It is going to be a really busy next couple of months for concerts that I have to attend. Between now and the end of September I am going to be going to the following concerts:

- The Arcade Fire

- Nine Inch Nails

- System of a Down/The Mars Volta

- Robert Plant

- Pearl Jam.

Whew, throw in a U2 tribute band tomorrow and thats allota freakin' concerts.

My 2 year anniversary with Catherine is coming up next month but I was lucky enough to get my present early. What did she get me??? A Sony PSP!

Despite Sony wanting to own everything and control all the content on all of their products there are some cool software hacks for the PSP. Doesn't Sony realize that they would sell more units if they opened up the source to home users like me?

I have already used the Kxploit hack to run a Nintendo emulator on my PSP so I can experience the old school goodness of the Nintendo games of the 80s.

There is also a hack to use a web browser on your PSP. Sony PSPs have built in WiFi so you can surf the net where ever you can find free WiFi if you have the web browser.

Right out of the box you without any hacks you can even use the PSP as a war driving device to find free WiFi.

In my opinion she hit it bang on with this present. To a geek like me this is an awesome anniversary present. So what do I get her? I have some stuff in mind but I can't post it here or it will blow the surprise. I have had Daisy doing some spying, assuming Daisy's intelligence is accurate I will be able to get Catherine something that she likes as much as I like my PSP!

In my opinion, there is no need to make your startup logo modal when you are loading your program. For those that don't know modal means it is when a window stays at the topmost level and that no other windows can cover it. You are basically stuck looking at it. Photoshop for example is bad for this.

I don't need to stare at your company or you program's logo while it is loading. At least if you do decide to show your logo when loading your program, please please please don't make it modal. I have other things I could be doing while your program is loading more information than it probably should be into memory. Thanks.

Update/Tip: If this happens press Windows Key + D to show the desktop and then open your other programs or folders.

I would definetly like to take a USB cable and hook it up to some other type of electronic device that has a regular power cord like a one cup coffee maker and then I can have a USB powered coffee maker. This site looks like a good start.

I had a ton of fun at the race last weekend and I can't wait for it to come back in 2006. I have a lot more pictures but these ones pretty much sum up the weekend.

A.J. Allmendinger won the poll on the weekend and set a new track record of 58.628. He was pretty much the fastest car out on the track the whole weekend and was poised to win the race but a small mistake near the end of the race cost him and he ended up having to retire his car without finishing the race.

Katherine Legge from Britain won the Toyota Atlantic race. She was very impressive the whole weekend and we were cheering for her to win. She trailed the Toyota Atlantic points leader Charles Zwolsman for most of the race but passed him and never lost the lead for the rest of the race.

Paul Tracy was in the lead for 30 laps but had car troubles and ended up in 3rd place.

This is a picture of Marcus Marshall and I. He is from Austrailia and races for team Austrailia racing along with Alex Tagliani. He was always out signing autographs for the fans and said he couldn't wait to come back to Edmonton next year.

Be sure to visit all the options undfer "Configuration" in the Admin Menu Bar above. There are 16 themes to choose from, and you can also create your own.

I am off to buy an angel for my Grandma and Grandpa. They had to put down their dog of 12 years yesterday.

Last summer when we had to put down our dog they bought me an angel and for some reason it was really comforting and in my opinion I thought it was a very nice gesture.

http://codebetter.com/blogs/raymond.lewallen/archive/2005/07/18/129345.aspx

Cec, this one is for you, it is a photomosaic made up of tons of tiny images to produce Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.

http://www.andreaplanet.com/mosaic/starrynight/

Adding an Assembly to the GAC

The Global Assembly Cache (GAC) stores assemblies that are meant to be shared by several applications that run on the computer. It is located in %WINDIR%\Assembly. Mine for example, is located in C:\WINDOWS\assembly.

There are several ways to install an assembly into the GAC:

-         Drag the assembly from your BIN folder into %WINDIR%\Assembly

-         Use the Windows Installer (this will be covered in a future article).

-         Use the Global Assembly Cache tool: gacutil.exe.

