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Win 7 Ultimate downloaded.

“So what’s the difference between Ultimate and Enterprise?”
“The license key.”
“So I should be using Enterprise for my domain attached development workstation?”
“Yes.”
“Crap. <sigh> It only took 6 hours to download Ultimate…”

Instead of eating lunch, I picked up hardware to build up a new development workstation. I think I know what I’m doing tonight when I get home. I guess I’ll load Ultimate and see what’s what before I worry about the Enterprise issue.

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

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.

I’ve been fighting problems with my ClickOnce deployment. I’ve got an app that has 23 successful updates. Number 24 didn’t go as well. I started making major changes almost a month ago and I finished up a couple of the last minor fixes yesterday. The deployment uploaded fine, but it would not install on either my XP development machine or my Vista test platform. In the end, it was a couple simple changes to the app.manifest file. A some point, I had played with the ClickOnce settings. This messing about added extra info to the XML file and reverting back to “Full Trust” didn’t remove these edits.

Here’s the mainfest before I found a solution.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<asmv1 :assembly manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <assemblyidentity version="1.0.0.0" name="MyApplication.app" />
  <trustinfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2">
    <security>
      <requestedprivileges xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
        <!-- UAC Manifest Options
            If you want to change the Windows User Account Control level replace the
            requestedExecutionLevel node with one of the following.

        <requestedExecutionLevel  level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" />
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="highestAvailable" uiAccess="false" />

            If you want to utilize File and Registry Virtualization for backward
            compatibility then delete the requestedExecutionLevel node.
        -->
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" />
      </requestedprivileges>
      <applicationrequestminimum>
        <defaultassemblyrequest permissionSetReference="Custom" />
        <permissionset class="System.Security.PermissionSet" version="1" Unrestricted="true" ID="Custom" SameSite="none">
          <ipermission class="System.Security.Permissions.FileIOPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Security.Permissions.KeyContainerPermission, mscorlib, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Security.Permissions.StorePermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Net.WebPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Diagnostics.EventLogPermission, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Data.OleDb.OleDbPermission, System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Data.SqlClient.SqlClientPermission, System.Data, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
          <ipermission class="System.Security.Permissions.DataProtectionPermission, System.Security, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" version="1" Unrestricted="true" />
        </permissionset>
      </applicationrequestminimum>
    </security>
  </trustinfo>
</asmv1>

So here’s the complete working manifest file.

< ?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<asmv1 :assembly manifestVersion="1.0" xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv1="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v1" xmlns:asmv2="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance">
  <assemblyidentity version="1.0.0.0" name="MyApplication.app" />
  <trustinfo xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v2">
    <security>
      <requestedprivileges xmlns="urn:schemas-microsoft-com:asm.v3">
        <!-- UAC Manifest Options
            If you want to change the Windows User Account Control level replace the
            requestedExecutionLevel node with one of the following.

        <requestedExecutionLevel  level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" />
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="requireAdministrator" uiAccess="false" />
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="highestAvailable" uiAccess="false" />

            If you want to utilize File and Registry Virtualization for backward
            compatibility then delete the requestedExecutionLevel node.
        -->
        <requestedexecutionlevel level="asInvoker" uiAccess="false" />
      </requestedprivileges>
    </security>
  </trustinfo>
</asmv1>

Last weekend, I rode about 1200 miles through southern British Columbia. Scott and I left Saturday morning and returned on Monday. I had a good time. I have never been over near Osoyoos before so that was a new experience. I really enjoy my time in Canada. It’s good to get away. The map shows the actual route taken. The original plan lacked some of the zigzagging near Klickitat and in Seattle. I was frustrated by a large truck on SR14, which is why I lead us up to BZ Corner. And we managed to hit Seattle during rush hour. After a required stop at Dick’s Burgers on 45th, taking 99 south seemed more entertaining than sitting on I-5 with my foot down.

Here’s the map:

View Larger Map

Yesterday, I was hit by a car while riding into downtown. I was exiting 26 Hwy to go into the city. I was in the far right lane on a one-way street. The light was red. I was slowing to stop at the light. The light turned green and another driver who was 2 cars back in the queue, stopped in the middle lane, decided that she wanted to be in my lane without looking. I grabbed both brakes and locked my rear wheel before I hit her right rear quarter panel. Then I hit the pavement. I never made it to the while line. Unfun. Nothing was broken (on me). I did hit my helmet on the pavement and trashed about $1600 in armour in the process. The other driver admitted fault and we have the same insurance company.

The map is a sat photo of the intersection, if you are interested.

View Larger Map

I’m already analyzing my actions and I don’t think there was anything I could have done. I wasn’t speeding. In fact, I was slowing down to stop for the red light. The other driver saw the light turn green and jumped into my lane without a moment of notice. The only possible thing I could have done would have been to crank the bike to the right harder, but since I locked the rear wheel that wasn’t possible. I was already sliding against the slope of the pavement as the left lane sits a few inches lower than the right and the whole thing took place in a slight corner. There wasn’t enough time/space to let off the brake and reapply. I am sure there was something I could have done to not put myself in that situation, but I haven’t figured that one out just yet.

The bike is pretty beat up but the dealership says it is fixable. I need a new radiator, oil cooler, side panel, bar end, mirror, shift lever and a handful of other obvious parts. The real cost will not be known until they start digging into it. And dont’ forget to replace all of that damaged armour…

As for me, I’ve been directed to stay home for a couple days and load up on pain killers and muscle relaxers. Basically, I unsafe to drive a vehicle right now. Now if the headache would just go away…

So it really isn’t the years. It is the miles. One great weekend followed by a dumbass in a cage.

I’ve been looking at Moo’s MiniCards. I don’t know why. I just have been. Maybe it is because I keep getting asked if I have a card at all of these geek things I have been attending. $20 for 100 sounds fair.

I ended up looking at Andre Jordan’s designs. I like minimalism. Einstein was right. (link)

I guess that’s part of why I enjoy the KTM so much…

Off to debug an Infragistics Ribbon control that crapped out during a major refactoring. KFLY is playing in the background. Once 2 comes, I’ll flip to Pandora or listen to MP3s.

I am learning that WinForms doesn’t like animations when the primary thread is occupied. A new rule to learn. I have been spending time cruising the net, reading up on threading in an attempt to solve my problem. Which is this: I have a dialog that shows a “waiting” graphic while work happens. The work does in happen, but the waiting graphic never updates. Does the graphic work? Yes. I know it works because I’ve displayed the image as a stand-alone item and everything is cool. More to learn. I’ll post some code to CodeKeep when I get it figured out.

I’m album mode today. Of course, this has rules too. Expect for the starting point I have only picked albums that I rarely listen to yet have owned more than a decade. Collections are not allowed. Full-length albums. Deep cuts, I guess you could call it. I started with the new G n’ R record, Chinese Democracy. Then I pulled up Fire Of Unknown Origin by Blue Oyster Cult. Followers have been Whiplash Smile by Billy Idol and War by U2. I wonder what else will come up. Bowie? I haven’t listened to Outside in a really long time. That was released in the 90s, 1995. Right?