I suppose I should start by telling you what my old favorite feature was... I'm not sure what it's called but it allows you to navigate up and down folders much more quickly.  It's great for going from one folder to another at the same level (e.g. from one folder of pictures to another).

My NEW favorite feature comes courtesy of Omar's blog: the shadow copy. Here's the MS description of the feature:

Windows Vista now includes shadow copy functionality built in, which enables users to access previous versions of their documents, even when they are stored locally on their computer instead of on the network. Accessing the previous versions of a file you're working with is easy.

What happened is I was bit by a bug which removed all the date taken information from the pictures I took over Christmas time.  Big deal?  Not to people who simply print their pictures... but for me it meant all the pictures were in random order on our web site.  I searched high and low for a tool to copy the date information from another part of the file and then remembered Omar's post.  The process of restoring files was pretty straight-forward... and really made me happy work provides us with Windows Ultimate (unfortunately for home users, it's not available on the consumer version).

For the curious, I made some screenshots of the process:

Oh, also cool: if you get a Windows Home Server your backups on the server will show up there too.  Sweet!  Dang I want that cool round one! See the Digital Amnesia site for more info (presented in an entertaining fashion) or for a great demo, watch CJ's video interview on 10.

Thanks Vista for the save (and thanks Omar for the pointer ).

Standard & Poor's report is out and Ireland is now ranked as the world's wealthiest country... that is once you remove the miniature countries (or is it massive banks?) like Bermuda and the small oil-based economies like Norway (and you thought the Scandinavians made all their money from cell phones). 

"Pink hearts, yellow moons & tax breaks for high-tech corporations!"

Turns out Ireland is actually ranked sixth.  Interestingly enough the US has dropped out of the top 10.

For more information you can read the article in the Irish Independent (but if you don't want sign up, visit the telegraph instead).

Yep... I'm lucky.  Sure, you already know I have the smartest, most bee-you-ti-ful wife ever... but that's not what I'm talking about in this instance.

Dublin is great... but there is some stuff you can't buy in Ireland (a US power strip, for example).  As a result, when I come back to the states on business I always end up coming back with a shopping list.  This time I had some pretty random stuff on the list.  Being a guy (you know, never asks for directions) I just drove off into Redmond.

Randomly I turned right and hey!  A lighting store, perfect.  I needed 9" harps to replace some which had been lost in the move.  Trying to drive out of the parking lot I was forced to turn right. A little down the street: hey!  Staples, I need 8.5" by 11" sheet protectors... and a power strip.

To make a short story long, by randomly driving around I never should have made it back to the hotel in under three hours with any of the things on my list. 

It took me 20 minutes and I got everything.  I'm a lucky bastard (did I mention I have a beautiful wife too?)

Here's an old Starbucks commercial to get you up and going on this, the first day of work for 2007.

I was trying to describe this to my brother-in-law, Barry, over Christmas and just had to dig it up. 

Oh, and yes, that really is Survivor following Glen (The Survivor lead singer can also be heard on the Bud Light "Real Men of Genius" commercials).

We returned home last night from our Christmas trip to Maryland. 

Our trip out was not delayed (as we expected it might be) but our luggage was.  We left Dublin with two bags and arrived in D.C. with one.  Damn Heathrow!  We went the whole week with the baggage system saying "we have no new information on your bag".  By the end of the week I was sure the bag had been stolen and we'd never see the stuff again (which sucked, Paula had a coat in that bag she really likes). 

When we arrived in Dublin we decided to check with the counter there... lo and behold! Our bag would be arriving tomorrow.  Even better... it arrived tonight!  As a bonus, the cheese and salmon we had packed in the bag as Christmas gifts hadn't leaked (which would have sucked big-time... Paula's pillow was in the bag too).

Ahh... vacation is over, we can relax now. :D