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Interesting bug for the day: .NET .ASPX referencing a namespace that the project can’t find. First check: did the set of referenced assemblies for the project change? Nope. Second check: did the .ASPX itself change? Nope. Hmmmm…. the namespace just… disappeared.

And Penn and Tina reveal the magic… a namespace doesn’t exist in and of itself. It only exists as classes claim to belong to it. So, when even one class changes its namespace, if it was the only class that laid claim to belonging in that namespace clique, the namespace just disappears.

Makes me think of Tinkerbell in Peter Pan: so long as you believe, it’s still there. And as soon as we stopped believing, the app became non-functional with a set of run-time compilation errors. (Of COURSE that one referenced namespace was by default included everywhere, just in CASE it had some functionality you were going to need.)

Pixie dust… Pixie dust… where’d I store that Pixie dust?

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H5N1, aka avian flu, you have the honor of being the only virus I know by a name other than “bug”. The papers have added a new word to my vocabulary: “pandemic”. I assume it’s something like panic-epidemic.

Advice abounds as to how to avoid the flu: get your flu shot (it won’t help, but the authorities are still advising it). Stay away from chickens. And my favorite, from a flu expert at the UK Health Protection Agency: “Avoid being in touching distance of [birds that could be affected]. Don’t kiss chickens.”

Will keep that in mind.

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Wow…. I was already impressed by the revenue streams being generated by ringtones: the idea is that I can assign some music bit to my phone, and even down to the phone number of the person who’s calling me. When my phone rings, I hear a bit of music that I like, and the phone company gets to charge me by the song for the privilege. The more different songs I apply, the more money they make, and the more my tastes change, the more money they make. Since it’s generally not very expensive to set up an individual ring tone, they get a nice revenue stream that I don’t notice as a significant outflow from my wallet.

New thing seen out on Verizon’s site: ringback tones. Now I can assign basically my own call-waiting music on a per-caller basis: while my caller is waiting for me to pick up, they get to listen to the music I’ve pre-selected for them. Hubby gets something from his favorite band, mom gets “There’s a Tear in my Beer” (cause she likes it and I hate it and I never have to hear it on the ringback tone), the boss gets “Working 9-to-5”, etc, etc. And of course, if I’m a hip thing instead of a mostly not-hip thing, I need to change that music as the music scene changes. Verizon collects $1.99 per tone, with a monthly subscription fee of .99, thank you very much.

Apparently Verizon was the first major carrier to do it, starting in November 2004 (see MobileTechNews article. According to Engadget, a wireless carrier in Illinois was the first with the idea, and T-Mobile jumped into the fray. They’re really big in China, and there’s a whole site (Ringtonia) with news on ringback tones. There’s even links to how to get ringtones of animal sounds, ala “gorilla beating on its chest“. Now THAT would shake a meeting up!

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This post started out as a post on software development: as a senior techie within my company, and a tech lead at that, there’s a certain pressure to have better or at least as good as technical chops than the folks I work with. Some of the guys I work with are senior themselves and darn good in their particular areas, so it’s a constant push to stay at the top of my game. But then I realized that I run into the same trap in my biz classes: have I read everything and done everything as the other folks in my class? Hmmm… the same can be said of the mommy track, though there it takes a slightly different spin. Have my kids done everything/read everything/known everything they should given their particular age? Have my hubby and I gotten to have every travel experience, every deep conversation, every loving experience that we “ought”?

Sheesh… quite a long list in that PDA. Which of course has to be the latest/greatest to keep up.

Bleah… waiting for us all collectively to decide that the keeping up/staying ahead race just isn’t supportable or cool anymore, and that we all oughta find some other way to fill and overfill our time. Or for me, anyway, to decide that my ego doesn’t need to be at the top of my game. Um, you go first, and then I’ll de facto be at the top, and we can all just slow down.

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Our baby, lil Callie Flower, turned two today. Actually, she turned two almost 24 hours ago, having chosen to enter the world at the ungodly hour of 1:10 am. Note that she’s often played havoc with our sleep schedule since that day, as well.

