Well, some of you may know that back in Feburary, as a bit of an early birthday present, I ordered a new car.  Well, after spending months wondering when it will arrive, scouring the internet for more information on how to track the progress, etc, I have good news.  My car has arrived in the US at Port Hueneme in San Diego in California and has been off loaded from the boat.

Only a few more days until she's preped and shipped up to Washington for me to take delivery.

I have to say, I'm really going to miss my 2004 350Z.  She's still beautiful and I really hope her new owner takes great care of her and has as much fun as I have.  There's nothing like a great drive through the mountains and around the hills in a 2-seat sportscar.

However, now it's time to enjoy the ultimate driving experience in a new 335i sedan... I'm looking forward to next week!

I know a lot of people out there using either Windows Vista or Office 2007 have been waiting for someone to come out with a good PDF preview handler that lets you preview PDF attachments in Outlook 2007 or from the explorer in Windows Vista.

Unforutnately, I haven't yet seen an official PDF preview handler from any of the companies that make PDF readers.  I decided that since Adobe Acrobat includes a useful PDF ActiveX control, it shouldn't be too difficult to wire everything up with that control to provide a preview handler, so I set out to write that.

After a few hours of tweaking some code, I'm happy to make available my PDF Preview Handler using Adobe Acrobat Reader.

System Requirements:

• Outlook 2007 or Windows Vista
• Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
• Adobe Acrobat Reader 7.x or later
• Compatible with 32-bit or 64-bit Windows Vista

Download no longer available

This preview handler was written with help of various code samples for COM interop found online.  Without the help of the .NET community this tool wouldn't be possible.

This software is provided "as-is" without any warranty.  While I've tested it in a number of enivornments, I can't guarnetee it will work everywhere or always.  No support is offered or available for this freeware utility.

Update: Since Adobe has released a version of the Adobe Reader (version 8.1) that includes a PDF Preview Handler, I've discountinued the download.

Amazon now has my book in stock!

I'm happy to say that my first book, Programming Applications for Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, should be available at bookstores in the very near future.  I received my first copies a couple of weeks ago, and they're supposed to be in the channel by the end of Feburary.  I'm really excited (as anyone would be I imagine) to have a book published.  After going through the process, I'm surprised at how much work is involved in writing a book, but also how easy the writing goes.  I suppose technical books are always easier to write than a fiction work, but it was still a lot of work to get everything together.

The book covers building solutions in managed code using Visual Studio 2005.  While the book is written mostly in C#, all of the samples from the book are available on the book website in VB.Net and C#.  We're also making some of the larger samples available using both our shared add-in template and using Visual Studio Tools 2005 for the Office System 2007 (also known as VSTO 2005 SE).

I think this is really a great guide for developing add-ins and application solutions using Outlook 2007.  The book covers everything from writing your first add-in to advanced topics like using the PropertyAcessor and creating solutions with form regions.  Randy (the co-author) and I both have put a lot of effort into this book to make it what should become the standard reference for any Outlook developer.

I’m happy to announce that tonight we got first two official Office gadgets published on gallery.microsoft.com!  If you’re running Windows Vista and Outlook 2007 then you should download the gadgets and get the experience of the Outlook To Do bar from the Windows SideBar.

I take a special interest in these because I was closely involved with the development effort and getting these gadgets out for everyone to use.  Let me know if you have any feed back about the gadgets and I'll make sure it's passed along to the right people.

Links to the gadgets:

• Outlook Upcoming Appointments
• Outlook Tasks

Today most of Microsoft is probably working from home (like me) or taking a vacation day.  After a couple of inches of snow fall yesterday, which almost never happens around here, the whole place is shut down.  The school closure map this morning was amazing, I think there are like 5 school districts in all western washington that are still open today.  Everything else was closed.

The roads home were crazy last night.  I ended up leaving my car at work and getting a ride home with a friend with AWD.  I'm 100% certain that by the time I left work I wouldn't have been able to get my car out of the driveway for my building (the 350Z doesn't go so hot inthe snow and ice).

Just to prove how little the world of western washington likes snow, take a look at the SR-522 camera from this morning.  Normally this road would be packed with cars at this time of day, and as you can see it looks a little like Siberia.

I also took a few shots from around my home in Redmond and posted them on Flickr.  Lots of snow on the trees mostly.

Right now I'm sitting outside the Target in Redmond waiting for a Wii.  When I woke up this morning, I figured it would be easy to obtain a Wii at a midnight release somewhere.  However, I forgot that I was going to a movie that wouldn't be out until 9:30.  Anyways, long story short all the midnight release consoles were spoken for at every store I tried.  Now I'm sitting on a bench outside Target, feeling the occasionally sprinkle, and thinking that 8am won't come soon enough.

I'll continue to update this post live from the line, as long as my battery holds out.  Right now I'm about 27th in line, and there are probably 45 in line.  Let's hope no one cuts in line, but there are 99 consoles at this store, or so the online list says.

3:11 AM: Well, the line hasn't grown a whole lot since about 1am.  It's now wrapping around the edge of the building though.  Thus far the rain has held off, but weather.com indicates it may start to shower somewhere aroudn 6am.  Let's hope it holds off until 8am when I don't have to be sitting out in the elements anymore.

4:19 AM: It's too cold out here for what I have on, I'm running home to put on some warming clothes, hope I don't lose my spot!

6:00 AM: Target asks everyone to put away all their camping gear and start to form a real line

6:05 AM: Everyone is ready with no place to go... only a little less than 2 hours till they open

7:15 AM: The weather decides it's been long enough without rain, and the rain starts to fall, not too bad at first, but it does start to pick up.

8:01 AM: The doors open, and in the first 30 of us go.. just to wait in another line

8:22 AM: I've purchased my Wii... I'm out of here!

So yeah, my first 360 died a tradgic death today.  Luckily since it was a launch day console, it's still in warranty and they're going to try and repair/replace the unit.  I'm starting to think that Gears of War is killing consoles.  Several of the people I know with early 360s have started reporting problems since Gears of War came out.  Conspiracy or just bad luck?  I leave that for you to decide.

Lucky for me I'd just purchased another 360 for upstairs, which will now be relocated downstairs for the time being until my console comes back from the repair shop.  Bummer dude.

I do have to admit that I had a great guy on the phone to walk me through the troubleshooting and I was really pleased with the whole experience.  It sucks that I have to send the unit back, but at least the support guy was friendly (and apparently not on forign soil).  He did sound like he'd had too much coffee today though.