I mentioned before about my return to blogging on ryanfarley.com and my renewed passion for programming. I've found myself moving from blog to blog reading things that continue to inspire me. I read a post from Justice Gray, titled "How I am becoming a better developer, part 1 of infinity". This was a great meme, and although I'm late getting to the table, I wanted to post some thoughts I have on becoming a better developer as well as some goals th

A meme that has been circulating lately online with .NET developers that I've enjoyed reading asks how you got started in software development (started by Michael Eaton). I just got through reading posts on this meme from Phil Haack and Joel Ross, so I decided to post my own story.

My son, Trapper, just had his 9th birthday party this weekend. I had my friend, Neil (kungfootrooper.com) come, who just completed his new Darth Vader costume to give the boys something to gawk over. Even though I knew it was my fiend Neil underneath I can't even describe how powerful and awe-inspiring it was to be in the presence of Darth Vader. Neil is a big guy and makes a really menacing Darth Vader. It was an indescribable feeling and felt like the fulfillment of a childhood dream to stand

I started this blog in August of 2003, almost 3 years ago. I've made 176 posts in those 3 years. I don't post too often to my blog because I'm not all that big on posting stories about my kids, wife, dog, etc - although those do come in every now and then. Anyway, even when I have lulls where I am not posting as much, my traffic seems to stay pretty consistent. I'm actually amazed at how much traffic I get, especially when I consider how often I get around to posting (big thanks to all the visit

The one about my custom vanity license plate...

Well. It's been a crazy week and I wanted to post about it. As I've mentioned before, I do try to keep the content here focused on C# or programming topics. However, a personal post does make it's way to my blog from time to time. This week I added another member to the band ;-)

For anyone interested or those who work with MSCRM, I've decided to put up a new blog dedicated to MS CRM development. It's still just a wee baby, but I plan to post somewhat regular content there.

Something I have always been a sucker for is tricking out my desktop. I love any kind of tweak or gadget that enhances my pc and the whole user-experience thing. It's one of the many reasons I am looking forward to Vista. I've been a fan of applications that trick out the desktop from the norm for years, so I thought I would share a few of my favorites.

I've been catching up on some blog reading lately, I've fallen a bit behind. Anyway, a post from Phil Haack has got me thinking. In this post, Phil talks about those projects that we all have found ourselves in from time to time where there is a limited budge and limited time and you just have to crank something out, something that might be mostly crap (or at least just not ideal) but functional, just so you can get things to phase 2 where you'll reengineer everything and do it right.

You can finally sleep at night, cancel the appointment with your therapist. At long last, you can be assured that you are pronouncing GIF correctly. Whew.

I've always been public about my descisions with which RSS reader to use. Last time I posted about this, I was using Sauce Reader and had found that it was bowing out from aggregator-land. Since then, I've used FeedDemon and have been a pleased, but not really that thrilled. I started using GreatNews and I've found that I like it (even though it's current version is missing a few things).

I started this blog a couple years ago, in August 2003. Back then, as I still do now, I live and breathe C#. So I picked a C#-ish title to reflect a bit of my passion for all things C.

I love to see how society evolves with technology. We're all so reliant on the internet now, thinking several years back things sure were different. I had a neighbor several years ago that was trying to teach his two young daughters to be hackers. His thinking was that the l33t haxor skillz would give his daughters an edge as they grew older and would put them ahead of the curve as far as their understanding of computers, networking, and programming. These skills would also put them in a positio

Poor Phil is suffering from Pagerankatitis. It might be due to a bad case of rel=”nofollow”, or maybe it's just that Phil is a hypochondriac ;-)

It's been over a week since my post about starting up my search for a new RSS Reader with the demise of my current aggregator Sauce Reader. Why is it so hard for me to find a reader that I actually like? I mean, there's a lot of them out there that are OK, but nothing that I can get really excited about.

I posted a long time ago about MaxiVista and how I use it to extend my desktop onto my laptop. I've been using version 2 for a month or two now, and found that I love it even more than before.

If you visit my blog via a browser, you'll see that I added a “Recent Posts” section in the top left corner. This actually has some humor to it since I've been on a 82 day unplanned hiatus, so none of my posts are really “recent”. But, none the less, I wanted to share how I added that. I did absolutely no programming or changes to the blog controls. Just a few things to set up with NewsGator Online services and a single line to add to your blog (you can even add it in the “news” section if you u

Forgive me readers, for I have sinned. It has been 82 days since my last post. Hehe. Well, I'm not sure how it turned out to be that long. Wow. I think it was just one of those things where I got really busy, and then posting fell out of my normal routine, then that turned to a long, unplanned, hiatus.

I posted a bit about opening night, but my friend Neil just posted his account of the entire opening week of Star Wars III - a week in the life of a Storm Trooper. A great read and a busy week.

