CodePrairie .NET

There are two primary reasons I do not own an iPhone today, both relate to my not being a typical user: AT&T Wireless is unwilling/unable to port my current South Dakota number over to their network (and I’m not about to give up my existing number). The ‘Apple Tax’ involved in getting to develop for it. ... well that and my not being ...

I still need to post a full write up of the glorious vacation I had back in November... however I pause to say that UPS has effectively ruined the vacation and cost me dearly as a result. While back in South Dakota hunting I was successful in taking two deer and left the meat of at a local (to where I was hunting) market back with instructions to ...

That’s right. You heard me... yesterday, December 22nd was the first day of the spring! Says who? Says Joe Soucheray, Grand Poobah of The Royal Order of the 21sters. Who are they? We are a group of people who have willing surrendered normalcy so as to engage in psychological delusion to stave off the the darkness and chill of winter that affects ...

The Seattle area has had some issues with snow over the last few days and due to a less than favorable plow-to-person ratio (tm) 2008 Brendan Grant (yes I hereby trademark in text that phrase I’ve used for quite some time (including during my Microsoft job interview at least twice)) the area has more or less shutdown. Roads are near empty with ...

We've all heard how'd evil it is for an application to call home. Sure there are evil things out there like adware, spyware, and other such bits... but what about basic usage reporting? For years web analytics tools such as AWStats, Google Analytics, SiteMeter and many others have been created and used to allow web developers and site ...

While this has always been a 'personal' blog, I have often times refrained from posting about various personal subjects, this post, along with the possibility of one or two more on this subject will break from that tradition. What follows is a cautionary tale of my having been nice to someone a few months ago and how one "Marley ...

What’s worse than having your 5 year old POS of a laptop die on you midway through a 2+ week long out of state vacation? To have the much needed bag of screws that I collected when I was disassembling the laptop in my uncles living room in North Dakota while trying to troubleshoot the problem (turned out to be a short due to a frayed monitor ...

This evening while sitting in the living room of an aunt and uncle in Bismark North Dakota and discussing the news of the pirates who attacked, captured and are ransoming a Saudi owned super tanker I got a thinking of the following graph which is a well known part of Pastafarianism: Could it be… that the increase in piratical activity around ...

Given some of the various ideas from this years presidential candidates (socialized medicine from Obama and socialized housing from McCain), as well as near socializing of US banks (not to be out done by British banks). I believe that there is one more important area that we must focus on socializing... education is already there and ...

Traditionally most companies are fine with their employees making a buck on the side or donating their time or services  just so long as doing so doesn't conflict of interest with the their day job either through causing ones work quality to go down or otherwise compete with the company. Microsoft is little different. Should I decide ...