I have a handy alarm clock that automatically adjusts for daylight savings. Thanks to the US Congress, I get to replace it next year:

Starting in March 2007, daylight time in the United States will begin on the second Sunday in March and end on the first Sunday in November.

[ Daylight Time ]

How on earth could congress make a change to the US policy regarding Daylight Savings and not have it be to get rid of it? Now we're extending it by another month (give or take)?

And, for those of us that write software, we need to think hard if we coded for daylight savings anywhere, and update that code. Perhaps congress is worried that we don't have enough to program, and changing the rules frequently will help to employ programmers...

After a long wait VS.NET and SQL 2005 have been released to manufacturing.

[ Miguel Campos Blog : VS.NET and SQL 2005 RTM ]

OK, I'll admit it, I don't know much about Macs. And, it seems, I'm not a wizard at Active Directory either. Googling how to "connect" your Mac to AD (on OS 10.4) has helped a bit, but I'm not sure how much I can trust the "this is how I did it" type how tos...

So, my fine readers, who also know about Macs and such, what book will give me the answer to this and provide me a good reference to the correct ways to run Macs in a Windows LAN environment? I'm putting you to the challenge, and I'm expecting big things...

For some reason I thought Rachael Ray came from a foodie family. Not only is that far from the truth, but when she "hit it" she bought the cabin she was living in. Not some fancy swank mansion, but a cabin in the Adirondacks. Now how cool is that?

Ms. Ray and her mom drove nine hours south in a snowstorm, and she nailed the "Today" show appearance. The next day, she said, the Food Network signed her to a $360,000 contract to teach America what she had been teaching the folks upstate. The first thing she did was to reupholster the old family furniture in the cabin. Then she bought the place.

[ Being Rachael Ray: How Cool Is That? - New York Times ]

Mark this one on your calendars:

The adventures of Curious George, a very inquisitive monkey, and his best friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat.

[ Curious George Movie Info - Yahoo! Movies ]

Opens February 10th, 2006.

I'm no Seth Godin, but it seems to me that you can't go wrong with a statement like this:

To fight Superman, you can't send an ordinary ape — you need Hanuman," he says, invoking the name of the monkey-god hero of Hindu mythology. "And Banrie is Hanuman."

[ TIME Europe ]

I'm rather sure I overheard a very similar statement in a meeting the other day...

Still don't have the phone, but I have a list of goodies to install, including this:

As the name suggests is does conversions - it supports four types of conversions, each with up to 10 categories. Currency Measures - 1 inch = 2.5 Centimetres etc Temperature - Celsius <-> Fahrenheit

[ "Convert It" for your Smartphone ]

Numerous times over the years I stumble across something that requires the use of LDAP. In the past I've tried to locate a program to assist me in exploring LDAP from the perspective of the program that will be doing the same thing. I found a weak one developed by whichever University used to be so very involved with LDAP, but it still confused me to no end.

Once again I have come across LDAP. This time, however, I found the program that I wanted all along. And it's free:

LDAP Browser is a lightweight version of LDAP Administrator with limited functionality.

[ Softerra LDAP Administrator/Browser ]

Do I understand LDAP any more than before? Not really. Does this tool help me to stave off that requirement? It seems to. I can continue along in my bliss, not truly knowing what LDAP is, all because the LDAP browser can easily show me the info that I need, and provide me with URLs that correspond to branches on a directory tree.

For those interested in the freeware version of CodeSmith, the 2.6 freeware version will continue to be available here.

[ CodeSmith Tools: CodeSmith 2.6 Freeware ]

The reports of your death were greatly exaggerated.

3.0 may be "all that", but until I can tell how 2.6 differs from 3.0 and 3.0 from 3.0 pro, I'll be continuing to sponge off of the good nature of Eric J. Smith and his fine free code generator.

John Dowdell has posted a bit of a rant about web interfaces and "his" data. He laments that every site has a different interface, different user flow, and different set of hurdles for him to work around:

Each of these sites had their own interface conventions, their own unique way they wanted to expose their range of services to the world. This site pushes links through JavaScript so I can't keep tabbed windows open. That site uses session IDs so I can only work in a single window. This third site wants me to choose a number of stops before I can see any offering. One requires a flight before you can see hotels. Some list hotels by which they'd like to sell most, others list them by distance, another lets you choose ranking. Each site had its own unique interface for me to come to grips with before I could use their service.

I will have to agree with the frustration. I would love interfaces to be more similar, and I would love to have my favorite bits from each site available on the others. However he then cries a rallying cry:

It's my data -- I want my record under my physical control as much as possible. I don't want to spend more time decrypting your interface than I do in determining what I want. The website/webapp paradigm failed me this week.

