I'm a fairly active member of a forum focus on VB development, XtremeVBTalk.com, I also happen to be a moderator, and carry the "Expert" skill-badge. Well, today they gave me quite a surprise. Back 2003 I posted this on my site at the time:

 12/01/2003
Expert! The folks over at VisualBasicForum.com just voted to give me an Expert badge!

Today, a similar honor has been bestowed. By a vote of the forum leadership I've been given the status of "Guru" - the highest skill acknowledgment available. This was quite a surprise, and really quite an honor as this is a status given to only a select few. This makes me the 26th to receive this, of the 91,348 current members.

I really do appreciate this, to be judged so by a group that I hold in such high regard really does mean a lot.

As I've written about, I'm in the process of rebuilding my network at home. the first major addition is a used Dell PowerEdge 2500 server, while this is an older server, it's quite stable and reliable - and with I intend to use it for, being reliable is critical. 

   
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On a daily basis, I use Query Analyzer for Microsoft SQL Server, Microsoft Access for Sybase via ODBC, MySQL Query Browser for a MySQL database, and PL/SQL Developer for Oracle access. While there are some features of all of these I really like, what I don't like is that I have to use all of them. 

I am proposing the formation of an open source project to develop a SQL front-end to allow users to access the major database platforms from a single, well-designed, and fully-featured front end. This would not be a full replacement of the afore mentioned applications, but a simpler, easy to use product wrapping the more common functionality. Developed in .NET (VB.NET most likely), this could greatly simplify the process of working with multiple DB platforms.

This is just an idea, and I would like to hear any feedback. If there's enough interest, I may try to put something together to get the ball rolling. 

Piracy is bad, right? Maybe not, and it seems Microsoft figured it out. Piracy can be indirectly profitable, both by giving you additional customers that you may collect from at some future point, and it also serves to reduce or limit the market share of rivals. Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, acknowledged this back in 1998 while speaking at the University of Washington, saying:

"Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don't pay for the software. Someday they will, though,…"

"And as long as they're going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They'll get sort of addicted, and then we'll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade." 

While Microsoft claimed losses of $14 billion for 2005, there were also several benefits as a result, that Microsoft rarely acknowledges. Among these is: 

• Limiting growth of rival products
• Locking users into Microsoft products
• Increasing overall market-share
• Increasing brand awareness

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I'm always interested in better ways to produce documentation or demonstrations for my software. One method I've found to be rather impressive is desktop capture, generating a movie either in a streaming format, or in Flash. The drawback: Price. The tools used for this are often rather expensive, and on a tight budget they can push you to the limit quickly. There is another option though, Wink - a free, cross-platform application that generates Flash demos and presentations.

From my short review, this seems like an excellent option, and the fact that it's free just makes it even better.

I saw noticed an article on Forbes mentioning the long rumored, Google Calendar , and sure enough! While I've not taken long to play with it, this, so far, seems to be very cool. I'll post more after I play with it for awhile.

I previously wrote about an offer for a free copy of Microsoft Visual Studio, well, mine came today. While it look it's time about getting here, it finally arrived. The book, while not the full version, is larger than I expected, and looks like it should be worth reading. I'm a bit disapointed in how soon that the discount for the MCP exam expires, as with the schedule I have for the desktop MCTS I don't think I'll have time to make use of it. 

All in all, this is one of the best free offers I've seen Microsoft release. The offer is still open (closes the 17th), so if you've not signed up for yours - you should hurry. 

MONEY Magazine and Salary.com have announced their top 10 jobs in the country. While it's no surprise to me, Software Engineer took the #1 spot. Here's what they had to say:

Why it's great Software engineers are needed in virtually every part of the economy, making this one of the fastest-growing job titles in the U.S. Even so, it's not for everybody.

Designing, developing and testing computer programs requires some pretty advanced math skills and creative problem-solving ability. If you've got them, though, you can work and live where you want: Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.

The profession skews young — the up-all-night-coding thing gets tired — but consulting and management positions aren't hard to come by once you're experienced.

What's cool Cutting-edge projects, like designing a new video game or tweaking that military laser. Extra cash from freelance gigs. Plus, nothing says cool like great prospects.

What's not Jobs at the biggest companies tend to be less creative (think Neo, pre-Matrix). Outsourcing is a worry. Eyestrain and back, hand and wrist problems are common.

Software development is certainly a great career, and here is yet more proof - from outside the industry.

When it comes to the world of development, Joel Spolsky is, without a doubt, my favorite writer. His work is always interesting and on-topic, and his latest work is something special. Development Abstraction, what a concept, the only way to ensure the highest productivity, and perhaps, a large part of the Superstars & Monkeys issue.

When I wrote about my views on how developers are treated, it was from a developers perspective, this article provides the managers perspective, on much the same issue. This covers what a development team should see, noting more, nothing less. Focus is critical for productivity, the hassles of running a business, finding ways around over-restrictive internet filters, or wondering how long the Development database will be hosting Production databases, none of this should be involved in a developers day.

Development is a thought driven, focus dependent activity. Anything that gets in the way should be eliminated, anything.

While I'm not a huge fan of Internet Explorer, I am quite impressed with the progress the IE team has made. IE7 stands to be the most impressive release so far, with many rendering issues resolved, rather impressive security advances, and a great many improvements on the standards compliance front. I must applaud both the team, and Microsoft for making these moves.

By focusing on standards, instead of proprietary features that degrade the experience for everybody, developers can work towards a unified web, free of browser discrimination and hack filed code. It seems like the Redmond power house has finally started to see where IE needs to go to remain relevant for Web 2.0, and beyond.

Then again, that's leaving TIME out of the picture.

Time up for TIME?

While HTML + TIME could prove to be a fun toy, due to its very nature - it's a toy not everybody could enjoy. This is a older (introduced with IE5), proprietary technology that is fairly unknown, and not often used. While it does have some merits in it's concept, any design technology that is intended to serve a single, closed platform is simply a bad idea.

Why Microsoft is taking another look at this, I'm really not sure. I'm holding out hope that they are cleaning up old, non-standard features in preparation for the next release. My fear is that they want to make another push with this out-dated, IE-centric technology.

Holding out hope… 

Let's hope they make the right call, and remove support for proprietary 'features' such as this. IE7 has the chance to not only catch up with the other major players, but to help push the wide-spread adoption of standards compliance.