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I am studying to obtain my MCSD certification. This book is for the Windows apps exam.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am not much of a sports fan. I don't pay attention to any of the major sports teams. I don't know the name of all the football, basketball, or baseball teams. I do know three of them, though - Bears, Bulls, and Cubs - as any kid raised in Illinois does. The Bulls were pretty cool there for awhile when Jordan played for them but just as I moved to Chicago, he quit, and now the Bulls are a nothing-special team again. But, miraculously, the Chicago Cubs are, for the first time in 95 years, in contention for a World Series spot. I started paying attention when they played the last game against Atlanta and won that playoff series. Now I've seen all of the three games thus far in the NLCS and last night's game was the best baseball game I've ever seen. I was busy until the 7th inning and tuned into a tie game. The game went back and forth until the climactic finish where that one guy (as if I have picked up the players' names yet...sheesh) got tagged out between 2nd and 3rd base. Awesome. I was having a great time until I looked at the clock. Two hours had passed watching the 7th, 8th, and 9th innings and the extra two in OT. Then I remembered why I never watch sports games. They take up too much time. If I was truly a fan and watch games all season, I would never get anything done. This site would never be updated because I would not have time to write anything. So I resolved to watch as many of the games as I can and then go back to being a non-fan after the Cubs win the World Series. Then I can say I was there when history was made.

Awesome movie with Tom Hanks, Michael Duncan Clarke, Barry Pepper, and other greats.

Just started

Why is it that corporations get so nasty when the economy goes in the tank? It's understandable that when the going gets tough, hard decisions need to be made. But those decisions should be made in an honorable fashion. Unfortunately, however, it seems that some companies can't take this high road approach. A very good example of this has recently come to my attention. Someone I know works for a company that is "down-sizing". I have a problem with the very term "down-sizing" but that is a different commentary. The problem here is that a lot of existing jobs are being merged into one. So if you have two management positions A and B, soon there will be only one position C, which is basically A + B. In the case of this company, they have decided to eliminate A and B and have the individuals in those positions "interview" for the new position C.

This is the best of the Jack Ryan books, in my opinion. The Bear and the Dragon was written after this one but this is still the best. A very compelling and realistic plot. Just like the plot in Debt of Honor was carried out on September 11th, I fully expect that there is some terrorist group out there looking to enact the plot in this novel. Scary stuff but written with genius.

This book was made into a movie but is still best experienced in print. It is in this book that we really start to see more of Mr. Clark, one of the most intriguing characters in this literary genre.

New and Noteworthy

This is a collection of articles on the Internet related to various technologies and areas of interest. Every effort is made to ensure these links are up to date ( I refer to these articles often! ) but there is no guarantee that the sites they reside on will keep the links constant.

This class, PrimeFinder, has two methods. The Find method takes the piMax parameter and finds all prime numbers between 0 and piMax. The Print method dumps the list of prime numbers from piStart to piMax, for example, between 1,000 and 100,000. With the int type, this class works well for primes up to approximately 14,000,000.