Greasemonkey ownage + MORE OWNAGE

I was looking around for some Greasemonkey news and found a UI for greasemonkey where you can visually remove parts of any page and then save that as a Greasemonkey script!

It's called Platypus and it totally rocks!

I'm starting to remove the ads from all the pages I regularly visit :D

Home again

The trip home was so very very long.

We left the hotel at 11am (EST) on thursday and when we got to the airport they put us on stand by for an earlier flight to Newark because of the impending and ubiquitous thunder storms.

Ulf checked in first, Christofer after that and then I did.

When we got to the gate it turns Ulf had been checked in last (eh?) and only me and Christofer made the earlier flight. Ulf made the original flight though and there wasn't any trouble.

I picked up a pair of Shure E2c at the airport while we waited for Ulfs flight to arrive.

Our home flight was to leave at 6pm and we boarded in time. However we sat in the plane waiting for a, you guessed it, thunder storm to pass by before we could take off.

The ride over was uneventful and boring. I arrived in Stockholm at around 11am (CET) and managed to get a flight home at 12:55.

I'm still deaf on the left ear and it bugs the hell out of me. It's good to be home even though I'm suffering from the jet lag. My brain still thinks it's 04:45 right now ...

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 11 & 12

Wednesday started off by lounging at the pool for a few hours, then we went to Sea World to visit Shamu and his family. The show was really cool and we sat in the soak zone and got really wet. Like every day here it was about 30-35 degrees so the soaking part was good :)

My cold is getting worse, I felt like crap all day but have refrained from whining so I won't spoil the others vacation.

We also saw some sharks, penguins and a "dolphin" show that had 2 minutes of dolphons and 13 minutes of people swinging from lines and jumping in the water.

We rounded off the day at the hotel with the guys watching Constantine (since I can't really watch a movie being half deaf and all; and since I've seen that movie). I fell asleep at around 10pm.

Today we went to the mall so I could buy a new bag to put all of my stuff in. Ulf bought stuff for his kids. We went back to the hotel and did nothing for the evening. We're all pretty beat. Christofer has caught my cold it seems.

Tomorrow we're going back to Sweden. I miss my family so it'll be good to come home again!

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 10

Crap.

It wasn't the salt water. I've got a cold.
Woke up all night from the soar throat and the first thing I did when I got up was to go over to Walgreens and buy some DayQuil. Thankfully it helps and I was able to eat breakfast.

The plan for today was to go to the Everglades National Park. The trip there took about 5 hours with stops for food and gas. Once we got there we decided to rent bikes to ride around instead of sitting down for another 2 hours on a tram :)

Turns out the bike ride was awesome. We saw lots of wild aligators right by the road, a racoon, a white tailed deer and turtles! The bike ride took about 2 hours and was hot as hell. It was alot of fun though!

The trip home took about the same time as getting there and my cold just got worse all the time.

While I'm writing this my left ear has gone deaf .. sigh. I "#¤%"! hate colds!

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 9

Todays trip was to Kennedy Space Center.
We rented a Ford Explorer and made our way to the coast.

The trip there took about an hour and the visit itself was very educational. They didn't mention any of the disasters though.

When we went back we stopped at Cocoa Beach and did some body surfing on the waves. I managed to hit two perfectly; it was awesome :)

When we got home I started to feel a bit raspy in my throat but I'm attributing it to the massive amounts of salt water I swallowed.

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 8

Today was the first day of the holiday part of the trip.
The only thing I wanted was for the day *NOT* to just be wasted away, sitting around doing nothing. This is exactly what happened. The guys had no motivation to do anything so I decided to go shopping to get something to do. Micke joined me so at least I wasn't alone. When we came back we ate at the indian restaurant we visited earlier in the week. Then we went to Friday's to watch the Tyson fight.

Tomorrow we've talked about renting a car and going to Kennedy space center but if I see the slightest evidence of apathy then I'll go do something myself directly instead of waiting for them to join me.

Edit: added the NOT :) (thanx protorion)

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 7

Yesterdays trip to Universal was very disappointing. We had 5 hours to eat, drink and go on the rides. We managed to go on the Mummy (which was very cool but soooo short), Men in Black (which totally sucked) and Terminator 2 3d (which was cool).

That's all we had time for. Maybe I'm getting old but I didn't get excited after standing in line for 45 minutes to ride 3 minutes no matter how cool the ride was.

Back at the hotel we brought out the heavy artillery at the jacuzzi. We were joined by a girlfriend to some guy that also attended Tech Ed. She was pissed because apparently the buses that went from Universal to our hotel had stopped going even before everyone was brought home. So they had waited for an hour and a half for a bus that didn't come. She was a nanny from New Mexico and she and her boyfriend were going to leave with a plane at 4.30am so she didn't want to sleep.

