Must have forgotten this last week while I was at TechEd. My first MSDN article went live last week.  Check out “Code Security Changes in Outlook 2007” to check out my first article.

Rory Blyth has a great post over on his blog about some of the problems with Microsoft today and what needs to be done to fix them. I’d have to say that he’s right, while Microsoft does have some absolutely great products, MS does have a serious image problem that needs to be cleaned up. 

While his message may be a little rough, I think his points are pretty clear.  Definitely worth a read.

I had a great time at TechEd 2006 this year.  I spent most of my time at the Visual Studio Tools for Office booth in the green technical learning center. Ended up visiting with a whole bunch of customers over the 5 days and really had a great time.

On Tuesday I was invited out to the Boston Aquarium for a New England clam-bake to celebrate the Office MVPs and partners. I’ve just finished posting the pictures and videos of some of the sea-life on Flickr and YouTube.

For pictures from the aquarium, check out this photo set.

There's also the following videos, mostly of the turtles swimming around the large center tank at the aquarium:

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.