Do you like what I’ve done with the place?

Saw Matrix Revolutions last night and it was good and bad. If you saw the first two you need to see it. Lots of eye candy in the fight scenes, but the movie ran out of gas in the end.

Linux on the Desktop

Not anytime soon. This actually bums me out, I would like to see what the competition would do to Microsoft. From ZDNet:

“Linux is seen by Microsoft as its most dangerous competitor for desktop operating systems, and after a number of high-profile cases where government departments have switched from Windows to Linux-based systems, the OS has been making some progress. However, Red Hat said that the hype around desktop Linux is still mostly unfounded at the moment.

Matthew Szulik, chief executive of Linux vendor Red Hat, said on Monday that although Linux is capable of exceeding expectations for corporate users, home users should stick with Windows: "I would say that for the consumer market place, Windows probably continues to be the right product line," he said. "I would argue that from the device-driver standpoint and perhaps some of the other traditional functionality, for that classic consumer purchaser, it is my view that (Linux) technology needs to mature a little bit more."

An Evil Company Forcing Expensive Upgrades

Today an evil company told its customers that it will force an upgrade on its users. The company will discontinue maintenance and errata support for versions 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December 31, 2003," and that the company will "discontinue maintenance and errata support for version 9 as of April 30, 2004," and that the company "does not plan to release another product in the line." You will have to upgrade to a very expensive Enterprise version.

So you say the boys in Redmond are at it again. Think again, these are Germans. Got this in the mail today. I have a lot to say on this, but will let it sink in, because I predicted this years ago and the Linux crowd created a FUD site dedicated to me. Payback is a bitch.

The email:

Thank you for being a Red Hat Network customer.

This e-mail provides you with important information about the upcoming

discontinuation of Red Hat Linux, and resources to assist you with your

migration to another Red Hat solution.

As previously communicated, Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and

errata support for Red Hat Linux 7.1, 7.2, 7.3 and 8.0 as of December

31, 2003. Red Hat will discontinue maintenance and errata support for

Red

Hat Linux 9 as of April 30, 2004. Red Hat does not plan to release

another product in the Red Hat Linux line.

With the recent announcement of Red Hat Enterprise Linux v.3, you'll

find migrating to Enterprise Linux appealing. We understand

that transitioning to another Red Hat solution requires careful planning

and implementation. We have created a migration plan for Red Hat Network

customers to help make the transition as simple and seamless as

possible. Details:

****************

If you purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS or ES Basic before February

28, 2004, you will receive 50% off the price for two years.[*] (That's two

years for the price of one.)

****************

In addition, we have created a Red Hat Linux Migration Resource Center

to address your migration planning and other questions, such as:

* What are best practices for implementing the migration to Red Hat

    Enterprise Linux?

* Are there other migration alternatives?

* How do I purchase Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS or ES Basic at the price

    above?

* What if my paid subscription to RHN extends past April 30, 2004?

****************

Find out more about your migration options with product comparisons,

whitepapers and documentation at the Red Hat Linux Migration Resource

Center:

    http://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/rhl/rhn

Or read the FAQ written especially for Red Hat Network customers:

    https://rhn.redhat.com/help/rhlmigrationfaq/

Sincerely,

Red Hat, Inc.

[*] Limit 10 units. Higher volume purchase inquiries should contact a

        regional Red Hat sales representative. Contact numbers available at

        http://www.redhat.com/solutions/migration/rhl/rhn

--the Red Hat Network Team

Stephen Put on Some Pants, Andrew Brush Your Teeth 

Linda was on a mission yesterday morning to get us up and motivated to watch the NYC Marathon up at Banshee on 1^st and 74^th as she ordered Andrew and I around before breakfast. The runners had awesome weather (sunny and in the low 70s) while we drank some beer and cheered them on. A band was playing in the street and some random runners even kissed random people in the crowd.

