Why isn't there such a thing?

This evening my neighbor came by to borrow my power drill and despite sitting less than 10 feet away from my front door, I hardly heard her knock and once again reminded myself that I should look into some sort of wireless doorbell, but being a geek I asked myself "Why just go with straight wireless? Why not something more PC accessible?"

I suddenly find myself wondering why (as far as I can Google) there's isn't an inexpensive off the shelf system that I could put at my front door and plug into a PC and notify me when the door bell button is pressed. Why waste time with a stand alone module alone when I could also have a toast pop up?

Yet another time when I wish I had some electronics skills, otherwise this would be a useful and interesting thing to try to DIY.

To quickly add to my previous post on the subject of DHCP4WHS... last week I came up with a new build of DHCP4WHS (0.8.4) which doesn't change much from the first build (0.8.2) and offers a few cosmetic and stability improvements (more cosmetic) for it's submission to the Code2Fame Challenge.

Also for your viewing pleasure (if you've got 4:52 to kill) I've also uploaded the video I recorded for it which is available for download here or on SoapBox:

I must say though that I am rather regretting my capture mechanism as it looks quite poor when compared to the other other entry video I've seen, that from Andrew Grant (no relation) and his excellent add-in Whiist which gives users users a quick and easy way to add custom web sites to their Windows Home Server.

When I first heard about Windows Home Server I fell in love and berated Charlie Kindel (General Manager of WHS) with countless questions on the original Channel 9 thread and after some begging of someone else on the team got let into the beta and eventually into the Insiders Program and I knew well before I ever got my grubby hands on the beta that this was a product I wanted in my house and set a limit as to how much I'd pay, it seems though that the asking price for an OEM copy is higher than I was willing to pay ($150 max shipped) so I guess I'll be going without (unless by some miracle I win something in the Code2Fame Challenge) for the time being.

Being a poor and largely unemployed geek, the box I used for beta testing Windows Home Server was one ugly frankenpc and had planned to upgrade that up to the final release just as soon as I got a copy, despite this though, I still plan on doing more development for Windows Home Server and eventually release a 1.0 version of DHCP4WHS (as well as a couple of other ideas) and likely later improvements so just as soon as the demo comes out I may just relegate it to a virtual PC for testing.

It's probably a good thing considering I have no money and I never really trusted the hardware I was going to throw it on so at this point I've got a couple of options... go strictly VM for a time, try to get a job on the WHS team and help build V2 (and get an employee discount), go without, or pirate it.

Me thinks I'm going to go with #1 and #2 (just as soon as my hands are working).

Funny thing about #2 though... back when this thing first was first announced I'd honestly given serious thought to taking a few days off from work, driving out to Redmond, finding the WHS offices and walk in my knees with my hat in one hand and a resume in the other. That idea was eventually scrapped when it became clear that my hands weren't getting any better.

One big problem with any kind of add-in tab development for the Windows Home Server Console is that testing is a #&*%. Even if you don't build a full installer every time, you've still got close the console, copy the DLL over to the server and re-launch the client... even if just to see if a label is in the right position.

And that all assumes that you've laid things out right internally.

The Home Server Console is pretty explicit on how a tab should look and how it can be loaded and is unforgiving if you are wrong and will fail pretty silently.

So as to avoid such problems I built this quick and dirty tool to check for those same things... as well as give me a quick and easy way to test some aspects of my add-in without having to deploy it.

Unfortunately due to the way some of the Window Home Server Controls (from HomeServerControls.dll) and dependant components do logging and loading of resources, add-ins loaded in this tool will not look as they do in the real thing (color wise) and may require being run as Administrator.

Windows Home Server Form discussion

For as long as I can remember I've always been shopping at stores like Casual Male XL as they were the only ones who had my ridiculously large sizes (4xlt & 5xlt) and now that I've come down significantly I'm slowly looking into other options as it is becoming more and more clear just how expensive the clothing is there... even when it's not a larger size and this problem is made doubly worse when one finds that it is getting harder and harder to find my size as my size decreases.

