Josh installed Mac OS X 10.4 – Tiger today and already I am very impressed.

Dashboard is nice and I can already think of some very cool plugins for it. The ripple effect is a little over the top but I can live with it…

One of the coolest things is the RSS screensaver. It takes a feed that you specify and goes through each of the entries outputting them on the screen. It then gives you the option to type a number and go to the article online in Safari. Very nice…

I will probably get Tiger installed on my machine tonight so more posting on it tomorrow.

After a few weeks of not knowing what was going to happen this summer I have finally accepted an internship at Shell. I will not go into exacts about what I will be doing as I do not know their blogging policy and don’t want to violate and “non-disclosure” agreements. I am mostly looking forward to learning a little bit about the corporate world and how programming and IT work in such an environment.

Look for more updates soon, I know I have been bad about keeping things current.

Google has a new beta feature called “My Search History“. It allows anyone with a Google Gmail account (or any other Google account) to login and keep track of their searches, from anywhere.

Some people are already screaming foul over privacy issues, which, in my opinion is just stupid. I am guessing Google already tracks searches by IP, now you have access to your own searches when you are on the road instead of trying to remember what you searched for. If you don’t want Google to remember your searches based on your username just don’t sign in, it’s as simple as that.

If you have a Google account definitely check it out and see if you like it. If you’d like a Gmail account send me an e-mail at s [at] badice [dot] com.

The Flickr Blog has announced some updates to the Pro accounts, including a price change to $24.95 for a 1 yr. account. The other updates include a monthly upload limit of 2GB for Pro accounts and 20MB for free accounts (along with 200 photos available through the archive).

I always thought the price was a little high for me to purchase a Pro account but with the update in upload a month and the cheaper price I will probably end up purchasing one sometime this month.

After reading this entry by John Zeratsky I realize that he is absolutely right. There is nothing out there right now that fufills my needs on my PC or Mac. The idea of having a tool that can sync with something online is a great one and would be the most beneficial piece for me.

Hmmm… Gives me an idea for a project.

Well I am just about fed up with my MIS Seminar class. To me, college courses should not consist of point-and-click instructions, even if it is a .NET class. Do not bore me, or the rest of the class with information that will not help us get ahead in the business world. Teach me things that are useful, things like creating a Web Service from scratch, transversing XML trees, and distributing a project across multiple developers in the IDE, especially with a tool like .NET.

There is no point in giving every person in the class the exact same project and making them all have UML diagrams, case studies, and screenshots for the entire project because you know what they learn from that? Nothing. Give us papers, assign us research, anything would be better than being thrown a generic project that does not illustrate the points a professor is trying to make.

If you are going to use .NET at least teach the proper way to create a Web Service and distribute across multiple projects. It is worse to give us the wrong information than none at all.

This could have and probably will be a whole lot longer.

I have now been informed twelve times in the past week that I either need to allow comments or have some sort of contact form.

Good news, soon there will probably be both (for sure one). I am working on a new table structure for my posts and into this I am going to add the ability to comment, of course there will be anti-spam measures. The contact form will probably be last because right now people can just e-mail me if they need to get in touch with me (s [at] badice [dot] com).

Last night my friend Courtney and I watched Grey’s Anatomy and I have to say that I just might be hooked. There was plenty of humor yet it was serious enough to be considered a drama.

The cast includes Ellen Pompeo (Old School), Patrick Dempsey (Sweet Home Alabama), and Katherine Heigl (Wuthering Heights). Definitely check this show out (ABC on Sunday @ 9pm CST).

After using Safari and Firefox at the same I have a small wish for Firefox.

In Safari (and Camino) I am able to close a tab by simply clicking the “X” on that tab. However, in Firefox I have to go to the tab I want to close, select it, then go to the right of the tab bar and click the “X”. It seems counterintuitive and if Firefox had the method for closing tabs as Safari and Camino then I would probably use it more (that and the speed issues on this G4).

That is my one simple wish for Firefox.

My mom is a funny person and she always gives me a good laugh (it’s true mom)…

Last night I get a voicemail that went something like this:

“Stephan, I think you should take that satellite photograph of our house off your website. I don’t like the idea of people knowing where we live. Anyway, that’s why I called. Bye”.

I laughed for about 10 minutes before finally deciding to call her back. I explained that there is no way for anyone to know where exactly my family lives by looking at a satellite photograph taken from 25 miles up… If anyone is good enough to figure that out then they deserve to know where we live.

Anyway, that was my priceless event for yesterday. Gotta love parents.