shahine.com/omar/

Here is a screenshot of something I've been working on... I'm 70% of the way integrating nGallery with DasBlog. Also, check out the search box... coming soon to a dasBlog near you.

I've finished up my NewsGator plug-in for DasBlog. You can download the installer by going to the GotDotNet DasBlog workspace releases page.

Lemme know if you have any suggestions or problems using it.

note: you need to enable the Edit Web Service in DasBlog. This is not enabled by default. You can turn this on from the Configuration page under Service Settings.

Dare recently posted about blogging software and support for conditional get. Details on what this is all about is covered on this article on HTTP Conditional GET requests. I ran into a few problems making this all work in dasBlog, but I can happily say that this site you are viewing will not unecessarily send you my entire RSS feed every single time you check it using your RSS readers. This can consume horrible amounts of bandwidth. I am already using up many gigabytes a month at my hosting provider. This should make it into the next rev of dasBlog, but if you want it sooner you could always check out and build from the GDN workspace.

I spent way to much time today and last week on a really silly problem. I'm trying to test one of the web services for DasBlog and I keep getting this error:

An unhandled exception of type 'System.Net.WebException' occurred in system.web.services.dll

Additional information: The request failed with HTTP status 401: Access Denied.

I spent a long time trying to figure out what was wrong with the code. Turned out I was getting this error because I didn't give anonymous access to the IIS Application Directory. Problems like this seems to consume an inordinate amout of time. The main problem being the simple solution is not the one I consider first. Sigh.

Looks like Apple decided to Patch Jaguar with the security fixes.

"Apple's policy is to quickly address significant vulnerabilities in past releases of Mac OS X wherever feasible," the company said in a statement. "The shipment of Panther does not change this policy. Apple has an excellent track record of working with CERT (Computer Emergency Response Team) and the open-source community to proactively identify and correct potential vulnerabilities," it said. [C|net]

That's nice. Now what Apple should do is publish something like this:

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=%2Fdirectory%2Fdiscontinue.asp

Cross Posting, is a great feature that was just added to dasBlog. I started off with my personal blog. Recently I've been blogging inside Microsoft, behind our firewall. I keep internal only info on my internal blog, and mostly keep interesting information that isn't to be kept Microsoft internal on both blogs. However, it's been a pain to try and keep the two in sync.

Well, cross posting rules. I can now post in once place (in this case my internal blog), and have that info posted to both. The post is then kept in sync etc. Way cool.

I'm 6'3” and traveling on a commercial airline can be brutal. Even more brutal if the person in front of me reclines. For the past 4 years I've been able to mostly avoid this because I fly enough on American to find a way to upgrade. However, this doesn't always work out. The next best thing is to sit in an exit row seat.

However, check out the Knee Defender. I might have to get one of these .

Well, it's 9:30 pm and I am sitting in the convention center waiting for the BOF Weblogging session to start and reflecting on the day.

I've been in LA since Friday (my wife and I drove down). We've done some fun things like visited the Getty Museum (really amazing), visited family, and done some shopping. She flew home today and it's just me in LA with some of my co-workers. The firers are so bad that my asthma is bothering me.

Overall things have gone smoothly. I am humbled by the number of people that are at this conference. This is MUCH larger than any Apple WWDC that I have attended. There is no reality distortion field, and well, real code was written during the keynote. Contrast to WWDC where the Keynote is really just another opportunity for Steve to “wow” the audience and such you in to the reality distortion. None of the Microsoft execs have quite the charisma that Steve has, and well, we are talking about stuff that will ship in a few years from now and not in the coming year (but giving developers working bits)... it's very different (plus there is no sexy hardware for us to demo).

It's crowded here. Most of the sessions I've attended were standing room only. I stood for the last two, and for one of those I didn't even stand inside the session room, but watched the powerpoint slides and audio on a plasma display. As a Microsoft employee, we were under strict orders to accommodate customers as much as possible, and this meant making sure that we were not occupying seats or space that they might otherwise want. So that made for an uncomfortable day .

The technology demoed was amazing. Longhorn looks great. Whidbey, to me, is even better. Some of the changes coming in the near future are really going to have an impact on developing apps today, on XP, and provide a great transition to Longhorn. I'm really looking forward to being able to develop apps and stuff using Whidbey.

I think I just saw Clemens walk by me. He was in a pack of other folks, and I think they all bought him some beer, because they were loud as they walked by .

Oh... Internet access sucks. My hotel, the Hyatt, is very primitive. Only dial-up there. The convention center has too many people and wireless is having a hard time (as is Ethernet). However, the conference folks have done a great job providing tables, Ethernet cables and power strips everywhere. Fantastic.

I've seen my fare share of PowerBooks here, which is interesting. I've also seen a lot of Tablets (and my Toshiba) which I have decided is a complete and utter horrible machine. I hate my tablet now. This thing is SLOW, annoying, hot, and unpredictable. It freezes, and crashes and I'd about ready to throw it out a window. This is what I get for using a v1 hardware product I guess.

Clemens put together version 1.4 of DasBlog for the PDC. There are a lot of great features in this release. Clemens added some cross posting features (so you can have posts go to multiple blogs (cool), as well as some better tracking tools (stats) for people who read your blog through web aggregators).