While Linda and I are running a marathon on February 26, 2005 in Antarctica, I could not get her to commit to running the NYC marathon with me next year. Kathleen did agree. Training starts this winter.

Its gotta be the shoes (aka a Night of Sin exposed)

The madness known as the Halloween Night Party started around 4pm on Halloween at East Side Nails on Lexington Avenue when the manicurist questioned my decision to paint my nails alternating blue and purple. I spent about 10 minutes picking out the correct colors to match my costume. I should have known, this set the tone for the entire evening.

Linda (a sailor), John (a Scottish man in a kilt) and I (masquerade masked man) picked up Kara (hot chick in red fishnet) in the cab and headed down to the Annual Halloween Festival and Costume Ball in the East Village. Andrew, with his new shows, playing the role of a gay British guy met us there and we got going. The night started off well when we found out that beers only cost $2, so we drank a lot (Please don’t tell Scott Hanselman). After Kara, Andrew and I got our Tarot cards read (it was soooooo scary how accurate it was), we got a little freaked out and had to drink and dance more. Andrew and I took over the stage on one of the dance floors and grooved until it was time to go. I was told that I was very drunk, but I don’t believe them.

As we walked to a bar called the Opium Den, we passed on the Bowery between 2^nd and 3^rd a bunch of homegirls grooving outside of their car. Andrew and I started dancing with them in the street. They got into it and started to smack our butts and one girl really got down with Andrew.

After dancing to some retro 80s tunes at the Opium Den, we decided to head home around 3:30, surprisingly we got the 5 train without any problems. After the 4am McDonalds Big Mac call (where that mean lady who cut us on line called Andrew and I gay), we ran into a bunch of dominatrix chicks across the street from home who whipped us pretty good.

After some beer and watching Governor Arnold in True Lies we finally got to bed around 5am. It was slow going at 2pm when we got up when John and Stephen went to the store and cooked breakfast. As I type this we are sitting down to eat breakfast at 2:45 pm. What a cool night..

Everyday is Halloween

Today for Halloween I am going to dress up as a coder from the future. A future where Longhorn is on my desktop (with the eye candy Avalon graphics), I am coding with Whidbey (refactoring away) against a Yukon database (sorry Clemens). Now that I attended the PDC, I am counting down the days. I am going to start my count, today is day 1.

Great Panels @ PDC Today

The RDs are covering some panels at the PDC today, check out www.pdcbloggers.net for their reviews.

