I decided to give IE9 a try. What’s not to like about a browser that’s supposed to be faster, cleaner, and support new HTML features?

They really nailed the faster and cleaner parts. I didn’t find the user interface in IE8 too busy, but seeing the improvement I’m happy for the extra space.

I’m charging forward on the Shared Resource Schedule Service. There are a lot of things I’m getting into place before I start writing code. Don’t try to tell me that I’m not being agile either, you always need to design a little to write good code. The key to being agile is designing only as much as you need, and being prepared to change your mind later.

I’ve been spending time on the first part of the shared resource service project: “Receive event invitations by email and send an acceptance email”. I hadn’t considered the difficulty I would face receiving emails. This is the most important part of the application, and if I can’t make it work, there’s really no point to continue.

The time finally came for me to replace my iPod with something new. I was using aniPod click wheelthat I got as a warranty replacement back in 2004.It was good to me, but I felt that it was time to look at other options.If iTunes ran a little better on my PC, I probably would have just bought another iPod without a second thought.

I had some fun trying to install SQL Management Studio on my home computer over the weekend. I was successful in the end, but it was a rough journey.

I want to start my project by dividing up the various things the system needs to do, then put them into the order I plan to approach them. I want to start with requirements that are the most risky and most important to success first, and work my way down the list until I finish with items that are neither risky nor important.

I think I’ve got a new project to work on at home. We’ve got this problem at work coordinating a few shared resources in Outlook (like a couple of meeting rooms and a projector), but we couldn’t find any good solutions out there short of installing Exchange Server.

I’ve finally gone and done it.

To be honest, creating my own blog wasn’t foremost in my thoughts until fairly recently. Scott Hanselman had a couple of interesting videos on his blog that finally convinced me to do it.