Congratulations to "Dave" for his first year not-smoking anniversary and my thanks for still being here.  Longest I have gone was six month.  Yeah, Dave.  I hear ya.  I will visualize my way out of this damn expensive habit too.

Microsoft's ASP.NET Teams have released an upgrade to Web Matrix, Mini Me to VS.NET.  It looks great, particularly its HTML editor.  I wish they would release the source code for Web Matrix though.  That would save a lot of folks a mountain of time.  Same comment applies to other projects by Microsoft employees like RSS Bandit which is open source only if you join the project. [correction: RSS Bandit source code is now included in the installation.  Cool.]

Loosen up guys!  I swear I never ogled a Linux box.  Well, maybe for just a couple of blinking prompts, but I never gone all the way.

On Marc Canter's recommendation, I am playing with Laszlo today.  It's basically a Flash-based application server/development tool using LZX, an XML-based language, to describe to the application.  It's somewhat like server-side XUL with ActionScript embedding.  A Java-based servlet eats LZX and spits out SWF.  Obviously, Laszlo has to do a lot of smart fine-grained caching for performance. 

Although I had a bit of trouble during installation (Radio was using port 8080 unnecessarily and one part of startup configuration was hardwired to default installation location), but it is running now and looks great (except for that UI feedback delay in Flash-based UIs reminiscent of videotext UIs).  Cool.  I like it so far.  I'll tinker with it over this weekend and report back.

Thanks, Marc.  BTW, you are absolutely right about that damned Timeline.  Macromedia executives need brain transplants IMHO if they think a thick coat of makeup and a new product positioning statement will work.  Nothing short of deep soul searching, bareassed understanding of developers' needs, and willingness to invest time and resources long overdue will work.

As to Macromedia stealing Laszlo's idea, I don't think there is anything wrong with recognizing a good thing and embracing the ideas behind it.  Besides, I had a similar idea a while back.  What I don't understand is why Macromedia didn't buy Laszlo.  Laszlo obviously has good people with good heads and the ability to execute.  Why bother mimicking when you can get the original and extend it?

Sean, my 9 year old , asked me what I would like to have for breakfast tommorrow.  When I asked why, he informed me that tommorrow is Father's Day.  Oh.  So I thought about breakfast food that would least imperil our kitchen and my son: an egg, sunnyside up.  Now that is settled, I am going to be mildly concerned from now til breakfast tommorrow.

When he was five or so, he got up early one morning and decided to make himself breakfast using the microwave.  He mistakenly entered an extra zero into the microwave panel and his intended food was literally vaporized into toxic fumes that stunk up every corners of the house.  He said he wanted to warmup his food but the plate was empty when he opened the microwave.  Oy!

Never buy a kid toy microwave.  It will just give him enough false confidence to stink up the entire house for a month with a real one later.  I am just glad it happened in the Summer.  Anyway, now you know why I am concerned about tommorrow's breakfast.  I think I am going to go to sleep really late so my wife would be there to help him prepare breakfast.

Update: I just had my breakfast.  Although the breakfast was forced upon me after only four hours of sleep, my son and our kitchen came through just fine.  No comments on the breakfast itself.