Michael S. Collier

A few months ago I was looking for a good way to put together some simple screen shots to show a few ideas on a web site I was looking to build.  My timeline was tight, and I really didn’t want to spend the time or effort to put together a working prototype.  The problem I have with prototypes is the prototype often gets viewed as the what the final version will look like or work like.  If something ugly is on the prototype, then people will often focus on that instead of the real goal of the prototype. 

I remembered hearing somebody at a development conference mention a tool called Balsamiq Mockups as a way to help in building a prototype.  They spoke pretty highly of it.  So, I figured I would check it out.

I browsed around the samples and demo on Balsamiq’s web site for a while.  There was a lot of good information there that helped me get a better idea of what Balsamiq Mockups could do.  So, I gave it a shot for the project I was working on.  I was able to quickly and easily build several mockups to show my ideas for several web pages.  Adding elements such as common input elements (textboxes, date pickers, etc.), hyperlinks, images,and grids were all very easy to add to my mockup.  Linking my mockups together via the hyperlinks was very easy too.  By linking together my mockups, I was able to view and interact with my mockups in a full-screen mode – very cool!!  In my first attempt, I had about 3 page mockups put together in about an hour.  I thought that was pretty good.  A lot of that time was spent playing around with the many controls available.

Once I was done with a few more page mockups, I showed another developer on my team the mockups.  He seemed pretty impressed, and he started building mockups to complement mine.  We were able to build out a good portion of the site rather quickly with Balsamiq Mockups.  This proved to be really valuable to us.  As we were building the mockups, we were able to bounce ideas of each other and figure out what we wanted the site to look like, and how we wanted the site to flow.  By the time we were ready to show off the mockup, we had a much better looking site (granted, a mockup/prototype) than I think we would have had before.  The time and ease of putting the mockup together was very valuable.

The more people I show Balsamiq Mockups too, the more positive reaction I receive.  It seems to be a valuable tool that not a whole lot of people now about yet for some reason.  But, it seems to be gaining some momentum.  I know I’ll be telling people about it.  Balsamiq Mockups is even on Scott Hansleman’s 2009 Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for Windows.  So, I’m sure it’ll continue to get more and more popular.  I showed a few buddies that were building an iPhone app, and since Balsamiq Mockups has controls for the iPhone, they were pretty impressed.  I think they’ll be using it to help flush out some ideas for the iPhone app they’re building.

I should mention that Microsoft is adding what I think will be a pretty heavy competitor in Microsoft Expression Studio 3 and Sketchflow.  Sketchflow looks to be taking a direct shot at Balsamiq Mockups.  Sketchflow has the same “back of a napkin” drawing looking for the UI mockup.  That rough look for the mockups is one of the really nice aspects of a tool like Balsamiq Mockups.  Sketchflow has a few other nice features though that Balsamiq Mockups doesn’t have yet – ability to export directly to Microsoft Word (very nice feature, in my opinion), show a chart with all the navigation links, and the ability to turn your sketch into a somewhat working WPF app.  While these are certainly nice features, I’m not sure it totally steals the show from Balsamiq Mockups just yet.  Balsamiq’s product is still pretty cheap, and it does pretty much everything I want it to do.  Plus, Balsamiq Mockups has a community of people developing new UI controls that can be added to the product.

In summary, I would encourage you to take a look at Balsamiq Mockups if you want to put together a mockup or prototype for a web site, desktop application, or even an iPhone application.  Being able to quickly see your idea on “paper” will surely help you flush out your ideas.  Plus, since the UI created doesn’t look pretty (by design), people looking at your mockup will likely stay more focused on the data and overall layout, rather than a pretty spinning wheel.

On Saturday I presented at my first developer conference – Indy Code Camp.  My presentation was entitled “Building My First Windows Azure Application.”

I was pretty excited, and nervous, about doing this presentation.  Like I said, this was my first time giving a talk at a developer conference.  It was also the first time in a long time that I’ve had to speak in front of a group of any decent size.  There were probably about 20-30 people in my session.   I have to admit, it was pretty exciting!  Hopefully those that attended liked the session too.  I’m looking forward to doing more presentations in the near future.

Overall, I think the session went pretty well.  Windows Azure is a pretty large topic to try to cover in a 75 minute talk.  The talk was supposed to show mostly code, and in my opinion, that really doesn’t lend itself to covering Azure’s features all that well.  I had a few slides at the beginning on what Windows Azure was and what some of it’s basic features were – and I whipped through those in about 7 minutes.  Hopefully I didn’t lose people.  I wanted to make sure there was plenty of time to show the code.

