I'm not sure how it started. I can only assume it was while cruising iTunes, but I've gotten into this mid-90's Britpop groove. More specifically, I went on a mission questing for early Oasis albums.

I picked up (What's The Story) Morning Glory and Definitely Maybe. After a few runs through "Champagne Supernova" and "Live Forever," I'm starting to feel the romanticism of the burn fast, burn bright, burn out rockstar lifestyle. The "alone in a crowd" feeling of being high and low at the same time. I had a similar feeling after watching Almost Famous - a ship of emotion on a rolling sea of fame.

Visions of drugged-out rock stars sitting in an expensive high-rise hotel room, throwing the TV through the plate glass door to the balcony and abusing the heroin-junkie groupies, the only people left who care. Fashion, glitz, and glamour, taken intravenously, destroying the user from the inside out.

I don't yearn to be a part of that, but I do appreciate the romantic, self-destructive quality of it. It intrigues me. I'm fascinated by the people who choose to surf those waves, to ride until they crash, and sometimes even get back onboard and try the ride again. A glimpse into that life is enough, and then it's time to return to reality.

The new version, which requires DXCore 1.1.18 (a free download), has been released and provides the following updates:

Added option to replace tabs in <code> blocks with spaces.

Added option to remove duplicate links in major sections (<summary>, <remarks>, etc.) to avoid "link noise." Links will be replaced with bold text.

Added context menu for inserting XML doc comment templates.

Added context menu for embedding selections in XML doc comment templates.

Added context menu for XML encoding selected text.

Added context menu for converting selected lines to XML doc comment.

Added context menu for expanding/collapsing XML doc comment blocks.

Added context menu for toggling visibility of CR_Documentor window.

Go get it!

I'm wearing my new Alias t-shirt, listening to the Alias Season 1 and Alias Season 2 soundtracks... Watched Alias on Wednesday and am liking that they're getting back into some of the more intriguing plotlines (rather than turning into a new version of Mission: Impossible)...

Loving it. Alias rules.

I got impatient because the TV repair folks haven't called me to schedule the pickup of my TV for tube replacement so I called them yesterday. Turns out the warranty company is sitting on it. Apparently they take three to five business days to approve standard changes; a tube replacement can take up to ten business days. That would mean I wouldn't even get the pickup scheduled until next Thursday.

As far as I'm concerned, that's unacceptable. I've been hosed for a month now, and I'd like it fixed.

Here's hoping they can come through a little faster than that. Maybe I can make some more phone calls and get things rolling.

I went this weekend and took advantage of some of the President's Day sales at Home Depot and bought a new dishwasher. That will be delivered and installed this coming Saturday, and I can hardly wait. I saw our existing dishwasher in the store - it's the lowest of the low-end models. No wonder our dishes aren't coming clean. Once that shows up, I'm going to the store to buy some new glasses - these are etched from poor drying and have hardened food on the inside because of poor rinsing.

We are also considering a new barbecue grill (ours is old and nearly rusted through), an air hockey table, and one of those retractable awnings so we can actually use our back porch.

I'm loving the Roomba - in fact, it's vacuuming right now. Ronco style - set it and forget it. My mom is skeptical, but I'm happy with it. I figure I can set it up in a room, push the button, and go do stuff. It might take three or four times longer than a human to vacuum, but look at it this way - you're not doing it. Who cares how long it takes? Now they need one of those that mows your lawn and I'm set.

The TV repair people haven't called me to schedule the pickup of my TV for repair yet, and that worries me. I mean, the TV is mostly watchable - it's not just dead sitting there - but I'd like to get this resolved ASAP. The stress of the thing is killing me.

The television repair guy came to my house and it turns out I need a new tube put in the TV. The offical diagnosis was "unable to hold purity - purity slips out of alignment." My diagnosis is "colors fucked up, picture not straight." Regardless, it needs a new tube. Next step is that they'll call me to schedule a pickup time.

I updated the SNInfo app I wrote for displaying assembly strong name information so now it shows a minimum amount of information in a small window to start with, and you can click a button to expand the form and see more detailed info. I also added the full public key to the information displayed, and updated the app so you can drop an assembly right on the SNInfo.exe program and it'll open up with the information directly (rather than having to open SNInfo and then drag the assembly onto it). Oh, and you can click on a "copy" button next to each field to copy that respective information to the clipboard.

