Have you ever had to:
a. take a screen shot of just part of your screen
b. try to match your web page color to something on your screen
c. figure out how wide to make a div or table cell

Working as a program manager at Microsoft typically means you take a lot of screen shots.  Screen shots of web pages, screen shots of application prototypes and (yes) screen shots of screen shots.  There are a ton of tools out there that do a number of these functions, some free, some not.  My current favorite tool happens to also have my current favorite price.

Mezer Tools from Bayden Systems is a free little app with a very appropriate icon: a Swiss Army knife.  This great, multi-purpose tool has widgets for measuring linear pixel dimensions and capturing arbitrary rectangles.  The dialog box also has additional tools for converting to and from Hex and for grabbing colors from anywhere on the screen.

 
Screenshots (made with Mezer, of course), click for a closer look.

Here's a list of some of the cool stuff you can do:

• Double-click the edge of a window to grow to the edge of the screen (not maximize)
• Capture a target window or just an arbitrary section of screen
• Capture screen to clipboard or directly to .JPG or .BMP
• Flag screen captures with arrows or scribbles
• Copy arbitrary string lengths to clipboard
• Measure the number of characters in the clipboard
• Grab the hex and RGB values from any location on the screen
• Convert from hex to decimal and back

I ordered my Xbox 360, and was cheap so I ordered it shipped via ground

moo

I went to Mike, told him to order an Xbox 360.  Go ahead and pick ground, that's what I did.

moo

Mike went to Dick, told him to order an Xbox 360.  We had ours shipped via ground.  Dick did the same... twice.

moo

moo

Now, because none of us were willing to spring for the extra few bucks for two-day delivery we are suffering through the weekend without our new toys.  All of us except Mike, he pawed the ground a bit, dipped his head and charged through the pasture fence.  He scoured the countryside and, after trundling around a china shop called "Best Buy", he found himself a 360 at Costco.

MOO!

At least our herd has a bull now.

Confused?  Read this: Moooooo

"Larry the Cow" artwork created by Matteo 'Peach' Pescarin and shamelessly lifted from the gentoo user forums.

I tell myself I'm working at home today because I had to take my dog to the vet.  My dog needed her teeth cleaned, nails cut and a mole removed.  I dropped her off this morning.  Since then I've been working at home, doing e-mail, making conference calls and obsessively hitting refresh on the FedEX tracking page for my new Xbox 360.

You all think I'm crazy.  All of you, except Mike and Trina.  Well... I don't care what you think!  Just stay away from me... unless you're wearing a purple and orange jumpsuit, in which case I have home-baked cookies for you, please hurry, they're still warm.

Paula and I always love a good caper movie, so when we saw the ads for Heist on TV we thought, hey, looks like a fun diversion.  We were only able to sit through fifteen minutes of this derivative drivel.

NBC sez Heist is "a series driven by unforgettable characters"... absolutely, they're unforgettable because you've seen them in a thousand other movies and TV shows. 

The criminal star characters of this garbage were lifted directly from the Italian Job, Ocean's Eleven, Mission Impossible, you name it.  There's Mickey, the handsome, clever criminal mastermind.  James, Mickey's trusted partner in crime and intellectual fencing partner.  "Pops", the wise, criminal father-figure (with requisite fedora and members-only jacket).  Ricky, the cute, Bronx-accented, wet-behind-the-ears thief.  And, of course, Lola, the beautiful but extra-tough she-thug who will punch you in the mouth as soon as you call her "babe".

The law-enforcement characters are no better.  There's Amy, the beautiful cop with a huge chip on her shoulder... trying hard to make a name for herself in a man's world.  There's Billy, the overweight, narrow-minded cop who speaks his mind without restraint... waffling between offensive and endearingly honest.  The only cop who hasn't become jaded and cynical is Tyrese, the young idealistic black detective.

Let's see, in the first fifteen minutes, Mickey and James show how clever they are by casually robbing a jewelry store, quizzing each other on ancient history to help pass the time.  Amy, the cop making a name for herself, busts a ring of thieves who rob moving trains (the noisy train robbers driving 4x4s were without hubris or subtlety, it was obvious they'd be arrested).  Amy then (without so much as a good night's sleep) goes to investigate Mikey and James's break-in.  Mikey is, of course, on the roof across the street, taking pictures of Amy investigating the robbery.

Scene: looking at Amy through the lens of a powerful camera.  The shutter releases several times, three back and white images of Amy in rapid succession.

Zoom in from street level to Mikey on the roof across the street with a camera.

Mikey: "Keep your enemies close..."

Fade out.  End scene.

Holy crap!  The thing that shocks me is this: somebody in LA pushed back from their keyboard and thought to themselves... "Man, this is great stuff."

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A close up of the bug taken by the company that did the vinyl wrap.

I never thought I'd see it happen... but it did.

One of my compact flash cards failed.

Nothing strange happened.  No shocks, no static electricity, no driving over it with a car (Rob).  Took ten pictures.  Downloaded them.  Took three more.  Poof.

I think from now on I'll carry an extra flash card or two when I travel.

Paula had a break in her homework load and so we did some tag team tile work. The weekend flew and we now have just a little edge-work left before doing the grout.

