I have a new apprentice

We've got a new guy at work, and he seems pretty sharp. I'm going to try to teach him some VB .Net. He has a PHP web design background. We'll see.

Um, That was weird

I just finished Valhalla Rising, a Clive Cussler novel about the never ending adventures of Dirk Pitt. I don't know quite what I thought of it. It kept me interested till the last page, then made me say 'Huh?'. I'll let you know when I've sorted it all out.

Also, I don't know why this blog is putting in a Clear: both tag.

New Comments system

The Comments system I was using wasn't working very well. I've set this up to use Blogger's comment system. Go ahead, try it out.

Back to Cussler

I just picked up another Clive Cussler book, Valhalla Rising. I'm up to chapter 8, and it's definitely up to Clive's quality.

If you're interested in my thoughts on his books, you can click the link to the right, Cussler books, in the books section. I will try to keep the entire books section up to date so you can find books that are helpful.

If you haven't heard of, the exploding whale

Here is another one that I cannot resist including. The exploding whale story has also been going around for years and has its own website. The actual event occurred in 1970 in Oregon. Video of the event is available on the Exploding Whale website.

I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on videotape.
The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon, which sent a reporter out to
cover the removal of a 45-foot, eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the
beach. The responsibility for getting rid of the carcass was placed upon the
Oregon State Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales
are very similar in the sense of being large objects.

So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan -- remember, I am
not making this up -- of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking here
was that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be eaten by sea
gulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.

So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of dynamite
next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of understatement
when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the most wonderful event in
the history of the universe. First you see the whale carcass disappear in a huge
blast of smoke and flame. Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!"
and "Whee!" Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound like
"splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces of... MY GOD!"
Something smears the camera lens.

Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation suddenly
gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale blubber fell everywhere."
One piece caved in the roof of a car parked more than a quarter of a mile away.
Remaining on the beach were several rotting whale sectors the size of
condominium units. There was no sign of the sea gulls, who had no doubt
permanently relocated in Brazil. This is a very sobering videotape. Here at the
institute we watch it often, especially at parties. But this is no time for
gaiety. This is a time to get hold of the folks at the Oregon State Highway
division and ask them, when they get done cleaning up the beaches, to give us an
estimate on the US Capitol.

I saw this once in a higher quality AVI file. If you have a link to that, please drop me a line.

Updates

Convention this weekend. Very excited.

We are separating our Wedding and Portrait customers to 2 different domains, one that will focus on each. On our portrait side, we are actually doing a subdomain for one of our customers, so that they can have their own customizations. Finished most of that last week.

Going back to DataMatch. We are holding off on camera integration, as this is proving difficult. But we are including cropping, and a host of other usablilty features.

Please note, on the right menu bar of this site, I now have my Channel9 posts. Channel9 is a site created by Microsoft Developer Employees to get better in touch with developers. I've gotten answers there faster than anywhere else. Check 'em out if you haven't already, and take a look at some of my posts if you think you can help.