Scott Hanselman

I picked up a copy of Hacking Video Game Consoles last week. What a fantastic book. It's ridiculously cheap on Amazon, only $18.89 right now.

The author, Ben Heckendorn has long been a legend in these circles, and has a vibrant community orbiting around his hacks.

The book is VERY well written with a snarky but not condescending conversational style that is  easy to read. He includes RadioShack Part Numbers for every part as well as an excellent primer on soldering.

This would make a great gift for any 20-something geek and an excellent father-son project for teens and tweens.

He's recently added a section on his site to buy the pre-cut machined plastic cases for your creations for very reasonable prices, IMHO. I'm totally stoked and am going to try to build one of these with the wife in the coming months. I think I'll make the PS1 portable first.

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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When I see things changing like this, it makes me smile and feel better for Z's future.

More and more on TV there are interracial couples that aren't called out as "The Mixed Couple." Sometimes it's a little played out when entire movies are created about how shocking a mixed couple supposedly is. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was ground-breaking in 1967, but Something New just pandered to racial stereotypes as did FX Network's recent reality show "Black.White," succeeding in little except making both families and their respective races look ignorant. Perhaps it was a West Coast thing. It would have been interesting had they picked families from integrated neighborhoods with a little more savvy.

Life and love are a lot more complicated than just Black and White. Here's a list of popular TV shows with mixed couples on right now.

Grey's Anatomy, ABC, Sundays at 10 p.m. ET/PT
The couple: Dr. Cristina Yang, played by Sandra Oh; Dr. Preston Burke, played by Isaiah Washington.
Their relationship: Top surgeon falls for intern. Opposites attract.

Lost, ABC, Wednesdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT
The couple: Bernard, played by Sam Anderson; Rose, played by L. Scott Caldwell
Their relationship: Viewers didn’t know Rose’s husband was white, but they did know she had unwavering belief in him.

ER, NBC, Thursdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT
The couple: Dr. Neela Rasgotra, played by Parminder Nagra; Dr. Michael Gallant, played by Sharif Atkins.
Their relationship: She’s an ER doc; he’s just back from Iraq. Was the quickie wedding a good idea?

My Name Is Earl, NBC, Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT
The couple: Earl’s ex-wife Joy, played by Jaime Pressly; Darnell, played by Eddie Steeples.
Their relationship: He works in the Crab Shack; she’s after Earl’s lottery winnings. Earl and “Crabman” remain best buddies.

There's a great organization in Seattle called the MAVIN Foundation. It's a non-profit that is focused on celebrating the mixed race experience. It is known for its work hunting for mixed-race blood marrow donors.

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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Everyone knows that I loves me some SlickRun. I'm waiting for QuickSilver for Windows (although some feel that's already arrived as AppRocket - I'm not so sure).

I bind SlickRun (with large fonts) to my Windows-R key, but apparently it's not very obvious how to do this. ;)

Here's how: Edit your slickrun.ini in Documents and Settings\username\Application Data\SlickRun\SlickRun.ini and add/change "GrabWinR=1" in the [General] section as seen at right.

I find the whole "Kermit Green on Black" large font color scheme very comforting.

Aside: Does an app like the Mac's GLTerminal (originally written by James A. McCombe and some how leaked/escaped) exist for Windows? Does Chris Sells want to write this in Avalon? This would be a rocking sweet Avalon application that I'd happily download the WinFX library for. It could sweep the net. ;)

Maybe casey will take up the challenge, or perhaps I'll have to learn how to do it myself. Another idea would be to modify the console application from SourceForge.

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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Wayne Allen posted this on his blog, here's the scoop. These are in Portland, OR on the Westside. Email Wayne directly with your resume (and mention me! ;) )

I have 3 openings in my group right now: Senior QA Engineer, Interaction Designer & Staff Software Engineer.

If you are interested in being involved in the next generation of online banking take a look or drop me an email.

Senior QA Engineer

This is a senior level software quality assurance and testing position reporting to the Manager of the Product Quality Assurance group.  Senior Engineer contributes to the development, deployment and support of products at Corillian.  The Senior Product QA Engineer will scope testing efforts, create test plans, and execute test cases.  In addition, this position will contribute to the development and use of various test tools and mentor less experienced members of QA staff.

Staff Software Engineer

The Staff Software Engineer develops products and completes implementation and customization of products sold to new and existing clients and business partners. This person has a track record of consistently rendering clear technical judgment and routinely considers architecture-level, project-planning, and other project-level issues. This person ensures that projects are conducted in ways that benefit the project objectives, the people participating in the project, and Corillian?s long-term interests. This person is innovative, consistent, and contributes beyond the assigned tasks.

Interaction Designer

The mission for this position is to deliver the most elegant, powerful, useful, and usable interfaces to our customers. The role of the interaction designer is to design, test, and specify requirements for user interfaces and user interaction models. The interaction designer will provide corporate leadership in the advancement of user-centered technology. Act as a resource for providing state-of-the-art professional expertise in the design of graphical user interfaces for web-based applications and supporting documentation. Ensure human factors principles, techniques and guidelines are applied to technology consistently across the organization. Educate management, end-users, and developers about the importance of usability in the design of software applications.

Now playing: ABC News - World News Now, 4.10.06

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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Seems to me that if one could pay off their mortgage early (earlier than 30 years) it would be a Good Thing (tm). The argument that the tax write off we (American's) get for paying mortgage interest is specious. You get a $0.35 tax break for the privilege of paying the mortgage company $1.00. How is that useful? If I pay $10,000 in a year in just interest, I get to (this is a simplification, really I adjust my gross) write off $3,500 in tax, but I'm STILL out $6,500. That $6,500 could be working elsewhere.

I googled some, thinking the experts on tha intraweb would have something useful to say. This only confirmed that I can get better advice from any public bathroom's wall. Note "Ask Kim" provides different wisdom based on the season.

I did like these reasons though:

Here are a few reasons for Paying Off Your Mortgage Early:

1. You want more than anything to be 100% debt free.
2. You want to have more choices and options for your future and no debt gives you this option.
3. You want to retire early. With no mortgage payment, you can save up for retirement faster and quit sooner.
4. You want a guaranteed rate of return. Paying off your mortgage guarantees you that savings rate. Investing in the stock market can never guarantee you anything.
5. You don't itemize but take the standard deduction.
6. You live in Canada or another country where these is NO tax benefit to carrying a mortgage.
7. You are disciplined enough that once you have paid off your mortgage, you will invest the same payments into a retirement fund until you have enough to meet your retirement needs. (Remember, with no mortgage, your required retirement income will be greatly reduced.

These resonate with me. Why sell a house that's appreciated 200% when a comparable house has ALSO appreciated 200%? I figure 99% 97% of Americans that own homes also have a mortgage (An official out-of-the-butt-made-up-but-must-be-true Scott Statistic) and that debt fuels the economy. I haven't the chutzpah to go off the grid, but paying of my house would be a start, at least we'd be off the "debt grid."

Even making one extra payment a year can trim SIX YEARS off a 30 year mortgage. Of course, to do this one has to stop consuming. I wonder if a significant number of folks stopped drinking Frappacinos and put the extra money on their mortages if the economy would grind to a halt.

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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