Thanks to Chris Pirillo for the reminder! The first new episode of Family Guy kicks off this Sunday night. There's even an official blog (with an feed) now.

Sweet! Time to get the DVR set up. :)

So I'm finally back in LA. Woke up at 4AM this morning for a 7AM flight! Not fun. Anyway, I had a great time up in Seattle during the last few days. I'm sure most of you could figure that out from my posts on the blog! It was definitely well worth the trip (and the four days of classes that I missed in the process). Hope you all enjoyed reading the blog too and learned some new stuff from the information posted. :)

Heh, it was actually pretty awkward walking around the airport with the silver briefcase in my hand. In addition to all the stuff in the bag that I mentioned the other day, I also came back with the Longhorn build, three T-shirts (two of which are size XL...damn it!) and an AMD cap. Just before we left the Press Room last evening, Ryan and I also got the big x64 "Raising the Speed Limit" posters that they were taking down. It's now on the wall in my room. :D

Now I slowly need to get the rest of the parts, one by one, and build a sweet AMD64 machine with the GeForce 6800 GT in the coming months. Mmm...

For those of you who missed it last time, here's the link.
I'll be posting there for the next couple of days.

The first set of pictures from the x64 VIP dinner are up. You're going to hate me when you see them. Sorry. :P

+5 for alliteration. :P

So I opened up my MSN Messenger contact list the other day and noticed one of those glowing stars next to my brother's icon. I clicked the icon and the contact card notified me that he had created a blog on MSN Spaces and that some new pictures had been posted. Cool! He has lots of pictures of the Columbia University campus and New York city, so go check out the blog and say hi.

Welcome to the blogosphere! :)

I was waiting for my flight tickets to arrive before mentioning this, and they got here this morning, so here goes...

Some of you from OSNN might already know this, but for those who don't - I will be attending Microsoft's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) this year as a representative of OSNN.net, a Microsoft Featured ExpertZone Community.

In addition to receiving the registration pass for the 3-day conference, we have also been invited to the x64 Launch Event, which includes a dinner on Sunday night with members of the x64 Windows dev team at the Sheraton, a launch party on Monday night, and some other cool events. And as if that wasn't enough fun, we have also received an invitation for lunch on Monday with the Vice President of Windows product development, the Director of Longhorn development, and the Group PM of the Windows x64 team.

Since I am fortunate enough to be able to meet some very bright people while I'm there, I'd be happy to ask them any (good) questions that you might have about Longhorn or Windows XP/Server x64. As you think of questions, feel free to post them in this thread or leave a comment here, and I'll be sure to get the answers from the people concerned if I get a chance.

I will be covering the conference on the OSNN WinHEC 2005 blog, possibly at regular intervals during the day (I'll have my laptop and camera with me), with a more comprehensive story that wraps up the day's events every evening/night; so stay tuned.

This is going to be awesome! :)

Good news! Microsoft is giving out free copies of VS 2005 Beta 2 to people who don't have access to MSDN Universal. For U.S. and Canadian residents only, while supplies last.

Thanks to Scoble for the heads up. My copy should be on the way soon. :)

A new site quietly emerged today with a rather mysterious looking, minute-long teaser video. After a long period of silence, it seems like Microsoft is revving up the marketing machine again.



The April 25th date is a hint that this might be something Longhorn-related. Guess we'll find out soon enough at the WinHEC? :)

The event that I mentioned earlier turned out to be a big success. The turnout was awesome! We didn't expect that many people to come by. There were literally lines of people forming in front of our table. :D

The crime scene challenge was undoubtedly the most fun part. We spent a few hours on Monday evening setting everything up...I was on campus until about 1:00 AM working on it with the team. We had black lights (ultraviolet bulbs), invisible ink messages on the walls, hidden cellphones, encrypted messages, a keyboard with the keys re-arranged...it was sweet! And watching the groups trying to solve the puzzle was hilarious, especially when they fell for some of the decoys we had placed all around the room. :P

We're doing the raffle tomorrow evening, and one lucky person gets that awesome little PSP that all of us were drooling over today. :D Lots of other good stuff to give out, as I already mentioned last time.

Wow, what a day...I'll post pictures when I get them.

Update: The pictures are up. Take a look! :)

I usually watch Channel9 videos on weekends since I have more time, and a more reliable connection here at home.

