Ajaxload.info is a site that has a big list of animated gifs that they will generate in the color that you need.  Throw in ColorBlender and off you go.

Giddy Up!

Man, that is a looooong drive and even slower driving a moving truck.  Thankfully, my wife and I made it safely and just ahead of the snow that was going across the country over the weekend.  It started snowing pretty heavy when I was backing up the truck in the driveway to begin unloading.  We decided to let it snow and start up fresh in the morning.  It was still cold but at least it wasn't snowing.

The kiddos are in Dallas with their grandparents and we are flying down this weekend to get them.  This will be first plane ride for all of them (that they are old enough to remember anyway).  They are excited and I am excited for them.  I remember my first plane flight when I about 5 years old and it was the coolist thing ever!

Giddy Up!

ps.  Still waiting on the Internet service to get hooked up in our new place in Baltimore.  One tends to grow dependent on the Internet without even realizing it.  :-)

Eric Sink is the owner of SourceGear and a source control guru.  Most developers, that are interested in really using source control, have read his Source Control HOWTO articles.  I subscribe to his blog but haven't been keeping up on it.  I have realized that his writing style and humor is pretty darn good and not just relating to source control.

I wish I had read these two gems earlier than today.  I delayed myself a few good chuckles.

• Buying a WII
• The risks of ransacking a nativity scene

I was warned about the parking situation in Baltimore.  I'm staying downtown so I was also warned about how bad parking gets on a Raven's game day.  I was told,  for a Raven's game day, that I should just plan on not using my car or I would never find a place to park.  Today was one of those days and I had been warned.

I went out and when I got back, about 1:30, the streets were already packed with cars (game started at 4:30).  I drove around for about 45 minutes looking and looking and finally found a lone spot that had a 2 hour meter.  So, on top of having to walk a half mile just get back I had to set a reminder to go and feed the meter again in two hours.

The Ravens lost so the football season is over now but I should've listened.  I guess I now understand why Frank Costanza, from Seinfeld, won't go out for weeks when he has a good parking spot.  :-)

If this has gotten around to me then its been around for a while.  David tagged me so here are a few things about me.

1. I was in the Air Force and that's where I met my amazing wife.  She too was in the Air Force and the best looking Airman I'd ever seen.  We met in technical training, spent three months stationed apart after getting married, and have now been married for 11 1/2 years.
2. My wife and I (me to a much smaller extent) home school our kids.  It's awesome and they love it.  Before we moved we had a little school room setup with chalkboard, desks, etc..  We use the Abeka curriculum.
3. I was a sporto (Ferris Bueller reference) in high school..everything revolved around a sport.  I played basketball in Junior High with future NBA player Corliss Williamson.  I was drafted by the Cleveland Indians as a shortstop the same year Manny Ramirez was their #1 pick.  I never played pro baseball but did play in college.
4. I lived in Fairbanks, Alaska for a year as a kid.  I remember times when the snow was so deep that my older brother would dig tunnels through the snow in the yard that I could walk through while standing up (I was 5).
5. I distinctly remember taking a programming class in BASIC (as an elective) that changed my professional world forever.  I then looked into future job growth reports and saw that being a Systems Analyst was going to be the hottest job for the next 25 years.  That's all it took for me to know what I wanted to do as a career, assuming baseball wasn't going to work out.  :-)

So, more than you wanted to know I'm sure.  I've tagged My Wife, Joey Beninghove, Joel Ross, and Scott Dockendorf

Joey has put together a list of lists for getting starting with Test Driven Development.  My personal favorite may be on the list somewhere but just in case it's not I wanted to mention it here.

It's this .NET Rocks podcast with Jean-Paul Boodhoo on Test Driven Development.  This podcast really helped shift my way of thinking on what TDD really was and how I could use it as a developer.

I've seen the little Remote Assistance icon in the start menu many times over the years but just thought it was one of those things that I probably didn't need or wouldn't use.  I live on Terminal Services and Remote Desktop but just haven't used Remote Assistance.

Here's how Microsoft describes it:

Remote Assistance provides a way for you to get the help you need when you run into problems with your computer. If you're an experienced user, you can even be the one to use Remote Assistance to directly help your friends and family members.

The last part there sounds interesting - "directly help your friends and family".  How many of us have been called on a time or two to help someone out?  I'm not as handy with other things as I am with computers so I'm always willing to help out when I can.  Being able to do it myself instead of directing someone else over the phone is a huge plus.

Last night I had the perfect opportunity to use it to update the wireless drivers on my wife's laptop.  The old drivers were causing issues with her new CloudMark SPAM software (awesome by the way) so it needed do be done ASAP.  Remote Assistance was really easy to setup and can be done via Windows Messenger, via E-Mail, or by Sending a File.  We chose to use Windows Messenger; my wife just requested my help from Messenger's menu and the rest was straight forward.  I was able to take full control of her desktop and do what needed to be done.  I'll definatly use this bad boy again.

FYI, Lifehacker has reviewed a few other programs lately that do basically the same thing.  Sure they have more features but they all require that both machines have the software installed.  When you're trying to help someone you really want things to be as easy as possible.

Giddy Up!

Today is the last day for the special.  If you write a lot of code in C# then this tool will pay for itself in a few days (or hours).

As a short follow up to my previous post On my laptop I had already installed the update for Web Application Projects so I had to uninstall it prior to installing SP1 (thanks Dave).  After going through all of that I was never able to re-install WAP so I assumed it was part of SP1.

I'm still settling in on my new project and so I tried to open the solution file that had one of the web projects and I got an error that told me it wasn't compatible.  I'm sorry I didn't get the actual error but it was something that let me know that the web project was saved using WAP.  I did not have WAP installed on my new work machine so I installed SP1 and that fixed it straight away.

So I guess WAP is part of SP1.

Giddy Up!