If you were wondering why the posts have slowed to a trickle here, it's because we were gearing for this grand new release.

Shocked! Yes, I'm shocked at being double-tagged by Dan Hounshell and Jason Follas to list five things that you probably didn't (and don't want to) know about me. I suppose this means that I've finally arrived as a force-to-be-reckoned-with in the .NET community. Or, perhaps not. Anyway...

1. I'm a guitarist. Granted, lots of guys can make that claim. But, I'm a professional guitarist. I actually hold a bachelor's degree in Guitar Performance from Bowling Green State University. I even went on to half-complete a master's degree before coming to my senses. You see, in Ohio, it is next to impossible to make your mortgage payment on time as a performer. So, I opted to go with my other skill set: software development.

2. I have a $50/week comic book habit. It's an addiction and things get ugly if I don't get my Batman fix.

3. On a related note, my wife and I are a superhero crime-fighting duo online in City of Heroes.

4. I fell victim to the national poker fad. It doesn't help that I work for a Las Vegas-based company. Sadly, it turns out that I'm just not great at it. I'm good but let's just say that I won't be quitting my real job anytime soon.

5. I'm a wizard in bed. 'Nuff said!

Now it's time to share the love. I think I'll go with Mark Miller, Greb Huber, Jim Holmes, Julian Bucknall and Julia Lerman. You've been called out!

If you live anywhere in the Great Lakes or Midwest region and haven't registered for CodeMash, you need to do it. Quite frankly, it has the best price vs. value that I've ever seen in a conference. If you're going, drop me a line and we can hook up.

If you missed my talk last night in Dayton, I'll be giving it again at the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group on Tuesday, January 16, 2007.

Be there or beware.

Last night's talk at the Dayton .NET Developers Group was a great time. Thank you for being so attentive and laughing at all of the appropriate times. I found the conversation after the meeting to be stimulating and intelligent. Clearly, there are many excellent developers in Dayton, OH (recruiters take note).

An update to my Neat Tricks With Extension Methods.

This article looks at the potential performance issues of String.Format() when used with StringBuilder.

Get the details here.

For those of you who like to live on the edge (are you hearing me Sam?), Microsoft has released an October CTP for Orcas -- the next version of Visual Studio. You can get it here.

Once again, it is in the form of a Virtual PC image but the 4GB download has been separated into chunks of 700MB. Also, don't forget to download the base image if you haven't already. Happy downloading!

For many programmers (except Mark Miller -- he's mostly caffeine-free, believe it or not), coffee is probably the most consistenly-consumed beverage. For me, it's like a warm security blanket in my mouth. And, by extension, my coffeemaker is probably the kitchen appliance that I have the most dependence on. If the coffeemaker doesn't work, my whole rhythm can be thrown off.

Yesterday, my coffee maker failed me.

Until yesterday, I was the owner of a Mr. Coffee 10-Cup Thermal Programmable Coffeemaker. Unfortunately, it decided to take a leak all over my countertop. Only half of the coffee actually made it into the pot. So, it was like pouring out 5 cups of coffee all over my kitchen. Needless to say, I was pretty hacked off. And, worse than that, I had far too little coffee to have a productive day of coding!

I toughed it out until my trophy wife got home. She sympathized and recommended that we head over to Kohls to purchase a new coffeemaker. We decided that, because of my obvious chemical dependency, we should go ahead and drop the $200 to get the Bunn BTX 10-Cup Home Coffee Brewer. After all, it's a business expense, right? This morning, I got my first 3-minute pot of quality coffee and I'm not disappointed. But, I'm wondering if I can claim this thing on my taxes.