I was pretty happy with the PowerPoint deck, and the code samples went off without a hitch – pretty much.  The only time the demo gods showed their vengeance was right at the end when I needed internet connectivity.  For some reason my virtual machine (VMWare Workstation 6.5) wouldn’t connect to the internet – but my host OS (Windows Vista) was able to connect.  It was really odd for me.   I’m still not sure what went wrong there, but I’m thinking it had something to do with some public vs. private network settings in Windows Vista that I don’t totally understand yet. 

As promised, you can find my sample Windows Azure application and PowerPoint slides here.

You can also find the sample application I built during the session at http://azurejokes.cloudapp.net/.  Note – I’ve temporarily disabled the ability to publish the jokes to Twitter.

Finally, I must give a big thanks to Dave Leininger and the rest of the crew that put on Indy Code Camp.  This event continues to get better and better.  There were some pretty good speakers there, and I was very honored to be invited to be one.  I’m looking forward to coming back next year – as either a speaker or attendee!

Today wraps up day 0 of CodeMash 2009.  This was the “Precompilier” day, and was a little less structured than the regular CodeMash days.  Today essentially consisted of two long sessions, each about 4 hours in length.  These allowed you to get a little more in depth on a topic if so desired.  Or, you could be a butterfly and flutter around to see a bunch of things.  I liked this format as we were able to get a little more interactive.

For my first session, I decided to spend my morning learning about iPhone development.  I thought this was a really neat session.  I hadn’t seen anything before about writing an iPhone app.  I thought it might be cool to write one of my own, but didn’t really want to buy a Mac to do so.  This session gave me a chance to see first hand how I could write one (if I ever decided to get a Mac).  Developing an iPhone app didn’t seem terribly hard, but it sure seemed like a big switch from my comfortable .NET world.  The procedural and objective-C language used to develop on the iPhone seems kind of funky to me.  The development tools Apple has really are different than Visual Studio.  It’s just a way different way to do things.  I think it would be a huge learning curve for me (not that it would be a bad thing).  Kind of neat though.  But, in a way, that goes with my general view of Apple – way different and somewhat uncomfortable for me, but at the same time pretty neat.

For my second session, I decided to learn more about Windows Azure.  I was hoping to learn some more details about Azure, and to be able to write and load an app into the Azure cloud.  But, due to a few technical problems, I didn’t get to write that Azure app.  But, Windows Azure Technical Evangelist David Aiken had a really good presentation on what Azure is and isn’t and how it all fits in the ever evolving Azure Services Platform.  He cleared up some of my confusion on Azure.  I left his presentation really geeked up about Azure.  I think what Microsoft is doing is going to be really interesting.  For me, I’m looking forward to using the features Azure provides.  It’s going to be fun to see how Windows Azure develops and evolves in 2009.  I can’t wait to write my first cloud app!  The Azure team is supposed to have some labs set up that will allow CodeMash attendees to write apps for Azure.  Those labs weren’t up today, but hopefully they’ll all be running on Thursday.  I did learn that the Windows Azure SDK and related Visual Studio tools require Windows Server 2008 or Windows Vista – they do not run on Windows XP!  I was shocked at this.  I can’t think of a good reason why the Azure SDK would require Vista.  I’m hoping to get a chance on Thursday to talk to some of the guys from Microsoft to ask them why Windows XP isn’t supported.

To wrap up, the CodeMash 2009 Precompilier was a big hit in my book.  I learned a lot and really was psyched up about some of the things I saw and heard.  I attended Microsoft TechEd in 2008 and was really geeked up after that.  I’m getting that same feeling again.  I’m surrounded by so many smart people and great technology.  Attending conferences like TechEd and CodeMash just seem to reenergize me.

This is a continuation of sorts from my previous post.

I’ve been trying to find a good way to get my wife and I to be able to see each other’s calendar information on our iPhones.  The more I got to thinking about it, the more I thought that I’m pretty close already and just need to put the final pieces in place.  Here is what I did.

