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Is it possible to have too many 30inch Dell Monitors?

Yes, when Dell accidently ships you an extra one, and you have to send it back :-!

No kidding, I ordered a brand new fully loaded Dell Dimension 9200, with Core 2 Duo, 4Gb RAM and "one" Dell 3007WFP Display, and they sent me two of them by mistake. Even my paperwork, invoice, packing slip and online account says "1", but I got "2".

So humbly, I phoned them and a rather shocked, but controlled, Customer Service lady politely replied that they would send me some shipping labels so I wouldn't have to pay the freight. I could feel the reaction over the phone, but being the professional she was she couldn't just blurt out "holy crap, you're kidding!".

Oh well. Anyway, here's my new guilt-free setup:

I'm using MaxiVista to control my Dell Inspiron on the left, and Synergy to control the iMac on the right, from my center keyboard and mouse.

Bigger is better ;-)

Internet Pet Peeve #1 - Timezones

Far too often, many public-facing website will display a date and "time" about something - without at least displaying a reference to a timezone. How useful is that?

I mainly develope business software applications, and not surprisingly I also find many non-public internal applications without reference to any specific timezone - for critical business data no-less.

This may be all well and fine for an organization that operates entirely within a single timezone, but as I discovered the hard way years ago, what do you do when your web-enabled working group spans multiple timezones, and an executive in New York has a scheduled conference call with someone in their Vancouver office for 10:00am Pacific Standard Time (PST)?

Do you force him to make the conversion mentally on the fly each time he (or she) looks at that entry in your application? I don't think so. (Just because they get paid more, doesn't mean they're smarter)

My strategy, as it has evolved, is to first of all store all datetime sensitive information in a database - converted to UTC (GMT) time. This can be accomplished easily using the T-SQL GETUTCDATE() or with C# using {DateTime}.ToUniversalTime();.

Then, when a user needs to read the datetime information, you convert it their local timezone for display purposes only. This can be done in T-SQL using DATEADD(hh, {TimezoneOffSet}, {DateTime}) or C# with {DateTime}.AddHours({TimezoneOffSet});.

So how do you get the {TimezoneOffSet}value (example: -6)? Ask the user! Or store it with their other profile information in the database. Following are some examples from my applications for timezone selection.

As an aside, what prompted my rant? The .NET Base Class Library Team is asking for feedback on Time Zone Scenarios. Woohoo!

Peeve Posted!

Connectivity Problems with Microsoft IceScraper 1.0

Yesterday I got the most fantastic Xmas gift from Microsoft, a handheld MS IceScraper. I filled out one their lengthy online surveys awhile ago, and they kindly send me a nice card and gift - I'm impressed.

Although you would expect the standard USB cable dangling from the end (which I think the Beta had), this one apparently is wireless.

I tried all the standard Wifi configurations I could think of, so maybe its Bluetooth enabled or something? Too bad, my laptop doesn't have Bluetooth :-(

Well, I guess I'm lucky being Canadian and that they sent me a handheld with a thermometer on the end of the handle that displays in Celsius.

Its the poor guy (or girl) that needs the IceScraper desktop utility to convert the temperature to Fahrenheit that I'm worried about - because if they can't get this puppy connected, they are out of luck. :-|