Also new in this release that I contributed are:

• Kick ass new HTML Web Editor using FreeTextBox
• This new template, which is XHTML Transitional (no it won't validate till Whidbey, sorry) and give you an easy way to control the look. There are a few stylesheets that componentize page look and feel into layout (using CSS positioning for the layout), dasBlog styles (I tried to pull out every available css style DasBlog exposes), colors (you can change all the colors in once place), and calendar (which contains all the calendar specific styles). This new theme is simply called DasBlog. I also updated justHtml with the same files, but the styles are all empty.
• Some small bug fixes here and there.
• A list of all new features is here:

I'm not sure why my site says it's still running 1.3 though.

I've had DSL for the last 4 years, and today I said goodbye. I am now getting my cable through Comcast (cause they offer HDTV and locals), and they have been spamming my real mailbox with deals to switch to cable modem for $19.99 a month for 6 months with free installation (42.95 after that).

I currently have the enhanced SBC DSL. For a promotional 1 year price of $49.95 per month I get 1.5 down and 256 up. However, I really get 1.1 down and 220 up. My contract is about to expire, and rather than paying $59.95 for the same service that Comcast is providing, the switch was an easy one.

And finally, the real reason that DSL sucks! I had PPPoE. This is just a technology gone bad. I can't stand the fact that I really don't have an “instant on” connection, but rather something that is akin to a slow crappy dial-up experience, until the dammed router connects, then it becomes broadband.

Oh, and Comcast blows my DSL connection out of the water. I am getting 1.7 down, and 250 up. Much better.

Microsoft is a company of over 50,000 employees. Imagine what it would be like if all these people were in one place and you had to find the right person who owned a specific product... you get the idea.

Well, Microsoft has about 4x? more entries in the GAL (Global Address Book) than employees. We love to create DLs (Distribution Lists) for everything. My team has 6 DLs alone (one for Program Manager, Testers, Devs, Planning, Leads, Team). Then there are the product discussion DLs, the cross functional DLs, the manager DLs, the Lead DLs, you get the idea. Microsoft also has company wide DLs for all Program Managers in the entire company and this is an amazing resource. There are also DLs for every kind of geek tech niche (Home Theater PCs, PocketPC, SmartPhone etc). You can simply send an e-mail to that DL and say:

“looking for OneNote PM <eom>”

and within 30 minutes you'll get a response from some one in the company that points you do that person (or set of people). From there you can ask things like “when is your next release shipping”, or “how can I dogfood your software”. It's amazingly gratifying to find the right people quickly and get the information you are looking for.

I do this pretty frequently to get answers to work related questions, or report bugs that I have encountered with a Microsoft product. This is what I did last night with my router and I got in touch with the right people by the following afternoon.

I also mentioned that I called Microsoft tech support last night (1:AM) and spoke to a Tier 1 individual. That person assessed that I had a problem that needed to be escalated to Tier 2. I spoke to a kind woman who immediately determined that I was a victim of the worst kind of problem... one Microsoft does not have a solution for yet. She was great and let me know that my issues was being escalated, and that someone would call me back on Sat or Monday (Tier 3, which is likely a full time Microsoft employee. Tier 1 and 2 are usually outsourced vendors). Anyway, I got an e-mail from the Tier 2 support person with my details and case number. One thing I will do right now is e-mail her manager and let them know what a great support experience I had with her. I always do that when I call Microsoft tech support. I think they do a great job and deserve kudos when they do that. It's especially important because most often Microsoft will here complaints about support and very rarely will we get compliments. I pretended to be a customer in this case and was very happy. This router has 24/7 unlimited support for 2 years. That's great if you ask me.

I must be some kind of crazy. When Microsoft first released their wireless basestation I ran out and got one (the MN-500). Soon after I set it up, it had the nasty habit of not working. As a former LinkSys users, this was something I was trying to avoid. So I returned it (this problem was subsequently fixed with new firmware). Instead I got the MN-100 which is a router only, and then purchased a LinkSys Access Point. However, in my quest to nuke all LinkSys products from my life, I wanted to replace my flakey access point. You see LinkSys has a habit of releasing firmware updates that render your base station useless.

When my parents needed a wireless AP and router I had them buy the Microsoft MN-500. For the first few weeks, the wireless part of it just died (as mine did). But since they don't use wireless too much, I was fine having them wait for the firmware fix.

Just yesterday, I got the new improved Microsoft MN-700. This is the new router/AP with a better firewall, 802.11g, WPA security, runs on WinCE.NET etc. However, I went home, set it up and bam! It stops working after I search the web for 2 minutes. Agrhhhhh!!!! What the hell? I mean, am I just stooopid for doing the same thing I mentioned above (buying a 1.0 product with no firmware updates)? A quick search on google finds other people with the same problem.

Here is a new rule of thumb for you all. Never ever ever ever buy a product till a firmware update has been released (this extends to cars these days). Chances are, due to the complexities of network topologies and such there is at least one bug that may or may not affect you. Why take the chance, as I did, and curse your PC, router, and network for hours only to call Microsoft tech support and find out that this is a known issue with an unknown resolution (translation: a lot of people have called in about this, we are working on a fix).

After pretending to be a customer when I called tech support, I will now look for some one in the company who may actually know what the heck is going on here (yes, one of the benefits of working at Microsoft).