She’s a beautiful little girl, who looks absolutely NOTHING like me. Blonde, blue-eyed, curly hair, and possessing three deadly weapons: a smile that makes her eyes sparkle, a pout that she delivers from underneath her curly mop of hair, and a laugh that sounds so delightful as it trills and rolls up from somewhere deep inside her little body. She’s irresistible, particularly since she loves everyone. Sample Callie anecdote: at a family picnic, with an extended family including folks in no way related to Callie who she’d never met before. She played airplane with one unrelated family member, gleefully flying through the air. When some of the kids were to told to line up to kiss their grandparent, Callie jumped into line ahead of her cousins, whose granddad this was, and planted a smooch on a gentleman who’d just met her that day. That gentleman’s wife was so delighted, she asked Callie for a kiss herself, and was quickly granted one.

Callie’s a cuddler, rarely to be found without a receiving blanket which she carts around for when she’s tired or wants comforting. I can’t bear the thought of the day when those blankets are left behind.

Little woo: you’re two! Mommy can’t believe it, and feels tremendously grateful that you were granted to us to be part of our family. Happy Birthday, and sleep well tonight. Tomorrow’s just waiting for you to wake up and move a little closer to little girlhood and a little farther away from baby and toddler land. Give Mommy the gift of lingering here a little while longer, though…

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My husband, blog connoisseur that he is, has kindly pointed me in the direction of WordPress. So, I’m trying it out here…

Likes, so far:
* ability to turn on/off comments across the whole site (MoveableType was drowning me in comment spam)
* idea that there are LOTS of plug-ins out there, and that, hey, I might even be able to write one
* idea that there are lots of themes out there, and hey, I might even be able to write one.. (I’m dreaming here, I know)
* easy import of my MoveableType content into here
* built in dictionary check when posting (you didn’t think I could spell connoisseur on my own, did you?)

I still have the “other” CMS up and available, so can readily switch back if I want to. But think I’ll play around here in a new space for a while.

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Wanted: .NET developers of varying skill levels in the DC area to fill cool project needs at company serving federal government. Assume that you’re going to work with me, or even better, folks smarter than me. (Check the heading on the blog. I’m convinced I’m “write”, and never more convinced then when I’m about to be proved dead wrong: ain’t life funny that way?) Leave a comment that shows you have something interesting to say about .NET or software development in general (and leave some rudimentary contact info) and we can talk. Always interested in hearing what cool work other people are doing.

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In the theory that writing it down will let my brain get off the spinning carousel for a while:
– hmmmm, what would that new tattoo look like?
– kid 3?? what on earth would we do with 3 of ’em?!
– performance appraisals: gotta make ’em worthwhile to him (I only work with hims on my teams at the moment – not being sexist) and to me
– it’s hard enough to get her to sleep at our house. How on earth do you expect a sleepover at YOUR house to work?
– dirt-biking: yeah!
– OPIC, OPIC, OPIC… why couldn’t I remember what that acronym was during the exam!
– I swear if I have to debug another firewall issue, I’m going to … set fire to the daggone wall
– “Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat, please to put a penny in a poor man’s hat”

Brain spinning faster, not slower…. Brain wave acceleration. Or maybe that’s just the beer talking.

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Installing a Beta 2 version (already soon to be superceded by a newer version) of Visual Studio 2005. It appears to be hung on the installation of SQL Server 2005 Express (big surprise for a beta MS product).

Got to play with 2005 at a class in Seattle a few weeks ago, given by a company called PluralSight. Taking a look at the latest MSDN magazine – 2 articles there from guys that I’m aware of from the company. September issue: another 2 articles. Very sharp guys, interesting training. Proximity to Microsoft’s campus let them both seed the class with guys from Microsoft who wanted to round out their knowledge, and let them bring in speakers to talk about the newest latest and greatest. Very cool.

Anyway, still waiting for the software to install. But looking forward to playing wtih 2005 features, maybe thinking about taking a 2005 Microsoft exam as my next cert effort. (I got my MCP renewed as of 8/10! The previous one had lapsed, due to a retiring exam. But I’m up and about again, and theoretically studying for another one.)