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Ok, I admit it, smart women make my nerd beanie spin.  Brains wins over cheesecake, no doubt about it.  If, however, someone tells you smarts and style are incompatible you can give them your best Urkle laugh and walk away.

Here's a cool thing, laptop bags just for women.

While I may have ridiculed the idea someone would want to put their cell phone in a briefcase pocket which blocks out incoming RF (and, presumably, incoming calls) I do have to commend Mobile Edge for spotting a need: laptop bags which don't look like laptop bags. 

To be sure my super-powered geek-vision wasn't clouding the issue, I checked with my better 50% (who is a history geek, band geek and photogenic fashion plate).  The verdict?  Paula agrees, these are great looking bags.

Check out Mobile Edge's line of women's bags.  If I were a woman (or cross-dresser) I'd totally go right out and buy one of these.

"Microsoft is not even a bad guy... you know... they want to be even more like Apple."
   - Steve Wozniak (from This Week in Tech, 3/5/2006)

Always one to be prepared, my parents have had a living will in effect for many years.  My dad just forwarded me his latest copy:

I, __________________________, being of sound mind and body, do not wish to be kept alive indefinitely by artificial means.
 
Under no circumstances should my fate be put in the hands of nitwit politicians who couldn't pass ninth-grade biology if their lives depended on it or lawyers/doctors interested in simply running up the bills.
 
If a reasonable amount of time passes and I fail to ask for at least one of the following:
 
 ______a Glass of Wine,
 
 ______a Margarita,
 
 ______a Cold Beer,
 
 ______anything Chocolate,
 
 ______a pork chop
 
 ______shrimp, lobster, crab legs or fish,
 
 ______the remote control
 
 ______a  bowl of ice cream
 
 ______a culinary magazine of any kind
 
 ______a hot dog, hamburger or bologna sandwich
 
 ______Sex
 
it should be presumed that I won't ever get better.
 
    When such a determination is reached, I hereby instruct my appointed person and attending physicians to pull the plug, reel in the tubes and call it a day.  At this point it is time to call the New Orleans Jazz Funeral Band to come do their thing at my funeral, and ask all of my friends to raise their glasses to toast the good times we have had.

Signature:      ___________________________

Date:     ___________________________

Fall down seven times, get up eight.
- Japanese Proverb

Those who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.
- Chinese Proverb (also attributed to George Bernard Shaw)

Time's up, pencils down.
- Dick Craddock

According to Reuters, a Chinese Journalist, Li Yuanlong was charged with Subversion for sending e-mails via a Hotmail account. The indictment did not come, however, with help from Microsoft. The wife of the journalist was told by Chinese officials that her husband was arrested for e-mails sent  via a Hotmail account, but it is unclear how the Chinese officials came by the information they used to charge Yuanlong. Unlike the case where Yahoo was accused of handing over a dissident's information to Chinese officials, Microsoft and Hotmail were not the source of the information leading to the arrest.

On a related note, this freedom of speech issue keeps coming back in the news and each time the articles point out that MS closed a Space (blog) last year at the request of the Chinese government.  The reports always  fail to mention, however, that the MSN Spaces team hated that action and built a solution... Spaces now has adjusted their filtering so it is dependent on the country of the user (see MC's post for more detail), allowing them to adjust the filtering to align more closely to local standards.

More info:
The story Reuters published yesterday did not have details from Microsoft at the time of publishing.  A follow up story today clarifies the MS position with comments from a Microsoft spokesperson. 

CNN: the most trusted name in news?  Must be on the web, because television is loosing ground to the Internet as a trusted source for information.  From that I segue gracefully into... the Edelman trust barometer found Microsoft is the most trusted name in business.

The Edelman Trust Barometer found Microsoft Corporation the most trusted global company, followed by iconic companies in their home markets, including Toyota in Japan, Haier in China, Samsung in South Korea, and Petrobras in Brazil.

I think MS is a great place to work, and having the company get this type of recognition feels good (especially for someone who used to be a closet MS employee).  I realize that Edelman is a PR firm which counts MS as one of its biggest clients, but this was, after all, a survey.

While I led off with the fun part of the survey... for me this is the really interesting part:

In the U.S., trust in "a person like me" increased from 20% in 2003 to 68% today.

In other words, most people in the US find the average employee is a more trust-worthy spokesman than the CEO.  Any connection to the surge in blogging?  It's pretty hard to preen cause from effect here but I, for one, am hugely thankful for the change in culture at Microsoft which made it possible for employees like me to feel comfortable blogging in relative freedom about our work.

I suppose that brings me back to the beginning... perhaps the trust in Microsoft will not be limited to a single survey or a fleeting one-year occurrence.  With any luck, as more people are able to get a glimpse of the people working at Microsoft and the pride they have in their work, the world will realize that for us it's really about building cool software, not crushing your enemies and seeing them driven before you.  While our moniker of "the evil empire" is something I look on with amusement, it's not a nickname I view with pride.

For a deeper dive on the topic of what can happen for company trust when the employees step out from behind the protective shadow of a company's CEO and PR machine I recommend you check out Richard Edelman's essay The Me2 Revolution on his blog.

It's eye catching... but, still, would you hire them?

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