I love my wife.

Seriously, I love her a lot.  Let me put this statement in context.  I am a homebody.  I hate crowds of people (i.e. shopping malls on the weekend, attending Redskin games at FedEx stadium even when the ticket is free).  Even when we have people over to the house, I like to keep it to one or two other families max, so that I can actually speak with my guests.

Tomorrow we are hosting the annual fish-fry of my wife's extended family (50-70 people) for the fifth time.  I do the grilling and frying.  I don't mind that actually, I like to cook and love to BBQ and grill.  It's all the people from noon until almost midnight.  Plus the swarm of flies that will infest my home for the next week from all the little kids going in and out all day.  The event used to be hosted by one of my wife's aunts for years.  Life changes and she wasn't able to host it for several years.  A couple of the cousins tried to get it going again, but it was often to far for most of the family to travel.  Then we bought our current house with a yard and the my mother-in-law and her sisters asked us to host it.  That was seven years ago, and the only way I have gotten out of it was to plan a week long vacation out of the country.

It's a lot of work to put this large of an event together.  We get lots of help from my sister-in-law and other friends, cousins and the sort.  The in-laws provide most of the fish and meet for grilling.  We provide the house and charcoal/propane.  Others bring drinks and deserts, assorted casseroles.  There's plenty to eat, in fact there is always too much and I end up picking up more lbs than I care to mention.  Finally there is the cleanup.  I can't sleep in late, because the chairs and tables we rented have to be returned the first thing in the morning.  Then there is the trash, so much trash.

Still, the smile on my wife's face during and after make it all worthwhile.  Let's face it, I love her a lot.

jQuery - Javascript Framework of Choice, with a little help

I've been mucking about with web development since...well, let's just say I remember writing my first HTML in 1993 with NotePad.  Things have changed a lot over the years and I still like to use a text editor to write my HTML and Javascript.  Several years back the world of Javascript exploded with a load of free, open source javascript libraries that made life so much easier to build dynamic pages. 

There are several great libraries, prototype/script.aculo.us, Dojo, MooTools, ExtJs (now part of Sencha), but a few years ago I started doing a lot of work with Microsoft SharePoint and starting MOSS 2007 I started to learn jQuery and jQuery UI.  Right away I was able to use jQuery to make SharePoint appear less 'SharePointy' as one of my clients put it.

Clinching my decision was when I found SPServices, Marc Anderson's library for SharePoint Web Services.  Now not only can I make SharePoint look good, but I can build truly interactive robust applications without cracking open Visual Studio everytime.  If you are are designing for SharePoint and not using jQuery and SPServices, then you are doing yourself a great disservice.