Due to the incompatibility with peoples’ schedules, their desires, their qualms, and so on, my family has put a moratorium on Thanksgiving.

Which is to say: nobody’s getting together, so I have a vacation day all to myself. Sounds like some Chinese food is in my future. Mmmm…

This is going to be the best Thanksgiving ever. I’m sure I’ll be making my way back to San Andreas for a bit, which will be nice since I’ve only really had time to return on weekends.

Speaking of San Andreas, my shirt should be here today. I ordered it last week and I’m anxious for it. After spending so much time there, it’ll be nice to have something that openly declares it so. I told Jenn I ordered this and she shook her head like I’d broken some unspoken rule that says I can’t be a gamer geek like the rest of the English speaking world out there. Too bad, baby! I’m a citizen of San Andreas now!

I also got to play (San Andreas) for a while this weekend, which was nice. I finished a few more missions that opened up the ability for me to fly, so I’ve been cruising around in airplanes and helicopters, going back to other places to pick up money and guns that I normally wouldn’t pick up because it’s too far away… but now that I can fly, it’s a lot faster. Just take a helicopter, land in the middle of the street, get what you need, and fly away. (My favorite flying vehicle is the jetpack - don’t leave home without it!)

I finished the book I was reading, Eragon, this weekend and it was awesome. I can’t wait for the next one.

While normally I alternate between fiction and non-fiction/educational books (I can only really read one book at a time because I forget what’s going on in the various books if I don’t stick to one), I’ve decided to break that and read another fiction. Next up is Lyra’s Oxford by Philip Pullman. Admittedly short, but I loved the His Dark Materials trilogy with the same characters, so it’ll be nice to see a little more from that universe.

Saw National Treasure this weekend and had a good time with it. Sure, it was totally implausible, but it was fun, so I have to give it high marks. I don’t know if I’ll be picking it up on DVD, but it was definitely worth the watch.

I use an RSS aggregator almost daily. I started off with RSS Reader, then decided to move to SharpReader because it had a little more of what I was looking for feature-wise.

I’ve used SharpReader for quite a while, but while it’s configurable in some ways that other readers aren’t, I found the control you have over feeds in RSS Bandit is pretty cool, particularly with the ability to apply your own XSLT to the feed, not to mention there’s actually a product roadmap and some pretty decent support.

So today I downloaded RSS Bandit and started messing with it, liked it, and decided to move my settings over to it.

Hoo, boy.

SharpReader exports in OPML format. RSS Bandit exports in some other format. Time to write a conversion…

…and here it is. An XSLT document that, when run against the exported SharpReader settings, renders an XML document that you can import into RSS Bandit.

SharpReader2RSSBandit.xslt

UPDATE:CR_Documentor has found a new home on Google Code.Head over there to get the latest version and updated information.

Lutz Roeder, a fantastic developer of ultra-helpful tools, took his “Documentor” application - which allowed a developer to preview what XML document comments would look like rendered into end-user documentation - down from his site. He was nice enough to send me the source for it, though, so I’ve converted it into a Visual Studio tool window add-in via the rich plug-in framework offered by the Developer Express, Inc. package, DXCore (which also supports CodeRush for Visual Studio .NET).

This plug-in allows you to see a preview of your XML document comments - a la Roeder’s original Documentor - real-time, as you edit the comments in Visual Studio.

CR_Documentor offers the ability to choose the level of tags you want to be “compatible” with, the manner in which “unrecognized” tags are handled, and other formatting options.

CR_Documentor also offers context-menu support to aid in working with XML documentation comments, including inserting templates, embedding selections in templates, toggling outlining on XML doc comments, and toggling visibility of the CR_Documentor window.

Installation is as easy as copying a DLL into a folder. The included readme.txt outlines installation, usage, and workarounds for known issues.

UPDATE:CR_Documentor has found a new home on Google Code.Head over there to get the latest version and updated information.

It was a pretty long week back at work after vacation last week. There was a deadline today… well, I guess it’s yesterday, now… Friday… for the project I was working on. I got done what needed to get done, but the stuff I was working on didn’t really get tested too well, so that’ll have to happen next week.

I got home after work Friday and, after some dinner and conversation, decided it was time to re-enter San Andreas for a short period, which I did. Like, maybe only four hours. Heh.

And now… It’s time for bed. I’m too tired to play anymore (and win; I could play and get killed repeatedly, but that’s not really fun), but I’m just slightly too awake to sleep. I figure I should probably just go to bed, though. A friend of mine is coming over tomorrow night (that is, tonight, Saturday night) and I should probably be awake enough to, you know, visit.

This evening is the end of my nine day sabbatical, and I look back on it with fondness, like the end of a movie where the person flashes back to all the good times in their life in a soft focus. I did nothing, and it was everything I thought it could be.

Tomorrow I’ll return to work and wade through the emails, voice mails, sticky notes, white board scribblings, and other communicative relics folks felt so inclined to leave for me in my absence. I’ll do my best to make sense of what happened while I was gone, piecing fragments of communiques together in a near-arbitrary order (since chronological doesn’t ever quite do it), and people will ask why I’m not done with whatever it was I was working on, what my status is.

Sigh.

I will also face the choice of allowing myself to be distracted by the innumerable requests for a recount of my adventures in San Andreas or blocking my cubicle door, at which point I will only get half as many requests, these from the people who think the “I’m Busy” indicators outside my cube really don’t apply to them (and those people would be incorrect). I will attempt to point them to my web site, where there is bound to be more richness and detail about my travels than I am able to impart in the abbreviated time allotted, but they will all always rather hear it directly from me, since I obviously will have copious amounts of time to spare on such things my first couple of days back.

In the end, my vacation was good, and I am glad I took it. However, when I return to work, bright and early tomorrow morning, I will probably close my eyes, shake my head, and wonder if it was really worth it, to take a small amount of relaxation time in the midst of one of my neverending projects, just so I can be that much further behind.

That said, I suppose it can be argued that if one is constantly sprinting, when “crunch time” really comes and additional speed is required, there will be no energy left to go that extra mile.

I think the answer is that maybe, just maybe, life itself needs to slow down - just a little - so it isn’t always required that one sprints; perhaps slow and steady really does win the race. Sadly, the business world - the high-tech business world - rests for no one, and doesn’t really afford its minions the rest, either. One must take one one can get, and enjoy it while it lasts, since the world waits for no one.

Onward, ever forward, I go.