Friday, February 25, 2005

ColdFusion MX7

I'm a bit late on this, but Macromedia has released ColdFusion MX7. In my opinion this is the biggest release in a very long time. The Flash forms, report builder (what out Crystal), event gateways, redone graphs and charts, etc, etc. If you are a ColdFusion developer, and you haven’t gotten into CF7 yet, don’t delay!

SHAMELESS PLUG: A couple of months ago, I wowrked as a Technical Editor on the latest edition of Ben Fortas CF book, the Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7 Web Application Construction Kit. It will be available on April 1st (no trick, no joke!), so go out and buy yourself a couple of 100 copies! ;)

Star Wars Knock-Offs

Came accross this via Boing Boing this morning: Star Wars Knock-Offs. Pretty funny stuff, the scary thing is, I remember many of the products!

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Tennis in the Sky

Tennis on the rooftop helipad of Burj Al Arab, the world’s largest hotel, how insane. I can't imagine why I will ever be in Dubai, UAE - but if I am, I have to go - what a cool place! The tennis match is just the latest sports stunt, Tiger Woods once teed off from the same Helipad, which is 1,000 feet above sea level.

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

A parent's primer to computer slang

I noticed this over on a Flash blog,
A parent's primer to computer slang. From the Microsoft At Home Security center comes a guide to l33tsp33k.

Way to funny! But, I have to admit it shows a degree of throughness on the part of Microsoft to include such information.

Baby Update


Evelyn 2
Originally uploaded by dah007.
My wife is now almost 17 weeks along and it's getting very exciting. Last Friday (the same day we finished moving!) we had our final ultrasound. It was amazing - seeing the little head, arms and legs moving around inside my wife was one of the most beautiful things that I have ever seen. We also found out the sex, our baby, is a girl!

Monday, February 21, 2005

Finally Moved

I have finally finished moving from Urbana to Chicago. As it turns out, it was a massive pain in the ass. My buddy Keith and I started packing up a U-Haul truck (who of course screwed up my reservation) at 1:00 pm or so on Friday. I expected be done by say, 3 or 4 at the latest. As it turns out, we didn't finish until almost 7:30! We finally got to Chicago around 10, and started unloading at around 10:30. Sadly, we didn't finish unloading the truck until almost 3 am.

I spent the rest the weekend attempting get everything straighten out, but I was (and still am) so sore that I really didn't get much done. The apartment still looks like a complete disaster, but with any luck it will soon be organized.

Thursday, February 17, 2005

Pale Male and Lola

New York Hawks Spotted Mating

Pale Male and Lola, the famous hawks who live in New York have been spotted mating. Very cool - I wondered if they would go back to "normal" life after their home was taken away and then rebuilt for them. Its nice to see that nature can overcome us humans. Score one for nature...

Saturday, February 12, 2005

Traffic HELL!!!

Until I move next week, I've been living Monday to Friday in Chicago, then driving down to Urbana on Friday night and returning to Chicago with a truck load of stuff on Sunday. Last week I left from the Northwest suburbs at 4:30pm on Friday. I got on 294 South at roughly 4:45pm; and *sigh* I got to I57 at just after 6:20pm! What a hellish trip! From there to Urbana was smooth sailing but damn the trip through the city just SUCKED!!

After carefully planning, I determined the "perfect" route for this weeks trip, I thought I had come up with a pefect solution to the traffic. Things started well, at about 4:45pm I started worming my way South on a variety of roads, my goal, was to get past the O'Hare toll-booth before I got onto 294. This is where things went very wrong... I ended up lost, in some strange suburb that I had never even heard of with no clear way to back to the highway. Finally I found 294, and quickly got back on - just to realize that I had gotten on the highway going North not South! The next exit, was just after the O'Hare tollbooth, meaning I would have to go all the way North to the airport, get off, get back on going South and fight my way through the tollbooth! It was now 6:25pm and over an hour away being even close to 57, meaning I had at least 2 plus hours to go. So I gave up, called my wife and went back to my place in Chicago - which still took me a another hour!

OUCH! Thank god, next week, on Thursday, not Friday will be the last time that I have to do this post work trip...

Lack of Updates

Well I'm back in Urbana for the weekend - packing and helping my wife get everything in order for the big move next weekend.

I still don't have high-speed internet in Chicago, and I can't quite get myself to use a dialup connection. So, I'm taking a moment off from packing to enjoy my high-speed connection here, while I still can. I expect that once have a real net connection again I will be updating more often.

Life in Chicago has been pretty good thus far. The job is good and I'm getting into my new routine and other than traffic I have no complaints - it's good to be back where I belong.