Rik explains how to use a Visual Studio macro to search for highlited text using Google (or alternatively from MSDN2 online) directly from within the IDE... its a pretty cool trick.

Which reminds me - Rik R has been a friend of mine for a few years now (a former coworker from 2001/2002), we were building highly interactive websites years ago using javascript, xml, and XmlHttpRequest. Today, we would call such a system a "Web 2.0 AJAX site". But back then, it was seen as heretical - since postbacks were the status quo. Anyways... I finally talked him into blogging... you can catch the feed at www.r2musings.com as he writes about his journey in the land of .NET

Speaking of new bloggers.... I also convinced Dan Attis to pick up the habit not too long ago... and as you can tell from the activity on his weblog, he is quite the prolific writer!

Last May, I posted about how I was signing up for an internet-based file backup service. I saw it as insurance for my personal data, and an investment in my personal sanity. Today was the day I had to "cash in" on that investment.

The server that I have been using to store my personal files at home has been on its last leg for a while now. I went through the trouble of installing a RAID controller months ago and configuring for mirrored drives (faster recovery with mirrored, and besides I didnt have enough drive bays to support raid 5).

The strong winds yesterday caused the power in my home to waver on and off, which was the death blow for my ailing rackmounted UPS. And in it's final moments, as a last act, the UPS must have sent a spike into the server... because at this point, the server refuses to boot, or even to POST test. The redundant drives, while protecting me from a disk failure, are pretty useless without a server to power them up.

Thats when the internet backup came to the rescue. I was able to restore every byte of lost data (last successful backup was only the day before). Our digital photos, old emails, online banking files, corporate documents, source code repositories,... everything was salvaged!

I am very glad that I had the foresight nearly a year ago to plan for a significant data loss, and by taking the right steps managed to mitigate the risk, saving my personal digital valuables which would surely be lost today if I had not. I would definately recommend a data protection/backup service such as Storage Guardian to anyone with personal data that they consider important (which is pretty much everyone that owns a computer, isnt it?).

I wanted to go see Serenity in the theaters, but a friend of mine insisted that I watch the Firefly series first, to get the story background. He insisted that it would be worth the time to watch the first season. So one of the things I got for xmas this year was the first season of Firefly on DVD.

Wow, this show was fantastic! I now see why people who have seen the show have become loyal fans. I popped in the first disc last night around 10pm. I figured I would watch maybe one or two episodes then call it a night. At 5:30 in the morning I finished the second DVD (episodes 4 through 7) and finally went to bed... that leaves two more DVDs to get through yet... but this show was pretty darn good. It was nothing like what I expected. I was simply told that it was a sci-fi story that I would enjoy.

This is like Tombstone plus star trek plus the dukes of hazzard (the show, not the movie) all rolled into one... I never imagined I would like a "western" flavored series, but I certainly dig this one. I just need to find 8 more hours of spare time so I can watch the other episodes....

Then I can start thinking about when I will ever have time to watch the Lost and Battlestar Galactica first seasons on DVD that I also missed during broadcast but now have on DVD...

I came across this site tonight... it is another ajax framework with some interesting stuff going on behind the scenes. This approach really lowers the entry bar for building simple ajax-driven portlets (it can literally suck in a functional page and inject the content into a new web part / portlet)... a nice and simple approach.

Check it out at http://www.pageflakes.com/

They are also claiming to be giving away an xBox 360 in a "flake building" contest through february.