The following is an overview of the gacutil.exe tool and its commands:

The gacutil syntax should be in the following format:

gacutil [options] [assemblyName | assemblyPath | assemblyListFile]

Here are some examples:

Install an assembly to the GAC:

gacutil /i assemblyToInstall.dll

Remove an assembly from the GAC:

gacutil /r assemblyToRemove.dll

List all assemblies in the GAC:

gacutil /l

List all assemblies matching a specified name:

gacutil /l System.Web.dll

Notes:

To install the assembly it must be strongly named. I will explain this in a future article.

References:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cptools/html/cpgrfglobalassemblycacheutilitygacutilexe.asp

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;815808#kb1#kb1

The NHL is going to be back next season! The NHL lockout is over!

I am looking forward to watching the Oilers maybe do better than 8th place in their division. I am also looking forward to the 1 o'clock matinees on Saturdays. It is awesome getting out of bed and turning on the TV and watching hockey. I also missed watching highlights late at night over and over. I guess there was a lot of things I missed.

Even though I am mad at both sides for missing a year of hockey I think that the NHL will be a better game when it comes back. I would much rather see the business side of the NHL go the way of the NFL rather than the joke that is major league baseball.

Heres a quick overview from TSN on the main points of the agreement with my comments on each point:

- a hard team-by-team salary cap with a payroll of range of $21 million to $39 million (in the first year), which includes all player costs (benefits, insurance etc).

Perfect for the Oilers but bad for the Red Wings. I bet the players are kicking themselves for not accepting the $45 million dollar cap that was offered to them by the NHL to try and save last season.

- the league's total expenditure on player costs (salaries, bonuses, benefits and insurance) is not permitted to exceed 54 per cent of defined hockey-related revenue and the salary cap and payroll range will move up or down as revenues increase or decrease each year of the deal.

This seems like a good idea only if the NHL reports their revenues right. It seems sketchy for the players.

- a 24 per-cent salary rollback for any NHL player who has time remaining on an existing contract, keeping in mind that the players will receive none of the monies they were slated to earn in the lost season of 2004-05.

I look at this as punishment for missing a season. Did missing a season hurt the owners at all? I bet the Oilers made money.

- liberalized free agency (including unrestricted status at 27 by year four of the deal), a more restrictive entry level system, totally revamped salary arbitration, improved pension benefits and a revenue-sharing plan.

Unrestricted status at age 27! Players are going to be moving around like hotcakes. Very exciting!

- Age eligibility for unrestricted free agency at age 31 in 2005, 29 in 2006, 28 in 2007. In 2008, it's 27 or seven years of NHL tenure.

This also might mean Crosby won't stay very long with whoever drafts him.

So how can the players be happy with this deal??? They screwed the fans out of a season and got very little in return. Why did they have a change of heart? Was the original deal that the owners were trying to give to them way worse? I need to hear the players side. I guess after all this is over the only conclusion that I can come to is that I think Jeremy Roenick sucks for his comments and he should try doing my job and I will take his, maybe we can slide that into the agreement somewhere before it is ratified.

I think the best decision would have been to let the fans decide. We would looked out for both the owners and the players. Although I think that the owners were right and that the players were spoiled, I would have wanted a fair decision because I am a hockey player too. We would have done what is right for the game of hockey and not just for one side.

My last issue is whether Steve Yzerman is going to decide to come back and play or not. The best all around hockey play and leader of all time does not deserve to go out like he did.

I made it into the top 5 in scoring in our division, although technically I should be in 4th because I have more goals:

 PLAYER NAME                    TEAM                     GP GOALS ASSISTS POINTS
==============================.======================.==.=====.=======.======.
STACK                GERALD    PUNISHERS              14    24      24     48
DEMCHUK              CHAD      ELECTRIC MAYHEM   14    18      18     36
NIMMO                DAVE      FALCONS                   9    23      11     34
HOLMES               ROBBIE    FALCONS                13    15      18     33
ROCKARTS             STEVE     ELECTRIC MAYHEM  13    20      13     33

I got 3 points last night so that should put me into 3rd. The werid part is that I am not to far off from last year's pace and last year I won the scoring race. It seems much tougher this year but I think we will hold down that 4th and final playoff spot and then take the championship. We had a rough loss in the last 4 seconds of the game last night but I think as a team we played great. I think we are going to ride a 3 game winning streak into the playoffs.

