Having just been to a conference, I saw a lot of different presentations, and saw a few things that [a] I hope I don't do when I'm presenting, and [b] definitely didn't help the speaker's cause. The biggest one was the number of speakers who kept turning back to look at there slides on the big screen. Not just a little peek to make sure they were in the right spot and get their bearings. I mean a full on reading of the slide with their back to us. Well, not reading - I don't think anybody pulled that old stunt. But looking at their talking points and keeping their back to us for the most part. Definitely not a very positive experience - at least some of them had content that made it possible to overlook this, but...

The other problem, one guy (won't mention any names) had his slides on a timer, so he could walk around. The problem was, his time interval was set too short, and he constantly had to go to his computer an re-adjust. If you want to walk around (and I think that's a great thing - I need to figure out how to do it), get one of those wireless remote things to control your slides.

On the positive side, several of the speakers were very obviously letting their true selves show, and it made the presentation much better. I don't know how they were able to be so relaxed, other than experience, which I'm sure was the case, but they were joking around, even poking fun at themselves, and just generally very engaging. I know its a hard skill to acquire - I am certain I'm not there yet, but its worth the practice, because these guys came across as real pros.

I'm sure everyone knows this already, but I figured since I have no worthwhile recourse with Dell, I'd complain about it on my weblog, and at least make me feel better that I might have disuaded one person from buying a Dell printer...

Anyway, Dell printers (specifically, the AIO 962 in my case) have timebombed ink cartridges. I have heard rumors that other companies do this to, I don't know specifics, but check carefully - its not hard to find out via an internet search. What this means is, if you don't print terribly often, and you have a spare ink cartridge hanging around, the cartridge might expire before you put it into the printer. It will probably still print just fine, but Dell has planted a chip in there to say it won't, and you can't really do anything to convince your printer otherwise.

I propose a constitutional admendment, to the Grand Developer's Code of Conduct:

The use Foo, Bar, and any other derivation of the ancient WWII term FUBAR is hereby prohibited from all demostrations, presentations, demo code, conversations, thoughts, and other emanations issued forth from a developer. A "Developer", in this context, is anyone who enages in any activity that results in the possibility of computer code being produced.

That joke isn't funny anymore. Its annoying and immature. What's wrong with using X, Y, and Z as sample variables? Or pet's names? Or anything else? Why not a little originality for a change? Scott Hanselman - I'm looking at you!

OK, at first, I thought they were cool. Then, I generally ignored them, but appreciated that the "wizards" put their stuff in them so I could ignore it for the most part. Developers at my current client have taken them too far, though, and so I'm forced to say it:

Enough already!

Regions suck. They were a hack to hide away the write-once, never look at it again code (or the Form Designer stuff). If they were intended for more than that, then the experiment has failed. They make it absolutely impossible to quickly look at a class and figure out what's going on.

Now that we have partial classes, put the things you don't want to see in another file. Don't make a region for you private members, and a region for your constructors, and a region for your delegates, and a region for your property accessors, etc. It just clutters things up, and makes it impossible to read the code, because you spend all of your time clicking little plus signs. Yes, I know there is a keystroke that will expand them all, but I shouldn't have to use it.

Ripping all of our CDs to the home computer was a major pain in the ass, but I have thoroughly enjoyed the results. It's nice having a jukebox with loads of music on it.

So, I was doing some work, and decided I was in the mood for some Led Zeppelin, which is odd, since I really don't listen to much classic rock anymore. The thing that struck me was how well much of it has aged (unlike the Beatles and the Stones). But the coolest part was rediscovering songs I'd forgotten about - Achilles Last Stand is an awesome track. I mean, The Ocean is still cool, but everybody knows that one, and it gets some airplay still (especially when the rappers sample it :)).

Then last night, I came across some PWEI. Why don't they make music like that anymore? I guess it will just take another decade - after all, 20 years later, we have The Killers channeling the ghost of Duran Duran (wait, they're not dead yet...).

So, the question is, am I old, or do they really not make much good music anymore? :) I know the answer, and it's that they don't play good music on the radio anymore, but they still make it...

I guess there was no real point to this post, except maybe this - go right now and dig deep into your music collection and listen to something you haven't heard in a while.

