I stumbled upon an very interesting writing tool called WriteRoom. What’s interesting is that it isolates you from the multitude of distractions of working in our digital environment. It does this by controlling your entire screen. In the default mode you are presented with a black screen. Typed words are green. For those old enough to remember, its reminiscent of the mainframe terminal days. Very retrograde. WriteRoom uses the escape key to toggle between its default display and your cluttered desktop. Its a free download … give it a try, it may surprise you, as it did me with how well it improved my focus.

I am back to working only one job. The timing could not be better. Next weekend is a three day weekend and I have no work commitments. It all belongs to me… YES!

Status of the ASP.NET, C# reading/study spree (pages read/total pages):

• Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform, Third Edition by Andrew Troelsen (616/954)
• Programming C# : Building .NET Applications with C# by Jesse Liberty (320/612)
• Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005 by Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta (605/1210
• Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference by Dino Esposito (100/703)
• Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics by Dino Esposito (0/629)
• Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, and Kathy Sierra (206/629)
• CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter (648/648)
• Design Patterns in C# by Steven John Metsker (12/430)

Status: (2507/5815) 43% complete.. Not to shabby. I did add Design Patterns in C# to my reading list. It was referenced to often to ignore. Jeffrey Richter’s book, CLR via C# was so good that I had a hard time putting it down. This is a must read for all C# coders.

Problem not solved. While attempting to install DSL service using a provided CD I got the three whirrs eject response. Doing the “option”, “apple”, “p”, “r” keys on a restart had no effect this time. I called Apple technical support, who concluded that the CD drive is defective. They sent out a prepaid shipping container which arrived the following day. The system is now with Apple for repair. Fortunately, I purchased one of the new Mac Pro systems so am not experiencing the dreaded Apple withdrawal pains.

Problem solved. The solutions was simple, and I should probably have known what to do. To put it simply, on restart, after the initial audio announcement, hold the “option”, “apple”,”p”, and “r” keys until the startup audio announcement sounds a second time. Did this, and now when I insert a CD the MacBook Pro no longer gives me the three whirrs eject response.

I am having problems with my MacBook Pro CD drive. It can’t read some CD’s. Specifically, the Apple CD that came with the new wireless Mighty Mouse just gets ejected. I experienced this same problem while attempting to install Windows XP Pro in both Bootcamp and Parallels. I also experienced problems ripping CD’s with iTunes. In every case, the system attempts to read the CD three times … I can hear the whirr of the drive spinning up at each attempt. Then the CD is ejected.

When the system can’t read a CD in iTunes, iTunes freezes up and the disk just spins… Force Quite iTunes is required to eject the offending CD.

There is no mention of this problem on Apples web site. However, a little searching on the Internet yields a few others with similar experiences. I did discover a work-around. Its not a good one but it works. What I do is make a copy of the CD on my Dell work computer. For some reason the MacBook Pro will accept the copied CD. Now that’s a good advertisement for the Dell and not so good for Apple.

My intention is to contact Apple for resolution. I hate the thought of having to ship the system off for repair or … replacement.

This has been a very busy month. Started a new 12 month contract while continuing 1/2 time putting the final touches on the last one. As the saying goes, “It never rains, but it …” I do love it though. Both of these opportunities allow me to write lots of C# code. It just doesn’t get any better then this.

On top of all this great work, my Mom is visiting. She lives in Florida, not far from Disney World. She is used to the heat so our Phoenix temperatures really don’t bother her. Actually she enjoys our heat since our humidity is so low. It’s really great that she could come. We have lots of Mom’s cookies, and her world famous beet soup and home made noodles. We will be traveling to Florida for her next birthday, which is this coming February. Mom will be 90 years young. It will be a big bash with lots of family and friends.

The last few days were spent in a little cabin north of Payson, AZ, elevation about 9000 feet. So while the temperatures soared to 107F in Phoenix we enjoyed a nice 76F. The nearest civilization was some 17 miles away. We really roughed it in this 2000 sq/ft, three bedroom, two bath home, with all the amenities, i.e., electricity, hot water, AC, phone, etc.. The only thing we lacked was high speed internet. This was that longest I have been without an internet connection in years.

It was really good to get away and just relax. At this altitude and with all the fresh air I slept like a baby. Even took afternoon naps. The only computer time was spent on my daily journal entries. I did have some quality reading time. Made excellent progress on Pro C# 2005 and CLR via C#. Expect to complete each this month.

