, Ted, ChrisT[avares], and Rick was fabulous.

What really impressed me is that Ryan Williams blogged his notes on the meeting. The next best thing to being there!

If you missed out, don't forget to watch for future meeting of both Nerd Dinners and .NET User Group here or on their respective sites. This next month, the Indigo Roadshow will be visiting Portland at the Intel Jones Farm Auditorium. Registration is required for this one, so sign up now.

It seems like just yesterday that we were called upon to help our fellow persons in South Asia. Well folks, it's time to help out here at home.

Our southern states are in dire need. Especially the good folks in New Orleans and the surrounding area. All hell broke on them and it's well worth the time to do something to help them out.

If you have a preferred target for donations of time, goods, or money, please go to them. Otherwise, you might just want to click this link and give a little bit (or a lot) to the Red Cross. You know they are there helping out.

If you are looking for updates on the situtation down that way, you may want to check out this blog or Sara's for more information. As Greg mentions, TextAmerica and NBC have teamed up to bring a site dedicated to reconnecting people in the aftermath called MissingKatrina.com.

Heck, even Rory has jumped in and done his part... in his way, of course.

From the local CBS station's website:

What were the chances?

[via Aaron Hockley]

I recently had a problem with my copy of Microsoft Money 2005. Somehow, it was completely uninstalled from my PC - probably because of a strange incident on the MSN Money pages, but that's not what this story is about.

It worried me a bit at first. I was connected to a call center that appeared to be offshore. I don't get so worked up about the 'where' support happens, but please, make sure the people speak clear and understandable english if they are supposed to be helping english speakers. It was a painful 45 minutes - and that was just to get directed to the actual support person.

But, once I got there, Nicole in Nova Scotia did a fabulous job of getting me up and running again. It turned out that I simply needed to do an upgrade, but the process took two hours! She stuck it out and was a pleasure to deal with. It turned out that she even had to stay an hour over her shift to complete this call. Big Kudos!

Of course, I worry about her not knowing about Second City TV, but that's another story - she's probably just a bit too young .

One thing I've noted over the years on the rare occasion that I've called MS Support: they must not beat their reps up over call time. I've always found that they are very willing to stick it out to make sure that the issue is resolved. Thanks for that and thanks to Nicole!