Kent used a phrase a few days ago “loaded for bear”, and while I can’t even really explain what it meant (though Google certainly can), it makes me laugh every time I think of it…

Anyway, I recently bought a home machine (from Dell, because I realized that if I built it myself I would probably spend weeks doing it for 20-30 minutes a night), and I’ve finally loaded it up with VS.NET 2003.

The motivation behind the purchase of a new home computer was that I would spend less time in the middle of night working on the more mundane aspects of my job, and more time on my writing and coding… but all I had managed to install was Outlook and enough other software to be able to work on the developer centers… not a lot of code can be written if you don’t install an IDE though (well, unless you are into emacs) so now I’m ready to go. Assuming I can stay up late enough over the next few weeks, I should be able to get back on track with my column, and perhaps write a few stand-alone samples that folks will find interesting. Of course, I bought Halo for the PC today, and the Titans add-on for Age of Mythology… I wonder how long I can leave them in the boxes?

I’m looking forward to PDC week, we’ll be putting a ton of new and interesting content up on MSDN… lots to read even if you aren’t going to LA yourself. One of those pieces of content is a chapter from my next book, so I’m pretty excited to get that posted onto MSDN… despite the heavy temptation to just stick it up on www.duncanmackenzie.net

[Listening to: Too Little Too Late – [Barenaked Ladies](http://www.windowsmedia.com/mg/search.asp?srch=Barenaked+Ladies) – Disc One: All Their Greatest Hits (1991-2001) (03:24)]

wrote this in w.bloggar, then cut and pasted into the .Text admin interface…not sure that is normal, but it works