The views expressed on this weblog are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect the views of my employer.
 Wednesday, September 10, 2003
It came in the mail today...

It came in the mail today, and it's about time.  What's next?


Updated Link to this post 8:49:42 PM  #    comment []  trackback []
The tragedy of November 9th

So, two people commented (one email, one blog comment) with some confusion over the 11/9.  Here's the explanation:

It was an internationalization joke (and a good one I thought) When we say 9/11 (formatted mmddyy) most people in the STATES assume we mean September 11.  In the last two years the word 'nineeleven' means more than just a date.  But it's use and newly attached deep meaning underscores how alone we are as a nation (not just politically) in things like date formatting and the measuring systems.   The rest of the planet uses ddmmyy, so they would say "11/9". 

The joke is, when we say "oh, ya, 9/11 was a horrible day," a non-american might say, "November 9th? What happened?"  Of course, nothing happened on 11/9, we just assume that 9/11 or 4/3 or 8/12 means the same thing to us as it does to them...

P.S. There was a local news report a while back that the local news had pulled off the AP NewsWire.  Some fellow came in on a Tourist Visa and transferred to a Student Visa.  At some point, he was arrested for some thing or the other and the local news lady, thinking this fellow had gotten away with some clever chicanery commented slyly that his identity was called into question when the news station "discovered" that his drivers license said he was born on 4/3 but his birth certificate listed his DOB as 3/4.  Oh, those wacky terrorists trying to pull one over on us.  If I had a nickel for every time an international friend reversed a date on a form...


Updated Link to this post 4:16:24 PM  #    comment []  trackback []
ASPLive! and flying on 9/11

Tomorrow, I'm leaving for Orlando to speak at ASPLive on Internationalization.  I'll be flying exactly two years (to the minute) from September 11.  Needless to say, the wife's justifiably not happy about it and I have mixed feelings. 

My boss says that even flying on September 11th is safer than driving any day.  I'm not sure about that, but I'll definitely be expecting some extra security.  It's always a challenge to get my Insulin Pump through.

If you're in Orlando at VSLive, please do stop by my Friday afternoon session called "It's the WORLDWIDE Web."  I'll be showing some cool stuff in ASP.NET like a banking site in English, Chinese, Malay, Spanish and Arabic.  We'll talk all about System.Globalization and dig into the issues around Dates, Currency, Culture and Right to Left languages.  It's a very interesting topic.  I may try to greet the crowd in at least 10 languages. :)

Remember, when we talk about what happened on 9/11, most people in the world wonder what happened on November 9th...


Updated Link to this post 2:30:30 PM  #    comment []  trackback []
Things that make my life better...thanks for sharing

Well, that was a nice little spike of traffic.  A few random thoughts:

  • Thanks to everyone for comments and author corrections for the tools on my List o' Tools. 
  • Too bad Radio doesn't appear to support Trackback/Pingback from 'Stories' or I'd know who's linking to me. 
  • I'll continue to update the tools list as I add more.  I'll also try to categorize it one day. 
  • Note that I only keep favorite tools - no cruft, no crap.  This isn't a list of "all tools" or "favorite tools" but rather "things that make my life better"
  • Some folks commented that it was mostly Windows and .NET stuff.  True, true.  That's where I live now, but some tools/utils I didn't include were Grep for Windows and Cygwin and Visual Studio Power Toys, etc, as I didn't think they qualified as simple little utils, although maybe they do.
  • I didn't include a utilities that are internal (either Corillian-internal or Microsoft-internal) although I wish I could.  There's some amazing stuff out there.
  • Now only if my list could get Scobleized by Robert's 18 readers...
  • As I sit here and look at my Start Menu, that fills my 1600x1200 screen and runs off the right edge, I see at least 40 other great utils that AREN'T in C:/UTILS that I missed.  I'll add them one day.

Updated Link to this post 11:49:06 AM  #    comment []  trackback []