[ JD on MX: My data! My interfaces! ]

But, JD, don't you see that it is their data, and they have full control over their data. He is the one who wants that data. That puts them in full control. His interface solution would either require him to code 1/2 of the cool features that he wants (which the average person isn't going to do) or require the purchase of someone else's software (and then software assurance to keep up with changing web services). In addition, the other 1/2 of the cool features will then be available or not across dozens of web services that all work extremely different. This shift in paradigm hasn't relieved the inconsistency, only pushed it to a different layer.

And the data? The data about what a flight costs, the data about what deals are going around, the data about who's interested in what, all of this data is very important to the business that have them, and only on a need to know basis. Why not share all of the data for free? Because not only can JD share it, so can their competitors. I can set up a site where I ensure that my prices are always $5 cheaper than my competitors. I can then guarantee the lowest price. These are the sorts of things that businesses spend a lot of time determining, and have been long before computers, but why spend money to help your competition get the leg up on you? And at the same time ensure less to differentiate yourself from others? No matter what the technology, or how much people want their "web 2.0", business will drive those sorts of changes, and business has little to no incentive to deliver Mr. Dowdell his vision of the future.

I'm constantly Synchronizing things, and I think I've finally found a tool that will help with a large part of that chore:

SyncToy is a free PowerToy for Microsoft Windows XP that provides is an easy to use, highly customizable program that helps users to do the heavy lifting involved with the copying, moving, and synchronization of different directories.

[ SyncToy for Windows XP ]

The first challenge for Caribou will be overcoming its Minnesota-ness. Caribou's coffeehouses (in Minnesota) account for about half of the company's stores and sales, and those stores have consistently been more profitable than coffeehouses outside the state.

[ Caribou Coffee off to bitter start ]

Let me say, as far as I am concerned, Caribou is just plain better than Starbucks. Sure, I like the 'bucks, but Caribou's drinks are much more reasonably priced. Caribou also has better drip, especially decaf, since they don't burn their beans like the Starbucks House Blend.

Interestingly, Caribou ends up even being a company I could invest in, as I am a bit strict about my investments:

Besides improving operations, Coles has his hands full addressing the public relations problems related to the 60 percent stake in Caribou owned by Bahrain-based Arcapita Bank, which was formerly known as First Islamic Investment Bank.

Arcapita ... operates the business in accordance with a body of Islamic principles known as Shariah.

Sure, we don't have Peet's in the DC area, so the only two national chains I am aware of are Starbucks and Caribou, but generally I prefer to do the 'bou.

Frappuccinos are too syrupy and fake, but DoubleShots seems nice. You can never seem to find them when you want them, however, which is always disappointing to me. Perhaps I need to move to Japan.

The launch of Starbucks Discoveries represents Starbucks first entry into the chilled cup coffee segment anywhere in the world. The Company took more than a year to create a superpremium ready-to-drink coffee designed to appeal to the local taste preferences in Asia, using the same high-quality coffee found in all Starbucks retail stores and coffee-based products worldwide.

[ Starbucks Launches New Ready-To-Drink Coffee Beverage in Japan and Taiwan ]

I was too busy trying other odd beverages and enjoying green tea in a bottle to try Georgia Coffee (by Coke) but the Starbucks foray into the Japanese market looks yummy. Better be too, as the Japanese market seems rather full.

What does coffee need that has been lacking in it so far? Oh yeah, more caffeine!

Today, Burger King will officially launch its BK Joe - brewed 100% from premium arabica beans. Sold in decaf, regular and "turbo strength" (extra caffeine), the coffee will be in all of Burger King's more than 7,000 U.S. stores by the end of November.

[ Yahoo! Finance ]

In response to other outfits improving the quality of their bean juice, BK has decided to enter the fray with better beans, and fortification! BK Joe could be the start of a new line of beverages for people too hit to drink Red Bull, but still cool enough to want a good ole cup of joe.

Props to Ken Harris.

I love egg, do you? New episodes! New to me, at least. Don't know what you think about I Love Egg? Then set aside some time to fully experience the I Love Egg phenomenon.

I know what your are saying, another flash-based series of adventures of eggs and a catchy soundtrack to go along. But it's really more than that. There's a whole accompanying site in Korean with pictures of giant coffee cups. There's my original post with the I Love Egg theme song. There's the UK based shop of goods with no way to buy anything. They even have wallpapers.

By this time next year, I think that the whole world will Love Egg, but you'll be able to say you heard it here first.