Full source and compiled executable available. Have at it.

I let the Roomba run its course in the living room last night, at the end of which it located its charging station and docked itself.

I wasn't going to empty the dust bin on it since I had already vacuumed that room earlier in the day, but Jenn wanted to see what it picked up, if anything.

Holy crap.

Either we have really cheap carpet (which is probable) or the vacuum we've got doesn't pick much up. There was all sorts of carpet fuzz and gunk in the Roomba's dust bin. I was impressed - I mean, hit the button, let 'er run... and that's it.

So far, I'm loving it. The real test will come this weekend after a full week of tromping through the house (we vacuum on weekends). We'll see how the ol' Roomba holds up.

I always find stories based on the lives of famous figures to be interesting, and when the figure is Ray Charles, it only gets better. Ray tells the story beautifully.

Through the movie you learn that Ray had a hard life. Sometimes he was an asshole. Sometimes he was a loving father. He overcame drug addiction. In the end, he brought his own unique style to music, and it's something that has impacted the world. Watching it happen is an emotional experience.

Jamie Foxx does such a fabulous job as Ray Charles, you could swear it is Ray. You even see in the credits that Foxx sang some of the songs. I'd never have guessed. (I caught his performance on the Grammy Awards last night, too. For a guy I'm used to seeing in a comedic capacity, he sure is multi-talented.)

The supporting cast all did a great job as well. It was especially nice to see Curtis Armstrong in something again. (I recognized him from his voice, but otherwise would never have guessed it was him.)

I hope it wins some of the Acadey Awards it's nominated for this year; it certainly deserves to.

I got some new shoes, which I'm pretty stoked with. They're Nike Shox TL2, which means I've got springs the entire length of the sole of my foot (which, if you've seen these feet, is a lot of springs).



I dig 'em. Ultra-comfy, and pretty darn cool. Highly recommended.

I went to Bed Bath and Beyond today with a "20% off any one item" coupon with the intention of picking up an organizer for the mess of plastic sacks we have in the closet. I walked out the door with that organizer... and a Roomba Discovery robotic vacuum.

I've been looking at the Roomba for a while, and with my tax return and the 20% off... well, the novelty of the thing just broke through my barrier. It ended up running me $200 all told, and let me tell you: Based on novelty alone I've got my $200 worth already. Watching it chase the cat around is way too funny.

It's in the process of cleaning its first room now. I started it in my living room/dining room, where there's no furniture, just to see how it works. It's actually pretty interesting. It seems to follow a pattern as yet undetectable to me. It moves with a purpose - like, it'll move halfway into the room, then turn a certain amount, then head straight to the wall - so I'm pretty sure it's not just randomly floating about. But it's not doing anything discernable to my robotically-untrained eye.

That said, I'm looking at where the tracks have been and it seems to have cleaned things up pretty well so far.

I primarily got it for the wood floors in the house. I don't mind vacuuming too much, but sweeping the wood floors is a pain in the ass. (We have a lot of wood floors.) If I can get the Roomba to do it, so much the better.

Plus, it's been a while since I've gotten a gadget, and I'd classify this as a gadget.

I'll keep you posted on it. Thus far - pretty cool.

It's been a long week. All week long, I've awakened being thoroughly convinced it's Tuesday. Even Monday, I could've sworn it was Tuesday.

We got our first official build out today, though, so I'm pretty stoked for that. It sort of legitimizes what we've been working on for the past few months.

I've also been working on CR_Documentor some, adding some fun new features to help folks edit their XML comments (like inserting documentation templates and embedding selected text in XML comment structures). That's coming along nicely and should be out shortly.

Got a hockey game tonight. Not a lot of excitement there, but hopefully I'll be amped up a little more by the time we get there.

I'm also still doing my best not to focus on the fact that my TV is still hosed. It's distracting, but I'm doing okay there.

Jenn works tomorrow, so I'll be home alone. Maybe I'll have to play a little Playstation or GameCube. It's been a while.

I hadn't heard back from the TV repair people on when they'd be scheduling my repair, so I just now called them.

Tuesday, February 15. Over a week from now.

Last time I pinged them earlier in the morning on Monday and they got to me in three days. Now it's eight. Next time (if there is a next time), I'm calling every 15 minutes first thing Monday to get in.

So I wait. Hopefully the picture distortion won't just drive me absolutely buggy in the meantime.