Microsoft released the Tablet PC Experience Pack last week, and Scoble interviewed Dustin Hubbard, who manages the Mobile Applications and Hardware Development team, for a Channel9 video. The video is about 25 minutes long, and it's well worth watching if the Tablet PC has piqued your interest (a few of you left comments last time, and others asked me more about it on campus too). Dustin highlights all the new features made available with the Experience Pack, and it's really cool to see what the Tablet is capable of with the right software. :)

Streaming video
Download video

Classes officially started on Monday after a rather short, but relaxing spring break. As usual, not much coursework actually began during week one. I'm taking two CS courses and a health psychology class as a general education requirement this quarter.

On Monday, we had an ACM officers meeting at Adam's place. Spent little more than an hour discussing official matters, and the rest of the evening watching TV and the Gamecube, playing poker and having dinner. Fun stuff. :)

We had another meeting on Tuesday to plan for next week's E-Week event. ACM's organizing a logic puzzles/riddles challenge and we're giving away some awesome prizes - gift certificates from Fry's and Best Buy, software and Xbox games (thanks to contributions from Microsoft), Google gear, and the grand prize - a shiny new Sony PSP. Yes, you read that right. :) So to the UCLA folks reading this, come to our table in the Court of Sciences on Tuesday between 11AM and 2PM. You know you want that PSP. For the rest of you, let the envy begin. :D


[Psst...e-piphany turns two years old tomorrow. :)]

With so many desktop search tools out there, which one is right for you? Or are you one of those people who doesn't use one, either because you don't feel the need for one, or because of unfounded paranoia. :)

ArsTechnica has a nice comparative review of all the desktop search tools available for Windows. I thought I'd link to it since my thoughts on the subject are pretty consistent with a lot of what the author of the article has to say.

Take a look...especially if you're looking for something to try out, or want something that your current desktop search tool doesn't offer.

What a slick little machine! Take a look at the review. It's well-written and very comprehensive. :)

This is crazy! :o

Kunal Kundaje hacks into own system to spy on self

..."Now I can find out exactly what I'm doing when I'm doing it!" said an excited Kunal Kundaje. "Since I'm on the computer all the time, now my spyware will tell me exactly what I'm doing every minute of the day!"...

Ridiculously skinny Kunal Kundaje wins Hide and Seek championship by standing behind parking meter.

After a tense and competitive final round lasting almost 5 hours, Kundaje's opponent had to throw in the towel. "he's just too tough," Scott Ackerman said. Apparently Kundaje began the match by hiding behind a broom, but had to move when the front porch needed sweeping

What a great idea! Now I don't have to keep refreshing that UPS/Fedex/USPS tracking page multiple times a day everytime I'm expecting a package. In fact, I'm supposed to be receiving two books for next quarter sometime soon. How handy!

Fellow Bloglines users: Click the "Add" link in the left pane, then the "Package Tracking" link in the right pane to check it out. :)

I finally got around to testing the Ubuntu 5.04 RC "Hoary Hedgehog" Live CD today, and I was pleasantly surprised by how well it ran.

I've been out of the Linux scene for several months now, and Arch Linux 0.6 was the last distro I had running on my notebook. I've tried pretty much every other "major" distro in the not-so-distant past, but I've never seen a single one that worked as well as Ubuntu right out-of-the-box.

This is the first and only distro that was able to detect and install my wireless card with no user intervention (it's an internal Intel PRO/Wireless 2200BG MiniPCI adapter, by the way). In fact, every single piece of hardware in the system, including my external USB 2.0 hard drive, was automatically detected and installed. I was pretty amazed. The out-of-the-box experience for new users has always been quite poor and problematic in most Linux distros, and it's great to see that the Canonical folks have taken a step in the right direction.

Of course, this aspect of the Ubuntu "experience" will obviously vary according to individual hardware configurations, so your mileage may vary. But there are other little things that are quite nice as well - most notably the update service and the Synaptic Package Manager (derived from Debian). The former is similar to the Automatic Update feature in XP or the Software Update feature in OS X. The latter is a way to connect to a large software repository from which the user can download and install additional applications. It's a great feature, and my short experience with it was excellent - the process was smooth and clean, and dependencies were automatically taken care of. Beyond that, I'd say Ubuntu is pretty much like any other recent, major Linux distro.

Although I've worked quite a bit with Linux systems in the past, I was looking at Ubuntu purely from a newbie's perspective...I wanted to see how comfortable someone would be had they never seen or used a Linux system before, and even from the limited experience I had playing around with it for just less than an hour, I can see that Canonical has the right idea. This is the direction every Linux distro needs to take if it hopes to become a major player in the desktop OS arena.