Yes, I said PDC ‘03, not ‘05. My boss stated that I need to get a budget going for ‘05, and since no info is available for ‘05 yet, I need to base it off of ‘03. Does anyone have the costs for PDC ‘03? Like, registration or any additional costs?

[Via Julia Lerman]

PDC ‘05 has just been announced! I’m trying to get my company to send me this year!

I have this nasty habit of always wanting to run the latest and greatest of any software. Sometimes this causes problems with my system, however I don’t think upgrading to Windows Messenger 5.1 will hinder my work. Supposedly, there’s enhancements in this version…whatever, I got the newest version.

Update: I just installed MSN Messenger 7.0 BETA, I wonder when my computer’s going to puke. BTW, this beta is just crazy…so many annoying things in it like “Nudge”

Update 2: And MSN Messenger 7.0 BETA is gone. Just too flashy and childish. I like the simplicity that Windows Messenger gives.

So back on October 27, 2004, Robert McLaws announced ProviderModel.com. In the announcement, he stated the Interscape USA Provider Model code will be available. So, its now December, and nothing has been done to the site, nor any code released. I ask this, was it a flop? Did Microsoft put their heavy foot down? Is McLaws just too darn busy right now?

This cool little app (pointed to by Ryan) allows you to IM people over MSN from the command line. I, however, won’t divulge Ryan’s thought for a new plugin…but if you grab the idea from the context above, I think you’ll understand.

If you missed it yesterday, BlogJet 1.2 BETA 31 was released yesterday:

(via BlogJet weblog)

FEATURES

• Added caption to Generate Excerpt button.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed keyboard shortcuts bug.
• Fixed: BlogJet uploads only first picture of post.
• Fixed: pictures inserted from the Web (http://) have zero sizes.
• Fixed: errors with converting local file names of pictures.
• Fixed: BlogJet fails to delete and edit LiveJournal posts.
• Fixed: Generate Excerpt button is enabled for services, which don’t support excerpts.
• Fixed: spell checker doesn’t treat typographic apostrophe (’) as apostrophe.
• Minor fixes.

 Download BlogJet 1.2.0.31 beta from Download section (second link).

Over the past month, I’ve been beta testing a new product by Avantrix called WipeClean. This product allows you to securely wipe files from your hard drive by writing zeros overall the bits on the drive. Another great feature that it adds, is if you wipe a folder, it’ll wipe that folders contents and subfolders based on a file mask that you provide. So, by easily supplying *.dat when wiping a folder, only files with that mask will get wiped leaving all other masks in-tact.

One of the biggest features that I enjoy, is the Windows Shell integration. This is an optional executable that runs in your systray that provides right-click context menu availability for wiping files directly from Windows Explorer. An added feature, is this same integration adds support for wiping your Recycle Bin contents.

There is also another great feature called “Wipe Free Space,” that you guessed it, wipes the free space of a hard drive. This is great for zero-ing out all that extra space on your hard drive if your a worry-wort, or just wanted to compress the drive size done (in VPC only).

The only pieces that I didn’t like, which is strung across all their products, is the fact that “Jobs” can be saved, but not on a per user profile basis. It saves your jobs to a directory below the installation directory, which means – you can’t save jobs if your running as Non-Admin. In Avantrix response, though, they state that operations like above should really only be done as an Admin, thus eliminating the possibility of not being able to save the job.

All in all, this is a great product, and I’ve found it extremely useful in securely wiping my files / folders from my hard drive. In work, this is a great thing, especially if you deal with secure documents all day. Check out the WipeClean website and try out their 15–day trial! And for a $19.95 value, you can’t go wrong.

As of 5 PM yesterday, I’m no longer apart of the Central IL Dot Net User Group based out of Bloomington / Normal, IL. Throughout the past year, I did my hardest to bring in the best & brightest speakers, and I succeeded. I wanted to personally thank those that came and spoke. As far as what I’ll be doing next…well, I’ll probably join the other .NET User Group in town and see if that group is any better (which I’m sure it will be). If that doesn’t pan out, I’ll probably start a third group in town.

So this is more of an annoyance than a bug, but you should be aware of the following:

If using SN.EXE to extract your public key information, and you supply an invalid file name or path, SN.EXE just states that your assembly “does not represent a strongly named assembly.”

If you run the same command on a assembly that does exist, but isn’t signed…guess what, you get the same error message. Misleading, very misleading.

Well, its Friday night at about 10:30 PM and what am I doing? Sitting on my leather fold-out couch writing a blog entry on dial-up because I didn’t want to pay $9.95 for high-speed internet.

No matter what, its been a great trip, conference, networking experience. I got the pleasure of meeting a rockstar, nay, legend…Sam Gentile, and of course his counterpart & former co-worker Robert Hurlbut. We three (well, Adam was around for dinner & our trip to Barnes & Noble, but dissapeared when we got the hotel to drive us to Starbucks – which Sam, working his thang, got us the ride – yeah Sam!) got to hang out, chill, drink some coffee, and shoot the s***. If you’ve never met Sam, he’s one of those guys that you expect to be super smart, but not that funny, and he’s quite the contrary (now, I’m not saying he’s not smart, I’m saying he’s super funny AND smart). BTW, I got the pleasure (if you can call it a pleasure) to listen to Rocky & Sam have their nice discussion last night for about an hour or so, and let me tell you…I was lost half the time – both of these guys know their s***. Maybe thats why they speak all over the US and are published.

Anyway, I guess I should mention the conference some…It was great. Joe (does he have a blog, and if not, dude should start one up!) did an awesome job with his team to put on a great conference. The venue wasn’t that great, as we were all crammed in conference rooms big enough for 50 (even though they said it seats 75 or something). However, I would expect that future HDC conferences will be 100 times bigger and better. Great work Joe & your team! It was great meeting you all as well, I hope to frag you many (many, many, many) times in Halo 2. Maybe we’ll get Sam to play (ha!).