My top pick for bowling balls is the Hammer Black Widow Pearl.  I stand about 5 to 7 boards off to the left of center and throw at the right gutter.  At the very end of my roll the Black Widow Pearl will break hard at the end.  I've rolled about 12 games with this ball and have 4 200 games at this point.  If you have questions about this ball I'll answer any you have if you leave a comment!

Driving out on South Saint Vrain in Estes Park will quickly take you to Lily Lake, a Reynolds' vacation spot favorite.  There are a couple of easy trails, one completely around the lake and another up a small mountain.  Going around the lake in early morning will get you nice photos from any angle.  Not every day will you get fog at Lily Lake, so enjoy it when you can, though I prefer a clear day with a nice sunrise to shoot.

Photo Statistics:

Shutter Speed 1/90 sec
Lens Aperture F/4
Focal Length 17mm
ISO-100
Metering Mode Partial
Exposure Compensation 0 step
No Flash

With as many new modules as I've created for my web sites and shared between them all, I've developed a need for custom sections in my web configs.  That way it's easy to copy and paste setting for a component into a new (or existing) project and not worry about overlapping (i.e to config elements with the same name).  I've been doing this for a long time but it always took me 4 or 5 lines of code to access the values in the elements.

Here some example web.config code:

<configuration>

   <configSections>

      <section name="RSS" type="System.Configuration.DictionarySectionHandler, System, Version=2.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089"/>

   </configSections>

   <RSS>

      <add key="ContentType" value="text/xml"/>

      <add key="Title" value="Site Construx's Article RSS Feed"/>

   </RSS>

</configuration> 

Here's how to access the custom config element with a single line of code

	(string)((Hashtable)ConfigurationManager.GetSection("RSS"))["Generator"];

If you're having trouble with this feel free to post a comment and I'll help you out!

In a 1 on 1 meeting with one of my senior developers today the topic of Continuous Integration with Cruise Control.NET was brought up.  We have a unique situation were we have Team Foundation Server as source control and backlog tracking, but not being used for Continuous Integration, instead we use CruiseControl.NET.  Needless to say with approximately a dozen developers working on our solution, we've encountered some weaknesses in trouble shooting broken builds.  Ultimately our weakness lies in a lack of experience...developers are so afraid of breaking the build and causing other people pain that they just don't try much and therefore don't gain much experience in troubleshooting broken builds. 

Ultimately, my conversation with the senior developer revolved around what he could do to further educate the team and get us using CI more extensively.  In hindsight I would have recommended that if he could get people using CI at home on their own personal web sites and projects their knowledge would increase exponentially faster than any effort we could do.  Funny how hindsight is so clear. 

After experimenting with the Time Value setting on my Canon 10D setting it on about 1/10 of a second, I was able to get some nice river pictures.  I really like the photos and the effects that they were captured on our vacation this month.

In case you didn't know one of my Grandmother's favorite plants was the Elephant's ear.  In her honor we have several in our front yard...somehow this little boy got lost in the Elephant ear jungle.

One of my grandmother Charlene's favorite plants is the Elephant ear.  Growing up she had an entire patch of at least 30 bulbs, and I keep that tradition alive in my home, although mine is scaled back.  I may be a software developer, but with photos like these I got a new career brewing...Gosh, I like those elephant ears on this girl.

This time my computer based task hails from the Sister-in-law, Shari Valdez.  She called Chris asking how to add music to her Stepson's graduation PowerPoint presentation.  Of course, being a programmer for a Fortune 500 company, I have no clue how to do this.  But I do possess the research skills to and technical savy to get the job done!  I typed into Google 'music PowerPoint' and the very first hit was all I had to look at. 

http://www.presentationhelper.co.uk/powerpoint_music.htm

This article will walk you through adding music to both 2003 and 2007 versions of PowerPoint with almost no fluff and just a few screenshots.

One last note, does the brother-in-law who saves the day, get to pick which song the graduates presentation is set to?  If so, Davey gets the Ice Man.  ==>who looks a lot different than back in my day.

First tip.  Don't buy a wheel barrow bigger than yourself.  Also, watch out for your kids and wrenches, for some reason the bolts *always* end up looser than when you started out.

Tornados aren't something you mess with, especially when they hit your childhood hometown.  I got the call last night from Mom.  You know the voice of bad news...the kind were you know something bad is coming and you don't know exactly what.  My Mom and Dad lost a lot of trees and siding but physically their OK.  My Dad's childhood home was hit hard.  I remember playing an organ in a room that is now gone.