01.Blogs :
AlfredTwo  
A blog about life, Microsoft, random technology and general academic stuff.

December 2004 - Posts

Locked in at Microsoft
Friday, December 31, 2004 7:14 PM
I had to visit a local Microsoft office today. Some network things just work better with a hard-wired connection to the corporate network. Local is a relative term of course. Twenty-five years ago when I first moved to this part of the county I worked
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Not something you see every day
Thursday, December 30, 2004 11:55 PM
I ran into an interesting blog today. Someone saying bad things about Google. One almost never hears a bad word about Google. This blog entry suggests, well perhaps more than suggests, that Google is taking advantage of open source but not giving anything
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

New blogger at theSpoke
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 9:49 PM
My good friend and co-worker, Sam Stokes is now blogging. His initial post has a list of organizations involved in the relief efforts for tsunami ravaged areas.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Neighbors
Wednesday, December 29, 2004 1:51 PM
My neighbor is away this week. She is visiting her son in Florida about 1500 miles away. When she goes a way it is my job to check on and feed her cat. We've had the keys to each other's home for years and years now. So every other day or so I walk up
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Shock
Tuesday, December 28, 2004 1:43 PM
I haven't been able to blog today. Everything seems pretty trivial compared to the tragedy caused by the earthquake and tsunami. It really shows you what the expression a force of nature really means. This whole thing shows how small the world has
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Happy Boxing Day
Monday, December 27, 2004 7:32 PM
I actually have no idea what Boxing Day is all about. I just know that it is the day after Christmas.My wife and son are out shopping as I type this. I hate shopping but my wife and son love it. They especaily love it when the stores are all busy, crowded
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Merry Christmas
Saturday, December 25, 2004 7:19 PM
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva i s Novim Godom Joyeux Noël et Bonne Année! Froehliche Weihnachten und ein glückliches Neues Jahr! Kellemes
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Two Nights Before Chiristmas
Friday, December 24, 2004 1:49 AM
My wife and I both had off from work today. One thing this let us do was to handle a lot of last minute things before Christmas Eve. Tomorrow night we are having company for our annual Christmas Eve seafood feast. Today we picked up some of the deserts
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

My first (and last) smoke
Thursday, December 23, 2004 2:53 PM
It was early January 1974. I was on vacation and staying in a nice hotel. We woke up and looked out the window to see that it had snowed. The city across the valley from the hotel was blanketed by about a foot of fresh snow. It was an amazing sight. So
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

A Degree in Computer Game Development
Wednesday, December 22, 2004 8:53 PM
Worcester Polytechnic Institute will have an undergraduate degree program in computer game development next year. A little bit controversial not because of the topic but because some people think it’s all a bit too much for an undergraduate program.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Hints and Tips
Tuesday, December 21, 2004 6:18 PM
And today, in an attempt to be useful,  a collection of little hints and tricks. Did you ever want to increase the font size of a bunch of text in Word? It’s obvious if all of the text is the same size and font but what about if you have two font
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Chat
Tuesday, December 21, 2004 3:13 AM
Chat, MSN Messenger in my case, has got to be on of the best inventions of all time. Think about typing messages in real time to someone on the other side of the world. (Which I did tonight BTW) In some ways it is better than the telephone. And not
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Slow week-end on the internet
Monday, December 20, 2004 11:57 AM
It's been a weird week end in some ways. Blog activity seems to be way down. Only three of the Spoke blogs I read have been updated today. The other blogs I read also seem to have reduced activity. And my email? Well let's just say that if the spam wasn't
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

A record price for spam
Sunday, December 19, 2004 7:29 PM
An internet service company sued several companies that sent spam to their customers. No one from the companies showed up to defend themselves and the court awared the company $1,000,000,000 US. I doubt they will ever collect it all. I hope they will
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Twis the year before Longhorn
Saturday, December 18, 2004 7:23 PM
A cute poem in the style of the Christmas classic.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Children and Tablet PCs
Saturday, December 18, 2004 7:13 PM
I read a great blog entry today. Mike Torres talks about how his nephew and niece have taken to his Tablet PC. They are 3 and 5 and are having an easy time using the Tablet to do fun things. I taught kindergarden for a year once and was amazed at how
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Doing something about spyware
Friday, December 17, 2004 9:07 PM
Microsoft gets beaten up a bit about the spyware problem. Some of that is justified and some of it, well, let's just say that I hold the people who write and fund spyware somewhat responsible too. But today Microsoft took a big step towards trying to
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Visual Gaming is heating up
Thursday, December 16, 2004 8:41 PM
If you are serious about the Visual Gaming event, or even if you are not but want to learn somethings about AI and pathfinding, you should be reading Zeddy Iskandar's blog. And for sure you want to be visiting the Visual Gaming hub on a daily basis. Between
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

More on Microsoft Windows CE Challenge
Thursday, December 16, 2004 1:16 AM
Josh Blake writes about the Windows ChallengE competition from last year. His team won and three of the team went on to form a company together. Read what Josh has to say and follow some of those links. He points out that it is possible to do something
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

