Scary stuff. How are you guys in Brisbane? Is Brisbane relatively safe from the floods or are they heading that way? I guess it depends on the suburb you are in as well.

Nice! I like it. Just doing the math 85.5 / 0.5... That would nearly be my record.

Josh Gray wrote:

Ballarat

You either love it or hate it, there is no in between, I cant stand the place.

Josh Gray wrote:

Do the limited employment opportunities there worry you? What would you do if they went belly up?

Yes, thats the trade off for the convenience I spoke of above. The sites listed in my profile are actually owned/operated by me and I am currently the only employee, I actually have more work than I can handle most of the time. I did have an employee but he disappeared, another down side is the lack of talented people in regional areas. But at the moment I probably couldn't afford to pay an employee anyway. If I had have known how hard it is to run a business before I started, I don't think I would have taken the leap... I am also lucky enough to have the support of a former boss who I can contract for at the drop of a hat. But if all of that disappeared tomorrow I could always become a prostitute, that's what I tell my wife anyway... she thinks we would go bankrupt...

Will do! I'll have the coldies ready.

We like it.

Josh Gray wrote:

It was the western limit of our last

Yes, just at the end of the Great Ocean Road, most people do the road, end up here, then turn back. I'm not a big city person, so it suits me fine, not too far away from Melbourne for the odd trip if we need. I can walk with my kids to school from home in 5 mins, another 5 mins walking and I'm in my office. That's the best thing about living here for me.

I think Holden. "Bogans" yep! The picture was taken in Hamilton VIC, would be one of the bogan capitals of Victoria, of course we don't live there, just visiting for the day :) . We are from the slightly less boganish city of Warrnambool VIC, bogan city with a sea view!

I agree with you on everything here...wish more people would. Slightly off topic. I have followed your boogermobile campaign, and saw this the other day http://yfrog.com/f5image164j[^] I thought you might get a laugh, maybe this could be next years vehicle!

My wife assures me that Mars is going to be a hoot! I think she may be trying to get rid of me for a while...a long while.

Yeah, makes me think of the early explorers jumping into their ships and discovering our land. It would take some courage thats for sure. I would hope there are people still around who would take the journey on.

My wife is urging me to sign up for this one... http://www.themoneytimes.com/20101029/trips-mars-might-be-oneway-ticket-id-10133490.html[^]

Mycroft Holmes wrote:

I have this huge dislike for the web user experience, and developing anything web based felt like amputating a decade of functional improvements

I hear ya!! Thanks for the info. I will check out some of the articles you mention.

Thanks for the reply Mycroft. It is actually something that I have been thinking about...the whole ASP.NET/WPF/Silverlight thing. You have obviously chosen to go the Silverlight path and I understand that it is probably "horses for courses" type thing, but what made you go the Silverlight path?

Thanks for that, I will check it out. Yes it is the same job, we now have the need to "web enable" some parts of our application. I still really enjoy desktop development and we still see strong demand for the things we do, but everybody just seems to want it on the web these days...for better or worse. Still, it is always good to learn something new I guess.

I am a fairly experienced windows desktop developer with mostly Delphi/C#. I now have to move to the dark side. Web development. Can you guys recommend any decent books that will give me a really good grounding on web development concepts using ASP.NET?

Nice! I was just getting really bored with my music collection at work... Now I can blow at least another hour searching on this before I do any work :)

Ditto what Dalek Dave has to say. Your main purpose is to be there for your wife. I have been through three, and remember them all vividly...You do feel quite helpless. Seeing my wife in some discomfort without being able to do a thing about it is very difficult. But the experience of seeing your children come into this world is amazing!

You can use the Windows\StartUp folder for this. Put a shortcut/loader exe in here and it will automatically start them on boot.

Look Here; http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb932385.aspx[^]

Perfect!! That's it. :)

Yeah, weird stuff. Although I have visited some offices where not having that stuff on permanent display would be unusual, it may be a normal thing for these guys to check this stuff out...A Macquarie office is a bit surprising though.