My kids and I went to hang with my friend Neil and the Arizona 501st Legion on the opening night of Revenge of the Sith. We had a blast. I would have died when I was a kid to have been able to talk with and get my picture taken with such an authentic looking Vader, Storm Troopers, or Jedi. It was great to see my kids every bit as excited as I would have been at their age.

Well, it is done. I've made a switch to a new RSS reader. I've used RSS Bandit for quite a while now. I tried many different readers and ended up quite satisfied with RSS Bandit. But it just didn't excite me any more. I had tried Sauce Reader in the past, although to be honest, I was so in to RSS Bandit at the time that I'm not sure I really gave it a fair shake, but I have now and I am really liking it so far.

I've been busy for a while so haven't made many posts. Anyway, I knew my registration on ryanfarley.com was coming up for renewal but kept on spacing it off - again back to the whole busy thing, but I thought I had set it to automatically renew (I use mydomain and they have that option). So yesterday I found out that I apparently did not have it set to automatically renew and it actually expired so things were down.

Some miscellaneous linkage to some cool free tools and services.

Freakin hilarious.

Definition of recursion

I just have to say that I can't get enough of the new Battlestar Galactica on the SciFi channel. I loved the mini-series they aired last year but was bummed that it was so short and over way too soon. Now that it is a full series it is every bit as great as before. If you haven't watched it yet, don't expect anything like the old series from way back (but I like that too). No cheesy acting & comedic relief. Just really great sci-fi and an awesome story line.

I love to take the approach of solving computing problems through programming. Sometimes it backfires and I over-complicate the problem (I have been known to prematurely generalize from time to time). But usually I bask in the greatness of being a programmer and having the skills to make my life easier and remove redundant or tedious tasks programically.

After my last post, I decided to do what I outlined to throw together a quick search page for my blog.

Chow down on those biscuits. Yummm. They keep bringing out the things they think I need, to the point where I buy into the idea that I need it too, but in the end I'll find out I am just eating people. What exactly am I talking about here (besides a classic 70's sci fi movie)? The endless Desktop Search applications coming out. MSN's is out now, thrown into the mix with Google, Copernic, X1, and Yahoo has one on the way too (via licensed X1).

I posted before about my friend, Neil, who recently dropped the cash for some Imperial Tighty Whities (hehe). His post about our trip to Wal Mart has received numerous posts so we talked about the need for a separate blog dedicated to his life as a Storm Trooper. I cranked out a custom .Text skin for the site and it's up and running at KungFooTrooper.com.

Call it noise, call it the next big thing, or just call it stupid. Define it how ever you want. Blogging has become a huge thing in today's world. It has changed my daily routine. It has changed how I look for help with my work. It opened up a whole new world of people to meet, learn from, and be annoyed at.

A friend of mine decided to take the plunge. The plunge that us mere mortals only dream about. Yes, he bought Stormtrooper armor. Ever since that summer of 1977 in a galaxy far, far away, I have had a dream of someday sporting that intergalactic white getup of imperial greatness.

My mom recently sent me a picture of when I was a kid (Age 4). I couldn’t get over the ridiculously huge bow-tie I was wearing so I doctored up the photo a bit to send back to her. Anyway, the picture cracks me up so I decided to share it with you. Have a good laugh.

What a busy month. I moved into a new house. Which moving for me means I am also moving my office since I work from home. Getting things back together again, getting the network up, setting up phones, internet, etc, etc. It is all a big pain. Meanwhile trying to balance getting my house back to normal and everything out of boxes with doing the same for my office. Ugh.

It was ten years ago today that I married my beautiful Jennette.

Tha Shizzolator done tricked out my blog.

According to the Death Clock, I will die on Monday, December 29, 2042. Dang. I'll only be 72, what a jip.

Stuart Laughlin is a funny man. Well, at least his kids are funny. Not to say that Stuart isn't, but the reason for this post is to point out how funny his kids are. You've got to read this post about a note from one of his kids. Just hilarious. For another good read, you can check out a mad lib by his other kids.

According to the Gematriculator my blog is 38% evil.

Can you tell a coder from a cannibal? Can you tell which people spent their time hacking computers, and which spent their time hacking up people?

Well, it's been a really eventful week. Pretty crazy. My wife, Jennette, was having some really painful things going on in her stomach, so I took her to the emergency room on Saturday. At the time we had no idea it would turn into such a big thing - but we just finally came home from the hospital tonight.

So my new daughter, Tess, was born this last weekend. She is my 4th. I can't believe that I am a father of 4. I love being a father, my kids are great. Although, I have to admit that the whole process is really alien-like.

Well, I finally decided to put my blog up. I'll be posting here my rantings and ramblings on subjects such as C#, .NET, programming, and life in general. I'm usually not a very outspoken guy, but I am a whole other person at the keyboard. I'll try not to scare you too much ;-)