While in Sioux Falls the other day I stopped into the local store to see if there was anything on the clearance rack that I couldn't pass up, and had the salesman mention that there was a deal on the jeans that normally they run $45 a piece but if you buy 2 you can get them for $40 each. I was shocked.

I pointed down and said "I paid $20 for these jeans and even with a 10 inch larger waist it was they were just $24 a pop."

He admitted that if it wasn't for his employee discount (30% normally, 50% 4 special times per year) he wouldn't be shopping there.

Since my last trip to a normal sized clothing store (21.8 lbs ago) I've done a bit of looking around and am not liking what I'm seeing as very few places carry tall shirts, and those that do the selection is horribly limited and not always very long... I stand 6'4" and I need height, lots of it, none of this "we'll add an extra 1/2-1" to the bottom of the shirt and call it tall" stuff.

After finding nothing at the Casual Male XL store I decided to stop by the local Kohl's (at the suggestion of the CM XL clerk) and take a look around. After about 5 min of casual looking I asked a clerk: "Would I be correct in thinking that it's pretty much a crap shoot as to you having tall sizes?"

According to her they *maybe* get one or two per shipment.

Perhaps it's time for a new store in Sioux Falls... "Just XLT"

Lucky for me though it's not important just yet as I still am a hair too big for straight XLT's and am only keeping my eye out for cheap things to add to the closet for when I'm ready to make the step down.

This morning my daily weigh in put me at 265 even, a full 150.2lbs down since I started my weight loss campaign back in May 2006 when I started at 415.2.

Previously:

This morning:

Bo ya! *Only* 69.8 lbs to go.

Why didn't anyone tell me about the release of that beauty?

At my old development job I used the free Dotfuscator Community Edition to protect a project that I lead the building of and because the company was rather cheap, I was stuck using the free version which meant a very complicated and round about build process that involved launching multiple different applications.

It seems at at least some of that can be over now as PreEmptive Solutions has released Dotfuscator Community Edition Enhanced, an updated and free version of Dotufscator that includes Visual Studio integration, enabling the user to easily integrate it into their build process so that they can automatically obfuscate binaries and send that project output to an installer project.

On the down side there's no obvious way to (delay/re)sign an assembly in that process as is required for some users.

What could be worse than Hillarycare where employers would be forced to provide health insurance for their employees?

Why John Edwards' new plan that would require every citizen to be covered AND seek preventative care.

This all begs the question.. what happens if someone refuses to go in for an annual checkup?

Do you drop their coverage? No... everyone is required to be covered.

Raise their rates or fine then? Sounds like a regressive system that would only hurt the poor to me.

Haul them into the doctors office? I can see it now... SWAT teams compromised of MD's and nurses armed with stethoscopes, thermometers and gauze breaking down doors and swinging through windows yelling:

Doctors FREEZE! Mr Johnson, you are late for your annual checkup and we have a warrant for your prostate exam... now drop your pants and get your hands where I can see them! <snap>

Come to think about it... I rather like the sound of that.. just so long as we have some doctors who act like Jack Bauer I'll be happy with this plan that was described as:

The whole idea is a continuum of care, basically from birth to death

On second thought no... being the fan of liberty I am I rather like the idea of self determination and having the choice to NOT seek medical attention for myself and NOT burden the tax payers with my treatment.

With all of the coverage of the Larry Craig arrest, guilty plea and resignation this week a common joke has been "Where is the next republican convention going to be? The Minneapolis airport bathroom?"

Has no one bothered to actually check?

For those who don't know, the 2008 Republican National Convention is being held less than 10 miles away, across the river in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center, home of the Minnesota Wild.

That's right... the Democratic People's Republic of Minnesota... the state where nothing is allowed, the state that has one of the highest tax burdens in the nation, a state that shuns the rights of private property owners will be playing host to the convention of a party that stands against most things the DPRM believes.

This is the very city also plans to work hard to welcome protestors and protect their right to protest.

