senfo

Boston Whale Whale Tour

2011-05-30T12:43:00.000-07:00

I took a whale watching tour off the coast of Boston this Memorial Day weekend and saw a couple of humpback whales. Here is some video footage I took from the tour.

Got My Google Voice Invite

2009-07-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Sweet, I have a Google Voice number. One interesting feature lets you embed voice mail messages into your blog:

ASP.NET MVC AntiForgeryToken

2009-01-05T06:28:00.001-08:00

I recently came across a new security feature that Microsoft has added to the ASP.NET MVC futures framework to assist in preventing Cross-site request forgery (CSRF) attacks. I was going to write about it, but I did a quick Google search and found a great blog post that gives the appropriate background information, as well as a demonstration of how to prevent CSRF attacks by using the ASP.NET MVC framework. If you're an ASP.NET developer interested in developing secure web applications, be sure to check out the post: http://blog.codeville.net/category/security/

Measuring ROI for Business Software Investments

2008-07-30T19:24:00.000-07:00

As they must do with any major investment, finance and technology leaders must develop a return-on-investment (ROI) model to justify software purchases. In many cases, organizations find it difficult to identify the indirect benefits and costs associated with software implementation.

If this sounds familiar, be sure to check out this article.

Free SharePoint 2007 Screen Casts

2008-05-16T08:16:00.000-07:00

If you're learning SharePoint 2007, be sure to check out these free screen casts.

Quote of the Day

2008-04-29T10:37:00.001-07:00

"A bad developer who comes across as a good developer is worse than a bad developer that every knows about." -- Dwight Rau

CDBurnerXP

2008-04-29T08:06:00.000-07:00

This one is new to me, but I don't burn as many CD's as I used to. Frankly, I'm cheap and I can't justify spending money on software that I'll use once every few years. If you're looking for a free CD Burner for Windows, check out CDBurnerXP.

Generic Caching in ASP.NET

2008-04-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

If you run a website with a high number of visitors and are interested in learning more about caching, DaveTheKnave has put together a good article on Generic Caching in ASP.NET that is worth checking out.

Introducing OpenProj

2008-01-20T19:22:00.000-08:00

If you're looking for a free replacement for Microsoft Project, look no further. Available for Windows, Mac, Linux and Unix, "OpenProj is a free, open source project management solution."

Generate Random SQL Data

2007-09-26T20:13:00.000-07:00

If you ever need random data for your SQL tables, be sure to check out http://www.generatedata.com/. Their random data generator generates transact SQL scripts that you can run to insert random data into your database. Other export formats are also available.

ASP.NET Login Control Remember Me Doesn't Work

2007-09-18T15:11:00.000-07:00

I recently did a quick Google search for an issue I was having with the ASP.NET login control where the Remember Me feature of the control appeared not to be working as I had expected. I found a few hits on Google Groups where users were experiencing the exact same symptom, but nobody was getting an answer to their question.

First of all, I knew that the login control called the FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie() method to save the cookie, so I figured it must have something to do with the cookie expiring sooner than I wanted. Knowing that, I looked at the details of the cookie and noticed that it was set to expire 30 minutes in the future. So I did another quick Google search and found a great article on Forms Authentication. Sure enough, there is a section in web.config that is used to configure the authentication cookie, one of which is the timeout. I'd recommend reading that article, first, but this is the authentication section from my web.config with the cookie timeout configured for 30 days.

<authentication mode="Forms">
   <forms
           loginUrl="Login/Login.aspx"
           name=".ASPXFORMSAUTH"
           protection="All"
           timeout="43200"
           requireSSL="false"
           slidingExpiration="true"
           cookieless="UseCookies"
           enableCrossAppRedirects="false"
      />
</authentication>

Hope that helps...

Comparing the Timer Classes in .NET

2007-08-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, I ran into some issues with the timer that I was using in my Windows Service. As it turns out, not all timers in .NET are created equal. This article was able to give me some valuable insight that I was able to use to solve my problem.

How To: Disable Clear Type for Office 2007

2007-08-17T05:11:00.000-07:00

It could be that I have something wrong with my eyes, but the ClearType fonts that Microsoft now uses for its new Office 2007 suite is incredibly painful to my eyes. If you would like to disable ClearType fonts in Office 2007 and/or have Office respect system settings, try the following:

Start -> Run -> Regedt32
Navigate to the following key:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\12.0\Common
Add the following DWORD value:
"RespectSystemFontSmooth"
Set the value to 1
Close RegEdit

That's it. Naturally, restart Office if it's already running, but you should notice that the Office 2007 suite now respects the system settings for font smoothing.