And I think Mak wants them to be more similar. One item in particular that c# has is the ability to have multiple events fire off of a single event through delegates. While javascript will never be c#, recent additions to javascript get it a bit closer with addEventListener. Unfortunately we live in a world where people aren't all using cutting edge browsers, and it will take time for that language improvement to be supported by all. In the mean time? Borrow good hack techniques like this one from Simon Willison (via Joe Grossberg).

For a script ... to be properly reusable, it needs to behave nicely in the presence of other scripts. This means that assigning a callback function directly to the window.onload handler is out of the question as doing so will over-ride previously assigned callbacks from other scripts. The correct way of adding a handler to an event without over-riding other handlers is to use modern event attachment method, which sadly differ between IE/Windows and other browsers. Scott Andrew's addEvent function handles the differences for you but comes with one major and rarely discussed drawback: it fails silently in IE5/Mac. If you care about the many Mac users still on OS9, you need to support that browser.

[ Simon Willison: Executing JavaScript on page load ]

I like this code snippet. I've used this technique before, but never as a generic function that could be reused. With a bit of tweaking this could easily be extended to handle other events (though the window's onload is usually the only one that everyone's fighting for) or allow the ability to specify if the added event comes before or after all current events (just in case you need to jack something in as the #1 thing to do).

Employees can get a licensed copy of Microsoft Office desktop applications, such as Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Project, and Microsoft Visio Professional, to install and use on a home computer.

[ Home Use Program ]

However you have to wait until March of 2006 before these bennies go into affect.

Props to mssmallbiz

I already use a few of these, but many look like products or sites that I won't know how I did without once I start doing with...

Everyone collects utilities, and most folks have a list of a few that they feel are indispensable. Here's mine. Each has a distinct purpose, and I probably touch each at least a few times a week. For me, util means utilitarian and it means don't clutter my tray. If it saves me time, and seamlessly integrates with my life, it's the bomb.

[ Scott Hanselman's 2005 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List ]

The few that I don't see:

• vim
• ieSpell
• gimp
• SQLCompare
• 7-zip
• My powertoys
• ObjectDesktop

The last one mostly for WindowBlinds, because I like my Windows to constantly look new, but it actually has quite a few handy tools that come with it:

• IconDeveloper
• Object Edit (though I prefer vi)
• DriveScan
• ObjectZip (though I prefer 7-zip)
• TweakShell

You have a table, with an identity, that, due to the nature of your application, deletes and inserts many rows on a regular basis. It crossed your mind that at some time the key will grow to the largest integer and then what? You tell yourself that SQL will of course handle that for you , or at least it will never come up since 2,147,483,647 is a large number.

Well, today it happened to me.

[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Arithmetic overflow error converting IDENTITY to data type int.
[Microsoft][ODBC SQL Server Driver][SQL Server]Arithmetic overflow occured.

My "fix" was to reseed the table and change the datatype to bigint, I wonder how long until 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 rows have been inserted and then deleted?

Certainly this may not be news, but it's the first I've noticed. Looks like it runs a bit faster, likely due to the fact it has been compiled for the chip and OS I'm actually using and not running in some sort of legacy mode.

Make your Pocket PC The ultimate Islamic resource tool ... Arabic Holy Quran with tashkil, English translation and recitation ... Athan and recitation ... Hadith in Arabic, Prayer table, Prayer schedule , Hijri Calendar and Hijri to Georgian conversion, Qibla according to your location and position of the sun ... Today Screen [plug-in] to display the prayer time and date in Hijri and to control the Azan voice.

[ Pocket Islam PocketPC ]

This may even fix some of the issues I've noticed with scheduling on the device, reminders and adhan (azan) didn't always work, perhaps that's all worked out now.

The simplest way I can answer the question is that Microsoft is 100 percent focused on Windows," said Nick McGrath, director of platform strategy for Microsoft in the U.K.

[ Microsoft Says No to Linux Office Software - CIO News Alerts - Blog - CIO ]

Wow. Of course OpenOffice will run on my Mac, Linux, or Windows box... (Or Solaris or BSD, but does anyone still use them?)

If you are using dasBlog 1.7 or 1.8 and have been using the MoveableType Blacklist to block spam referrals, then your site is having issues too. On some sites it seems to block all access, on mine it only blocked most links to my site.

The setting to turn off in site.config is false as seen in the screen shot above. If you don't have this setting, or this file then you're not affected.

[ DasBlog Alert! Referral BlackList has changed! ]

Sorry for the inconvenience, I've stopped using the MT Blacklist functionality, and hopefully someone will come up with a genius idea to replace it.

It's about time that someone stood up for decency.