1. Use Google Calendar to share calendar information.  We each have our own Google Calendar accounts and simply share our calendars with each other.  That’s a simple enough feature of Google Calendar. 
2. Sync the Google Calendars with Outlook.  I’ve been syncing my personal and work Google Calendars account with my Outlook account for a while now.  I use SyncMyCal to do the calendar syncing.  I like using SyncMyCal because it lets me select any of my Google calendars to sync with any particular Outlook calendar.  To get my wife’s calendar info, I did pretty much the same thing.  I simply created a new calendar in Outlook and set up SyncMyCal to sync my wife’s shared Google Calendar with this new Outlook calendar.
3. Sync the calendars with MobileMe.  Sure I could use the traditional iTunes approach, but MobileMe is just so much more convenient for this.   Now when MobileMe syncs my Outlook calendars with my iPhone, I get my wife’s calendar info sync’d to a new calendar entry on my iPhone.  Nice!  Remember – all calendars under the main Outlook “Calendar” calendar will sync when using MobileMe.

So far I think this approach is working great.  I’m essentially using Google Calendar as the main “calendar in the cloud”, if you will.  From there, everything just gets sync’d up.

My next step will be to set up my wife’s iPhone to do calendar syncing with my calendar data.  Now that I have an idea of how to do it on my phone and Outlook instance, setting up hers should be a snap.

One of the big features of my iPhone that I love is the ability for it to sync calendars with Microsoft Outlook.  For a while now, it has also been one of the most annoying.   Apple has very little documentation, as far as I can tell, that describes in any detail how the iPhone syncs with Microsoft Outlook.  All Apple says is that it does.  But how?  How can I control the calendars in Outlook (I have several) the iPhone will sync with?  How can I control the calendar colors on the iPhone?  After a few nights of digging around blogs and forum postings, as well as a good amount of time experimenting with my iPhone and Outlook calendars, I think I can finally answer the questions of which calendars sync, and how to control the colors.

First, what calendars sync?  From what I can tell, when using iTunes to sync an Outlook calendar to the iPhone, you can request that all calendars be synced, or just selected calendars.

However, if you use MobileMe to sync calendars, it appears you loose control over what calendars will sync.  When using MobileMe, all calendars will sync.  You can no longer select which calendars you want to sync.  So it is a trade off – you get slick over-the-air syncing with MobileMe, but you can not control what syncs.  If you want that, you have to be tethered to a USB cable and iTunes. 

I also should point out that MobileMe seems to sync all calendars under the “Calendar” folder (inclusive).  When I moved my “Home” and “Work” calendars to be at the same level as the “Calendar” calendar, MobileMe wouldn’t recognize them.  All my calendars had to be sub-calendars of “Calendar”.  Odd.

This worked.	This did not work.

Second, how to control the colors of the calendars on the iPhone?  From what I can, by default, the iPhone will pick a random color from a set of predefined colors.  There seems to be no way to control the calendar colors from the iPhone or iTunes.  That just seemed moronic to me.  So, I went on a hunt.  I found some blog postings that mentioned the iPhone would pick up the calendar color defined in the iCalendar it synced with.  Well, since I don’t have iCalendar, but instead Outlook, that didn’t really help me.  But, I thought that maybe what Apple is doing with iCalendar they’re also doing with the calendar in MobileMe.  So, I made sure I had set up my iPhone to sync calendars with MobileMe (thus giving up control of what calendars to sync).  After the first MobileMe sync, I checked the calendar colors on my iPhone.  No change – they did not match the calendar colors in MobileMe’s calendar.  I decided to change the calendar colors in MobileMe and try again.  Magic!  The calendar colors on my iPhone now match the calendar colors I defined in MobileMe’s calendar.

Hopefully this helps others who are struggling with calendar syncing between Microsoft Outlook and the iPhone.  If you have any other suggestions or tips, please let me know by posting a comment.

I recently came across the Stopwatch class while browsing through some code online.  I’ve never heard this class before, so I took a closer look.  I talked to a few friends to find out if they’ve heard of it – nope.  So, I figure this would be a good time to do some .NET evangelism.  :)  Can I get an ‘Amen’ from the congregation?

Have you ever tried to determine how long some chunk of code takes to run?  If so, I'll bet you've used the DateTime and TimeSpan classes to do so.  You've probably written sometime like this:

   1: // Set the start time.

   2: DateTime startTime = DateTime.Now;

   3:  

   4: // Do some work.

   5: DoWork();

   6:  

   7: // Set the end time.

   8: DateTime stopTime = DateTime.Now;

   9:  

  10: // Determine the elapsed time.

  11: TimeSpan elapsedTime = stopTime - startTime;

  12:  

  13: // How long did the work take?

  14: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("It took {0} milliseconds to complete the work.", elapsedTime.Milliseconds));

That's all well and good, I suppose.  But, there is another way.