Programatically Add User to SharePoint 2007

2007-08-03T06:39:00.000-07:00

There are a ton of articles out there detailing how to add a user to a SharePoint site; however, it's a struggle to find anything detailing how to perform the operation in a SharePoint 2007 environment.

private static void AddUser()
        {
            try
            {
                using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://test1"))
                {
                    ServerContext context = ServerContext.GetContext(site);
                    UserProfileManager profileManager = new UserProfileManager(context);

                    if (!profileManager.UserExists("senfo"))
                    {
                        UserProfile profile = profileManager.CreateUserProfile("senfo");

                        profile[PropertyConstants.WorkEmail].Value = "me@myaddress.com";
                        profile.Commit();
                    }
                    else
                    {
                        Console.WriteLine("User already exists...");
                    }
                }
            }
            catch (UserNotFoundException err)
            {
                Console.WriteLine(err.ToString());
            }
        }

It's important to note that if you're using multiple membership providers that this code will throw the following Exception "No mapping between account names and security IDs was done". To correct the issue, add "MembershipProviderName:" in front of the username. For example, "SqlMembershipProvider:senfo".

Extension Methods

2007-07-31T17:27:00.000-07:00

This is the first in a series of posts that I will use to demonstrate some of the cool new features of the new C# 3.0 specification and Visual Studio 2008.

If you asked me, the two coolest new features of C# 3.0 are LINQ and Extension Methods. There have been a ton of articles demonstrating the power of LINQ, so I'll focus my first post on Extension Methods.

So what exactly is an extension method? In as few words as possible, it's a language feature that allows a developer to add new methods to existing types. And I see quite a bit of potential with this feature. For example, adding a SaveAsJpeg() method to the sealed System.Drawing.Bitmap class.

Just a little background so we can begin. An extension method must be declared in a static class, which makes a lot of sense when you think about it.

For demonstration purposes, let's create a static class called StringExtenstions that adds a Reverse() method to the string type.

public static class StringExtentions
{
    public static string Reverse(this string str)
    {
        StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

        // Reverse the string
        for (int i = str.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
        {
            sb.Append(str[i]);
        }

        return sb.ToString();
    }
}

And believe it or not, that's it. You have just added a Reverse() method to all string types within your assembly. And how do you use it? Good question. Just like you would had the String class always had a Reverse() method.

  string myString = "This is a test";
  string reversed = myString.Reverse();

It should be noted that unlike regular methods, extension methods cannot access private members of the class that they are extending.

Stay tuned for more C# 3.0 goodness.

Don’t buy an HDTV without reading this first

2007-06-03T14:26:00.000-07:00

I was recently inquiring about the latest in HDTV technology and I came across a great HDTV survival guide that I thought others might find useful. Definitely worth a read if you're in the market for an HDTV.

Asynchronous Pages in ASP.NET

2007-04-10T07:08:00.000-07:00

In my opinion, one of the most unappreciated enhancements to ASP.NET 2.0 is the ease in which one can design their code to run asynchronously. In my experience, developers have blown off the idea in the beginning because of not realizing the true potential of asynchronous development in a web application. This MSDN article goes into details about why asynchronous programming is important to your ASP.NET applications, and provides code samples to help you understand.

Infinities Loop : TRULY Understanding ViewState

2007-03-22T09:12:00.000-07:00

I recently stumbled across this article on ViewState. I wasn't expecting to learn much, but I was pleasantly surprised. Definitely worth the read if you are an ASP.NET developer.

Using code Tag to Display Code in Your Blog or Website

2007-03-08T04:05:00.000-08:00

If you post code to your blog or website, you might want to consider using the <code> element to help separate your content from the code. This can be achieved nicely by setting the style for the <code> element in your CSS. I use the following style in my blog to help format code snips that I post.

code
{
  background-color: #f6ffff;
  border: solid 2px #bbbbbb;
  display: block;
  font: courier;
  margin-left: -10px;
  overflow: auto;
  white-space: pre;
  width: 410px;
}

Sample:

<code>
  #include &lt;stdio.h&gt;

  int main(void)
  {
    printf("Hello world!\n");
    return 0;
  }
</code>

Advanced OOP Design Patterns

2007-03-02T05:13:00.000-08:00

This is, without a doubt, one of the best online resources I have come across, which clearly demonstrates some fundamental design patterns used in OOP. After reading the excerpts from the book, I'm convinced I'll be purchasing a hard copy as soon as possible. Whether you program in C++, C#, Java, or any other OOP language, these fundamental design patterns should be applied to your programs.

