Recent Messages

Thirty Seconds To Mars - The (Shining) Kill

An old 1970s TV classic. I really liked this show when I was little.

A friend of mine and I went on a summertime motorcycle camping trip to south Texas. As we pulled in, people were laughing at us for packing a cheap box fan and a 100-foot extension cord.

Who was the last tribe to get the Black Hills? A few years ago, I was contacted by a friend in South Dakota who asked me to research the history of the Black Hills and the claim by the Lakota Sioux that the area is their ancestral homeland. My friend sent me all sorts of information that I read and found interesting. After looking into this, this is what I've found. So, if this sounds like a report to my friend in South Dakota, that's why.

Debugging multi-threaded code can be extremely tough. While I've wished for a "Run everything single-threaded" button to use while debugging (We still don't have that) there has been new functionality added to VS 2022 that makes life a lot simpler (by far!) when trying to visualize just what is your multi-threaded app doing. 

Keep hearing the world's going to end, that horrible things are upon us, any day now! But then nothing happens... Here's a list of 50 things that were definitely going to happen that didn't happen.

...but it sure is a hint.

This is truly bizarre

 Ok, a lot of you people ask the same questions over and over. "What did Neil mean by this? What did Neil mean by that?" For those of us that have taken the greater portion of our important lives to get to understand the band, this is very annoying. I was telling Geddy this over a cold one the other night, and he suggested that I, since I am the sort of person who can relate to all people, write a little something to help you guys out.

Looks like the blackouts are going to last longer and longer, Reddit leaders are not (yet) backing down.

A video from Microsoft Build explaining how to use the Visual Studio Upgrade Extension to convert .NET Framework apps (And older versions of .NET Core as well) to modern .NET.

Ralph slid into bed, kissed his wife on the cheek and fell into a deep sleep. He awoke before the Pearly Gates.

An AI came up with this, taking info about the current writer's strike and writing about in in the style of Rush's The Trees. Very interesting read!

Bumbling around for years with Microsoft's Prehistoric GIF Animator and the sorta-kludgy way to do it with Paint.NET, and came across this tool which makes everything much quicker. Can create, crop, optimize, and more! (Even cut a Sprite Sheet into individual cells in one shot!)

To paraphrase Abraham Lincoln after he defeated the Eskimos at the battle of the Alamo, "Never trust what you read on the Internet."

Live Concert (COVID) 2020

OK, the new version is finally playable (!!), but there's still some stuff to finish. Online (and offliine) battles are working great. Come play it today!

BLACK SMOKE TRIGGER

A story from an ex insurance adjuster: I used to be the guy who worked for insurance companies, and determined the value of every little thing in your house.  The guy who would go head-to-head with those fire-truck-chasing professional loss adjusters.  I may be able to help you not get screwed when filing your claim.

Curious about what’s out there? Tired of mainstream entertainment ruining all your favorite franchises? Downstream Pulp covers the latest in Iron Age creations, not to mention original tales. A place where literature fans can relax, grab a warm beverage, and discuss the wonders of the imagination.

The average person evaporates 32 gallons of water from the surface of their eyes each year. 

One of my machines hasn't picked up the "Kill IE" update yet, so decided to fire it up once last time (Although I haven't used it in quite a while) and am using it to post this message.

There are two versions of Blazor (Blazor Server and Blazor WebAssembly), I've been getting heavily into Blazor Server lately, so I'll post stuff here that will come in handy to others.

This is a good quick reference, focusing on all the different possible properties for the parent element (the flex container) and the child elements (the flex items).

This is very cool, recorded and filmed all over the world. Finland to New Zealand, Louisiana to Africa. Featuring John Paul Jones. 

Getting old is a lot like that scene in "Back to the Future" when Marty and his family start fading from the photo. More and more things that you knew for most if not all of your life begin to disappear, one by one. The grandparents. One, if not both, of your parents. Perhaps a sibling, or friend, gone too soon, but not improbably soon. The kid from that TV series that you related to because you were about the same age. Each falling away one by one. You're left like a contestant in an old-time dance contest, wondering how many other competitors will be eliminated before the judge finally comes to tap you on the shoulder... 

I found my old source code (written in pre .net active server pages with vba, wow this is some old stuff!) and rewriting it in C# and Blazor. Getting close to done, raids, battles, tavern, bank, and armor shop are done. Just a few more things to get converted. Excited to see this once popular game relaunch soon.

Say you've got three (or more) monitors on your system. In my case, I have a (smaller) monitor built into my laptop, and two larger external monitors connected to it. I wanted to just use the two external monitors for a Remote Desktop (RDP) session, but not use the smaller laptop monitor. 

Oh, I'll admit it isn't looking good this year but the war is never over. I'm still limping from an ambush three weeks ago. We were just outside Wyoming spraying down nativity scenes with napalm when they hit us. At first it was just some light caroling and we figured we had us some wet nosed UCC'ers on our hands. So we dug in. I took point with Das Kapital, Hoss set up the big rig burner we were using, and Lucky stood by to run us craft beers and angry pamphlets as we needed them.