Here I come!  I'll be hanging out in Boston all week at TechEd 06.  I'll be around in OFC-1 (where that is, I'm not really sure yet).  I think this TechEd is going to be really exciting, we've got Windows Vista beta 2, Office 2007 beta 2, and a ton of other really cool things to talk about (like Windows Server 2003 Compute Cluster shipping last week).

My blog is pretty slow as it is, but it's only going to get slower next week (or so I would guess).  See you after that!

Not so much fun tonight.  I managed to make it home though.  More on this later.

I’m impatient, I know, but does it really take 30+ hours (and counting) to take my new Dell laptop and put it in a box?  It’s been in the “boxing” stage for the last 30 hours.  It seems to me that this is an amazingly long time to take the laptop, but it in a sheet of foam, and put that into the pre-made cardboard and foam packaging along with the necessary cables, adapters, and leaflets.

Don’t get me wrong, considering this laptop will be travelling a great distance between the time it is packaged and handed off to UPS and the time it gets to me, I want it to be well packaged and ready for the travel.  But still, I want to play with my new toy, so please hurry it up!

I ordered a new Dell Insprion E1505 last week with all the bells and whistles, and I’m eagerly waiting it’s arrival.. which won’t happen until the end of next week it seems.

I've updated PictureSorter for a few issues that have been reported.  It should no longer crash if you attempt to open a folder that doesn't exist (like a disconnected network drive).

I've also done various other minor fixes all over the place.  Nothing big though.

Download PictureSorter 1.0.5

Last week I ordered a Nintendo DS Lite and a Harmony 880 remote for my living room.  Both arrived yesterday and I have to say they were totally worth it.  The DS lite technically doesn’t come out in the US until sometime later this year, but thanks to Lik Sang I was able to import one from Japan for a slight premium.  Totally worth it, the DS lite is smaller and easier to handle, with a much brighter screen and seemingly better wifi connectivity. When this thing comes to the states, it’s going to be a big seller.

The Harmony 880 is a sweet device as well.  It’s lighter and has a better button configuration than the 668 I had previously, and it includes a nice recharable battery and docking station. I no longer have to worry about keeping a stockpile of AA batteries around the house.  I also noticed that programming this remote is much quicker, only taking about 30 seconds to download into the remote instead of several minutes with my 688.  The key layout is also easier for me to work with, so all around I’m happy with the purchase.

If you've found my website, or any of my other hosted websites to be somewhat slow lately, you weren't alone.  I've noticed my internet access (same pipe) was just dragging.  It appears that my primary network switch had decided it no longer wanted to route packets in any optimal fashion.  The result was numerous TCP packet errors and retransmissions.

I've temporarily swapped it out for a slower switch that appears to not be causing these problems.  Guess it's time to order a new GbE switch.

It sure is nice to be able to download at >1MB/s again.

UPDATE: Thanks to the managed switch I picked up to replace my previous GbE switch, I found out this wasn’t a problem with my desktop at all.  The network card or cable running to my firewall is apparently having issues with running at GbE speed (hence why replacing the switch with a 100Mbps switch fixed the problem).  I’ve downgraded the port the firewall connects with to 100MB and everything is working dandy.  Perhaps I need to swap out network cords or NICs on the firewall machine.

It's only 10:50, and yet I've been up since 3am, and I'm still not tired.  I still haven't wrapped my head around the idea that this morning when I woke up I was 1600 miles away, in a whole other town, and yet I still had a fairly normal day where I went to work and hung out with my friends.  Crazy.

I had a good time in Dallas, although no pictures to post.  The weather was so beautiful down there, it cooled off to a nice 75 degrees just for me.  Remind me I should visit in spring, and not the middle of summer.

Now that I'm back, it's a race for Office Beta 2.  So much work to be done, and so little time to get it done.  Don't expect a lot of activity from me until then.

I also have confirmation that I'll be at TechEd 2006 in Boston this summer!  We'll have lots of great Outlook stuff to talk about by then!

Well, I've had a good time sheding my CSS stylesheet for the purposes of web memes, but it's time to put the look and feel back into my site.  I think after running naked for a whole day, it's happy to get it's style back, even if it's not that styling.

On the other hand, I'm leaving soon for Dallas.  Time for a quick get-away to visit a good friend of mine.  See you all next week.