Another Linux Desktop: XGL

2007-02-17T11:43:00.000-08:00

Speaking of Linux desktops, here is another favorable desktop for Linux known as XGL.

Project Looking Glass on Ubuntu

2007-02-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

For years, people have regarded Linux as a toy for geeks. Many claimed that the capabilities of desktop Linux lagged far behind the power of the desktops offered by Microsoft in the Windows operating system. Fortunately, those times are changing as innovations to the Linux desktop have placed Linux well ahead of the enhancements brought forth by Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows Vista. One prime example of this is Project Looking Glass, which is brought to you by none other than Sun.

Complex Password More Weak?

2007-02-12T04:35:00.000-08:00

Firstly, I'd like to point out that I am a developer, I am not a writer. That said, I apologize ahead of time if this reads like a high school student wrote it. I did my best.

At any rate, in this day in age, and with as much as we rely on the Internet for the important day-to-day aspects of our lives, we can never be too careful with our passwords. But is there a point in which password complexity can actually have an adverse affect on how secure a persons password really is? I say the answer to that question is an irrefutable, "yes".

I want to point out that I am huge on personal security. Actually, I've been told that I'm obsessive, at times. Having said that, I have come up with passwords that I'm thoroughly convinced that it would take more than a trillion monkeys pounding away at a typewriter, over 100 lifetimes to crack. They're secure, but they mean something to me, so they're easy for me to remember. For the times that I need more protection, I resort to encrypting my data with a passphrase, which is even more complex. However, even though I consider the passwords that I use to be reasonably secure, I can't help but wonder what the person/people were thinking when they came up with the list of requirements for a site I was recently signing up for. Following is a list of requirements.

must be at least 7 characters long
cannot contain the login id (exact or partial)
must contain at least one letter, one number, and one of the following special characters:
$&#_!@%^*()-=+~\:;<,>.?/
cannot contain any repeat characters
cannot contain any of:
|'`"

Two things from this list stand out. Firstly is that the password cannot contain any part of my login name. At first, I wasn't exactly sure how strict this rule would be enforced, but I later came to find out that any part of my login ID means exactly that. Any part. For example, if my login ID contains the letter 's', my password cannot cannot have the letter 's' anywhere in it. To make matters worse, the password also cannot repeat any characters. Yep, that means that you cannot have the same character in your password more than once.

Amazed by the complexity of the requirements, I was finally able to come up with a password that would comply; however, there was no way that I was ever going to remember it, considering the passwords complexity and that it was for a site that I'll rarely visit. So, if I ever want to be able to get back into my account again, I really didn't have much choice except to either write down the password or save it in an encrypted file.

In my opinion, this is an example of people getting quite ridiculous with their password requirements. As I mentioned before, I am pretty big on personal security, which is why I opted to save my password in an encrypted file. However, for the majority of the people that I know, this password format is so complex that their passwords will end up on a Post It note stuck under their keyboard. So much for security.

It is my hope that developers will read this post and realize that there is a point that going overboard on password complexity can have an adverse affect on what their original intentions were. This, in my opinion, was obviously an example of going extremely overboard.

C# 3.0: An Introduction

2007-01-26T14:43:00.000-08:00

This article hopes to bring readers up to speed on some of the changes we can look forward to in the C# 3.0 specification. Some of the new features include:

Object Initialization
Type Inferences
Anonymous Types
Lambda Expressions
Extension Methods
Queries (LINQ)
Expression Trees

SQL Injection Attacks by Example

2007-01-25T05:26:00.000-08:00

Are your applications susceptible to SQL injection attacks? I recently stumbled on a decent article that hopes to educate readers by demonstrating sample SQL injection techniques. A recommended read for any SQL developers.

Search Engine Optimization for Beginners and Experts

2007-01-18T04:18:00.000-08:00

Scott Bowler has written a great blog article detailing how to "achieve consistent results in the major search engines." I have found his blog post to be extremely useful and recommend it to others to read.

Custom Iterators

2007-01-17T05:47:00.000-08:00

Bill Wagner has written a great article on custom iterators that I highly recommend reading. He takes you through a series of problems in great detail to help explain better ways of iterating through collections. A Word document version of the article is also available here and his blog can be found here.

Diet Coke and Mentos Bottle Rocket

2006-08-12T19:40:00.000-07:00

First of all, I stress, do NOT try this at home. This is provided for educational
purposes, only. This is basically just a collection of links including the videos to some people that made the rocket.

