digitalMoto.net

After about a week of playing around with Zen, I finally dropped the hammer and pulled out my credit card. Somewhere in all of this, I learned that having a tool like Zen really simplifies my life. I know that sounds cheesy but it’s true. I can stop trying to remember everything that is going on. If the woman has an infrastructure request like “I need a new mouse.” She can add it to the infrastructure project in Zen. The next time I log into Zen, I’ll see the new request and respond accordingly. The same for bugs. And when she comes up with a new feature, it too can be added to the list. If I think of a new feature or want to force time to refactor my codebase, I just add it to the mix. And when I sit down to start working on stuff, the priorities are defined. I know what she cares about the most because it is on the top of the screen. Simple. Well worth the $9/month that I’m paying at the moment. That may climb as my project list grows, but 3 is a good place to start.

The rumor finally reached my ears. According to a friend, who read a Tweet by Scott Hanselman, Windows 7 has been released to manufacturing.

What??? Cool!

So what does this mean to you?

It means that the end of Vista is nigh. It means that Microsoft is not the evil beast it used to be. They failed miserably with Vista. Win7 appears to be the exact opposite. They have tried to under promise and over deliver. Yes, I know they dropped some features during the development cycle. But when was the last time Microsoft released a new O/S on time, with a high possibility of success? I’ve sat through at least 6 programming presentations that were running on Win7 beta/RC versions. I never saw one barf. I saw beta issues, but the core O/S ran without rebooting every 15 minutes. And development machines are the most nasty, unstable machines around. I install and uninstall drivers and DLLs all day. It takes it’s toll. Win7 appears to be a very stable, fast, and thin(ner) O/S. It runs on netbooks. That’s something Vista could never do!

What does it mean to me?

It means that I can stop waiting to “upgrade” the Vista installs at the office and jump directly to Win7 Ultimate.

Technically, RTM means that Microsoft has released the O/S to large scale vendors like Dell, Toshiba, Asus, etc, so they can start getting their builds ready for mass deployments.

It means that we can finally dive a stake through the heart of Vista and move on.

I’m supper jazzed. I keep hitting the reload button for the Windows 7 Operating System page in MSDN. I know it won’t show up here for a while until Aug 6th.

What can I say? I’m OCD.

Recently, I got turned on to Zen by Nate Kohari. Having used a Kanban-style feature management system (poorly). I can see a real need for what Nate has written. I’ve signed up for the free demo to see if I could really use it. If it does work out for me, I know the $9/month would fit into my budgets. Just allowing the product manager (the significate other) to update the item queue from anywhere would be worth the subscription. 90% of her new feature requests come about during the day, when she’s actually using the application (we are only using one app/Kanban to see if this style works for both of us). As it is, we have to gather and stare at the board in our home office. Remote, anytime updates… Nice.

The frame sliders showed up last night. After reading the instructions, they were a breeze to install. There was a warning about cross threading so I took my time. The only “difficulty” was torquing down the lower slider. The slider assembly replaces the stock lower engine mount with a new rod that fits through the engine case. So far, so good? Well, my arms aren’t long enough to tighten a nut on one side of the bike while holding a similar nut on the other side of the bike. I hadn’t thought about this issue… After waiting for the woman to return from walking the dogs, the problem was solved.

Bonus: She learned how to use a torque wrench and that the Craftsman 1/2″ torque wrench I bought a couple months ago does have a real purpose.

Things are moving along with the bike. Here’s a pic from last Wednesday evening. I picked it up on Saturday. Of course, I need to make sure everything worked… 200 miles later, I returned home.

I am still waiting on a couple parts: another bolt for the ignition and a strap for the exhaust. Handguards were added before I picked it. I’ve already reworked the handguard placement and attachments. I need to get the Pazzo levers back on it. That isn’t going to happen until I mail them off for repair. Duh. Framesliders are coming from KTMTwins.com Cali. (upper, lower). Hopefully these will arrive before some bubblehead tags me again.

I’ve been listing to the Uncle Bob (Robert Martin) podcasts on Scott Hanselman’s site, http://www.hanselminutes.com/HanselMinutes.com.