I wonder if they'd do the same if the roles were reversed.

Like Joe Soucheray, I wonder why they picked that place. Do they really think they'll be able to swing it back to being a swing state? After all, this is a state that hasn't gone to a Republican since 1972... even when they were the only state going to a Democrat in 1984.

Not a second after I posted the last post I remembered one major advantage of this point... portions of my NDA with my previous employer would have expired... specifically the portions regarding their ownership of anything I create, invent, write, etc.

Why is this important?

Back when I was only an intern there (nearly 4 years ago) there was an immensely useful piece of software that came from a company in France, a piece of software that was only part of a larger suite and one that my employer was the only authorized seller of it in this nation (we rebranded it).

One problem (aside from the extreme cost)... hardware dongles.

One weekend while at home I sat down with a copy of the relevant ISO document (ISO 13818-1 defines MPEG-2 Transport Streams, the fundamental basis of digital television today) and got to writing a basic version in VB.NET of one of the applications in the suite and come Monday morning was quite proud of my work and figured I should probably tell my manager just in case they had a problem with me writing an app at home that could theoretically compete with something the company sold down the line.

After seeing a couple of screen shots my manager was shocked... and along with a short document I wrote up explaining my intent for writing it and how far I wanted to take it he took it to the department manager.

In short I wanted to make a piece of software I might sell for $50-$100 that had a few of the features of something the company sold for ~$70,000... so needless to say mine would be pretty limited by comparison.

After giving it a read through the department manager took it on to the head of the sales department and they scratched their heads for a while. Eventually the department manager got back to me and said that while he technically couldn't force me to stop building my app... he assured me that if one day there was news from up front that they'd lost a large sale because of the personal work of someone in the engineering department... heads would likely roll.

Needless to say I didn't continue it. Partially due to that threat, but also because I figured that they could technically take control of it from me at anytime due to the before mentioned NDA.

That isn't the case anymore... and perhaps it's time to consider restarting that project (from scratch of course).

Running into a former co-worker this week made me remember a rather unfortunate anniversary that has come and gone... the six month anniversary of me leaving my previous full time programming job due to my hand issues.

Last week when seeing HD4 the PA had asked if I had any kind of assistance coming in and I said no and went through the list of things that a person in my position might qualify for and why in my case I do not and ended with SSDI and said:

... and then there's Social Security Disability Insurance which requires one to be disabled and out of work because of it for a year or be expected to be for a year... I've got half of that under my belt already which means I've got another six months to wait at least unless one of my doctors were to write a note for me saying that they still have no idea what's wrong with me and that given previous experience see no reason to believe that I'll be fixed and able to work again for at least the next six

To which he replied:

Yea I don't think we are going to be able to do that

Not really a surprise.

It's both interesting and horrifying to realize just how long of a time that's been since I last held down a full time job.

It's interesting to consider just how many nights I was able to stay up until the wee hours... and how many mornings I could sleep in without worry of alarms, schedules or having to be anywhere while it's horrifying to consider just how much that time has cost me in terms of food, gas, insurance, housing, etc... money that I don't have and will be paying for for likely years to come.

It's also quite disconcerting to realize that it's now been nearly 6 months since I went under the knife to try to fix my issue and in the end I seem to be far worse off today than I was prior to that.

In the days after I first released DHCP4WHS I got notice on some of the following sites/blogs:

• DHCP for Windows Home Server
• WHS Add In: DHCP
• DHCP for Windows Home Server Aka DHCP4WHS
• Add-in: DHCP for Windows Home Server
• Neues Add-In: DHCP for Windows Home Server
• Neues Add-in: DHCP für den Windows Home Server

That's right... not just one, but two German language notices. Forget Norm MacDonald's old theory... perhaps it's now time for a new theory regarding that country... Germans love Brendan Grant.

One of the biggest events in the history of DHCP4WHS was it's being featured in this alleged picture of the RTM version of Windows Home Server as seen over on wegotserved.

Bo Ya!