...when a Wharton grad starts talking about the price of oil being "negotiated". Um, Mr. Trump, did you ever hear of the laws of supply and demand? Oil is a commodity - the price is set by the market. There ain't no getting around that - it is globally traded. You'd think a capitalist like yourself would know better. The problem isn't supply, per se, but demand, as the rapidly growing Asian economies (India and China) are consuming more and more than they did before (and it should be noted that on a per capita consumption basis, they still aren't even in the same ballpark as we are, so things are only going to get worse).

I agree with The Donald - we need to look harder at alternative energy sources (and I'm not expert on anything science related, so I won't go into any details about that, because I'd probably just be wrong). But to suggest that we can just haggle with the sheiks over the price of oil? Come on now, Mr. Trump - you know better than that.

I don't have any real attachment to the people I am currently working with.

You can argue that it's because I'm a consultant, just a hired gun. I shouldn't be attached to any people in this company. I've been here a year, longer than a fair number of them. But I'm just that guy that knows a fair amount about .Net, and makes a good devil's advocate from time to time.

But the thing is, none of them have any attachment to each other, either.

It has bugged me for a long time. Back around the mid-point of my stay here, they even tried to hire me a couple times. I couldn't bring myself to seriously consider it. The biggest reason was the lack of a "team". I've often wondered how it could be like this. I'm not sure how it got here, but one of the things I've realized is this - I've never gone out to lunch with anybody else who works here. I've never seen any of them go out for lunch together, either. For the most part, I could not tell you much about any of my current co-workers. I just don't really know anything about them.

It's not me. I'm a little shy, but everywhere else, given enough time, I have always managed to come out of my shell. But recently I realized, it is probably because nobody bothers to find anything out about anybody else. Nobody makes any effort. Now, I'll be the first to admit - it is a very hard thing to do, especially when you are the new guy on the block. And, really, instead of griping about it, I should be trying to fix it. But I can't bring myself to do so - I've mentioned it to the powers that be, and they assured me that when they move (they have outgrown this space, and are moving near the end of the summer), things will be different. I'm just a consultant, and repeatedly reminded that I am an outsider. That is fine - I had may chance to become an "insider".

I should have realized the problem back when I started. On my first day, no one made any mention of lunch, or even where there were good places to go for lunch. No one tries to gather up the troops for a beer after work on a Friday. A vendor even sent in lunch one day - we all gathered lunch and went back to our desks.

It really is the simplest form of team-building, and it really does go further than any other for the same level of cost and time. You need to have a place to go, to get to know about the lives of your co-workers. To find out what makes them tick. To learn what you have in common. Otherwise, there won't be anyone to watch your back when crunch time comes.

So, my dear old Dell Axim is obsolete (ok, maybe it was obsolete when I bought it :)). It's an X5 I purchased back in February of 2003, and it came with PocketPC 2002 as the OS. Dell briefly offered an upgrade to Windows Mobile 2003, but at the time, it just wasn't worth $30 to me - my X5 worked fine, and did what I needed it to do. I could write code for it using the lastest tools (VS 2003), and I was happy.

So, I finally got around to installing the beta of VS2005 at home, and I finally figured out what I was going to monkey with to see how the new features stacked up - time to do a little work on mobile development. Except, I just discovered - CF 2.0 doesn't run on PPC 2002.

And Dell, in their infinite wisdom, doesn't sell the upgrade CD anymore. Or offer any way to get it, like perhaps a download. And I just don't use my Axim enough to justify replacing it with another $400 PDA (at least, not until I'm ready for a new cell phone, and Verizon offers some decent products - not that I don't enjoy my Motorola v710, but...).

So, does anybody know of a place where I can buy the upgrade? I tried eBay, but that just didn't work.

Time to give SCOTUS a little back.

Hat Tip: Chris Williams

The end of Dot Net Junkies, that is. It's very sad, the way they've let it go. First, the CodeBetter guys left. Then, some folks trickled over to GeeksWithBlogs. Along the way, some people went out on their own. Now, Dave Balzer has started DevAuthority, and I suspect anybody who remains at DNJ, and writes content worth watching, is probably gone, so I've updated my subscriptions in NewsGator and removed the main DNJ feed.

It's a shame, really. It was a REALLY GOOD community for a while, and then the servers got overburdened, and the software threw strange errors, and finally the comment spam got overwhelming. They kept promising to fix it, pretty much the same way I keep saying I'm going to watch what I eat. :) I'm sad to see it go...

Today, I am reminded of the famous Pragmatic Programmers concept: Don't live with broken windows.

By way of DevHawk:

"The difference between a hallucination and a vision is how many other people can see it."

I like it - sounds about right.