The Stopwatch class was introduced in .NET 2.0, and provides a clean way to measure elapsed time.  Take this code for example:

   1: Stopwatch stopwatch = new Stopwatch();

   2:  

   3: // Start the timer!

   4: stopwatch.Start();

   5:  

   6: // Do some work.

   7: DoWork();

   8:  

   9: // Stop the timer!

  10: stopwatch.Stop();

  11:  

  12: // How long did the work take?

  13: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("It took {0} milliseconds to complete the work.", stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds));

  14: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("It took {0} ticks to complete the work.", stopwatch.ElapsedTicks));

  15:  

  16: // Start the timer, again!

  17: stopwatch.Start();

  18:  

  19: // Do some more work.

  20: DoWork();

  21:  

  22: // Stop the timer, again!

  23: stopwatch.Stop();

  24:  

  25: // How long did the work take?

  26: Console.WriteLine(string.Format("It took {0} milliseconds to complete the work.", stopwatch.ElapsedMilliseconds));

As you can see here, the Stopwatch class provides a simple Start() and Stop() method that can be used to measure elapsed time.  After stopping the stopwatch, you can start it up again and time continues.  It's just like, well, a real stopwatch.  If you want to stop the timer and reset the elapsed time, simply call the Reset() method.  Easy and clean!!

Another feature of the Stopwatch class is that it automatically uses a high-resolution timer if the underlying hardware and OS support it.  Otherwise, the Stopwatch class uses the system timer (the DateTime class).

To read more about the Stopwatch class, read the documentation on MSDN at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.diagnostics.stopwatch(VS.80).aspx.

I've been spending some time recently debating with myself over the purpose of this blog.  I'm debating if this blog should be technology/software focused, focused on me, or a mixture of both.

So far, this blog has been a mixture of technology/software items and stuff about me.  With that approach, there has been no clear direction for the blog.  I basically post a hodgepodge of information.  I wonder if I would be better off focusing on one subject area.  Would I get more readers?  Would it be better for me personally and/or professionally?  I've been wanting to get more involved in the .NET community - would a more focused blog help with that effort?

Would I be better focusing on technology/software with one blog, and personal life items with another blog?

Thoughts?  Ideas?  Suggestions?

Well, the first day of CodeMash 2008 is in the books.  It was really a great day.  I've already mentioned some of the highlights from the first part of the day in my previous post.  The second half of the day was even better!

After lunch we were treated to a very, very entertaining and informative keynote by Microsoft's Scott Hanselman.  He started off with about 5 minutes of very funny slides about him, his past, and what he's doing now.  It was a great way to get the crowd energized after a pretty good lunch.  Scott's main presentation was on some of the kick-ass features of IIS7.  I really hope I get to use IIS7 on a future project.  Some of the features that IIS7 now provide would have saved me tons of time on past projects.  If you're not using IIS7 now, you should really consider moving in that direction.  Take a look - I'm sure you'll be impressed too!  One of the cooler tidbits from the presentation is that PHP scripts run about 3x faster under IIS7 than previous versions.  That speed improvement is due to the new FastCGI module available with IIS7.

The third breakout session I attended was headed-up by Brian Prince, and entitled "Applied Service-Oriented Architecture".  It was a pretty good session.  I certainly picked up a few tips I'm eager to apply, and some best practices I'm eager to use (especially with some of my moronic colleagues).  :)

The final session of the day for me was "Putting the Fun into Functional with F#".  I'm not sure what to think about F#.  During the presentation I went from thinking F# was very cool, to that it is totally crazy, back and forth a few times, and finally at it probably isn't for me yet.  Granted, F# is still a project at Microsoft Research.  I think F# is more tailored at people who do a lot of mathematical applications.  That is not the type of software engineering I generally tend to work on.

Both Guitar Hero and Rock Band were set up on a few Xbox 360's.  These were pretty popular.

I'm looking forward to seeing what great things the second and final (snif, snif) day of CodeMash will bring!

Well, I'm half way through the first half of day 1 of CodeMash 2008.  I've attended the morning keynote speech by Neal Ford, a Silverlight presentation by Jeff Blankenburg, and a very entertaining presentation on Windows Sharepoint Services 3 and MOSS 2007 by Leon Gersing.  I'm having a lot of fun so far, and learning a few things along the way!