MSN Toolbar with desktop search
Tuesday, December 14, 2004 4:13 AM
Have you installed the new beta MSN Toolbar with desktop search? Oh this is so cool. I do not want to go back to living without it. Jay's blog over at MSN Spaces has a great write up. And Channel9 has some videos ofthe development team talking about it
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Competition
Monday, December 13, 2004 10:49 PM
The AZN Leader announced yet another warm up contest. This one is a doozy. You will not know in advance what map will be used and the white blood cells will be a little bit smarter. This is where we start to see who is working at this event for real and
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Amazing
Sunday, December 12, 2004 3:55 AM
I went to the theatre tonight. They we performing A Christmas Carol and it was very well done. I have to say that I am amazed at people who can sing and dance. TO say that I can't dance would be an understatement. And I can hardly carry a tune with an
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

China, American Companies and Censorship
Saturday, December 11, 2004 9:22 PM
I read a couple of articles about censorship and China today. http://news.com.com/2061-1012-5484388.html?tag=xtra.mlEllison: "Censorship ain't my problem"   and   http://www.boingboing.net/2004/12/06/chinese_editions_of_.html China versions
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Books? What are these "books" you speak of?
Friday, December 10, 2004 11:24 AM
Online research worries many educatorsOne quote for the article:Georgia Tech professor Amy Bruckman tried to force students to leave their computers by requiring at least one book for a September class project. She wasn't prepared for the response: "Someone
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

QOTD
Thursday, December 09, 2004 8:37 PM
If you had to give up seeing, hearing, or speaking, which would you choose? Why? What a question isn't it. I'm already frustrated that I need glasses to read and increasingly for other things as well. No way do I want to lose my sight. Among
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Community v Networking
Thursday, December 09, 2004 2:37 AM
On my other blog I have an entry that comments on someone's blog that compares communities to networks. I make the case that theSpoke combines attributes of both.I'm also doing this to see if I understand how trackbacks work. :-)
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Home ownership and working at home
Wednesday, December 08, 2004 9:46 PM
One of the things I'm not sure I like about working at home is that my wife thinks its quite reasonable for me to take a break now and again to do a little laundry. So today I took a break and took a load of towels down to the basement. Now we have a
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

On Balance
Wednesday, December 08, 2004 5:11 PM
Found on Tom Peter’s blog. "The less people like their jobs, the more they focus on balance." —John Wood, ex-Microsoft Asia exec (from the new worthwhile magazine) I think there is some real truth to that. If you really like your job than you enjoy
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Geek Humor
Wednesday, December 08, 2004 12:07 PM
Take a look at this picture. Math.pow(Joy,World);This was taken at Bentley College which is pretty much a business related college. I wonder how many students really understand it.And then there is Eric Maino's Proposal in C# That link is why I set this
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Sad Docks and Sad Boats
Tuesday, December 07, 2004 6:03 PM
I drove by some docks and marinas this morning. During the warmer weather these docks are filled with boats of all sizes bobbing in the water. I have to say that the sight of boats in the water always seems encouraging to me. It just seems like that is
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

First Thoughts
Monday, December 06, 2004 11:29 AM
OK the lastest "Small Competition" looks like fun. Make sure you check the Visual Gaming hub and Ori Fujiwara's blog for the lastest details. These important details includes information about new features and bug fixes in the viewer. You will find that
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Email down
Sunday, December 05, 2004 10:31 PM
My email account at work has been down for about 24 hours. This is pretty unusual at Microsoft. I suspect that there are a couple of factors. One is that the particular Exchange server I connect to is an experimental one. Another is probably the fact
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

New Visual Gaming Event
Sunday, December 05, 2004 8:13 PM
There is a new Visual Gaming "small" event. Be sure to check it out. I am going to download the new tissue and the new beta of the Visual Gaming SDK today and see what its like. Always something new here.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Toys
Sunday, December 05, 2004 1:56 AM
I like high tech toys just about as much as most people. Probably not as much as some others though. I have no interest in an iPod. No interest in most gaming devices. I'm actually fine with "my" Xbox living at my son's house. I don't want a Smart phone.
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Project
Saturday, December 04, 2004 5:05 AM
So here is what I have been working on instead of clearing the tree from my garden.It's not a very good picture I am afraid. The shelves are a little over 7 feet tall and about 4 feet wide. I hope that they will hold most of my computer/software related
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Tree Down
Friday, December 03, 2004 2:59 AM
Here is a picture of the tree that was blown down in my yard the other day.It covers most of what used to be tomato plants and extends into the flower garden. I almsot lost a bird feeder as well. It's not a big deal really. I know that storms did much
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

The good follows the bad
Thursday, December 02, 2004 12:29 AM
It's been raining hard all day. In fact it's been raining since last night. Not fun at all. And then about a half hour ago it stopped. The sun came out and the most amazing rainbow arched across the road I was driving along. Huge, colorful and a complete
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Ah networks
Wednesday, December 01, 2004 5:10 PM
I took a couple of classes on-line today. One of them using LiveMeeting worked out very well. Powerpoint on the screen with audio either over the internet or via phone line. Very cool talk on Avalon. Another was a short course taken "on demand." That
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posted  by  AlfredTwo  (Comments Off) 

Searching for myself
Wednesday, December 01, 2004 4:32 AM
Like a lot of people, from time to time I look myself up on the internet. I use the search string "Alfred Thompson." Now mine is not the most common name in the world but for the longest time I did not show up at the top of most searchs. There is an artist
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