Today we went golfing and for the first time in my life I broke 100 strokes! I shot a 95 and I attribute the great game to watching a Tiger Woods golf clinic on TV the day before. I didn't really learn anything different from watching the clinic but I think good Tiger vibes came through the TV and gave me super golfing powers. I would have shot a lot better but I shot a 10 on the last hole and lost by 1 stroke to Mike, talk about choking haha!!!

The golfing was relaxing but my blog will probably go quiet this week as I have a lot of work to do. I went to some in house training for work and despite being in training I was still assigned bugs and projects. It doesn't help that I have Friday off to go to the 1st annual West Edmonton Mall Grand Prix plus I have 2 important hockey games this week and I have to make a trip on the LRT to Rexall Place to pick up my Champ car tickets.

I might post something for my own reference about binding a Windows Form Datagrid to a Business Object because I spent too much time looking for it and it wasn't that intuitive but besides that it might be a week before I post again. But when I get back expect a lot of pictures of the race and the cars.

I have performed the Alien Autopsy on my mouse. The project has been put off because RadioShack is out of breadboards and hookup wire and they seem to be having a hard time getting it in since they were bought out by Circuit City. I would just go somewhere else but its the closest place within walking distance that I can go on my lunch break.

I also figured out that I am in serious need of a dremel. 4 hours of driving to my dad's shop is a pain if you find you missed something when hollowing out the mouse. I haven't cut holes in the side for the motors and the top still needs some work, the mouse was quite different from the one in Make but I figured out that they list glue in the tools section for a reason <g>

 Anyway here is a picture of what I have done so far, I would have done more but I got distracted by my dad's plasma table.

I installed SharpDevelop on my USB stick today. Now I can have a portable development environment to take with me whereever I go. As long as the computer that you plug your USB stick into has the .NET Framework installed you can develop anywhere! I swear I find a new use for my USB stick everyday.

This site is great http://www.howdtheyvote.ca it shows how your MP voted on recent bills in parliament.This could be great around election time.

Mmmmm Pizza: http://www.billyreisinger.com/pizza.php

I will have to give this a good read. I still need to make a pizza with the pizza cookbook I got for my birthday.

Happy Canada day to my fellow Canadians. I figure that we have it pretty good as Canadians and I think we should set an example for other countries to follow. So for Canada day I encourage anyone who reads this to do one of the following:

We are honoured to have Live 8 on Canada day:

Sign the list: http://www.live8live.com/list/

Upload your Photo: http://www.live8live.com/live8/imageHome.do

Visit the One Campaign website and subscribe to the One.org blog from the One Campaign and educate yourself:

http://www.one.org/

http://politicaltechnology.com/one/blogs/one_blog/

Sponsor a Child on WorldVision.ca:

I have sponsored a child from Mali

http://www.worldvision.ca

Or if sponsorship is not your thing give a one time gift:

http://www.worldvision.ca/home/give-a-gift/

Think of that CD you were going to buy this month, go download it and donate the money to a cause, you won't feel it, I guarentee it and I don't think Bono or Beyonce will mind.

Or instead of sitting through 20 ads before finally seeing the remake of the Longest Yard stay home and download it without the ads and sacrifice the $40 bucks to a just cause. 

Or you could find a free Canada day celebration and skip going to the bar. Booze doesn't make Canada a better country, it's the people that do.

Don't do it because you feel guilty, do it because these people work twice as hard as you and deserve to be treated as equals. Anyway that is my rant for Canada. I think that we would be a much better country if we let other companies play on the same playing field as us.

Canadian quotes:

“I just wish people would realize that anything's possible if you try. Dreams are made if people try.“ - Terry Fox

“Leave the beaten track behind occasionaly and dive into the woods. Every time you do you will be certain to find something you have never seen before” - Alexander Graham Bell

““Never again.” - Romeo Dallaire

"My friends, watch out for the little fellow with an idea" - Tommy Douglas

"Integrity is not a conditional word. It doesn't blow in the wind or change with the weather. It is your inner image of yourself, and if you look in there and see a man who won't cheat, then you know he never will." John A. MacDonald