To top off this vacation, I purchased Sid Meier’s Civilization IV. I really wanted this game, however, should not have made the purchase. It’s a superior game, but a huge time sink. My first game took almost 3 hours. I love the game but it should come with warning label on the package; DANGER: TIME BLACK HOLE.

Its been a very busy two weeks since my last post. We are in the final weeks of of completing a major development project at work. Its been a fun project, with lots of challenges, however its time to make an end. I only have two more features to code, then some cleanup. There will be some bug fixes and the typical last minute changes once the complete product is viewed by management. Overall its been a really fun project which has sharpened my ASP.NET C# skills.

I have added two more books to my reading collection. They are “A Developers Guide to SQL Server 2005”, Bob Beauchemin and Dan Sullivan, and “Design Patterns in C#”, Steven John Metsker. Both are excellent in my view. Of the 9 books now on my reading list, I have read a 1601/7004 pages or about 23%. I need to pick up the pace some to meet my end of the year goal.

My MacBook Pro seems to get better every day. I purchase and installed Paralles which gives me the capability to run virtual operating systems. I tried Apples Bootcamp, but did not like having to reboot the machine to run Windows XP. With Parallels I can run Windows XP in a OS X window. The product is reasonably priced and runs fast. Currently I have installed the Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Express and find it runs faster then my PC system at work. Now I have one computer that really meets all of my computing needs.

Speaking of computing needs… my 3+ year old Compaq Presario desktop HDD died. The machine suddenly got very slow … checked it for spy ware, root kits, and viruses and found it clean. Purchased SpinWrite, but all it reported was “immanent disk failure … backup now”. As I attempted to move files it died. No! I did not have a backup. So all is lost. Fortunately it was not my main computer so the loss was not catastrophic. The MacBook is on a backup schedule that I check in light of this incident.

Noted today that Technorati reports its been 91 days since my last post to this blog. While a little out of date, the number 91 really hit hard. Its is a not very remarkable number as blogs go. Many blogs start with a flurry of entries that slowly fade to none. Like so many projects, we start with such grand intentions. But over time life’s events lead us in other directions. The number 91 hit hard because I saw myself as being different. I would post often with interesting, meaningful, witty, bla-bla-bla,…. articles. But alas, I failed… However, I am committed to push on.

For the past couple of months I have been of a ASP.NET, C# reading/study spree. Currently I am reading and working through the following:

• Pro C# 2005 and the .NET 2.0 Platform, Third Edition by Andrew Troelsen
• Programming C# : Building .NET Applications with C# by Jesse Liberty
• Pro ASP.NET 2.0 in C# 2005 by Matthew MacDonald and Mario Szpuszta
• Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Core Reference by Dino Esposito
• Programming Microsoft ASP.NET 2.0 Applications: Advanced Topics by Dino Esposito
• Head First Design Patterns by Elisabeth Freeman, Eric Freeman, Bert Bates, and Kathy Sierra
• CLR via C#, Second Edition by Jeffrey Richter

The overall page count of these books is staggering… to get done I just make sure I read at least a few pages every day. So far it looks like I am something like 20% done. At this rate, I won’t get done until the end of the year. I am approaching these readings a little differently then my 7 book CSS reading spree last September. This time I am reading a little from most books every day. I find each book to be excellent. Really note worthy is “CLR via C#”. The author Jeffrey Richter, has a writing style that makes the most complex concepts simple to understand.

Last December I made the transition from Mac to PC. It was painful, but I did it. As it turned out it was just to painful and now I am back to Mac.

My new Mac is a Mac Book Pro, Dual 2G with a 7200rpm 100G Hard Drive and 1G RAM. This is one fantastic machine. What is spactacular is that I can dual boot into Windows XP for those times I need to code .NET stuff. This system runs cool and quite and ith the dual core processor and 7200rpm drive it handles .NET, no problem.

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The HP Pavilion ZD8000 was my first step away from Mac. Of all the PC’s I evaluated, this was the best. Howeve, having said that I found several annoyances that made me change. This system is heavy 9+ pounds, and runs very noisey (three fans) and hot. Its great if you live in a cold climate because it can also function as a space heater. Here in Arizona it quickly heated my office to uncomfortable temperatures.

I next moved to a Compaq V2000. This is a really nice little system. Runs cool and quite. Its light weight and easy to transport form place to place. However its a little underpowered. Bumping memory to 1.5G helped, but when using the .NET development environment it made you wait while it did stuff. With a dual processor, this would be an excellent system.