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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.

Hardware

It took me quite a while to choose a new device. I did look at the iPod Nano, but they couldn’t store quite as much as I wanted.The iPod classic on the other hand is way more storage thanI need, and I prefer the lighter weight, longer battery life, and the improved durability of flash storage.

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.

These seem to be the things that can lead you into my scenario:

• Windows 7
• Visual Web Developer 2010 Express (which installs SQL Server 2008 Express)

These are the things I ran into trying to install SQL Management Studio (both from an SQL 2008 standard disk, and a download of the express version from the Microsoft web site):

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.

This approach gives me several advantages. It’s not an issue in this case since I don’t have any deadlines to meet, but if this were a professional project and a deadline had to be pushed up, I am more likely to have a product that does the most essential things. If I had a fixed deadline and the project starts running long, I’m more likely to have a working product that’s just missing a few less important features. In an ideal world those don’t happen, but at the end of the project the parts that were risky and/or essential have had the most time to be tested and fine-tuned as the application matures.

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 been wanting to play around with Entity Framework a bit, so this should be a good candidate. Perhaps I can slap a UI on it using Silverlight and Ria Services.

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.

I hope you like it.