The Senate defied the White House yesterday and voted to set new limits on interrogating detainees in Iraq and elsewhere, underscoring Congress's growing concerns about reports of abuse of suspected terrorists and others in military custody.

[ Senate Supports Interrogation Limits ]

The only obstacle now is ensuring that the House follows suit.

Despite his victory last night, McCain has two major obstacles remaining: House GOP leaders object to attaching it to a spending bill, and Bush could veto it.

But you can help to mitigate this risk by contacting your representative and letting them know how important this is to you, the American voter.

(Note: Some readers may point out that they are not American voters. Perhaps you could just forward the URL for this article to any American voters that you know...)

I've got the fever for the flavor of Dengue, or something like that.

Dengue Fever has surprisingly universal appeal. Vocalist Chhom Nimol, whose family is a pop music dynasty, not unlike a Cambodian analog of The Jacksons, regularly seizes the hearts of listeners (including the King and Queen of Cambodia). Zac Holtzman (Dieselhed) and his brother Ethan on Farfisa organ, Senon Williams (Radar Brothers), David Ralicke (Beck) and the seasoned drummer/engineer Paul Smith stay remarkably true to the crazy party music spirit of the '60's- and '70's-era material they perform, while their originals veer off into the darkened corridors of lost love and ghostly noir romanticism, dissolving into spaces of genuine bleakness and tragedy.

[ Dengue Fever ]

I'm loving the new global pop scene, or as I like to call it Pop 2.0. These guys have an infectious, funky, exotic sound without sounding so far off that you can't figure heads from tails. Like the Fantastic Plastic Machine and Pizzicato 5 that I've been digging lately, Dengue Fever has a retro chic that I just can't shake.

Props go out to the Koosh Moose, who would have blogged about them, but I only gave him about 18 hours to do so, and he's a busy guy.

Or can it?

The agreement between Sun and Google also kicks off further collaboration between the companies on projects like OpenOffice.org, the open source productivity suite that is the world's leading suite on the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux--and the leading alternative suite on Microsoft Windows.

[ Sun Microsystems ]

I've used OpenOffice and I think it's ok. Get Google involved, and Microsoft better start innovating.

Sure, I knew it was going to be a short game, but under 5 hours? It actually took about 7 because my battery died and I had to replay the end of chapter 5, all of chapter 6, and a little bit past that.

Perhaps I'm putting too much stock in one game

[ david kearns dot com - My DS Killer App: daily opinions & trivia ]

However, this totally reminded me of the old Apple ][ days, and the quasi-graphic adventures. Which, is to say, a wonderful walk down nostagia way.

However, the plot is confusing and lame, and the ending lacks in a big way. The graphics are far better than those old Apple // games, and it's nice that most of the game can be played with the stylus or without.

All-in-all, not the reason to buy the DS. My next great white hope is Castlevania DS.

Found a new Windowblinds skin I like, and I think a new artist with it. danillooc resides in Brazil and does great skinning work:

When does Ramadan start?

The crescent moon signals the start of the monthlong holiday, and it will be up to the Plainfield headquarters of the Islamic Society of North America to formally determine for Muslims in this part of the world whether tonight's moon is the real deal.

[ Muslims turn eyes to sky to start Ramadan | IndyStar.com ]

ISNA and the Fiqh Council of North America should be discussing that exact topic this evening. Chances are, based on fancy math, that the Hilal (cresent moon) will not be seen tonight, and Ramadan will start at sunset tomorrow.

If you are itching to find out before everyone else on your block, check out:

• Islamic Society of North America
• Moonsighting.com
• Hilal-Sighting.com

Even more confused by when the days start? Heard that Ramadan starts Tuesday, but your co-worker didn't fast? Keep in mind that days on the Islamic calendar start at sunset, and not midnight. Curious about what is prohibited to a fasting Muslim during Ramadan? Wikipedia to the rescue.

Update: For Northern Virginia, it seems that all of the "big" mosques (or at least the ones with websites that are updated) agree, the first day of fasting is Wednesday:

• Dar Al Hijrah
• ADAMS center

Not quite:

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said that it developed the "save as PDF" feature in Office 12 using the open, freely available PDF standard published by Adobe. Under the open specifications, Adobe allows other software developers to create PDFs without paying a licensing free.

[ Microsoft's Office upgrade to support PDF files - Boston.com ]

When you buy Office 12, you'll have the ability to create PDF files of your documents without having to use PDFCreator. Still, that's one less thing to install. And you can guarantee that all of your employees will be able to create these files. And since it's been siphoned through to PDF, no more worrying about the comments you may have left embedded in the document...