Return of…:
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=189

SOLID
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=163

SOLID: This time with feeling.
http://www.hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=168

Windows 7

I have to admit I am totally jazzed about the Windows 7 release. I’m rarely an early adopter and I still avoid messing with betas. My mindset is usually, “I don’t have time to get everything done on my plate as it is. Why would I want to play with something that I know it is (probably) broken and doesn’t include any upgrade path when the full release comes out?” Still I’m really tempted to throw Win7 RC on the netbook.

Speaking of the netbook. I am falling in love with it. It is a crack up in so many ways. I am doing all of these things that you shouldn’t do to a netbook. I installed Visual Studio Team Edition with all of the add-ons. I installed Virtual PC so I can run a Win2003 Server in the background while I program. I’m plugging in my portable laptop drive then working off compressed versions of my files. All of these action shouldn’t be possible on a XP Home netbook. I don’t know how many times I got warning, but I still plowed ahead and did it. And EVERYTHING works. I can query my Win2003 server, which is running SQL Server 2005. My biggest problem is the small screen. This could be fixed with a higher rez or a larger screen, but then I am leaving the realm of netbooks. It is a challenge to work on such a small screen. At work, I have a 20 widescreen. At home, I have a pair of 20” flat screens on my development machine and a 22” on my test box. So the shift to a single 10” widescreen requires a bit of effort. Still… It works. Yeah, it’s slow. Yes, I coulda/woulda/shoulda done it differently, but pushing this little machine is kind of fun. Tuesday night, I was a PADNUG with everything fired up and running. I had my external drive, my Bluetooth mouse, Virtual PC running and active while I fixed a couple bugs in VS2008TS. It rocked.

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I installed ASP MVC on Wednesday after confirming I had already installed .net 3.5 SP1. It dropped in without any issues.

Which brings me around to the original topic… I am thinking about digging up another laptop hard drive so I can install Win7 on the netbook without mucking about with the default OS install. I know where I’ve got a 100 gig drive lurking someone where around the house.

Moto Crash: Update
The KTM should be back on the road next week. My new helmet might arrive today. I need to pick up some new armour on my way home from work tonight. I’m already lining things up for a shakedown run through the Cascades.

My body is starting to re-align. Muscles are less sore or sore from PT as opposed to sore from muscle spasms that last for days. I am back to tapping my foot at work. I tend to thump out the bass drum lines to the music I listen to while I program. I’m on the second floor of a steel reinforced building. When I get going, the monitors on the workstation next start to bob. It’s kind of funny for me, but I’m sure it annoys my co-workers beyond measure. I usually smile and stop as soon as I notice or someone points out the shake. I don’t mean to do it.

Guilty as charged.
100 Basic Geek-Skills for Geeks

All of those who have survived corporate environments know this to be true but now we have a new study to prove the argument (yet again). The difference is this one has a couple suggestions on how to avoid this problem.

Why Incompetence Spreads through Big Organizations

I used to subscribe to Sara Ford’s Visual Studio Tip of the Day RSS feed. She stopped that series after 350-some odd tips. I am less interested in her current work within CodePlex. This morning, I realized I hadn’t actually read any of her posts in weeks even though that is my start-up page in Visual Studio. So what should I be looking at? What are the big MSDN feeds that I actually care about? I found a short list of feeds (below). I ended up subscribing to the Visual C# feed. Safe. Boring. We’ll see how it goes. I’m half-way tempted to write my own aggregator, but the sloth factor is a bit too high today. Plus, I have 3 other “real” projects waiting in the queue.

One thing high on my “need to learn” list is printing. Coming from a Web background, I have never needed to print things. The browser handled all of that. Throw in a printer targeted CSS (if needed) and that’s it. In WinForms is takes a bit more effort. So I’m reading through the chapters on Graphics in my Essential C# book. I find it interesting that neither my C# Cookbook or my Programming C# books contain any information on printing. Hmm…

Here are those feeds.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/security/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vbasic/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vcsharp/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/visualc/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio/rss.xml

http://msdn.microsoft.com/webservices/rss.xml

My morning news feed brought me to a page on the worst tech commercial ever. The first one is truly cheese. The second one is kind of cute, until the baby pukes and then it is really funny. You’d have to watch to see humor. The last word is probably the best.

Then of course there are the Internet Explorer ads… However this one is the one. I told you this one was about projectile vomitting.