Try the Marlborough Hotel[^] It's not the cheapest but my Mother used to stay there when she visited and liked the place a lot. It's quite central too being in Bloomsbury. James.

I usually just tell them my daily charge rate and ask them how they are going to pay... But I think John Simmons' reply below is much better... James.

Not really a PC practical joke - but try reversing the keypad on a phone... James.

We just found a computer on our network that was sending 20MB of data a day to port 80 on an external website... The virus checker didn't pick up anything. The only way we caught it is because we wondered why our ISP was logging a non-zero data rate overnight and at weekends. We still don't know what is on the computer but its off the network awaiting a format now... Hope yours isn't the same thing. James. James.

Actually, there is a very good use of "lock(stringConst)" - when you have a multithreaded cache and only want to lock the portion on the cache (or key) you are about to update... James.

There is an article on the Microsoft website about how this is a really bad thing to do as it can cause all sorts of problems within the .NET runtime - including the inability to create new objects of that type whilst the lock is being held. I know its in the examples, but they say they will be revising them in the future... James.

As long as its not "lock (typeof(Foo))"... James.

We love it... Maybe you can tell us where the good pubs are as we've just moved here... James.

Down the A4 to the west... A place called Benham Valence... James.

Sure... www.exony.com[^] It only takes an hour from Bath... James.

Near Newbury... But we have aircon and I'm sitting here in shorts so its a bit chilly :) James.

I've used Star Trek Systems in the past as there is an infinitate number of them: Betazed, Riser, Bajor, etc My laptop, however, is currently called Buffy... James.

Anyone going next week? Its my first visit to a Tech Ed and also to Barcelona so suggestions are welcome. James.

Prozac... James.

... except the SQL Server .NET data provider doesn't support COMPUTE BY clauses ... James.

From personal experience - "Language Barrier"... I used to work for a Japanese company in the UK and we were asked to develop a video server for news organisations. We wrote a very detailed specification and sent it over to Japan. They replied saying "please build this"... Skip forward a year++ and we find out that: 1. They never read the spec as it was too long - they would have preferred no more than a couple of pages with a big picture. 2. There was already another spec in Japanese which wasn't translated until too late. 3. The project was really for NHK (Japanese TV station) to play TV programmes and not for news organisations. That was a really fun time for us... Oh yes, whilst we are on the subject you can add "Inappropriate Technology". The above project was required to use 12" magneto-optical discs for the video storage and they could hold a whole .... 20 mins of video. About this time Tek were making hard disk based video recorders quite cheaply that could hold much more. Ever hear of magneto-optical broadcast storage? No... Sucessful wasn't it. James.

Wallpapers not related to programming[^] Much more pleasing to the eye :-D James.

And the spangly new Festival Place.... James.

I think there is a new one as well... 16 Ability to purchase Red Bull in a supermarket... James.

As I assume most people around here are engineers or similar. I can reccomend the "Hacker's Diet" or as the subtitle says "How to lose weight and hair through stress and poor nutrition". http://www.fourmilab.ch/hackdiet/[^] From the headline: "It treats dieting and weight control from an engineering and management standpoint". There is a pdf to download so no need to buy a copy either. James.