Timidity in fear of reprisal

I haven’t written much on here thus far about the big G, mostly because I went through my big non-theistic binge some two or three years ago. Had I been writing then I surely would have been overflowing with thoughts on the matter, but as it has since become more-or-less “settled” for me I don’t often find topics to discuss. I’m also not too keen personally on ranting about how there is no god.

As a libertarian (something I have mentioned a few times on here now), I’m much more of a “live and let live” kind of guy, and as such I don’t really desire to trample on other people’s faith. If you ask me about it, I’ll tell you honestly: I don’t buy it and I think it’s horseshit. But then, nobody asks me. Maybe that’s for the best, as I’d rather like to avoid the inevitable consequences that would cause.

But that’s what brings me to the table today: atheist cowardice.

Change of exam plans

So I didn't take the test like I previously mentioned doing. None of the usual suspects like laziness or money were to blame. I wasn't abducted by aliens and no dogs consumed homework. I just decided not to do it.

I stand by what I previously said about the certifications (though perhaps I downplayed the personal financial hit too much). My reasoning for delaying taking any exams for now came after making that post, though I suppose the seeds had already been planted. I've had a lot of time lately to get more and more practice with Visual Studio 2010, .NET 4, and WPF, which I previously had little to none. As such, I started to feel that spending a hundred bucks (a little more, actually, even with the coupon) on a test that's now obsolete wasn't such a good idea.

I studied for it, though, and was very prepared to pass it. I still learned a lot, as a result, and I'm for the better I think, despite not having the credit for it.

The test was only the first in a series of tests to earn an MCTS, which could then be continued into an MCPD. Since I'm so late to the game, though, my book and practice material was for the original VS2005 version. According to Microsoft, though, the updated VS2008 one didn't necessitate knowing the new 3.0 material but even so there was a 2nd Ed released of the study book. Now that VS2010 has been out for eight months, the new 2010 exams are available. This time they didn't even bother updating 70-536 — they just dropped it altogether.

There are a lot of other changes to the exams for 2010, such as no longer having a combined Windows/Web über-MCPD (Enterprise Application Developer). With the dropping of the old 70-536 test, the paths of Windows or Web now really need you to pick one or the other.

Frankly, I don't know what to pick. So far, in my four years doing .NET, I've done both more or less equally. At any rate, that's my new dilemma. I think I prefer to take the updated exams for VS2010 now that I'm using it primarily, but I'm really not sure which path will be more valuable at this point.

Converting an image to grayscale in WinForms

A simple little helper static method to easily convert any image to its grayscale counterpart using older WinForms classes (System.Drawing namespace stuff).

Bird droppings

By now everyone’s heard of our dead animal epidemic. So far, there aren’t any real results in from the vets on why, so far as I’ve read. Still, it was parroted around all day today at work. We (that is, as our state) love getting our fifteen minutes.

While I’m interested to eventually hear what actually probably happened once they’ve had time to figure it out, I mostly just enjoyed watching the slams fly on /.:

Maybe the birds realized they were in Arkansas and figured suicide was really the only way out.
antifoidulus

I got arrested traveling through Arkansas once. They got me for contraband. I had a bunch of books. I got off on a technicality: no one could prove they were books....
Himring

The birds were hit by emanations from the Arkansas school system, and promptly forgot how to fly.
hyades1

And my favorite...

Arkansas - America's Somalia.
Alsee

As someone who’s not big on tribalism, I have no problem with people slamming our state. It’s often much deserved and I often am the one doing it. (As if I were somehow obviously exempt from the label “Arkansan”).

It's also an interesting live experiment in tangents as you can literally watch the conversation get hijacked by a vegan/PETA debate on eating meat and then one on existence of god. Great sociology fun! The tangential stuff easily makes up half or more of the comments, which is probably because just about anything is more interesting than Arkansas on a slow news day.

These aren't frosted, though

I've been doing a lot of hardware research lately towards purchasing parts for a new system (which I'll probably cover in great detail soon). One of the hardest decisions was the graphics card, so I spent an especially large amount of my focus on reading up on them. Since this started during the limbo before Radeon 6000 series cards came out, lots of review sites were posting the same AMD marketing material as previews before the hands-on reviews were possible. As such, I saw the following slide a ton of times:

And every time I saw it, I thought of these:

Spoilers: I ended up going with Barts.