Steve Harman digs in and solves a longtime mystery for me regarding VPN connections and default gateways on remote networks.

If you’ve read my blog for any length of time, you know I tend to go on and on about the virtues of blogging and participating in Open Source projects.

This is amusing. I tried to view a post on Slashdot and got the following error page.

Today I turn 32 years old.

** How do you uniquely identify a person, without divulging the identity of that person? **For example, given a set of personal artifacts, how would I arrange the set of artifacts grouped by the person to which they belonged?

Yesterday I mentioned that Jeff Atwood and Jon Galloway wrote an Identicon implementation for .NET. It works beautifully, but they distributed the code as a Web Site Project, which I cannot deploy to my blog as is.

In order to promote the book Windows Developer Power Tools: Turbocharge Windows Development with More Than 140 Free and Open Source Tools, O’Reilly is declaring January 19^th^ (aka today) to be “Windows Developer Tools Day”.

We often hear that the current state of software development is still dysfunctional. Scott Rosenberg recently wrote a book to that effect called Dreaming In Code. He takes takes a look at the question Why is software so hard? According to Scott, Software developement’s history is marred by poor quality, missed deadlines, and cost overruns, primarily due to a persistent dysfunctional culture.

Looks like Beckham is moving to La La Land. Sure, he is no longer on the English national team, nor does he start for Real Madrid, but I bet he’s still got some good playing days in those legs, and will definitely be a huge lift for the level of play in the MLS, or at least for the struggling Galaxy.

I’m currently working on an interesting project to develop a series of HTTP services used by games running on the RIM Blackberry. These services will enable players to compete against one another (though not in real time) in various games and see high scores, challenge friends, etc…. It brings a social aspect to gaming on your blackberry device.

While I really enjoyed the holidays, one part was really difficult for me. There was some great discussions happening about Subtext in the mailing list and in various blog posts, but I was too busy to really get involved.

Not too long ago I announced that my wife and I are expecting a baby this year as part of our world domination plans. Adding fuel to our plans is the discovery that this year is a special year according to the Chinese Zodiac.

K. Scott Allen, Jayson Knight, and Keyvan Nayyeri all tagged me, so despite my general antipathy towards these viral questionnaire memes (they remind me of that silly slambook fad in grade school), this one is interesting enough for me to respond.

Here’s wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays. For Christmas, I received a defective video card as a warranty replacement for my defective video card. Thanks Dell! The replacement card was more defective than the one I returned.

No, this was definitely not a good sight for me. With my team pressing the attack, an unfortunate turnover left our defense out of position to help as the opposing team quickly capitalized. (Click on any pic for a larger view).

Clean drinking water piped to my house is something I take for granted (yes, even in Los Angeles). When I stop to think about it a bit, I can’t imagine how tough it must be to not have clean drinking water.

Today my team had a friendly preseason game against Hollywood United. They fielded a mixture of a few players from their 40 and over team, but most of the players were from their main team.

I don’t suffer from classic OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), but I do sometimes have OCD tendencies. Just ask my poor wife when we’re having dinner while my mind is still trying to resolve a thorny programming problem. Earth to Phil. Are you on this planet?