To Whom It May Concern...

Following up a recent discussion at Neopoleon.com I post these articles: A few scientists discuss the question: ' Does God Exist? ' And the next article in that series: ' What Is God's Purpose? ' This is an extremely good article, Why God Has Permitted Suffering taken from the brochure ' Does God Really Care About Us? '.

Just read an article by Daniel Appleman in .Net Developer's Journal on Handling exceptions. For new programmers or those new to .Net Try... Catch may seem like a simple way to avoid UnHandled exceptions, and pretty them up. That's all I used them for. But I had heard of more you could do with them. Dan's article was extremely well written. Simple and to the point it helped me to understand this great facet of .Net better. I knew that you could handle different types of exceptions by having different Catch statements, almost like a Select statement. I also knew, however, that this should not be used as logic flow. Example: If you have code that should accept a numeric, and somebody enters text, you shouldn't use exception handling for this, you should do something like IsNumeric. What Dan really helped me to understand is what the difference between a SystemException and ApplicationException is. Also, why you would want to roll your own exceptions for let's...

I spent the weekend in Bar Harbor with my wife. What an awesome experience. From seeing all of god's creation from Peregrine falcons and their chicks to Bald Eagles. Went out on a four mast Schooner, and got to hoist sail with the crew. Got sun burn, but who doesn't from time to time. My system was wiped over the weekend (as per request) so I am re-installing Visual Studio. This should be better since I'm letting it go default. I had installed and un-installed so much... SQL 7 was listed in add and remove programs, but if I tried to un-install it SQL 2k came out. Sometime this week I'd like to see if I can get into a discussion with Rory . I want to ask him why he's atheist. I have more, but busy as always. I'll try to get some pics of the trip up.

Try this for a little stress relief! Also... I've been looking through some articles on Visual Studio 2005, ASP.NET 2.0, and the improvements to Visual Basic and C#. WOW!!! A lot of cool features. If you get a chance pick up the April edition of .Net Developer's Journal . It has a good interview with Chris Sells and a nice overview of some of the new features coming out. This site is supposed to be dedicated to newbie coders, which I still consider myself one of. Lately tho I have been buried with work, and may be lacking in my posts. Forgive me... drop me a line with questions... and let me know what info you would want as a Newbie. One piece of advice, learn proper Patterns and Practices quick! You can do something, or you can do it right. And doing it right the first time will save you headaches. Instead of scratching your head and starting over, you can just jump right in and make changes if you need to. You may think commenting and normalizing and learning how ...

Interesting point in the April '04 DotNet Developers Journal feedback section. Sam commented that 'Open source and freeware just make it harder for the developers that are trying to scratch a living out of this industry.' Interesting thought, and probably somewhat true. I can see the arguments for Open Source and freeware, money's tight. But could the software money be tight because the companies trying to get paid for software can't fight a price war with free? I can see that too. These folks that are working on Linux... are they sinking their competitors? Well, not really. But other things, like the smaller customer base apps... this is where it gets delicate. I can't prescribe anything, but we'll see how it pans out. What are your thoughts?

Okay, I was thinking about computers. Computers and printers that is. Let's say you have 1 printer on the network, printerA. You have two computers. PC1 and PC2. PC1 sees the printer and calls it 'Joe's printers'. PC2 sees the printer as 'LaserJet 45000'. But they are both talking about the same printer. K. Now let's think about us, and how we see color. I look at something and say 'that's blue'. You look at that and say 'that's blue'. Fine, we're talking about the same color. Once upon a time somebody else told us it was blue and that's what we know. But how does our brain interpret that color. If I was to look from inside your brain through your eyes, does your brain interpret that color the same mine does. Let's say I look through your brain but the blue item appears as my red. Follow? It doesn't matter how our brain interprets the color, as long as it interprets the colors differently. We associate a name ...

They already have the next big thing. SMS this , you too can have your own light special effects over Dublin!

What's next, SMSing your homes lighting, stove, fridge? Check this out!

This looks cool! I've been wanting a 4x5 or so sized screen for a PDA for a while, since I've had my first PDA. The screen is just a little small on most of them. This one only does e-books and documents, but it's a step.

Yea, I got the post from Slashdot, but who wouldn't want this car ! In other news, we installed Data.Match. I am trying to refine the installation tho. Also fixing bugs as we find them, but most of it is visual changes. Very few bugs thanks to Dino!

Let's just sum up... today hasn't been going all that well. A day that includes being late for work, a funeral, my car breaking down, my project not working for no explainable reason (Explained here) and two other projects that were needed last week. All this after a weekend that left me saying, WHAT WAS THAT?!?! All this typing is making me dizyy........jkdafj;of bn

It's official: click here

Once again, I feel the Web site is ready. I now move back to DataMatch. I am documenting more. Trying to keep things neat and tidy so that when I need to get help I can show people what I am talking about. Anybody know a good way to put Powerpoint slides on a web site?

Check this out: Developing Open Source Defense Projects . I doubt he would get help. However, I'm curious, as I've often thought of developing a roof mounted rocket launch system for those people who just don't want to get out of the way. I could also install it on the trunk for tailgaters... ;) And before you sic the cops on me... I'm only kidding. It's April 1st dontcha know.

Some people have too much time on their hands. But without people like that we wouldn't have such great things as Monty Python, or Cheez Whiz! This site goes to show that Windows XP boxes and Linux boxes can play nice. Man! This is something to see.

So, I have the website done. Actually, the web designer and I have finished it. The only missing piece is the cropping. It works great! Except, not on the web server. Can't get through the firewall. Trying to get help, but so far nada. So anyways, if you want to check out the site, it's http://www.centurycolor.com If you want to try the form, use demo/demo. And for original orders use 999999. Now it's back to DataMatch. I'm excited. I've wanted to finish this. I just hope I haven't lost the steam. I may use the cropping class in there. We'll see. I want it to get all the info it needs from our server. I'm working on that now. This is gonna be good.

I finally did it. I put my clie up for auction. I hated to do it, I loved that thing. But I just can't get it fixed. No money and no time. And hey, this is my blog, so I can advertise for free. If you want to look, click here .

Microsoft releases XNA a game development package. Why am I only hearing of this through Yahoo News?! I searched MSDN, and Microsoft's site, and no news out there?!?! What do I have to do to get my hands on this?

K, so I haven't posted in a while... A friend of mine told me he and his wife were going to have a baby! I have been pushing to wrap up the last touches of www.centurycolor.com so that I could move back to DataMatch. I was almost there with cropping, and I got the retouch commands working. Other than that, this past weekend I went to PA with my wife and picked up some stuff from her parents house. I got to drive with a car carrier on my roof!!! Kewl... NOT! K, that is it for now. Let's wrap this junk up boys!

So, this weekend I got a job from my dad. He would like a simple file mover application. It will ask some questions about what is being moved and where. I am going to try it in Sharp Develop. The project seems straightforward enough that I can get my feet wet with this new tool. I hope that this will let me feel more comfortable with Mono Develop later. I wish I had a PDA. I would love to be able to jot some notes down. My Clie has been damaged for some time now. I am going to ebay it. I'll put the link here when I do. It's got a damaged screen. Powers up, I am very sure that it is just the screen. I got it to come on once or twice by rubbing the screen. I believe the screen has been stuck together, thus causing an eternal touch that hangs the unit as it tries to start up. Any offers can e-mail me or post a comment. I also thought of an illustration. Programmers are very logical, scientific people. That may mean that they have lost faith in creation, or doubt it's fea...