Darkfalz.com

We now have an accepted offer on a new place and actually managed to get the same closing day for the sale of our existing house. So it's looking like Nov 21st will be "the day". I get a feeling that from now until then things may be a little on the chaotic side. There are so many things that you just dont realize you need to do. Heck, just changing address forms for things like Banks, Credit Cards, Catalogs, Mailings, etc...that's enough to drive ya nuts. Mix in Insurance (changing Car over to new address and moving homeowners over), Phone, Cable and those types of things and you really get busy. Top if off with hiring inspectors and lots of trips to the realtor and the banker and you pretty much need a vacation.

Still though...the new place is great and I think it will be much better for us. More room for us, more room for expansion, bigger yard, bigger garage(woohoo). Sounds good to me...

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If you happen to notice a lack of posts I've got a pretty good reason. After having the house up for sale for nearly 2 years (off and on) we finally sold it. We're not deep in the search for a new, bigger, place. It's been a long trek and we're 1/2 way there now.... If all goes well we should be in a new place sometime in the next 5-8 weeks. I'll still try to keep posting but my time is pretty consumed these days.

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I just finished listening (yeah, I listen to a lot of books) to the first "chapter" of .Metatropolis and all I can say is WOW. The title is really more of a series of stories so the first chapter is nearly a book in itself. I got a copy from www.Audible.com of just this first chapter and I can already say it's going to be a must-read (or must-listen). It's an interesting look towards what seems like a very possible, not so distant, future. The imagery is exquisite and the characters are facinating. It definitely hooks you in. The chapter was about a 2.5 hour listen so it's quite substantial but it flew by.

I tend to spend a lot of time with headphones on, listening to podcasts and music but lately I've rediscovered audio books. It's been a great change from the same old tunes and really makes the computer work fly by. I'm amazed at how well the brain seems to still absorb the story even while typing away at code....

Anyways, if you're a reader/listener of sci-fi then I'd highly suggest picking this one up. The full work will be out on 10/21/2008 at www.Audible.com to listen. I'm not sure when (if) there will be a print release but I'm fairly sure it will be eventually (if it's not already).

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This is yet one more quick widget I wrote for the Graffiti CMS. A user was asking about extending the existing Link List widget and I suggested he/she would be better off just writing their own. I had a few minutes and threw one together myself. It allows you to add extra attributes to your <a href...> tag that is generated for the Link List.

You can find it here: http://www.codeplex.com/ExtendedLinkList

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This is just one more widget that I wrote while playing around with Graffiti. It simply does a listing by month with a count of the # of posts for each month over the last (n) months where the # of months is specified in the configuration.

I hope you enjoy it. http://www.codeplex.com/PostArchiveListings

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I was playing around with the development options for this site and thought I'd share what I wrote. As you may know this site uses the Graffiti CMS application as it's underlying engine. It seems pretty solid and is fairly extensible. With that I decided to try to write what Telligent calls a "widget". Basically it's like a .Net Server Control. It's a self contained DLL that inherits from the Graffiti architecture (sorry for the techie talk). Anyways, I decided to share what I wrote so others could use/learn if they wanted as well. You can find this new widget on CodePlex at http://www.CodePlex.com/PostsByMonthWidget

Oh, you can see what it looks like by looking down the left hand column of this site......

Enjoy.

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For a number of years I've been running my own consulting and development business (df-Software.com). It's been a good run but what's started out as something I did because I enjoyed it has become less "fun" and more of a burden. I've always done this in addition to working a full-time job but alas the workload's had be burning the candle at both ends for too long and it seems like the times have caught up to me. With this I've decided that it's time to close up the shop and allow me to better spend my time with personal matters and give myself what I can only consider a long overdue vacation. I will still be running this site (how could I not?) but my other sites are all coming down one by one (most are already gone) and my official business site will be coming down in the near future. I will still be working with a few existing customers to finish up contracts and/or transition the workload to other sources but I wont be taking any new contracts nor any new work. If all goes well it should all be completed by the end of the month. I thank all of my customers over the years for their business and wish them all the best with their endeavors. Thank you....

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In the middle of a brain meltdown the other day I started to think of just how nice it would be to quit it all and start over. I've been a techie in one form or another my entire professional career and what started as a hobby I loved has turned into somewhat of a migrane. It's the common story of taking what you enjoy and pushing it beyond the limits of "fun" and destroying why you loved it in the first place.

With that, I started to reflect in on myself and think about just what it was I would do if I wasn't a geek. I've always had a passion for cooking (got that from my Mother) and have always gotten a lot of enjoyment from tinkering with powertools (thanks Dad) and then there has always been my enjoyment of the outdoors (camping, fishing, hunting, etc). For me it would be a tough call but I would have to say that opening a nice (small) Bar & Grill would probably be great. Some place where the menu would be "comfort food" and all the locals would know about and yet some place the tourists would all stop in when they were "in season". A northern vacation town perhaps, with lots of good fishing & hunting around and a place I could setup a little shop and make fun crafts & such for the family and friends.

How about you? I'm guessing that since you are reading this you are probably a techie (if not even better) but what would you do if you were told you had to change careers?

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Well, it's been a fun run and an interesting one but as of 10/1/2008 I am no longer a Microsoft MVP. It appears that my contributions to the community over the last year were insufficeint to be considered for another award cycle. It's been a 6 year run full of lots of great interactions, great people and exciting stuff but I guess it couldn't last forever. Who knows, maybe I'll be awarded again in the future but for now I'll just have to look back and try to smile and remember the good times.

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