Paula and I were at the mall the other day and as we were walking out another couple was coming towards us, into the mall.  Just inside the door the man stopped short and turned to the woman with a look like she'd just kicked his dog... twice... with big, heavy boots:

"Three hours?!? In here?  What do you need that for?"

She ignored him and just kept walking as he wilted and sulked after her into the mall.

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?)

I've moved to Ireland... Hotmail is in Mountain View, California.  The observant reader may put 2 & 2 together and think: "Hotmail has moved to Ireland!" Fortunately most people who read this blog are observant and  intelligent (you do read this blog, after all ;) ). 

While my original plan was to bring some development resources with me to Ireland, I ended up instead joining up with a growing team here which is building components for a new web analytics project code named "Gatineau".

Gatineau will be Microsoft's entry in the the web analytics market.  While the nuts and bolts of the operation are in Redmond, here in Ireland we're building some cool, extra bits to pile into the mix.  I wish I could provide some more detail as I'm really excited about what we're doing (both here and in Redmond) but for now, things are under wraps.

One of our new planners, Ian, has provided a quick run down of what's going on, it's not a tell-all by any stretch, but it does give a bit more information.

... but I suppose some parents may need the extra cleaning power of the "scrape it clean" for their child changing.

Overseen in the baby products aisle at our local super store.

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).

It's 2007, you know what that means?  My driver's license expires this year.  I wonder of the California DMV will send me a new DL to my address in Ireland.

It is also that arbitrary time for a portion of the world to reset their calendars and reset their goals.  Yes, New Year's resolution time.  Resolutions always feel artificial to me... and yet I cant resist the "clean slate" state they represent.  Here's some stuff I'm going to do this year:

• Join the gym (and use it at least twice a week)
• Take more pictures (at least every other day)
• Spend time reviewing my pictures (instead of just keeping 100% of them) 
• Get back on the Getting Things Done wagon

One of the things I rarely make the effort to do is to go through my pictures after taking them.  I should really get in the habit of tossing out the crap (I'm a horrible pack rat) and cleaning up the good pictures (below are two different compositions of the same shot, the second removes the distracting window from the bottom... though I'm still not sure which I like better ).

I hope everyone has a great 2007!