I've been working on tracking down different assemblies' strong naming information this morning and I've decided that sn -T [assemblyname] is a big pain in the rear, so I threw together an app I'm sure is out there plentifully already yet I couldn't be bothered to search for. If it's out there, great. If it's not, here you go.

This utility is a simple Windows forms app that allows you to drag a .NET assembly onto it and view the strong name information about it.  You can copy/paste any of the information directly, plus I even threw in a little thing that will generate a sample binding redirect you can put in your app.config file.



I wouldn't want them to just put this in the properties on the assembly or anything.

Download SNInfo 1.1.0.0725

Download SNInfo 1.1.0.0725 source

Version History:

• 1.1.0.0725:
  • Converted to .NET 2.0.
  • Added binding redirect generation (for easy copy/paste of binding redirect configuration).
• 1.0.2.1101:
  • Added main menu bar (thanks to James McShane for pushing this one over to me).
• 1.0.1.0:
  • First release.

My television woes are not yet over.

I thought I could just ignore it, but it's bugging the crap out of me.

Lines that should be displayed as parallel on the TV are not parallel. For example, when I'm watching a widescreen movie, the black bars at the top and bottom of the TV are not horizontal, nor are they parallel. In a very slightly exaggerated style, it looks sort of like this:



I'm sure this is an artifact of the "purity alignment" it underwent, and I did try to ignore it, but I can't - I bought the extended warranty specifically for a case like this, and as far as I'm concerned, they'll keep fixing it until I don't see a single impurity in that picture, like the day I bought it. All I know is that while I'm watching a widescreen movie on there, or looking through the digital cable guide (which lays out the menus using horizontal and vertical lines, none of which are straight), I can't see anything but the fact these lines aren't straight, square, and parallel. And it eats at me.

I'm not a big fan of the SUV. Between the fact that most of the people who own them never go offroad, never haul anything, and don't know how to drive and/or park them, and the fact that they consume natural resources like they're going out of style, I believe the SUV is the largest atrocity ever to saunter slowly down the freeway.

To that end, here's an excellent educational article for you: Are Small Cars A Threat To SUV Drivers?

The television repairman, Jon, fixed my TV today around 11:30a or so. The problem I was seeing was some color distortion in the bottom corners of the set. It looked like some sort of magnetic disturbance, but there was nothing near that area of the case, so I couldn't figure it out.

Jon said he's seen this a lot. The deal is, the tube in my TV (being a 40" tube) is large enough to be affected by geomagnetic forces (i.e., the North Magnetic Pole). Which means if you place it, it gets used to facing a particular direction and the forces in a particular location. When we moved to the new place, the moving process, coupled with the fact that the TV isn't oriented precisely the direction it used to be, caused the "purity" (as Jon calls it) to go out of alignment.

Jon did the "purity alignment" by silicone gluing some small magnets to the tube. It was a trial-and-error process, and you can't get it 100% perfect, but it's fixed enough now that you don't see any distortion in the picture.

I would never have conceived that the Earth's magnetism would affect my TV. Definitely not something they tell you in the store.

He told me lots of interesting things about TVs and such. For example, DLP (digital light processing) TVs on the assembly line can be aligned/configured via a computer-driven sensor array in about 10 - 15 seconds. My TV, being a large tube, must be aligned by a human, and each human only gets about 30 seconds to do that alignment. He also told me that manufacturers are moving away from CRT (tube) TVs and toward LCD and DLP (rear-projection) TVs. Finally, he recommended looking at the Samsung DLP TVs, particularly their 50" model, as those offer the most bang for your buck (they use the same internal components as the Mitsubishi TVs but have less troubles and are, in some cases, consumer-serivceable).

Not that I want to be buying a new TV in the near future, but if and when the time comes, I'll have to give those a look.

Use of context menus from within the DXCore plugin framework (used to extend Visual Studio .NET) is not very well documented within the DXCore developer documentation.

I have a need to use context menus in some planned enhancements to my CR_Documentor plugin. I got an example of generallly how it works, but nothing that compiles and actually does anything... so I wrote one myself.

Enter CR_ContextMenuDemo: Source for a compilable DXCore plugin that illustrates how context menus can be used from within the DXCore plugin framework. The source is well commented to illustrate precisely what is happening in each place. You'd be surprised how easy it is to use context menus in DXCore.

Download CR_ContextMenuDemo source