I finally decided to quit being a cheap-ass and so I purchased web hosting with WebHost4Life. Now my blog is hosted at https://haacked.com/ rather than that old ugly domain name (https://haacked.com/).

Thanks to the help of the very talented Joel Bernarte, I have a nice new look to the site. He created the logo you see at top. I then spent a bunch of time trying to modify the layout and Css to do the logo justice.

See, this is exactly the type of comment spam I’m hoping to avoid.

Another option is to simply remove the web interface for comments and only allow comments via the Comment API.

I now have a WebHost4Life account. I’ll be moving my site there sometime in the future. If you sign up for webhost4life, be sure to use this link or refer to me. :) http://www.webhost4life.com/default.asp?refid=haacked

In an email to Ian Griffiths I mentioned that I wished he had a comments section because some of his posts are so intriguing I have to reply. ;) His reply relayed a common angst regarding enabling comments on a blog, comment spam

I’m trying out this sweet plug-in for the Windows version of iTunes. After installing this plug-in, you can click on the musical notes at the bottom of w.Bloggar and it will insert information about the currently playing song wherever your cursor is located. This page lists plugins for Winamp versions 2,3, and 5 as well as iTunes (the one I’m using).

I received a lot of comments (a lot for me) on my post entitled “The Difficulties of Language Design”.

This is too funny to be made up. Raymond’s first death threat.

Apparently I’m not the only one who’s been contacted by the son of the late Democratic Republic of Congo President Laurent Desire Kabila. I’ve also been contacted by several other members of royalty or political dissidents who are fleeing the Congo.

This doesn’t bode well for my buddy Kyle.

Found this out in the blogosphere:

I have a confession to make. While at Tech-Ed, I did some bad things. Please look upon me not with a judging eye, but try to have a forgiving stance.

My car hates me. Or it should. Last week I made two round trips to SD. Last Friday night, I returned from SD, and Akumi and I left the following Saturday morning to drive up to San Francisco. I used to love road trips, but after all the hours of sitting on my ass in my car this weekend, I’m done for the time being (or at least for two weeks since we’re going camping).

So we’re going to keep the Media Center PC since we won’t be able to get enough to buy a Tablet PC if we sold it and since we can get a lot of use from it. I have a lot more to write about Tech-Ed and my fabulous weekend in San Francisco. Stay tuned.

Last night I attended the Microsoft Office System party at the Hard Rock Cafe. The “Unauthorized Rolling Stones” were playing and the crowd was into it. I was primarily there for the food at first, but after a few free drinks, I was having a jolly good time talking to people. Even met a techie from Juneau, Alaska. Though I live in L.A., I still claim Anchorage since my family still lives there. So it was nice to bond with another Alaskan. Especially as I didn’t figure the Alaskan government would be using .NET.

The best part of Tech-Ed 2004 is how Microsoft puts us developers in touch with the people who are creating the languages and tools we use. They’ve accomplished this in two ways.

My good buddy makes the Kyle following comment on my last post:

It’s probably too early to tell, but Don Box and Doug Purdy gave what I bet will be the most interesting talk I will hear at Tech-Ed. This was the opening talk for the Connected Systems track which focuses on that hot TLA, SOA (Service Oriented Architecture).

I have a new personal record time for the drive from Los Angeles to San Diego.  I believe I made it in 1.5 hours.  It was a harrowing drive, but I made it safely and already received some free code generation software.  Now to find some food and watch the Alias finale.