I'll be heading to Nebraska this afternoon for a few days on a business trip. So, I will probably have limited contact with the outside world. I'll be back on Thursday, so I'll attempt to get caught up at that point.

Well, after a disaster of a release last week, I've fixed the problem of using VS.NET project files as your source and Directory as your destination. I think that it's come to the point where I need a set of good beta testers. Unleash It has grown to the point where this is needed now, as the last 2 releases have shown it.

So, if your interested in becoming a beta tester for Unleash It releases, shoot me an email using the contact form to the left. Your peers and I will graciously appreciate your generosity to testing and finding bugs in one of the best deployment tools out there.

I've released a new version of Unleash It that fixes multiple problems that people were having. Most notably, exclusion of folders when a VS.NET project was the source was not possible. After re-working the code, this is now possible along with being able to view the files / folders to be deployed dialogs.

Changelog:

• Added support for displaying folders / files to include for VS.NET Project Files as the source.
• Added ability to name your FTP profiles.
• Added checking to see if Unleash It is currently running during installation / uninstallation.
• Fixed error when parsing a file mask with an underscore.
• Fixed the logfile button being enabled after a deployment when that profile isn't using logging.
• Fixed mis-spelling of "changed" in the logfile for FTP deployment.
• Fixed directories not being excluded during a VS.NET Project deployment.

So, head on over to http://www.eworldui.net/unleashit to get your latest copy!

I just signed up to attend HDC '04 located in Des Moines, IA this coming December. Its going to be a long 4-5 hour trip, but I think it'll all work out since I'll be able to network with all you other geeks out there. If you're heading out too, make sure you attend the party Thursday night...maybe we could meet up and chat!

BTW, how can you pass up the registration fee, its 18 fricking bucks! I figure between hotel costs and gas, I'll spend (err, my company) about $300 bucks. Not too shabby.

In the most bizarre article, engineers of the Good Housekeeping Institute tested both TiVo and ReplayTV. What did they find? Well, they found both work great, but the engineers (who do this for a living, I might add) had to call ReplayTV twice for technical support.

On an unrelated matter...

Oh, wait...this isn't the article...

I'm currently sitting in a SQL Server 2005 technical overview webcast, and I just coined a new term.

VS.NET Head

What it basically means, is those that spend most of their day in Visual Studio .NET, no matter what version. I decided this was a good name due to the "tight integration" of SQL Server 2005 within future versions of Visual Studio .NET and the fact that our SQL Developer will be spending more time in VS.NET, like the rest of us, next year.

Are you a VS.NET Head?

I just noticed that the main pages have been updated with links to listings of bloggers. For instance, weblogs.asp.net has 3 links, "Microsoft Bloggers", "Non-Microsoft Bloggers", and "All Bloggers" whereas blogs.msdn.com has a link called "Blog Lists". What these are, are actually the non-truncated listing of blogs on each community site. This (I assume) is to replace the HUUUGE listing of bloggers down the side of the main feed site. It even comes with a nice listing of the descriptions too :)

I tell ya what else would be nice:

• Display # of posts along with Last Updated
• Change "LastUpdated" to be actually "Last Updated" in the listing <-- Picky aren't I
• Be able to sort this listing by (asc / desc for all):
• Blog name
• Username
• Last updated
• # of posts

How about it  Community Server :: Blogs team?

I decided it was time to apply a new blog skin, as David pointed out, "Lighty" just doesn't render correctly in Firefox. I think it would be cool if more skins would appear for weblogs.asp.net, or we can upload our own, yeah that would be cool.

Update: I forgot the wonderful world of being able to override CSS elements. Wahoo! Now I can take the current skin and modify it to what I want :)

No, I'm not talking about their browser only being half the way there, I'm talking about their goal of 1 million downloads in 10 days. I can't believe that in only a mere 2 days, over 500,000 estimated downloads have of Firefox 1.0PR have taken place. At this rate, I think they'll reach the 1 million mark by day 5.

Go Firefox Go! BTW, if you've not downloaded Firefox, I'd suggest doing so, it is by far becoming my primary browser both at home and at work.