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A week of fun stuff.

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I should be posting once a week at a minimum. Looks like I was away a bit longer than that, but I've been working on some fun stuff. :)

Client Callbacks
Last week I worked on the website quite a bit, wrapping it up so that it does database submissions properly (including a bit of XML for type-of-submission-specific data). Yesterday and today I worked on implenting using client callbacks for out-of-band calls (functionally similar to AJAX). It took a while to figure out Microsoft's official way of doing things (using ICallbackEventHandler), because it changed between the Beta and the released version of ASP.Net 2.0; there is still a lot of Beta samples and discussion on the internet. Here is the real deal.

In the end, I was amazed at how performant it was. True, this is in a single-user same-machine development environment (though the SQL database resides elsewhere)... but I'm getting updates in very-sub-second response time.

Brand Theory
I attended a rather interesting presentation on brand theory by Isabelo. I had thought it would be about how to design a brand into your UI... but it ended up being on the history of branding in the United States, as well as a second bonus presentation on how to "be your own brand." Overall, it was a rather interesting talk given by someone that has done this a long time.

While I was there I ran into my ex-manager. We had a brief talk, and he promised to go over my transition report. I got it back, and I'm happy to say we parted on good terms. :)

Bryan K., PM
I ran into Bryan while getting a salad at the caffeteria. We had worked together writing SQL Server documentation, and he bailed after a year or two to become a product manager for Systems Management Server. He said it's been really rewarding, but hectic at times. Being a PM means you have to manage all the resources to deliver on your feature area, without being the direct manager for any given person.

He's just filed a patent (you get these cool cubes made out of marble? for each one). He talks regularly with the VPs of extremely large car manufacturers and airplane builders (think of the biggest). He appears to be having fun. Mostly. :)

World of Warcraft
I was talking about the Final Fantasy beta in our internal XBox forums (of which I am an avid poster), and someone mentioned that WoW had a trial demo out. After a few days of downloading gigs of software and patches, I got it up and running. I can see, first-hand, how this could become addictive... to the point that I bought it.

Anyways, there's a Microsoft clan that just started up two weeks ago. There's already around 90 clan members and counting, so I'm hoping that it sticks around while I explore the game and have some fun.

Windows Media Player
I didn't feel like installing a particular application on my new system, so I spent a few minutes putting together a little utility that converts a common streaming format into something that Windows Media Player can recognize (no, nothing Apple). I'd love to share it if they let me, it is so amazingly simple... so I wrote to Geoff H. (the Windows Media Player PUM) to see if I can post it. If not... maybe it'll come out as a powertoy (which would be nifty too).

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