A little background theory:
http://www.stevespanglerscience.com/experiment/00000109

A short video to demonstrate what we've learned:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=3673360343168243565

A little more exciting theory:
http://www.gadgetlounge.net/archives/2006/07/27/how-to-make-a-mentos-coke-rocket/

And finally, Diet Coke and Mentos bottle rockets:

The Battle for Net Neutrality

2006-08-02T13:10:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure how many of you are in IT and/or undestand and have been following what has been going on with large telco's that provide Internet access to the country; but this is something that affects us all and I just wanted to bring it to your attention.

Basically, the large telco's (AT&T, Verizon, etc.) are trying to push Congress to permit charging additional fees for the use of a connection to the Internet. In the past, you paid for a connection to your ISP, and you connected to a host who paid for service through their ISP. Along the way, you will likely travel through connections (that our tax dollars paid for, mind you) that were laid in place by these large telco's. It's the nature of the Internet. In this situation, the speed of the connection between you and the host you connected to, is limited by the slowest link along the way (by the way, for the curious, when a company buys a dedicated (non-shared) connection to the Internet, ISP's generally charge a little more than double what it costs for your connection to the ISP. This is because you have to pay for your connection to the Internet, and a connection on the ISP's side that can adequately supply the bandwidth of the connection you paid for). That was how things worked in the past.

This push, however, is an attempt to split the Internet into two "lanes" (for lack of better words). A fast lane and a slow lane. In this new Internet, if the host you're connecting to (e.g., Google, Amazon, etc.) does not subscribe to the services provided by the fast lane, your connection will travel down the slow side. The biggest problem with this is that the connection to the host did not change. The hosts have already been paying for unrestricted use of their connection since the connection was originally purchased. However, greety telo's would now like to collect money twice for the same service! It's insanity! And ultimately, consumers will be the ones that end up paying.

If this doesn't make sense to you, I've throught up an anology that I hope can make it a little clearer.

I say we picture the Internet pipes just like a garden hose in our yard. The flow of water through the hose is limited to the physical attributes that make up the hose (for sake of simplicity, ignore water pressure for the moment. But if one wanted to include this in the analogy, simply think of water pressure as the maximum bandwidth your LAN supports (e.g., 100 Mb/Sec, 1 Gb/Sec)). When you buy your hose, you expect to get the maximum flow of water through the hose that the hose can possibly permit. However, unless you pay for the super speedy hose subscription, this new hose comes with a special end that can only be screwed into a device, which slows down the flow of water at the end of the hose. From here, you can screw in whatever attachments you would like to use.

As you can see, the flow of water up to this super stupid device is unrestricted by anything other than the characteristics that originally limited the flow of water through the hose. But somebody wants to rob us of our money and claim that we're getting a free ride by leaving out the device that restricts the flow of water!

Whether this is something you understand or not, I urge you to write letters to your representatives supporting Net Neutrality (the unrestricted flow of the Internet). Believe it or not, as of now, the telco's are winning big time so we really need all the help we can get.

If anybody has been following the battle towards Net Neutrality and has an opposing view, feel free to share your opinion.

Man Gets Hit By Lightning - Well Sort Of

2006-07-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

The actual lightning bolt hit about 30 feet away; but a smaller arc hit a guy outside working on his motorcycle.

Made Digg

2006-07-27T18:13:00.000-07:00

Well what do you know? After like 1,000 attempts, I finally made the digg homepage. And at the time I took the screenshot, the number of diggs is my lucky number, 109.

Digg Comment Ratings

2006-06-30T06:59:00.000-07:00

In recent, I have personally felt that many digg users have forgotten how to properly use the digg ratings system for rating comments. As of late, users need not flame or post spam to have their comments buried. Instead, it has become quite common for the average digg user to bury comments where an opinion deviates from the majority. Take, for example, the comments in response to WGA and Microsoft possibly about to release a Windows Kill Switch. One comment that really stood out, in my opinion, was one posted by the user furtwan1. In the post, furtwan1 suggests that a Windows kill switch is not necessarily a bad idea because it will affect mostly people that have illegal copies of Windows. All that was posted was a difference of opinion, yet digg users buried the comment into what is presently -31, which hides the comment from most users screens, by default.

