Favorite News Story of the Day

So this has to be my favorite news story of the day. Queen Elizabeth is now the proud owner of a iPod mini. I Love the fact that somehow that is a news worth event. That is almost as bad as the Associated Press marking the story about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes getting engaged as urgent.

AJAX + .NET = AJAX.NET

Well, this will be my first techincal post in a while. I've been studying for my MCAD, and for some reason, that has not made me want to post anything to technical, however this one is too good not to share. Of course I've been reading about AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript and XML) for a while and have really loved the concept. The bacis concept is using Javascript and XML to send the data back and forth the the server instead of making a new page request. A new page request forces the page to reload on the users machine, where AJAX does the request in the background and is invisible to the user. You may have already used a web application that uses AJAX, if you've tried Google Suggest, you've used a AJAX enable web application.

Well, of course the idea of doing an application that uses this technology (group of existing technologies actually) has been intriguing to me, but I haven't the time or energy to work out how to implement it in our environment here at work. We are a Microsoft shop working mostly in C# but also doing some VB.NET stuff. Then I came across AJAX.NET. Looking at the documentation, this is going to make it so easy to do a proof of concept. If you have to do a lot of web user interface, check out AJAX.NET, while it isn't a perfect solution to the web user interface problem, it's definitely a step in the right direction.

A little shake

This afternoon there was a 4.9 magnitude earthquake, in the greater Los Angeles area. When it happened all my co-workers and I looked at each other, and just commented on the fact that it wasn't that big of an earthquake, and that it seemed to be a roller. We didn't even get out of our chairs. Then we discussed that the building we worked in is on rollers. If it was our first earthquake I seriously doubt we would of been that calm, or of blown it off like we did.

The Fun of Work

So this weekend the "Boys" got together. While that may sounds like the start of a faternity movie, it was actually, my two brothers, my Dad and I getting together and working on my Aunt's place. I'm not going to get into all that we were doing, but talk about the feeling of it. You see I worked with my Dad and Brothers in construction for ten years, but due to health reasons I needed to find a new line of work. The physical exersion that the job demand is too much for my asthmatic lungs to handle. Never the less, I loved working with my Dad and Brothers. Sometimes the work was very hard, sometimes it was very frustrating, the work and each other, but in the end when it was finished it was something we did and built together. That is the feeling I loved, and still love.

The other thing about working together is well, we are all a bunch of goofs! No one can make me laugh harder than my brothers or my Dad, they are just naturally funny people that are a lot of fun to be around, even when you are working. In fact saturday at lunch they had me laughing so hard, I couldn't breath. Just as brother K would do something so funny, that I'm laughing so hard, that I'm going to turn blue, I look to over at brother J and he is doing the same thing, and of course each time Dad looks at either of them they have a "I have no idea why he is laughing so hard, it wasn't me" look on their faces and that made me laugh even harder. The pure comedic timing my family posses is incredible.

Another thing that I really miss is the feeling like we are all taking care of each other. There is no corporate political games. There is also no clear cut lines, as everyone is willing to do whatever it takes to get the job done. Dad will dig trenches, just like all the rest of us would. There isn't any, oh, that is a different department's job, we were all the deparments wrapped up in one.

The weekend was very hard on me physically, It was dusty, and dirty work, and not all of the work was pleasant, but we had a lot of fun working together.