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.

I finally love my Samsung Omnia i910 and they stop making it

So last Friday I woke to find that my phone was locked. No biggie, I set the password and use it all the time. But when I attempted to enter the password I noticed that the highlighted number was totally wrong. Eventually I failed to enter the right code and it kindly offered to let me enter "a1b2c3", but I could not change the virtual keyboard to "sym 123" to put in the password.

Hoping beyond all hope, I tried a soft reset...no good. Then I tried pulling the battery out...still no good. Then I tried a hard reset...still no good. Time to head to the Verizon Wireless store.

Let me just say it now: "Skippy does NOT like sales people." This seems like such a harsh, broad statement, I know, but it's true. Now, customer service reps are different - partly because Skippy used to be one many years ago, back when AOL was Quantum Computer Services. Still, I always try to keep Skippy on a tight leash when I head into get support. So imagine my pleasent surprise when I visited the local Verizon Wireless store on Prince William Parkway and they had me heading out the door in less than 30 minutes with a replacement phone with my email tested and phone transferred!! (I have a Windows Mobile phone so all of my contacts were synced on my PC at home).

What turned out to be an even bigger surprise for me was that the replacement phone also seemed to have the latest BIOS and applications installed. Even though it still had the old apps, including the VZappZone - been there, done that - they included several new apps in the SamsungOnlineWidget, (touchscreen slide interface). Best of all they have added the Microsoft Marketplace for Mobile! Keeping in mind that Skippy rather enjoys our iPod Touch and the AppStore, I think I am starting to win him over with the new MarketPlace and the nice selection of apps available, Free and otherwise. In fact, since I got my new phone both Skippy and I are mesmerized by the Skyfire browser we discovered in the Marketplace. Enough that when I left for a doctor's appointment today, I left my iPod Touch at home and used the Omnia to connect to the free wifi at the office. Anyone on Windows Mobile 6.x should defintely install this browser on their mobile device.

Skyfire has pulled of a real winner with this mobile browser. OK, I know lots of folks have their favorite Facebook and Twitter apps that have special features. Honestly, I have just use the Facebook branded apps on my Touch and my previous Omnia, but Skippy keeps complaining about the missing features. What the folks at Skyfire Labs seemed to have figured out is that people like me and Skippy want to be able to see a single page with all of our Facebook, Twitter, news feeds in the order they arrived and be able to add comments without having to do a seperate login every time.

But what finally got Skippy was the Flash support. Yes, I said Flash support on a mobile browser. I had to see how good this was, so I jumped over to tv.com and pulled up NCIS. Sure enough, I started watching a full episode with picture. Now, I will admit I was using the WiFi in my house instead of the 'broadband' dialup on my phone, but let's face it, I was watching TV on my mobile. Naturally, Skippy wanted more and jumped over to hulu.com to watch shows and clips from there, but alas Skippy was not pleased. Turns out hulu.com does not like anonymous IP addresses and would not let us view the shows.

All of this has led me to rediscover my Samsung Omnia and the Windows Mobile 6.1 OS and enjoy it as much as I did when I first got it so long ago. This seemingly minor updates might be enough to curb Skippy's infatuation with Android phones...might be. Of course, now I have to be more careful with my phone as Samsung has come out with a new Omnia with a new footprint that would require me to get a new case and other accessories. Skippy figures if we are going to upgrade we might as well try to a new OS and get a super cool phone with thousands of apps and all the Google add-ons. I keep reminding him that phone envy is not healthy. I can't repeat his retort.

ModNation Racers Is Here!!!

It's probably been three months now since I saw my first video demo of this oh so kewl game. I've always enjoyed racer. I tried out the demo for LittleBigPlanet which allowed customizing my SackBoy, but some of the worlds got a little creepy for my taste - not a big fan of the "Day of the Dead" motif.

ModNation Racer has all the great customization features, plus some awesome racing. With the split screen, upto four people can play at once without going online. Speaking of online, the options are pretty robust too. The Tag story line is fairly interesting, but I love just doing the Quick Race. Still the best part is Customizing your racer and kart. My daughter and I mad a few mods with the demo I downloaded last week. When I inserted the disk for the first time today, the software found our custom mods and imported them so we could use them right away. We haven't uploaded any yet, but for those who are interested there are some great Custom Mods at ModNationRacerHQ.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the load time. There were many reports of slow load times on the various forums during the beta test. Are the load times long? Yes, but if your like me and like to repeat the same race to learn the tracks and improve times, then you only have to suffer once. Honestly, I don't know any game on PS3 or PS2 that doesn't have a long load between chapters. Would I prefer more of the approach that Burnout Paradise takes of providing more useful content during loads? Yes, but again it's really not that long and I suspect that the future updates will continue to improve the load times.

In the coming weeks I'll be posting more indepth post on my experiences with this awesome game.