David's Minutes

It's difficult to get into the habit of doing something like this on a daily basis, especially when you're a two-fingered typist like myself. Can't teach an old dog new tricks, and it's even worse with a mutt like myself ...

Southeastern Michigan is frozen this morning. Schools are closed, I'm working from home, and there are 20 cars in the ditches along US-12 east of Clinton. Of course, the kids want to go shopping. Sheesh!

Lots going on computer-wise here. Someone dumped something in one of the MS natural keyboards. I've taken on developing http://www.hopeadrian.com once again. There are products to review, help files to write, barcode apps to look into, a pair of video editing systems to build, embedded processors to examine, and then maybe I can get my Palm updated.

Meanwhile, there's some sad news. VBExplorer, where the HTML Help Center began in 1998, is now defunct. I talked to Burt Abreu yesterday evening, and he's simply run out of money to operate it. If anyone has any thoughts on how to solve this, please let me know.

Off to work again. As the Dean said, working at home is nice since it's closer to the fridge.

Trying to make a decision here ...

It's looking more-and-more as though the HTML Help class module will need to become an interop assembly for VS.NET. Regardless of a couple requests of Microsoft's help team and the VB team in this matter there is still no reply from either camp.

Looks like I go it alone once again.

How long did it take to get going the last time? If I remember correctly, version 1.0 of the class module was available about a week after I started it. It may take a couple weeks this time due to the lack of a class wizard in the .NET IDE. But even so ...

VS.NET's support of help is a complete disaster. WinHelp support is gone and HTML Help support may as well be for as messed up as it is.

Time to jump into the fray. Here goes ...

Ok, let's open with some statistics ...

It's been said 90% of all auto accidents happen within 25 miles of the home. Of course, when you think about it, probably 90% of the trips you make in your car are within 25 miles of the home ...

I thought of this the other day when I read that some University had completed a study which indicated how fat children are is a direct result of how their parents feed them.

Such a statement makes for enough of a pregnant pause to create triplets.

What I want to see are the statistics of how many people would have rather watched Scott Hamilton skate to Aerosmith performing "Walk This Way" live than watch Kiss make complete fools of themselves when Gene Simmons both knocked over his mic stand and then twirled Kristi Yamaguchi like the old man he really is. The closing ceremonies for the Winter Olympics would have been much better with the former than it was with the latter (and you know darn well the boys in Kiss had to use ladders to get onto those platform boots).

What does this have to do with programming? Or help systems? Or art?

Not a darned thing. But it gets this page posted, and for the moment that's what matters.

Hmmm ... you know, if I had a transporter beam, I could then use it to jump out of this 25 mile radius and avoid 90% of the car accidents I'll ever have ... maybe a large slingshot would work ...