I've been slaving over a hot keyboard for a few days to finish the Inner Drive Extensible Architecture™—the Idea™—release 1.10. I've added two major components to support auditable business objects and money, the latter being much more interesting but a lot simpler to code. For the truly geeky, I've also published a Software Developer Kit (SDK) for your perusal. Some of the documentation may be slightly out of date as I needed to get the bits out sooner than the docs.

<SelfPromotion>

If you're extraordinarily geeky, or looking for a great buy-not-build decision, I'm open to licensing and consulting deals.

</SelfPromotion>

I've finally brought a new server online to take over from three old ones. By "old" I mean a Windows 2000 box with gerbils powering it and two salvaged desktops, one with a whopping 640 MB of RAM. Together all three have performed the tasks of one fully-functional server. And now, I have one fully-functional server.

A couple of problems have emerged.

First, which I knew would happen, the IDT Webcam that used to run on the old Windows 2000 server needed a new home. I've moved it to my spare laptop.

Second, apparently Symantec Endpoint Security does not run on 64-bit operating systems. Never mind that Windows 2003 x64 has been around since—wait for it—2003; Symantec apparently missed the memo. They're telling me I need to keep an old, 32-bit computer (they actually suggested a Windows XP machine) as the central antivirus server for the network. Um. No.

Finally, the rails that shipped with the new server don't fit my server rack. I am now looking for new rails.

Otherwise everything is hunky-dory, and as soon as I figure out the antivirus situation, I can decommission the old Windows 2000 box (along with the two old desktops.)

Useless fact: Today was the first time since April 6th that my walk to work was below freezing.

Not useless fact: the Inner Drive Webcam was temporarily off-line overnight, as I'm making some infrastructure changes and the computer it's attached to is being decommissioned. (It's back up now.) Apparently people noticed:

I don't do business with you because I don't need to, however, I do look at your live camera every day to see the weather and get a look at Evanston, the town in which I was born and raised. My grandfather lived in the North Shore Hotel in the '50s and I visited there often. Your bottom line may not get any bigger if you continue with the camera but there may be people like myself that will miss getting a glimpse of a portion of the city. I hope that you will not let your new infrastructure cancel out the continuation of the camera.

—John in Craddockville, Va.

And:

Greetings:

I look out at Chicago Ave almost every morning that I am not home in Evanston—just to 'check in'. I think it is the only Webcam in the town. Please keep it up! I love it!

—Bernard, writing from Los Angeles

I had no idea.

The technical issue is simple. Right now the camera runs on an ancient (6-year-old) server running Windows 2000. It's essentially Inner Drive's backup server, sort of the Prince Charles of the office. All it does with its 200 watts is run the Webcam and wait for another server to die.

Here's a photo. The Webcam is hooked into the server on the bottom. (One wag called it "Paul McServer" and called the other one "Server Wonder," but in the office we call them McHenry and Bulle. Bulle is so old it reflects the obsolete naming scheme we haven't used in years.)

Well, server prices having fallen, and efficiencies having risen, and rack-mounting being generally preferable to floor-mounting, we're replacing it with a Dell 860. But the new server will have a Xeon processor, which means we'll be running the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003, which means (finally) our Webcam software won't run on the new server.

When we get the new server running (probably the first week of December), I may take an old, decrepit laptop and hook that into the Webcam. In any event, given the outpouring of support for it, I'll do what I can to keep it running.

(Via Bruce Schneier.) I'm really not sure what to make of this, or what, actually, they're selling:

The Inner Drive Extensible Architecture, our extensible framework, got some needed maintenance recently as we started integrating it into a new product we're developing for January release. I'll come back to the product from time to time, but for now I've updated the partial SDK we've had online for a while. Any comments, criticisms, or even kudos, are appreciated.

I have now sent the same 2GB compact flash card through the laundry twice. It still works. I'm impressed. That is all.

The Base Class Library (BCL) team at Microsoft has published a really good overview of floating-point types in .NET. Check it out.

I have to say, the conference has disappointed me a bit. Many of the panels I thought looked interesting turned out to be somewhat less in-depth than I'd hoped. To make matters worse, I'm in one of the greatest cities in the world, the weather is perfect, and I haven't had enough exercise this week.

So, as irresponsible as it seems, I'm going to take the next two hours or so to cogitate on what I've learned this week, by walking up Powell Street until I hit water. That should get me back to the conference (by Muni, most likely) in time for the next panel I'm interested in seeing.

One would think that planning a conference for 1,500 or so software developers would involve planning for 1,500 or so laptop computers. This means, among other things, providing (a) power outlets and (b) decent WiFi access.

After searching for half an hour I found one lone power strip in the "Gold Passport Lounge," and the only reason the other 1,499 people here aren't using it is that they're patiently sitting upstairs listening to an ill-prepared presenter from Microsoft who will probably get a "BillG" email tonight asking him why he was so unprepared.

As for WiFi access, despite the relatively few people down here in the lounge, I'm still getting only about 77 kbps of throughput. Yes, I'm at a developer conference getting modem-speed Internet access.

I'll have more later on today's presentations, the final three of which I may skip. The pre-conference workshop I attended yesterday I found invaluable; I'm looking forward to Deborah Kurata's panel discussions later on this week.

I realized last night that I forgot to bring some important things to VSLive:

1. Business cards. I have about six with me. I have about 200 in my office. Hello, Kinko's?
2. A USB cable, required to connect my phone and my camera to my laptop. There's a CompUSA about 100 m from here, fortunately.

It's always something.

Also, a propos of nothing, I got the best pitch from a panhandler today that I've ever heard: "Buddy, can you spare $1,000? I have a payment plan..."

I'm in San Francisco, at the Hotel California on Geary Street. They've checked me in to Room 404, which, as you can imagine, I couldn't find at first.