Scott Hanselman

A little trick that I like to use when I install Firefox on a family member's computer is having multiple homepages.
In FireFox from Tools|Options|General, enter in the homepages you want, separated by pipes "|".

This will make the day of spouses, parents, great uncles and cousins who only visit three or four sites a day. Rather than trying to teach them the wonders of RSS, just show them how tabbed browsing works and send them on their merry way.

The WAF on this tip is high.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We just upgraded to a rocking sweet new printer, but I just didn't feel right throwing the old Canon S300 away. It had become totally useless, unable to print black and yellow.

The printer was only a $50 printer and the local printer place said they'd repair it by soaking the print head for, you guessed it, $50. No way, says I. Instead I got a small plastic container and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol and soaked the print head (minus ink) overnight.

Amazingly, the printer has been brought back from the dead and prints better now than in years. I took it to my office and replaced the old Canon BJ200ex at work with my shiny new-to-me-at-work S300 Color.

New printer at home, well-loved printer at work and now an orphaned B&W inkjet on my shelf...gotta find a home for that...

Isn't recycling of techie equipment great? I just can't stand to throw anything away if it can be put to some use.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We are looking to add a Senior Software Developer to our Consumer Banking team here at Corillian.  Are you "just the right person"?  If you are, then you fit the following description:

You know web development inside and out and can explain the HTTP protocol and HTML to your mother.

You have deep expertise with development using Microsoft ASP.NET.  You know the page event model, the control event model and the difference between a HTTPModule and a HTTPHandler and when each makes sense.

You understand how DOM and SAX parsers function, how XML schema works and how it is fundamentally different than database schema.

You know that TDD really means "write the test first"
 
You know how to read code, not just write code.

You are prepared to do what it takes to deliver value to the customer.

You work with others in an environment that encourages new ideas and improvement.

You have experience using a source control tool other than VSS.

You are willing to live in Portland, OR.  (To be a part of our team, you have to be here.  No telecommuting.)

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Wow, this post really nailed it. Sometimes I read a post and wish I'd written it and this is one of them.

Here's a choice bit:

With the amount of crap being vomited up by his Ethernet connection -- all day, every day -- it's tough to walk away from the spigot for fear that he'll return to waist-deep water. Ethan reads his mail in real-time to avoid being greeted by a hundred-message pile-up when he gets back from lunch. Bringing the computer with you is the only way to keep up. [greg @ an entirely other day]

Here's my pending life:

• Voice-mail messages at work: 2
• Voice-mail messages at home: 9
• Voice-mail messages on my cell: 3
• SMS messages on my cell: 5
• Hours of television on the DVR: 17
• E-mail messages at home: 525
• E-mail messages at work: 67 (I was at 0 last week...)
• Items in my feed reader: 4929
• Books on my nightstand: 23
• Active Projects at Work: 6
• Active Projects at Home: 9
• Homes Pending Sale: 1

Go read the post, then, if you feel like it, change your life. I think it's time for a large garbage sack and a little Ctrl-A, Del action...

Now, to be clear Getting Things Done works, but one of the risks of gaining the ability to filter lots of information is the psychic weight of all the worlds information. Folks start a new personal system of organization into order to handle some amount, x, of life that is coming at them. When that number x becomes x^2 the need to filter and when singing the refrain Do It, Defer It, Delegate It, Drop It, the Drop It part becomes especially important. 

Don't lose track of what's important. As much as it may pain me, I think I'll have to miss this week's Grey's Anatomy and probably not read the pending feed items this week.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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We awoke today to find that our trusty Canon S300 Printer had died. It was a great crappy little $50 printer that we had just used up. Noisy, but with great output, cheap ink and fantastic photos if you use good paper.

I shopped around BestBuy today and finally decided on the Canon Pixma MP500. It's got everything we wanted and way more.

• Duplex Printing - Total bonus and a great feature.
• Color Copier - Big on the WAF, this lets my wife Mo easily make copies without using the PC.
• Scanner - Very simple TWAIN drivers let me dump my old and flakey Canoscan N650U.
• Two paper trays - Feels like the office. I can put photo paper in one and regular in the others
• Borderless 4x6 or 5x7 Photo Printing - Amazing quality from my Casio 7.2M Camera.
• 2.5" Color LCD - Didn't think I'd like this, but it's actually pretty useful and shows details about how much ink is left.
• PDFs - You can scan directly to PDF, which'll be useful for documents. It is literally one-button as it auto-names files and puts them in My Documents. I actually prefer this kind of "Just Do It" UI. I my write an app to help though...
• Quiet Mode - You can give it a time of day (I said from 9pm to 7am) to run extra quiet while printing. Slows down to make it happen.
• Memory card slots - These actually mount as disk drivers, but unlike cheapo memory card adapters, the drives only exist while the memory card is in the slot. It's always lame to have empty drives E: through L: that I don't use, but take up space in My Computer. Seems like a small detail, but it's a good think.
• IR Support - Print directly from Camera Cell phones
• Digital Camera Support - Prints from USB Digital Cameras

Bad stuff:

• I was totally unable to run the included CD-ROM's setup, as it crashed when I pressed install. However, I was able to download just the drivers and not the craplets and it worked fine.

In retrospect (a short 1 hour later) I probably should have purchased the Canon Pixma MP800 since it's only $25 more on Amazon, and has 512 nozzles instead of 320 on the MP500, but really, who can tell the difference? Not I. All in all, we're thrilled.

One other note, no matter what printer you end up getting, no printer is complete without a copy of FinePrint. You can advanced and editable print-preview for all applications and printer-independent sizing/tiling. If you want to print 4-to-a-page duplex, no problem.  If you print a web page and see that it's 2 pages, but the second page is half empty, just delete it, visually, before it gets to the printer. What a great way to save paper.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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