Posted By : Dan Wilson     April 15, 2007 1:41 PM

I was reading an article on Worst Games Ever. Here are some quotes that had me laughing:

The gameplay is almost as deep and engaging as flipping from one option to the next on a DVD menu...

It would take all of history's greatest geniuses working in unison with history's greatest untreated sewage to come up with uglier graphics.

Have you ever stepped on a nail during a seminar about trends in hydraulic pump insurance? If so, then keep doing it. It's more fun than this electronic wasteland.

Also, AIRCARS don't have brakes, so once you start accelerating, your only chance of survival is quickly putting in a different game. A typical AIRCARS adventure is you careening out of control through trees and waiting for your clumsy rolling bathtub to explode.

Good medicine for a cold rainy Sunday.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     April 12, 2007 9:38 AM

Please stop resetting my default browser to IE. I've been using Firefox for several years. Just because you installed some 'Updates' to my Operating System doesn't mean I am switching

That is all.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     April 12, 2007 9:15 AM

This morning my computer was updated by the Microsoft Automatic Update service. This runs in the background downloading 'critical' updates to important software on my computer. Like 'Genuine Advantage'.

In all fairness, there are often important security related releases in the Automatic Updates. I like the idea of this as it keeps me from having to stay fully abreast of MS Security issues.

What I don't like is, when the Automatic Update service completes its installation, it then asks for a reboot. You get two options, 'Reboot Now' or 'Reboot Later'. Fair enough.

Reboot Later should be reworded to say 'Would you like for me to ANNOY THE CRAP OUT OF YOU every 9 minutes about rebooting?'. I timed it. In Microsoft-speak Later = 9 Minutes.

My point is this. If Microsoft can leave crushing security holes open for MONTHS at a time, then I should get more than NINE minutes in between nagging.

Where is Scott Barnes when you need him?

Update:

Jim Priest commented and submitted a link with a fix. I just applied the no-nag fix and couldn't be happier. Thank you Jim!

Here is the link: http://www.pcdoctor-guide.com/wordpress/?p=2133

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     March 24, 2007 10:48 AM

I am not a threatening guy. I mean it. I am between 5'8 and 5'10 depending on what convenience store I am leaving. I weigh 150 pounds and rarely wear hockey masks. "Why am I telling you this?", you wonder?

It was a long and stressful week what with preparing an application for launch and my consulting work in the evenings. Way too much time on the keyboard, know what I mean? The weather up here turned warm, so I went out for an evening stroll.

After about 2 miles of walking, I returned home to pick up a bottle of water and a jacket. Approaching my driveway I was approached by 2 people with dogs who questioned me. I pointed to my house, explained I was out for a walk. Having lived in this neighborhood for 6 months I was a little annoyed but stayed friendly.

I went into the house, grabbed my coat, the bottle of water and set off again. About an hour later, a police car pulls up and starts questioning me. He asked my name and my address, which I promptly told him. Then I asked him if "Everything was all right?" He said "Yes." Then drove off.

At this time, I am starting to wonder if I should be out walking. Something seems strange. Is it normal to question the health inclined for just being out walking?

I was still thinking about this encounter with the police when I turned from the main road into the neighborhood. 50 yards up the street a man walked with a flash light. After 20 or so steps, the man turned around, pointed the flashlight in my face and approached. I started getting annoyed when he KEPT the flashlight pointed in my face, so I yelled out "Hello?!?!?!".

Suprisingly and not suprisingly, it was another police officer. He asked my name, address and some other details. I began to wonder if I was on some New Jersey game show. Next, he asked for my identification. I told him I had been out for a walk, not shopping but if he would like to accompany me to the house, I would retrieve my documents for him.

He seemed amused and satisfied and told me not to worry about that.

For the record, I live in a country suburb in New Jersey. The kind of place where the neighbors all know one another. The kind of place where garages and doors are left unlocked. A nice friendly place. I felt like I had wandered from the Garden State to a Police State.

5 minutes later, two officers come running up the street yelling for me to stop. I stop and wait for them to catch up. At this point, I am getting beyond "Friendly, Helpful Citizen" and to "Annoyed, I Live Here, Leave Me Alone"

The two officers say they are going to need me to produce my ID. "Fine, lets go get it", I say. So off we go walking up a hill towards my house. The whole time I am thinking, "My roommates are going freak out when I show up at the door with two armed policemen..."

Moments later, several cop cars arrive. Now surrounded by 7 officers, I am told to unzip my jacket, produce my cell phone and then answer a bunch of questions.

• "What is your name?"
• "Where do you live?"
• "What is the zip code here?"
• "What is the area code here?" ( I actually got this one wrong? Ha Ha. )

Next thing I know, an officer takes my cell phone and drives off with it. I am still fully surrounded and getting nervous. I have no idea what is going on.

After 10 more minutes of Q&A with the police, the car comes back, announces "It's not him", hands my cellphone back and leaves. I am left walking back to my house shaking my head.

So how was YOUR Friday night?

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     March 15, 2007 5:54 PM

Hi, you might remember me. I was the guy in the Porsche this afternoon you wanted to race. I know you were perplexed when I didn't take you up on your challenge. Allow me to explain.