Next came an IT pro from Northwestern university and his girlfriend. His name was scott and he was originally from Hawaii. Some more people joined and eventually departed.

So some of our team had a bit of a trouble getting up to the sessions this morning :P
Once again I woke up without a hang over (I must be blessed) and attended some good sessions about ASP.NET and about client development in .NET 2.0.

After Tech Ed was finished we went to shop some more at the premium outlet. I bought some more things at the nike store. I tried to find something for Anna but it's impossible to shop for someone else :( :(

We eventually got real tired of shopping and went back to the hotel; eat some burgers at TGI Friday's and ended the evening by watching the movie Robots on pay tv.

We've extended my room until thursday so at least we have somewhere to stay for the rest of the week. We haven't really decided exactly what we're going to do - but I'm sure it'll be fine.

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 6

I knew yesterday that today wouldn't be filled with any good sessions so I just attended one. It was about data driven web applications and had about 10 minutes of useful information.

Meh.

So, I did some labs and decided to try and do the only test I had left to get my certification complete. 70-229 - Designing and Implementing Databases with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 Enterprise Edition (phew).

I had made half a transcender test but the test was so cheap (only $60!!) so I figured I could give it a try and see what happened.

I passed :D

So now I'm an MCSD for Net as well as the old Visual Basic 6.0 MCSD.

Just stopping by at the hotel for a quick shower before we go out to the attendee party at Universal.

Oh, and I met some of the guys that have created DotNetNuke. Pretty cool. I even got a T-shirt for you Tomas :D

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 5

First session today was ASP.NET 2.0 Under the covers; which talked about the life cycle and compilation model of 2.0.

Next session was a two parter about ASP.NET where Scott gave us an overview of pretty much all the new features in ASP.NET v2. It was really good and I got some cool ideas.

I continued with some hands on labs on v2 and then went back to the hotel.
We were planning on going to the Premium Outlet and were waiting for the trolley when the other guys got tired of waiting (after 10 minutes ...) and wanted to go eat instead.

So we went to a crappy steakhouse. The ribs were pretty good but the fries were sub standard. We spent the rest of the evening just lounging at the hotel watching the womens softball finals. Michigan won apparently.

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 5

Todays keynote was about SQL 2005 and Visual Studio 2005. I was looking forward to it but was disappointed. The niveau of it all was very basic.

First session of the day was Code Generation with Scott Hanselman where he talked about how they've set up a whole very cool framework for generating code from xml and wsdl.

He was using notepad2 and slickrun so he's cool in my book :)

The session gave me some good ideas about creating a generator for some episerver code that I always have to write.

After that session I sat down for some hands on labs about ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. It was real easy to sit down and boot up the lab. Very smooth.

Session three was more info about ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005.
The main focus of Visual Studio 2005 was to increase productivity for the developer. Boy have they done a good job. There are so many new cool features that might seem like small things, but they save maybe 3 seconds of work on tasks you do hundreds of times in a week.

The biggest applause came when they said "VS Studio will NEVER reformat your code".
Boy have I been waiting for that one :)

Session four was more about Team System; this time through the eyes of a developer.
They've really stolen everything from NUnit, NAnt, trac, cruise control etc and integrated it into Visual Studio. The only thing that seems a bit ... gay ... is that they're changing the licensing model. Not that I have to pay for it, but it still sucks.

That was pretty much my day. It was totally an ASP.NET 2.0-day and I learned alot of cool things that i'll have great use for in the future.

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 4

Today was the first real day of Tech Ed.

We had the continental breakfast in the meal hall. I'm amazed how easy everything flows. There's over 10K people here but there's hardly any lines anywhere.

After the breakfast we attended the keynote speech from Steve Ballmer. The fun part of it was when they showed some of the new features of Windows Mobile 5.0 that included push email.

Next was a break out session about some c# tips and tricks in the Visual Studio IDE 2005.
They had included some nice time saving features like snippets, xml-formattted snippets that you can write yourself to help automate tedious tasks like writing properties.

Session 2 was about an in depth look at the new features of c# 2.0.
The lecturer was the "father" of c#; which was really cool and he talked about:

Generics: Something java has had for a while, but generics in .net seem to be better implemented because they've actually adjusted the CLR making it a .NET feature and not just a language feature.

Some new cool handling of delegates that went in conjunction with generics.

Lunch was served after that and still things went very smooth. They had people posted at empty tables with huge signs that made it easy to find an open table.

After lunch i attended a session about the new Visual Studio Team System.
This was really interesting because it described a developent lifecycle and what Microsoft has done to help out with it.

It was basically a new server product that acted as a repository for all information related to a project. This meant that they've replaced source safe (!!!!). the other things included in this was basically a total rip off of cruise control.net and nant and nunit etc etc. But it's good that they've really put an effort into solving this and putting it into one product.