Neal Ford's speech was really pretty good.  He was funny and informative - always a plus for a speaker in my book.  He took some nice shots at Java and C#, and a few other languages.  One of my favorite shots of his at Java was when he pointed out how Java implements generics.  He quoted Venkat S. in "Generics shows that Java is retarded".  Funny!

Another topic in Neal Ford's speech was comparing software engineering to traditional engineering disciplines (i.e. civil engineering).  He pointed out that the code software engineers produce relates to the documentation produced by other engineering disciplines, and that compilation and deployment relates to the manufacturing phase. He also mentioned that testing is the engineering rigor of software engineering.  I thought that was a pretty interesting statement.  So often testing is forgotten or disregarded for some stupid business case (time, money, blah, blah, blah).

The MOSS 2007 presentation by Leon Gersing was very, very entertaining and informative.  He related working with various programing languages and tools to dating and life with women.  He did a very good job with that comparison.  I hadn't thought of it like that before, but he was soooo right.  Darn funny!!

Ok, so this is probably old news to a lot of people.  But, as I talk to more people about Microsoft's Live services, I find that many people still aren't aware of what Live offers.

One of the very nice features of Live is a new email address domain - live.com.  When Microsoft took the wraps off their Live service line-up, they also made the live.com domain available for email addresses.  If you don't like your current email address, and would like something a little cleaner or just different. head on over to http://get.live.com/getlive/overview to get your new account.

You can also migrate your old Hotmail information over to your new Live.com account so you can continue to use Live services like Windows Live Messenger.  For info on how to do this, check out Jeff Blankenburg's post at http://www.jeffblankenburg.com/2007/11/new-hotnesslive.html.

Earlier this week Microsoft announced the next version of Visual Studio and the .NET Framework will be announced later this month!  The developer in me is saying sweeeeeeta! 

There are some very cool features in VS2008 and .NET Framework 3.5.  I'm really looking forward to getting to play with these tools!

Also announced was the Microsoft Sync Framework.  From what little I've read, this looks really exciting.  I can think of several situations where having a read-to-go application syncing platform would have been really helpful. I'm hoping to get time to learn more about this exciting tool!!

I'm currently using a Cingular 2125 for my cell phone.  I've had the phone for almost 2 years.  I really liked the phone. . . for a while.  It's not the phone's interface or features that I'm having a problem with, it's the hardware.  The phone has a small toggle/joystick on it that let's me move around.  The trouble now is that little joystick has started to not work very well.  It works sometimes, but not others.  When it doesn't work, doing virtually anything on the phone is very frustrating.

With my phone troubles in mind, I've started looking for a replacement.  Being the Microsoft fanboy that I am, I wanted another Windows Mobile smartphone.  I started looking around for phones running the new version of Windows Mobile 6.  There are a few out there, but nothing great.

So, I caved into the media and hype and starting considering an iPhone.  I've even gone into. . yes. . an Apple store.  Weird.  I felt so out of place there.  Like I was letting my Microsoft family down.  :)

After playing with the iPhone in stores, and talking to a few coworkers, I'm really leaning hard towards an iPhone.  The interface is simply just revolutionary.  There is nothing like it.  Some phone manfactures are staring to come out with phones that run Windows Mobile 6 and have a touch screen, near iPhone-like interface.  But, from what I've seen online, that touch interface is merely just a cover over Windows Mobile 6.  Windows Mobile is nice and all, but it is just nothing like the iPhone.  There just doesn't seem to be a smartphone that can compete with the iPhone's interface.

I've been asking myself what is important in an iPhone.  Do I value more business features over media features?  Do I need MS Exchange syncing?  Do I want an IM client like Windows Live Messenger on my mobile phone, or would text messages do the job?  How high do I rank web browsing?  Ability to take pictures?  For most of these, the iPhone seems to do the job better than a Windows Mobile 6 device.  A Windows Mobile 6 device would likely work better with Office documents and Exchange.  But, I question how much I would use that.  Heck, I've never edited or read a Office document on my phone.  Would I if I had a phone designed for business features like that?

Other than being a MS fanboy, I have a few other grips about the iPhone:

1. Price - why on earth is the stupid thing so darn expensive?  I'm sorry, but $400 plus all the darn accessories is a lot to drop for a phone that will really be outdated in about a year.  So, figure $500 after taxes and accessories to use it for about a year.  I'm assuming Apple will release a new one in about another year or so.
2. No 3G support.  What the heck is up with that?  3G is sooooo much better than EDGE.  Apple comes out with this really advanced phone, but decide to go with the slower, outdated EDGE network.  Come on!
3. No ability to synch with Exchange.

