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I received an updated ship date for my Acer C300 Tablet PC today. Looks like it's now going to be November 11th for the Canadian release. I'm not sure if the American release is still set for November 3rd, or if the release date is delayed another week there as well.
Look at the temperature for St. John's! We've got 21° C here today (70° F for any American viewers) while the west coast of the country is freezing and snowing. I don't know what's up, but I bet we're going to have to really pay for this with a dreadful winter. :)
MSDN is now hosting the .NET Rocks! show here.
Chris Anderson and Don Box provide a code-centric, high level walk through of the main pillars of Longhorn. Avalon, Indigo, and WinFS are all covered briefly.
The PDC keynote excerpt is now available from MS Downloads.
Update: Oops. Jumped the gun on that one. Seems the clip is a pre-recorded clip done on the MS campus, not the PDC "Lap Around Longhorn". Still some great Longhorn info though.
Microsoft announced today that its releasing Windows source code to eligible MVPs through the Most Valuable Professional Source Licensing Program (MVPSLP).
"I'm a huge fan of the MVPs. They do a great deal to help Microsoft customers. Giving them access to one of our most valuable assets, Windows source code, is a testimonial to how much we value this dedicated group of people," said Jim Allchin, group vice president of the Platforms Group at Microsoft. "Giving them access to the source code will help MVPs do even more for technical communities around the world and will thus strengthen support for everyone using the Windows platform."
Read about it here.
The amount of watchable television content is at barely a trickle for me. The latest casualty is the Discovery Channel (Canada). The new season evenings are filled with stupid shows about "Choppers", motorcycles, hot rods, and "monster" garages and houses (I haven't figured out what a monster house is yet). Like most American television these days, the shows seem to be more about the personal childishness and bickering of the show's characters than about technology or art -- the kind of "reality TV" crap that drives me crazy.
(I can't help but think that if the Columbo series were created in 2003 it would be a weekly "must-see" series about every inane detail of Columbo's relationship with his wife and co-workers.)
Update: I just reviewed the comments on the Discovery website about the current content. It appears that I'm very much in the minority. Ok, it's time for me to come clean. My name is actually Mvbrrgz and I come from the planet Grbvt.
Everybody and their hamster has blogged this link, but I'm putting it here for my future reference. Acrobat 6.0 loads insanely slow(ly?), but here's a tip that'll make it load muuuuuch faster:
My Acer C300 has been backordered by a week. Now expecting it Tuesday, October 28th. I will be posting a review as soon as I've had a chance to break it in.
Niko: Hey-Pong. My parents played this game.
Brian: It takes this whole console just to do Pong?
Kirk: What is this? [Picks up and twists the paddle controller] Am I controlling the volume?
Hilarious. See the full article here.
Ordered my new Acer C300 Tablet PC yesterday. Our supplier is expecting it on the 20th, so I should be seeing it on the 21st. Can't wait.
Update: My review is here.
Currently enjoying my entire 13,500 song collection that resides on my home desktop system from my laptop at the kitchen table. Can't wait to test it from work tomorrow. I have the firewall port redirected in anticipation. Finally, finally I can stream my entire music collection easily. iTunes is insanely difficult to figure out though. I really don't know how Apple has gotten a reputation for being easier to use. Maybe I'm trying to complicate things, but I can't get simple things like drag and drop to work. Arrgh. Thankfully we have a good Mac guy at work who can 'learn me how to use it.
Update: I'm having difficulty getting iTunes connected to my home computer from work. I'll wait a few days to see if others are having the same difficulty.
On another note, I did figure out how to get drag and drop to work, and open up more options in the application. There's a silly looking icon in the top right corner of iTunes that my aesthetically-impaired eyes just automatically ignored. It happens to say "Browse" under the silly eye icon. Turns out that clicking that opens up the functionality I wanted in the app. I think my brain is wired to ignore eye candy and look for the meat. I wouldn't have thought of clicking that image in a million years. Our Mac guy pointed it out, and admitted that even he stumbled on that. Maybe that's why I find the Mac so frustrating to use.
I've noticed a significant increase in the amount of spam getting through Outlook 2003 in the past few days. It looks like the spammers have figured out how to get around the filter. Has anyone noticed the same? I wonder if Microsoft has any method to update the filtering to keep a step ahead?
Mozilla Firebird 0.7 is out. If you're having trouble downloading from the official Mozilla site, try using BitTorrent. Details, including links, can be found here.
Attn: Doctors' Offices
Please, please stop playing Top 40 radio in your waiting rooms. If the Eminem tune is causing me more pain than what I walked in for, I can't imagine how the 80 year old lady next to me feels.
Hmm... that reminds me.. I need to check on the company's "on hold" music. I'll bet it's also Top 40, and I'm guilty of doing the same.