After this session there was a reception where we got some more food and then we wandered the exhibition hall collecting t-shirts and other freebies. We spent the rest of the evening at the pool before going to bed.

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 3

The relaxation day.

I woke up at 7am, played some poker until the guys woke up and wanted to get some breakfast.
Overpriced again :)

We decided to chill this day and lazed around the pool with me sipping margaritas and the others drinking beer. The sun finally broke through and we were treated to a glorious day.

We all got various degrees of sun burn; I got away pretty ok.

At around 2pm we hoppes on the Tech Ed designated bus to register at the convention center.
This place was huuuuuge! I think it takes somewhere around 200K attendants. We got our badges and our bags and went back to the hotel.

We stopped by the liquor store for some beer for the guys. Once back at the hotel we sat by the pool and I taught them to play texas hold'em. After the session was through we went over to Popeyes for some chicken. I managed to choose the most vile drink I've ever had there. I can't even remember the name of it but it was a fiendish red liquid that I thought was carbonized (which it turned out not to be). Yuck!

Now I'm in my room playing some inebriated poker. I'm up $50 but one never knows how it'll end.

Tomorrow we'll hop on the bus at around 8.15 and go to the breakfast at Tech Ed. I'm really looking forward to this and will report more tomorrow!

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 2

Day 2 began with the guys eating a totally overpriced breakfast at the hotel. We then decided to spend the day shopping.

We took one of the trolleys to the Prime Factory Outlet where they had around 200 stores.
The stores were divided into different malls and the first one we went into was ... lame.

None of the clothes appealed to me but the other guys bought some jeans at Levi's.

We walked around just browsing until we got to a leather shop. I instantly spotted a killer jacket that I had to buy - so I did - and my path to shopping madness had begun.

I bought some surfer shorts in a surf shop, shorts and a shirt at the Reebok store, Ecco sandals and Ecco shoes. Two sets of Nike basketball shorts and a shirt at the Nike store.

Next up was the designer factory outlet where they had some really nice stuff. I bought a few Ralph Lauren pique shirts and made a few mental notes about another shop I'm gonna go back to and look at pants and suits in.

By the time we went back to the hotel we were beat. We stopped at a small indian place that looked like crap on the outside, but was really good on the inside, and ate some really spicy food.

On our walk to the hotel we stopped by a liquor store and got some beers and malt drinks which we started to consume upon arrival at the hotel.

The weather is still kinda crappy. Humid and rainy. We finished off the day by going to the pool before hitting the sack. I'm gonna go through my receipts now and see how much I've spent :)

My trip to Tech Ed - Day 1

So I'm finally here. Orlando, Florida.

My day started at my friend's apartment in Stockholm at 06:00. I slept about 2 hours alltogether, waking up all the time so I wouldn't over sleep. Taxi ride to Arlanda Airport - arrival at 07:20. Met up with my colleagues and we checked in. It was pretty pain less and went smooth. I was expecting more fuss at the check in.

So, 9:20 am our flight left Stockholm heading for Newark. The flight over was an uneventful 8½ hours. I watched 8 episodes of sopranos and played some PSP. Turns out the flight was the inaugural flight for Continental from Stockholm to Newark. There was a bit of a hoopla with the american ambassador wishing the flight bon voyage et al. We got some freebie sandwiches and somekind of a glass ball.

In newark we had 40 minutes to:

1. Disembark
2. Retreive the baggage.
3. Get through customs - they took finger prints and a photo.
4. Leave the baggage again and then run to the gate where the connecting flight was leaving from.

With 1½ minuts to spare we made it on board. Some people from the first flight missed the cut off and were left behind. However now we were waiting for the baggage to be put on board. That took 10 minutes. Then we started to taxi but stopped before hitting the runway.
We waited for another 10 minutes and then we were on our way.

When we were on approach to Orlando airport the pilot told us that we had to circle for a while because of a thunder storm just above the airport. So we waited for 20 minutes .... and then were told we were diverting to Tampa for refueling.

So the flight that should've been 2½ hours suddenly had become a 5h flight. Not that we were in a hurry but I'm dead sick of flying right now :)

Anyway; arrival in Orlando was .... humid.

Oh lord the humidity.

We checked in and went out to get something to eat.
Turns out everthing here *is* bigger than back home.

A medium size coke at McDonalds here is the same as a large size coke in Sweden.
I thought i'd eat a small burger so I chose a chicken sandwich. Which in sweden is an ok snack if you're not dead hungry.

What i got was a gigantic burger, tasted good but man am I full now.
I'm using up the one hour of internet access I purchased at the hotel to write this and to talk a bit with Katie since she's the only one awake at this hour :)