See, once upon a time, I was a street racer too. I had a car I thought was very fast and I took great pleasure in revving my 4 cylinder engine and challenging all comers, so trust me, I know where you are coming from. I chose not to race you because I am 31 years old now. A lot has changed since I was your age.

Frankly, at my age, I am more concerned with the price of gas than bragging rights to a street race. Seems strange doesn't it? When your mommy stops buying your gas and you finally get a job, I think it will clear up for you.

There are some other reasons as well.

Your car says Acura on the front of it. Acura is a make of automobile manufactured by Honda, a corporation mostly known for making fuel efficient vehicles. My car says Porsche on the front, a company mostly known for making incredibly performant vehicles. Think on that one for a second.

As they say on TV, "But Wait, there is more!"

Your car has a wing on the rear. A quite impressive structure, your wing. I believe it stands at least a foot tall. It also looks homemade, did you make it yourself?

My car also has a wing on the rear. It isn't quite as tall as your wing but a tad more stylish than your contraption which happens to look more at home on top of a semi-tractor cab than a japanese import vehicle. Just my opinion, mind you.

Opinions aside for a moment, there is another subtle difference between your wing and mine. Your wing is on the rear of your car. Your drive wheels are in the front. Any fourth grader with a passing interest in aerodynamics will tell you your wing puts extra downforce on the rear of your car thusly, reducing the traction available. Not a great feature when racing, let me tell you. On the contrary, the wing on my car is over my drive wheels and adds traction. A handy feature when racing in wet conditions, as it was today.

My car also has a deep exhaust sound. It came from the factory like that. Sounds powerful doesn't it? Not to be mistaken for a car impersonating a misfiring weed eater as your noble ride appeared to be doing zooming up behind me.

Finally, notice the panels on my car are all the same color. This might not provide any racing benefits, but it sure looks much better than your custom patchwork quilt look.

It is possible I am just out of touch with what is 'Cool' these days. If we meet again, my greasy haired speed racer, kindly fill me in on how puberty is going.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     February 14, 2007 10:02 PM

I logged into the MSDN to look up some SQL Server particulars and look what I got:

Perhaps Microsoft should switch from using IIS to Apache.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     February 1, 2007 10:11 PM

I spent several hours going over a new ModelGlue:Unity + Transfer set up and had an error that stumped me. For the life of me I couldn't get any scaffolds to work. ModelGlue and Transfer loaded up perfectly, Directly querying the database worked perfectly. All signs pointed to GO, except for the lack of any scaffolded events working.

Oops!

Message Model-Glue: There is no known event handler for "skiresort.list".

Now, I've set this up several times so I was sure I misconfigured something. I checked every possible thing I could think of that could be holding this up and then started cfdumping the internals of the frameworks. Getting nowhere fast, I started complaining about it in the IRC channel and the second I started explaining it, the answer came to me. So for public humiliation and for posterity, here is the answer.

If you want to access the event-handlers generated by the scaffolding feature, the <scaffold /> tag in the modelglue.xml file MUST be contained in the <event-handlers /> tag.

This is Bad

This is Good

I shall hang my head in shame for the next 5 minutes....

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     December 15, 2006 11:17 PM

I am not a fan of advertising. In fact, I hate it. So it gives me great pleasure to denounce the worst advertising of the week.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     September 22, 2006 9:21 PM

Vongo.

Ok. What is Vongo? More importantly, who do these Vongo people think they are? Check out http://www.ihatevongo.com/ the site to learn about and share stories about Vongo.

I bought a new HP laptop a few weeks ago. It is quite a nice laptop with some very well laid out features. The laptop model is HP dv5000 series. It has some fun features, like the integrated 6 in 1 card reader, which have come in real handy as well as It has a 15.4" widescreen display, DVD writer, an Intel Core Duo processor, Windows XP Pro and preloaded with 1.5 GB of Ram. It was exactly what I was looking for. Not to mention when was the last time you saw a laptop from the factory with 1.5GB of RAM? Seems like an odd number, doesn't it? I think that kept rolling around in my head (1.5 GB? 1.5GB? ) until I bought it just to keep the noise from rattling around my corpus collosum any further.

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Posted By : Dan Wilson     September 17, 2006 12:05 PM

I personally have nothing against people named 'Dan'. I promise...

My name happens to be Dan and coupled with my last name 'Wilson', this makes for the second most common name in the english speaking world. The first, is John Smith.

I picked this name for my blog after the No Homers Simpsons episode so if your name happens to be 'dan' don't worry, if they let me in here, they'll allow you as well.

There might be others named Dan, but I am the only Dan Wilson in existance. The others are merely alter egos. You can see from Google I keep quite busy...

Some of my alter ego accomplishments:

Professional baseball player

Semi-accomplished musician

Actor, playwright, stage and film director and producer, improvisational comedian, voice over artist, fine artist, podcaster, cartoonist, poet, and author.

Robotics Engineer

And of course, I have my own Wikipedia page

It is quite exhausting keeping up with myself as you can see.

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