What good is a discussion if everybody shares the same opinion? Deviating from the majority promotes a healthy discussion. We don't all have to agree, do we? It is my belief that the digg comments area would benefit greatly by promoting "outside of the box" thinking, rather than outcasting those that do not share the same view as you. Additionally, I believe greatly that some individuals may be reluctant to post comments against the norm because of fear that they will be ridiculed by other digg users. Bashing these users really isn't healthy.

Let's all try to promote a healthy discussion that encourages new ideas. If you don't agree with what another user posts, feel free to post your reasons for disagreeing; however, at least give other digg users the respect they deserve for feeling the way they do.

Life in the Green Lane - New York Times

2006-04-17T07:32:00.000-07:00

If you're considering purchasing a hybrid vehicle, be sure to check out the NY Times article, Hybrid Cars Not Always More Fuel Efficient.

Also, I've heard, but not confirmed, that the battery packs that hybrids use cost in upwards of $7,000 and last about 5-7 years. Consider this as a possibility and just imagine what it would do to your trade-in value.

And before somebody accuses me of being anti-environment or whatever, let me explain that I'm all for protecting the environment and do whatever I can to save/conserve energy and resources. That said, it is my opinion that hybrids vehicles are like a disease. Assuming for the moment that hybrids car owners use their car in a fuel efficient manner (see link above), oil consumption will decrease. Sounds great, at first. But consider, for a moment, what this will do to large oil companies that relied on regular income. Think oil prices will remain the same? Think again. To make up for the lost margin, oil companies will be forced to increase the cost of fuel to make up for the difference. In turn, truckers suffer the most, which results in raised shipping cost for good and supplies. And it doesn't end there. If the shipping companies have to raise their prices, so do the large retail stores and every other company in the world to again make up the difference. It's a disastrous chain reaction that could lead to the worst inflation this country has ever seen.

There are alternative fuel sources that are both clean and renewable (somewhat unlike oil that takes millions of years to form). Don't allow automotive manufacturers to put a bandaid on the current design by buying hybrids --especially if your driving habits don't make for efficient use of a hybrid.

Best Jobs

2006-04-12T19:07:00.000-07:00

So I might be a dork at times (ok, all the time), but if there's nothing else to look forward to, it's comforting to know that I have MONEY Magazines top rated job. I'm a little surprised that Software Engineer ranks low on the stress scale. Apparently whoever was surveyed has never had to deal with impossible deadlines and sleepless nights trying to make them!

Best Use for a Dell

2006-04-05T18:47:00.000-07:00

So what do you use your Dell for? This QVC caller has no problem sharing his favorite use.

Installing ASP.NET 2.0 Framework Extension For IIS

2006-04-05T08:55:00.000-07:00

If you installed IIS after you installed the .NET 2.0 Framework, it's likely that the 2.0 Framework is not registered with IIS. To register the 2.0 Framework extensions for IIS, run "aspnet_regiis.exe -i" from the framework directory. In my case, it was located in "C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v2.0.50727".

The problem surfaced when I was trying to install the latest Microsoft SharePoint beta and got the following error:

"This product requires ASP.Net web server extensions to be enabled"

ASP.NET 2.0 State Management

2006-03-27T07:32:00.000-08:00

When you've got only one web server, keeping track of users states is quite trivial. But if you've got a web farm to deal with, it suddenly becomes more detailed. Because of HTTP's stateless design, web browsers must make a new connection for every user request, disconnecting afterwards. Because of this, there is never a guarantee that a user will end up on the same web server, request after request. In the past, developers were faced with implementing custom solutions, which usually involved saving state information to a database server, which all web servers could then access. Fortunately, ASP.NET has simplified the process of maintaining state between multiple web servers in a web farm so that your clients never notice that they've moved from one server to the next. Here is a quick look at using Profile to aide you and your web projects in state management using some powerful features in .NET 2.0.

Office 12 Screenshots

2006-03-22T07:13:00.000-08:00

Dan Fernandez's Blog : Announced at PDC: The LINQ Project

2006-03-08T13:09:00.000-08:00

I was recently thumbing through some comments on digg and came across a post by danielfe on the LINQ Project (Language INtegration Query). His blog explains the project well:

Dan Fernandez's Blog : The LINQ Project

Tunnel of Death

2006-03-04T10:11:00.000-08:00

This has got to be one of the most confusing videos I've ever seen. For starters, why on Earth are all these people crashing? I believe at one point the camera perhaps shows at least one other tunnel (the scenery changes), but there are just some freakish accidents that I simply don't understand.

For example, at about 1:00 into the video, a truck is driving along, minding its own business with [seemingly] nothing in front of it. Out of nowhere, it runs into an invisible truck driving backwards! I've watched this video frame by frame and simply can't figure out where the truck came from. Freakish and confusing!