Title	Speaker(s)	RD
Making it Sizzle: Enabling and Building Next-Generation User Experiences on Windows “Longhorn”	David Massy; Pablo Fernicola; Tjeerd Hoek; Chris Anderson; Michael Wallent	Thomas Lee
Designing the CLR	Brad Abrams; Anders Hejlsberg; Christopher Brumme; Patrick Dussud; James Miller; Jonathan Hawkins; Sean Trowbridge; George Bosworth	Paul Sheriff
Choosing The Right Business Integration Technologies	Donald Farmer; Scott Woodgate; Alex Weinert; Joe Sharp	Andrés Fontán García , Mike Snell
Real World Innovation:  From Idea to Product	Phil Fawcett; John Lefor; Lili Cheng; John Breese; Jeff Erwin; Katie Drucker; Renee Labran	Joel Semeniuk
Connected at the Edge: Building Compelling Peer-to-Peer Applications	Robert Hess; Amar Gandhi; Oliver Sharp; Kim Cameron; Shaun Pierce; Gursharan Sidhu
Client Architecture: The Zen of Data-Driven Applications	Michael  Pizzo; Alex Hopmann; Jeremy Mazner; Mike Deem; Quentin Clark; William Kennedy	Edgar Sánchez, Terry Weiss
Mobile Application Development and Distribution:  Innovation and Opportunity	Irwin Rodrigues; Chee Chew; David Jones; Bruce E. Johnson; Laura Rippy	Jon Box, Chris Kinsman
Put The Power Inside: Hosting the CLR in Your Application	Balaji Rathakrishnan; Mahesh Prakriya; Christopher Brumme; Christopher Brown; Dmitry Robsman; Ramachandran Venkatesh; Mark Alcazar	Abdelmalek Kemmou
High Performance Computing on Windows: Taking Care of Business	David Lifka; Kang Su Gatlin; George Spix; Andrew Lumsdaine; Max Giolitti
“Indigo:” What’s Next for Connected Apps and Web Services	Don  Box; Oliver Sharp; Omri Gazitt; Joe Long; John Shewchuk; Eric Zinda	Ingo Rammer
Computing on the Beach: Visions of Mobility	Donald Thompson; Tara Prakriya; Bert Keely; David Groom; Otto Berkes; Arif Maskatia	Abdelmalek Kemmou
Rocking the Web with ASP.NET “Whidbey”	Scott Guthrie; Rob Howard; Jon Box; Shanku Niyogi; Thomas Lewis; Nikhil Kothari; Dmitry Robsman	Jon Box (panelist), Carlos R. Guevara
The Future of .NET Languages	Paul Vick; Rob Relyea; Anders Hejlsberg; Brandon Bray; Erik Meijer; Daniel Thorpe; Raphael Simon; Basim Khadim	Jackie Goldstein
Architecture Panel:  What is Service-Oriented Analysis and Design	Michael Burner; Brent Carlson; Mark Driver; Martin Fowler	Scott Hanselman, Michele Leroux Bustamante
Security Panel: What’s Next? Directions in Security	Jason Garms; James  Hamilton; Carl Ellison; Howard Schmidt	Thomas Lee, Patrick Hynds

Melody has a Fan

-----Original Message-----
From: Andy Catlin 
Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2003 4:51 PM
To: Coach T (work); Adam Heiser; Linda Varoli; Fortissimo; Jack Prilook; Stephen Forte
Subject: Belle of the Ball

So I'm pushing my way through the flood-tide of male

ubergeeks at the Microsoft conference this morning, and

notice that the crowd is rubbernecking as it makes a wide

berth around this drop-dead beautiful blonde.  As I get

closer, I hear this most decidedly animated dialogue coming

from her side, and there, of course, is our man in LA,

Stephen.

"Andy, meet my editor, Melody."

Of course she is.

Yukon XML Features

Don’t get me wrong, I like XML. Yukon has so many awesome XML features I can’t even absorb it all. I have been focusing on XQuery since beta 1, but there are many more things to work with.

For starters there is a native XML data type. You can also use Full Text Indexing on top of the XML datatype and use the full text query as a filter or a XQuery statement.

The coolest thing that I saw was the XML Schema validation of the XML Datatype, so if you try to insert data into the XML field and it violates the XSD, it will bomb.

Good stuff, stay tuned for more as we write the book….

Rows and Columns Revisited-on the Radio

Today on my Sys-Con Radio Interview at 11:15am PST, I'll revisit the Rows and Column issue as well as Clemens' Elements and Attributes argument-where at the bar last night he said in a lame attempt to win the argument that Oracle is more scalable than SQL Server. :)

I think that I will have to write das Blog and base it all on SQL Server Yukon storage and call it der Blog. Anyone want to help?

Refactoring C# Code in Whidbey

Want to refactor some code? How do we do it today, maybe use global find and replace? Ugly.

Whidbey has several great new tools to select a block of code, right click and select one of about 8 ways to refactor your code. My personal favorite is “Extract Method” where Whidbey takes selected code and makes it a new method (complete with parameters). Whidbey then writes a line of code where the code use to exist calling your new method.

Some other refactoring tools allow you to promote a variable to a parameter, switch the order, etc of parameters and also “surround with” which allows you to surround your code in an If statement, Try block, etc.

Happy Refactoring.

(From TLS321: Visual C# "Whidbey" IDE Enhancements)