I am pleased to announce that this morning, at 9:20 AM, our new granddaughter, Summer Ruth Clark, made her entrance into the world! 

She was not really as red in the face as the photo seems to show, in fact she is quite the lovely little lady.  And she was so very alert and observant!  It is sometimes said that girl babies tend to want to connect, and it surely is true in her case.  She would hear the voice of someone talking to her, and she would turn towards the sound already.  Just two hours old in this photograph.  It's also a good shot of Daddy Jason's ear, by the way.

I do note that I can see her great grandmother Ruth's eyes in her, so she is well named.  She was a most healthy baby, too.  Vital Stats: 8 lbs 11 oz; 20 inches long.

1/1/2007 6:52:07 AM UTC      Comments [0]Trackback

Well I have great news!  And that news is a new Grandson.  He was born to my son Daniel and his wife, Linda, this morning at 5:40 am.  A nice weight, 7 lbs 3 oz, length 21 inches, and the docs couldn't find a single thing wrong with him.  His name?  Oh, yes:

Daniel John Clark

When your children start having children, THAT's when the fun begins.  And a few weeks from now, maybe right at Christmas, our son Jason and his wife Larene will be presenting us with another grandbaby, this time a girl, whose name has already been picked out: Summer Ruth Clark.  I can't wait!

12/3/2006 8:39:15 AM UTC      Comments [0]Trackback

I just heard of the Object Test Bench in Visual Studio 2005 (in Kevin Hammond's blog), and hurried to use it, but ran into a small problem, in that the context menu off the class diagram I don't have a "Create Instance" item!  Am I perhaps doing something wrong, or is this OTB tool only available in a higher version of VS2005 (I'm running VS2005 Professional)? 

Here's a picture of what I get, which does NOT include the Create Instance:

Anybody with any clue is invited to comment...

10/20/2006 12:45:55 AM UTC      Comments [2]Trackback

Learning new things is almost always fun, and one must try to check one's assumptions at the door.  However, what if your brain assumes something and doesn't come right out and say so?  That's interesting.

Keeping in mind that I am new to ASP.NET 2.0...

I'm experimenting, and here I have a neat little master page with a hidden field on it that I want all the other pages to use, so one page puts data in the field and then transfers control to the next page.  The next page then checks that hidden field and doesn't find anything.  This had me wondering what the darned problem was, until suddenly it occurred to me how on earth I could expect anything to be there?  The master page is not stateful, and it is generated from scratch each time.  Doh!  Somehow it had gotten into my head that the master page was some sort of repository -- despite the fact that I know there is no state preservation or information passing beyond query strings, forms, and session/application variables.  Amazing what assumptions one can make with no justification whatsoever and contrary information and experience in rich abundance from past encounters.  Makes me feel like I just called up customer support with the complaint that my computer's cup holder had broken. 

Doh!

10/18/2006 9:06:34 PM UTC      Comments [0]Trackback

Rory Blyth.  Neopoleon.  He's a geeky Microsoft guy who was formerly with the Microsoft MSDN Events team, and he was going on about leaving, possibly even leaving Microsoft, and finally the shoe dropped and <whew>, he's not leaving Microsoft, just moving to a different part of Microsoft.  Still part of Developer communications, but in the heart of The Beast, in Redmond itself.  He's joining the Channel 9 team.  Here's his "Exit Interview", so called:

http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=237876

9/26/2006 5:13:17 PM UTC      Comments [0]Trackback

On a trip to Mormon Country (Sep. 8, 2006), the head of the National Association of Evangelicals branded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a "cult", but said he might vote for a Mormon presidential candidate in 2008.

Ted Haggard, NAE president and the pastor of a Colorado Springs megachurch, said Mormons and evangelicals don't agree on spiritual matters even though they have similar political agendas.

"The Mormon church aligns with us on pro-life issues and the Mormon church aligns with us on many of the social issues," Haggard said in an interview. "Now where we would take pause is, we believe Mormonism is a Christian cult."

The first thing that jumps out at me is the description of "Mormonism" as a "Christian cult."  Wow!  Check it out!  Up until now I have heard us described as a "cult" frequently enough, but this Haggard fellow has actually allowed the adjective Christian to be applied as a descriptive to the word "cult" when applied to the LDS church! 

So, we might be a "cult" to them, but at least we're a "Christian cult".  Oh, my, how we have come up in the world. 

9/10/2006 3:02:40 PM UTC      Comments [0]Trackback