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 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.

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’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.