This weekend, Catherine and I participated in 2 charity walks this weekend. The first one was the Superwalk for Parkinson's. The Parkinson's Superwalk was extra special because of the passing of my Grandpa last week.

Thanks to everyone who was kind enough to donate, Catherine and I managed to raise over $1,000 for Parkinson's research, hopefully next year we wont have to! If you would still like to donate you can still sponsor me using the instructions here.

Today, Catherine and I also participated in the 15th Annual HIV/AIDS Walk for Life. We decided to bring along Daisy along for the walk and she got pretty tired after 1km so I ended up having to carry her for the rest (4km) of the walk.

Technorati Tags: parkinson's - hiv - aids - charity - walk

Recently I installed Windows Vista and I noticed that after installing it all of my purchased music from  iTunes was gone (kind of). Normally this wouldn't be an issue but I had bought the entire U2 library and I can't lose that!

When you install Vista overtop of Windows XP, everything is moved to a folder named Windows.old. For some strange reason, the new search in Vista will not search Windows.old!

To restore your purchased music go to C:\Windows.old\Documents and Settings\Your Old UserName\My Documents\My Music\iTunes

Copy all of the folders in here to C:\Users\Your Username\Music\iTunes

Next in iTunes go to File->Add Folder to iTunes and select C:\Users\Your Username\Music\iTunes this will add all of the files to iTunes. You will have to re-authorize the files to play on your new installation of Vista. If there is an easier way please let me know! You only have to re-authorize it once.

[ Currently Playing : The Entire Purchased Library of U2]

When my Grandpa was 17 he joined the Canadian Navy just for the free boots. Little did he know that during his service in the Navy he would meet Winston Churchill, become one of the first Candians to learn how to use radar, chase the Bismarck, ram a U-Boat and storm the beaches of Normandy on D-Day.

I loved hearing his stories about the war but despite the many adventures he had, he always spoke out against war. If you asked him, he would say that his greatest achievement was the family that he raised after the war.

My Grandpa passed away today. He was a great man who I respected a lot. The impact he had on my life will be carried with me until the day I die. I am not very good at putting it into words but I will miss him a lot.

My friend and fellow team member at work Jonas is blogging. His stuff is definetly worth checking out.

NYAHHHH!

I have to disagree with Don on the use of enums instead of booleans. Using an enum instead of a boolean may be more readable but you are bound to run into a true, false, maybe wtf.

Instead of a long parameter list I like to use a parameter object. 

So instead of:

string SomeStringManipulation(strInput, true, false, true, true, false)

I would use the following:

string SomeStringManipulation(StringManipulationArgs args)

Now if I want to change the number of arguments that are passed into the SomeStringManipulation function I only have to change it in one spot and the code is more maintainable.

Tonight I finished my examples for the upcoming Edmonton code camp. I think that they really show the strengths of the effort that John Lam has been putting in to bridge Ruby and the CLR.

After the code camp, I think I will create a couple of screencasts showing how to setup the RubyCLR (something that I am going to skip in my presentation because it isn't easy) and I will also add my code samples to the code camp site for download.

I also spent a couple of hours on Saturday putting together the swag bags for code camp and I still have more swag to add to them. Just for showing up everyone is going to get some great stuff from our contributors. If you are reading this and you have not yet signed up, I suggest you head on over to http://registration.edmontoncodecamp.com and sign up because we are getting pretty close to being full.

Last night I played poker with Catherine, my uncle and my cousin and I pulled off a Royal Flush with clubs!!!

For those that aren't familiar with it, a royal flush is the best hand in poker and the odds of getting one are about 650,000 to 1. Unfortunately, I didn't win much money off of it because everyone else had crap.

After watching John Bristowe's demo on Atlas last Thursday and seeing him use Windows Vista RC1 during the demo, I have decided to install Windows Vista RC1 on my desktop.

It is a quiet Saturday and I am hung over so I figure I will  have a lot of time to sleep while I wait for the long installation process. Hopefully, I will go to bed and when I wake up Vista will be installed. I will update this post as it installs.

 Update #1: I currently see a gray and black screen telling me "Please wait a moment while Windows prepares to start for the first time". There is also a lot of this action "..............................."

Update #2: This isn't taking as long as I thought and I haven't went to bed yet. It is completing the installation now. How will I sleep off my hangover now?

 Update #3: Completing the installation is taking forever. I am off to bed. Hopefully it will be done when I get up.

Update #4: I am awake now. This post must be popular because it seems like everyone read it and knew that I was sleeping and tried to phone me. I now see a screen asking me for a username and password, and login icon. Being a geek, I am going to pick the robot icon. 

I have made it through all the setup screens and now Vista is checking my computers performance, I hope Vista isn't disappointed with it.

Logging in for the first time now...Success! This rules, the experience is pleasant and my video card is only a NVidia GeForce2 Ti. Too bad I have a poker game to go to or else I would play around a bit more.

[ Currently Playing : Kill Me In My Sleep - Chad Vangaalen - Infiniheart (5:59) ]

Scott's post about changing his colours in his Visual Studio IDE to be closer to the colours in TextMate got me thinking about how I customize my environment and how my environment is different from other developers.

The first thing I do when i start VS on a new machine is change my background colour and my font. Currently I am using a gray background and although Scott takes a shot at us gray backgrounders I find it a lot easier on the eyes. Also, since I sit by a window there is less reflection on my monitor with a gray background than there is with a black background.

The font I am currently using at work is called AnonymousRegular, it is a Windows version of the popular Mac TrueType font Anonymous 9. It is quite slick looking give it a shot.

Next I add-in NUnit, FxCop, and NAnt into my external tools list. You will save tons of time if they can be launched right from your IDE.

The last thing that I do is change my mouse buttons so that I can mouse lefty. I switched about 2 months ago and although I am left handed I recommend it to people who aren't left handed by nature. You will feel like a complete asshat for about 2 weeks but once you get used to it you will find that the soreness in your arms and wrists is reduced significantly. Plus as an added bonus, when you move your hand from your mouse to the keyboard, you have less distance to travel.

 Let me know what settings you change either in the comments or on your blog. I am interested in finding out what other developers do to make their IDE unique.

September 23rd, Catherine and I will be doing the Parkinson's Superwalk at Rundle park here in Edmonton. I have been doing this walk for the past 3 years hoping that it is contributing to a finding a cure for Parkinson's.

Every year I do the walk for my Grandpa. This year is going to be tough because on my birthday this year my Grandpa was sent to the hospital suffering from the effects of Parkinson's and has not came out since.

This weekend, I am going back home to see him for what may be the last time so it would mean a lot to me if you could sponsor me (or if you don't like me sponsor Catherine) in this year's SuperWalk by clicking the link below:

Sponsor Me in the 2006 Parkinson's Superwalk

Thanks!

Update: I have been informed that people had problems with the previous link, I have updated the link but you will now have to put in the following information to sponsor me:

• First Name: Steven
• Last Name: Rockarts
• Province: Alberta
• City: Edmonton