Google's announcement of Google Gears is getting a lot of attention around the blogosphere today.  I don't need to rehash what the technology delivers.  You can get Scott Hanselman's take on it here and follow the links on his post for more information. However, I was reading a post by Lazycoder that calls into question whether having online apps go offline is all that cool or useful: See, taking a web application offline isn’t as neat as it sounds. Why would I want to work with my document ... [More]

On the Today Show this morning, Bill Gates demoed a "new" technology called Micorosoft Surface.  This technology consists of a table with a computer and cameras + sensors embedded within that allow for a unique user interface.  This makes it possible to draw pictures with your fingers and arrange photos with your hands.  OK, cool, but this is not new.  In face, it looks like a complete rip-off Jeff Han'ss multi-touch displays. Next, follow this link and watch the video (I don't have a direct ... [More]

Well, I had my spinal fusion surgery about 8 days ago now and I am learning to live with my brace.  The brace's function is to support my spine at all times and prevent me from bending in a way that would hurt me as I recover.  I need to wear this for 3 months post surgery.   Putting it on There are 2 ways, first I place the brace over me while lying on my back (the brace opens in the back) and roll left to tuck the right edge under my back.  Then  I roll all the way onto my right and hook th... [More]

Recently at work, I ran into a problem where a page appeared to be hanging the whole asp.net process.  Being a person with very little patience, I ran the handy dandy iisreset after about 1 minute.  As it turns out, it wasn't actually hanging, it merely was taking 3-5 minutes to load a page!  So, I dropped into debug mode and hit the pause button on the debugger.  Behold, the Regex object was the culprit. We have a complex web app that parses the links of each page and appends certain querystri... [More]

Just passing along a thank you to spine-health for great customer service.  I lost my login information and had no option except to send an email to the administrator.  I rarely do this, because I feel my email will go into the Internet abyss.  You know, it will land in someone's bit bucket and never be touched again.  But, not 5 minutes after sending my email, i got a response and resolved the problem.  Thanks!

It is 2 weeks from my surgery date, so I wanted to write this post to explain how I got into this situation.  History: I was wake boarding (or attempting) when I was about 24.  My low back starting hurting pretty bad a few hours after and by the time I got home, I could barely walk.  I missed a whole week of work due to that incident.  But, I recovered until a year later, when I was moving some heavy furniture, the same thing happened again.  I was out for a week again, but this time I didn't ... [More]

  Well I am a younger guy (32) with a lot of back problems. Problems I never expected to deal with at this age. I am at a point where they are really flaring up again, so I am going to use my blog as a pain journal. I am scheduled for surgery on May 14th, so this will also catalog the events leading up to the big day and the experience of post-op. I read a lot of message boards/forums with people who are going through back troubles and often the information is discouraging. I have a theory th... [More]

Yep, the few places on the web where I have left my mark all had the link "blog.masonlyngby.com."  I had a different web host at the time... I was playing around with Ruby on Rails (never really got into it, but that is for another time).  So, I signed up with a traditional asp.net hosting company and I am much happier.  Yes, I suppose I'm lame for leaving the flare of ROR and opensource, screw microsoft crowd, but I truly love .NET.  I may be just an idiot with this, but it does not appear my... [More]