What to do?  I'm hoping to keep using my crappy Cingular 2125 for another month or so.  But, every time I do and it doesn't work, I keep thinking that an iPhone would be so nice.

Have you seen Windows Live SkyDrive?  If not, I encourage you to check it out.  SkyDrive provides you with 1GB of free online storage space.  You can set up private folders, private folders, and/or shared folders.  This can be used as a great way to share pictures, documents, or whatever you want with your friends and family.

SkyDrive integrates nicely with Windows Live Messenger so that you can see when you're friends add new files.  RSS feeds for SkyDrive storage is also available.  Cool!

Stay up-to-date with all the latest and greatest SkyDrive information by checking out the SkyDrive Team Blog.

Sonja and I went to the Gathering of Mustangs and Legends 2007 air show in Columbus a few weeks ago.  I wasn't too thrilled about going at first.  But, once I got there I was very impressed with some of the planes on display. 

When we first got there the Air Force Thunderbirds were putting on a show.  Very cool!!  We also saw some very, very large Air Force cargo planes.

Naturally, there were a lot of P-51 Mustangs on display.  A very cool pyrotechnics show was also put on display to show off the destruction that some of the WWII era plans might do.  Awesome!!

You can see more pictures from the show on my Flickr site.

I was a little bored tonight, so I took a stupid test to see just how big of a nerd I am.  I think one gets points just for taking the test.

Apparently I'm not a huge nerd, just a light-weight nerd.  I suppose that is a good thing. 

Sonja and I went to the Ohio State fair a few weeks ago.  I haven't been in a few years, and Sonja had never been to the Ohio State fair. 

The fair was pretty much like I remembered - smelly, hot, full of junk food, fat people, and people selling crap.  There really is nothing to do at the fair other than eat junk food.  So, I did just that.  I had a great Polish sausage, some lemonade, an elephant ear, and a first for me - deep fried Snickers.  Yes, I tried the deep fried Snickers, and it was good!

If you're at the Ohio State fair, one must see the famous Butter Cow.  So, we did just that!

There really wasn't much else to see.  One thing that we thought was cool was the Budweiser Clydesdale horses.  I've never seen those horses up close, and they are huge!!

In the parking lot I saw a sign that caught my attention.  Which way should I go?

See more pictures from the 2007 Ohio State fair here.

As some of our friends already know, Sonja and I were in a minor car accident a couple weekends ago.  It really wasn't all that bad.  Everybody in all the cars was ok, so that was good.

Sonja's car has damage to the front, rear, and passenger side.  The damage doesn't look very bad, but apparently it is running up a pretty expensive repair bill.  Thankfully the girl at fault has insurance, so her insurance company is paying for everything.  Although, I'm not so sure I'm happy with how the insurance company is handling all of that.  But, more on that in another post.

Some pictures from the accident can be found on my Flickr site. 

Below is a picture of the intersection where the accident took place.

Friends and Family,

Sonja and Mike have an announcement to make . . . WE’RE ENGAGED!! That’s right – after over 3 ½ years Mike finally decided to “pop the question” on Sunday, July 8^th.

Sunday was Mike’s birthday too. That morning Sonja gave Mike a set of new golf clubs as a birthday present. After opening the box the golf clubs were in, Mike gave Sonja a DVD wrapped in birthday paper. She opened it and played the DVD. It was a slide show, set with various songs, of pictures of us over the last 3.5+ years. She thought it was just another video, as Mike had made a few of those for her before. This time the video was a little different as it ended with a slide asking “Sonja, will you marry me?” Mike tried to get down on one knee, but Sonja jumped on him before he could even get that far!

Mike got new golf clubs and a fiancé for a birthday present . . . not bad at all!

We’ll be putting up a web site soon where you can find pictures, announcements, and all sorts of information about us.

You can also find a few more pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/buckeye01/sets/72157600724502098/.

Cheerfully,
Mike and Sonja

My programmer personality is:
PHTB

You're a Planner.
You may be slow, but you'll usually find the best solution. If something's worth doing, it's worth doing right.

You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way.

You work best in a Team.
A good group is better than the sum of it's parts. The only thing better than a genius programmer is a cohesive group of genius programmers.

You are a liBeral programmer.
Programming is a complex task and you should use white space and comments as freely as possible to help simplify the task. We're not writing on paper anymore so we can take up as much room as we need.

Determine your programmer personality at at http://www.doolwind.com/index.php?page=11