Jeff Handley

Installing VS 2008 SP1 and I’m bored

Jeff Handley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 17:28:14 GMT

Before leaving last night, I uninstalled all of the appropriate bits, and then fired off the installation for VS 2008 SP1. I had heard it took a couple of hours, so I wanted to let it do its work while I was gone.

This morning, I arrived to find that the installation had paused, waiting for me to close down Word, Outlook and Internet Explorer. So now I’ve closed those apps down and resumed the installation.

So, when I cannot use Office or IE, what should I be doing? I don’t have Firefox installed, so I cannot even browse with that.

Before I closed IE, I saw that Ayende has already posted a Connect bug for SP1. I’ll tell you what, it seems like he should be a Beta tester for every release and service pack—he always seems to find a way to break something!

Technorati Tags: Visual Studio 2008 SP1

Headless Horseplay - MediaSmart Home Server Status Indicators

Jeff Handley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:29:04 GMT

I posted an entry that Google Reader isn't picking up for some reason. Go check it out here.

Technorati Tags: HP MediaSmart Server,Windows Home Server,WHS,Family Photos

NIN Concert Review

Jeff Handley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 07:29:48 GMT

It was a couple of weeks ago now, but Kelly and I went to the Nine Inch Nails concert in Seattle. I had really been looking forward to going, and let me tell you, Trent did not disappoint me one bit. The show was absolutely amazing.

I must admit, and offer as a disclaimer, that I'm not much of a concert-goer. I think my last concert before this one was seeing Dishwalla perform in a dive bar in Cincinnati after winning 2 tickets from Q102--that was in either 1996 or 1997. I think there were 20 people there to see them. Before that, I saw Live perform at Miami University (Oxford, OH); that was a good show. I've been to only a few other concerts, so altogether, I don't have much of a baseline to compare NIN's Lights in the Sky show to. That being said...

The show blew me away. Not only was Trent and his band playing an outstanding mix of old and new, and doing so really well, the visual effects used were simply mind-boggling. They had what appeared to be a translucent stage-width touch-screen display that they repeatedly used in front of the stage. They also had a huge screen behind the stage, and they used the 2 in unison very well.

The screen in front of the stage was often displaying effects such as rain, which made it look like the band was playing outside in a storm. But there were many times when Trent and others would get really close to, or touch the screen (which appeared to be flexible), and it would react to them in spectacular ways.

I don't want to give away any more spoilers, so I won't say anymore regarding the details of the show. But if you are a NIN fan of any sort, do yourself a favor and buy some tickets for the show nearest you. And give Trent a break about having to reschedule a couple of the shows already... he is really pushing his voice to the max with this performance, and he needs to take care of his throat! He's simply incredible and it was great to see him perform live. Oh, and his band did a great job too. :-)

I was going to link to the Q102 website (WKRQ.com), but MAN is it hideous!

My first panoramic picture

Jeff Handley — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 06:55:18 GMT

A few weeks ago, we took a day trip down to the Mt. Rainier National Park. We took tons of pictures and some of the views were absolutely spectacular. At one point, we walked down a trail onto the river bed of the White River, and there was a log bridge going over the river. The scene was just breathtaking. I hadn't ever used the Stitch Assist feature on our Canon PowerShot S3 IS, and I decided that was the time to try it out.

I took 3 pictures, using the highest resolution in the "Landscape" mode. The other night, I finally got around to trying to stitch them together. I went and grabbed Windows Live Photo Gallery for the task, and it did a great job for me. Here's the result. This is now the desktop background on my machine at home and at work. At work, I have resized and rescaled the picture to fit my 3360x1050 needs.