I don't know how I didn't come across this before, but when using the file explorer built into Vim, you can tell Vim to automatically switch the working directory to the current file you are editing.  Normally in Vim if you performed a ":cd c:\projects\blah" and subsequently navigated three folders deeper to edit a file (say “c:\projects\blah\foo\bar\foobar\fun.cs”), then choose to go back into the file explorer from your current location by issuing ":e .", the "c:\projects\blah" will be listed, not exactly where you might expect to be.  If you edit your _vimrc file and put the following command in when...

Happy New Year everyone! I've been having some issues with my server recently, so if this post makes it out there all the better. I just received notification from Microsoft this morning that I have received my MVP award for 2008. I look forward to seeing everyone up in Seattle this coming April. I am planning on blogging more this year. We have been absurdly busy at work, but there are a lot of little nuggets I am looking forward to sharing. Until next time...

This blog has been pretty quiet lately, what's going on, has Nick fallen asleep? Nope, I've just been busy wrapping a few things up. Most importantly, I got married on June 2nd, and we took a few weeks off to head down to Hawaii and relax. If you've never been, my recommendation is to skip Maui and head right for Kauai. I will be presenting at the Cedar Rapids User Group on January 7, giving my presentation on Castle's MicroKernel/Windsor Container, so if you are interesting in hearing more about the light-weight IoC container come on...

Nice one Google.

The other day I finally decided to replace CommunityServer with Subtext. After upgrading to CommunityServer from .Text a while ago, I found the user experience less than friendly. Subtext also is offering more features right now than CommunityServer such as cocomment and akismet support out of the box. Scott mentioned recently that CommunityServer is looking to potentially add cocomment support with the next release, I'd rather not wait. Blog spam is increasingly an issue, while I was working on the import process, I deleted 9,410 spam comments. Most importantly I now have the source code...

Tomorrow Windows Vista will launch, a long awaited day for many. If you happen to be in the Des Moines area, an event is being held at the Polk County Convention Complex, you can register here. Aside from discussing Windows Vista, other topics will include Office 2007 and .NET 3.0. A little birdie even told me Microsoft will be giving away free licensed products at the end of the day to registered attendees. In case the recent snow put a damper on your weekend plans(for those of us in Iowa), the week looks brighter.

How does your application support notification policies? Do you have failover mechanisms to support the policy? Our plane was scheduled to leave at 4 o'clock Saturday to fly out to TechEd. When I arrived at the airport at 2:30 I was notified that our plane had been cancelled and rescheduled to an earlier time that had already left by this time. The airline confirmed that they had in fact notified us via a phone message that was left at the main number of our office - which somehow never made it to us, they were free...

Yesterday I decided to move the blog from a modified version of .Text to Community Server 1.1. While it has taken a little while getting used to the new back-end administration, I think the move was good. Sorry to those that were flooded with posts yesterday, I should have setup a temporary redirect to a static RSS feed in hindsight. The structure of Community Server is quite a bit different, so for those considering a move to CS, I would recommend using Ken Robertson's SiteUrls generator (to setup a single blog) and Kevin Harder's conversion utility to...

I came across both these links today and thought they were worth sharing. Let me know what your thoughts are concerning the topic once you have read both links. Are you a prostitute or a software consultant... What is Consulting?

I just came across this, yes, yet another test available for you to take online and see where you fit in with the rest of the world. Answering 20 quick questions will give a territorial breakdown of your spoken drawl. Yes, that's right folks, I drink pop, not soda. ;-) My results: Linguistic Profile: 75% General American English 15% Upper Midwestern 10% Midwestern 0% Dixie 0% Yankee