Feel free to clue me in if I'm missing something that should be obvious.

Ferrari Enzo Crash in Malibu

2006-02-23T18:25:00.000-08:00

I managed to run across these pictures of the horrible Ferrari Enzo crash from February 21, 2006 in Malibu, California on the Pacific Coast Highway near Dekkar Canyon. Owner Stefan Erikssen, the former executive of Gizmondo, walked away with little more than a bloody lip. A video report of the accident can be seen here.

Senfo's Theory Of Time

2006-02-17T06:43:00.000-08:00

The way I see it, nobody could come from the future* --it hasn't happened yet. For somebody (or something) from the future to show up on our Earth, they would have to come from another place in the universe where time ticks faster. But I personally do not believe that time actually works in only this way. The best way that I could possibly describe my theory (and I am not a physicist) would be to draw two lines in parallel to each other, like so:

----------|
----------|

For the sake of argument, pretend that the two lines at the end are connected. In my theory, the two dashed lines represent two possible rates in which time increases in different places in the universe. In this example, pretend that the top dashed line represents a place where time increases at twice the rate of the lower line. If one person showed up at the location of the top line, and a second person showed up at the location of the second line and simultaneously started stop watches, we could observe that the stop watch of the person on the top line would increase at (obviously) twice the rate of the lower line. However, I believe that these two people are bound together by at least one more constant, which is like time, but operates at a constant rate. I'll call this "universal time". For this discussion, I'll call Einsteins fourth dimension (time) theoretical time. So if the top line represents Mars and the lower line represents Earth (for the sake of argument, just assume that time increases at twice the rate on Mars as it does Earth), in my theory, it can be assumed that a person on Mars will, in theoretical time, age at twice that of the rate as an Earthling, but they both age at the same universal time.

Based on this theory, in order for an object to come from the future, it would have to increase its universal time, which is not possible.

* Although I am thinking this at this very moment, if somebody came up with a way to come back to this exact moment in time, I'd still be thinking the same thing; but, since I'm currently in the present, it's not *yet* possible (make sense?).

Chad pranking his step son Justice with my scary maze game

2006-02-15T13:58:00.000-08:00

Watch what happens when this poor kid plays a maze game familiar to many of us.

Firefox Extension: Web Developer

2006-01-26T13:28:00.000-08:00

The Web Developer Firefox extension adds a menu and a toolbar to Firefox with a compilation of tools that are very handy for web developers. Some examples include tools for HTML/XHTML validation, editing CSS, various form editing functions and a boat load more. I have found this extension very useful and I strongly recommend it to anybody doing web development.

This toolbar makes use of the w3c.org HTML validation and CSS validation services. Other useful tools include a speed check and 508 compliance standards testing (to help make it easier to browse your site for people with visual impairments).

Forbes.com: Forbes World's Richest People

2006-01-23T19:51:00.000-08:00

Forbes has posted the list of Wealthiest people for 2005. Topping the list worth $46.5 billion is Microsofts' William Gates. And nipping just 2.5 billion behind is Warren Buffett of Berkshire Hathaway at 44 billion.

America's Best Big Companies - Forbes.com

2006-01-23T12:20:00.000-08:00

Forbes has announced
America's Best Big Companies for 2005. Company of the year goes to Seagate Technology. Highest income for a software company goes to (you guest it) Microsoft. Interesting read..

Mozilla Firefox Extension

2006-01-22T19:45:00.000-08:00

This Firefox Extension enables you to click an icon in the status bar, to open a new tab that displays thumbnails of all of your open tabs. Works great if you have a lot of tabs open!

Free Stuff

2006-01-22T18:12:00.000-08:00

Anybody interested in a free iPod or a free laptop?

Here's how it works. First, you sign up using your email address. You should definitely give them a junk email address because they will sell your email address to make money (how else would they be able to give away free stuff). After that, you need to sign up for an offer. Offers range from anything from free stuff like a free credit report or paid stuff like Block Buster online. There are free offers, but you need to be patient and look. After you have completed an offer, you need to refer your friends. The free iPod requires that you refer 5 friends while a free laptop requires you refer 20. I've successfully referred three friends for an iPod, so I need only refer another two!

This does work. I have friends that have completed their referrals and have received their free merchandise. And I have personally seen this for myself, not just some random person on the Internet that heard something.

If you are interested, please follow the links I have provided. By following my link and completing an offer, you will fulfill another one of my required referrals.