No, this post will make no mention of Paris Hilton. Promise. (Fully realizing that if I had mentioned her, it would attract an undesirable crowd via Google).

In the 1998 movie, The Big Hit, the protagonists kidnap the daughter of an extremely wealthy Japanese businessman. When they call to deliver the ransom notice, they turn to Gump who employs a brand name Trace Buster to prevent police from tracing the call.

My first couple computers (TRS 80 and Commodore 128) led very solitairy lives. Though they had the constant company of a human companion, they lacked the familiar company of their own kind. I wonder if they longed for a form of communication that didn’t require a fur-less primate jabbing his fingers at a keyboard.

I saw this post on Scoble’s Link Blog…

UPDATE: I wrote a post with notes on getting this to work with ASP.NET 2.0.

My friend Walter points out some common sense advice about how not to get fired for the content of your blog. Of course this issue has been beaten to a pulp in the larger blogosphere, but one thing he mentioned caught my attention.

Currently, the only plug-in model supported by RSS Bandit is the IBlogExtension interface. This is a very limited interface that allows developers to write a plug-in that adds a menu option to allow the user to manipulate a single feed item.

A coworker sent me this video of some of the most amazing breakdancing I’ve seen. And no, this isn’t that pop locker dude. Check out the way he does push-ups near the end. Amazing.

Jet Brains released a free upgrade to their ReSharper product. Let me tell you, using this product feels like walking on land after a long stint trying to walk under water.

Via Dare’s blog, I found this interesting post on Random Number Generation on Michael Brundage’s website. My undergrad thesis was on the topic of pseudorandom number generation so I thought I’d take the two classes he provided for a quick spin.

Yes folks, it’s true. After working a while in VS.NET, it suddenly stops and asks if I’d like to send an error report to Microsoft. Then it shuts down. Almost like clockwork. This creates a very good time for me to take a break, stretch, and meditate on how much work I just lost as I was just about to hit the save icon.

My coworker sent me this link and it just cracks me up. A bitter blog.

For my personal coding projects at home, I’ve been using the free one-user version of SourceGear vault for my personal source control needs. As you know, having proper source control is #1 on The Joel Test.

Today, my boss, the CTO, announced that I’m leaving the company to join the adult movie industry. Don’t worry, I’m actually not out to challenge the supremacy of John Holmes. That just happens to be the typical way he likes to announce the departure of employees. I’m just joining the seeming legion of developers who are going independent.

Don Park outlines an interesting potential solution to Google’s proposed Auto Link feature of its Toolbar. Essentially his solution is to allow content author’s to opt-in via tagging content for auto-linking.

My friends are always looking out for me. Apparently Tre (aka Macktastic Tre Flava) realized that as an elevated player, I was in dire need of a pimp name. So he helpfully sent me a link to the Pimp Name Generator one of the many useful utilities on PlayerAppreciate.com.

It’s really coming down out there. On the freeway today I started hydroplaning a bit. Be careful out there. I’ve been pretty quiet on this blog due to being very busy. I have some big personal news (no, we’re not pregnant) to announce, but I promised not to announce it till others announce it.

I want an add-in to my instant messaging apps whereby if someone responds to a message by me with just the word “ok”, it doesn’t pop an instant message window if I’ve closed the window. Perhaps it can filter any messages with just the word “ok” and flash the system tray or something. Anything. Just don’t get in my way.

My friend Thomas Wagner has a small epiphany of sorts. At first, I thought he was writing the biography of my first year at my current job. But apparently this is quite common among businesses.

There’s a house on fire a couple of blocks away. It’s a veritable light show down there with nearly 10 or so fire trucks arriving on the scene.