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Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley
In my last post I talked about a new feature that I suggested for Vista. Turns out that it's already in Beta2. So I guess my thought wasn't particularly original (I'm sure that's a good thing) - but it's still nice to feel like there are good ways of making suggestions.
Feeling inspired yesterday, I wrote a letter to David Dein, the Vice-Chairman of Arsenal (and really, the guy who runs the club). He's also on the board of The Football Association and is on a UEFA committee. So he's pretty influential. Did I mention I went to school with his son Darren? I can't say Darren and I were good friends, but we were in the same year.
My letter was about the issue of salary caps. I don't think salary caps are generally a good thing, but I think there are things that can be introduced that have a similar effect. So I wrote to David Dein about it. I had to guess email addresses, and cc'd it to a general address. Overnight I got a reply saying "Your message has been passed to Mr Dein's office." - so I guess there's a chance he'll read it.
Who knows? Perhaps one day people will be using a "Farley Salary Cap" system around the world, and I'll be as infamous in the football world as Bosman.
One of the things I really like about the community aspect of Microsoft is that it's given hooks a long way into Microsoft.
For example... some of you might've watched the video from Channel 9 featuring Chris Jones. Chris Jones is a corporate vice-president. He's in the Executives list. But in the video, he said something like "If you have any feedback about Vista, then drop me a line..." So I did. I said there should be a really obvious way of activating Vista (proactively, rather than just reacting to a popup in the taskbar), and a really obvious way of telling if Vista has been activated (like in the "Registered to:" section of System Properties).
And he got back to me within a day, and now we've exchanged a couple of emails about it, and he's suggested a new feature to one of the guys in his team.
I'm sure that a couple of years ago, this wouldn't've been nearly so possible. I'm not on any beta-testing list or anything - it was just that I had watched a video (well, had it on in the background while I was doing other stuff), and decided that I should give a bit of feedback. I could've gone hunting for an official beta-feedback address - but this was easy. Chris could've just pointed me at an address, or could've just ignored me. But he didn't. I like that. :)
MsgPlus 3.60 is out today, so now I'm using MSN Messenger tabbed, as well as browsing tabbed. Not sure if I'll keep using it yet, but I'm guessing I probably will. It's nice to be able to have them all together, to Ctrl-Tab between conversations, that type of thing. And I can always ungroup particular conversations when I want to.
I don't always grab add-ins, but this is one that I do like. I just need to remember not to install the sponsor whenever I update it. ;)
The other night I felt like wasting some time. So I did. 
I got my cap today. It's not a bad cap. It's denim, and has a proper buckle on the back. But it says 'Certified Rock Star' on the front. If it had said 'Certified - well, certifiable at least' on it, then I might wear it.
My kids will appreciate it. Thanks Andrew!
19200x2400 is probably overkill. But doesn't it look nice!
I suppose if you have to monitor some feeds, want to have various things running in the background, that kind of thing... Is this the future? I suppose it would be neat for playing games on that could support that kind of resolution. Car games where you could physically turn your head to look out the side windows for example. What's next? Screens that you surround yourself in for flight-simulators, and a USB swivel chair, so that you can turn around properly?
Today I'm finding that I need to re-install Vista on VirtualPC. Being busy over the last few weeks, I hadn't got around to activating it (I generally prefer to run VPC without networking unless I have a really good reason), and it had gone past the activation period to the point that I couldn't do anything on it at all. :( So now I'm re-installing it. I'm fine about blowing away the stuff I'd done, but it's a shame to have to reinstall the thing.
This time I'm going to activate it straight away. I don't want to have to go through all this again.
Also, I want to play with Atlas, but I've heard that it doesn't work properly with VS2005 RC1. So I guess I'm putting Beta2 back on. I guess that's not the worst thing in the world, but I really would've preferred to be using RC1.
Joel's had the week off because he's been sore still. He'll be back at school on Monday.
I'm at home tonight. Joel comes home tomorrow, assuming things are okay in the morning. He's fine now. Almost no more pain, almost no more swelling, almost no more redness. Almost no more colour-loss in Dad's hair.
For those of you who have asked - he had an idiopathic oedema. Which basically means that he had a swelling of fluid that they couldn't put down to a particular cause (idiopaths!). We put it down to a fall he had on Friday morning during PE, because he was normal in the morning, and got sore after his fall. Roslyn and I were out for the evening (to celebrate her birthday), so her mum picked the boys up from school. She took him to hospital in the evening (phone-call one - the 'probably nothing' one), and then to the children's hospital at about 1:30am, which is when we got phone-call two - the 'probably something' one. Not the kind of phone-calls a grandmother wants to make, nor the kind that you want to get. I often wonder how on earth my grandparents took the news about my dad dying. Not something I ever want to go through.
It's good to be home. I wish Joel was here though. Roslyn's staying at the hospital tonight, after I did last night and Friday night. Tomorrow is Roslyn's birthday, so it'll be a weird day. I'm exhausted. I have a list of things to do before turning in tonight, including getting a bunch of stuff sorted so that Samuel and I can leave for school really early so that we can drop by the hospital en route and give Roslyn her gifts and cards. I'm only on-line because I can't really turn my head off properly.
It's only just after a year since Samuel (8 now) was in the same ward in the same hospital with Kawasaki's Disease. It took several days from when he went in until they figured out what it was, and just how serious an effect it could have had. Even now he's still on aspirin every day, and it has really affected all of us a lot. I guess on Friday night when we were at the hospital with Joel having an ultrasound to try to work out what was wrong with him, a lot of stuff started going on around my head, which should slow down at some point. Distraction is a good thing. I don't enjoy hospitals, particularly children's ones. I'm so tired. And Roslyn probably won't enjoy her birthday as much as I'd like her to. Sleep is in order, but it's very hard to relax, even after something like this is over. Relief is good, but it still doesn't allow for much sleep.
Oh yeah - it's also "Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day" tomorrow. Aaarrr. Poor Roslyn, it's an annual thing.
I like to feel that I have at least some degree of control in every situation, but I guess I'm not realistic in this hope.
At work I tend to have control over what?s going on. If a client springs some new requirement, I can deal with that, and although I might be put out, I can maintain control, scheduling it when it suits my other priorities for example.
But this morning I find myself at the Women's and Children's Hospital. Overnight our youngest, Joel (5), had to come in here, and I have no control over the situation at all. It's just over a year since our oldest spent over a week in the same ward as I'm in now. He had Kawasaki's Disease, and will be taking aspirin every day at least until February. This place doesn't do it for me. I don't want my kids to ever have to be in hospital.
I didn't get much sleep. I was on stay-over duty. I wouldn't've slept at home either, mind you. But Joel managed to get about 3 hours or so, which is better than nothing.
I don't know when this post will get to the blog, I don't have connectivity from here. In the meantime, please pray for Joel, and for the rest of us too.
November 7th is my birthday (I'll be 31 this year). And I'm convinced that Microsoft took this into account when they decided on this date for releasing SQL2005 and VS2005.
Of course it'll be Nov8 here in Australia before Redmond has woken up, but perhaps that's them being nice, and letting Australians get through their Monday before causing hysteria as we all download the final versions.
With PDC on in LA this week, the release candidates of these tools have been made available, and most importantly, stuff written against these release candidates WILL WORK (or at least, will be easily migrated) to the final version. This is a big deal. I'm 30 for another six weeks or so. And now, I'm really hoping that I can get the chance to put proper code into place on these new systems, confident that I can have that code work on the final versions. That's nice.
Now I just need that time thing.
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