Think you can write a better web mail interface?  I know I do .  I'll have to take a look at it a bit more when I get a chance.

If you're interested, here are a few good starting points for ya:

• A small introduction for a C# client implementation.  Looks like a good starting point to get your code going.
• RFC1939 and subsequent extension, RFC2449.   The official specification for the POP3 protocol; a good reference to clear up any ambiguities when writing your implementation.
• RFC2821.  The official specification for SMTP (used for sending email messages).  I dealt quite heavily with this RFC when I was at Factiva.  Quite an interesting spec, but probably better to use CDOSYS instead if you have that available and you don't need full control over the SMTP implementation.
• An article by Duncan Mackenzie on writing a custom client.  Duncan also has a neat little ballon popup implemented.
  
• A .Net 2.0 library for POP3 communication.  Looks full featured and documented...good starting point if you're not interested in the intricacies of POP3.
  
• A good sample POP3 session "conversation" example.  It helps to understand how the messages are typically used in a session.

Will be interesting, I'm looking forward to getting some free time to work on this.

I'm debating whether it makes sense, from a performance perspective, to use a sort of POP3-SQL Server synchronizer to move messages from one or multiple accounts into one repository for fast indexing and lookup.

So I just returned from Utah and a trip out to visit my new cohorts at Zorch Software.

Man, I hate flying.  Planes are just terribly cramped and my legs feel like Jello after even 2 hours.  Not to mention that fat people that always seem to end up next to me and take up 1.5 seats, seemingly.  And what's up with the cell phones?  I swear, people in and around airplanes talk extra loud when they're on their cell phones.  I visualize myself punching some of these stupid people in the face and yelling "STFU!"  I just didn't have the patience.  When the screener at the airport asked me to take my fleece off, I blurted out: "So what if I have a weapon strapped to my chest?"  Seriously though, what's the point of making me take my fleece off if you don't make me take my shirt and pants off?  What if I have a gun strapped to my leg?  Oh that's right, the metal detector would catch it.  So why the fuck do I have to take my fleece off?!?!  And seriously, you think a terrorist would be stupid enough to even try?  They'd surely come up with much more creative solutions than the obvious.  Our airport security is a joke.

Okay, enough ranting.

But anyways, Utah--around Salt Lake City, in particular--is a beautiful place.  The area where I spent my week is surrounded on both sides by huge, snow-capped mountains.  It was awesome waking up in the morning and seeing the mist move past the mountains as the sun was breaking just behind the mountains.  Simply beautiful.

Some tips for anyone going to the  Salt Lake City (SLC) area:

• Utah weather is weird.  Very weird.  When I woke up Thursday morning, my rental car was covered in 3 inches of snow.  Later that day, a huge blizzard whipped through.  Honestly, I've neve seen such a violent snowstorm (I've seen more snow, but the winds were wicked).  But then by afternoon, it was 60F and all the snow had melted.  WTF?  It was like it never snowed at all.
• Google maps is all wrong.  The exit numbers in Utah in the SLC area are all wrong.  I spent a good portion of Monday night trying to figure out where the hell I was because the directions I had were just terrible.  Brad told me that they actually made an error during construction for the Winter Olympics in 2002 with regards to the mile markers. Doh!
  
• Lots of places to eat.  So much variety and so many different choices.  Downtown SLC is just jam packed with restaurants.
• Impossible to get a hotel room during the middle of March.  So Brad only booked me for the first two days since he couldn't find anywhere to book the full week.  The hope was that people would cancel, but I wasn't so lucky.  So I spent Tuesday night calling around trying to find another place to stay.  Called like 8 hotels.  Nothing.  Which leads to...
• As I was told by Blake, Utah is the skiing Mecca.  So many people there skiing.  Wish I wasn't such a pussy

All in all, it was a fun and productive trip (and a bit frustrating at times (did I mention I hate flying?)).  Brad's house was beautiful, although incredibly hard to find.   Some genius decided to name all of the roads in the development the same name with a different suffix (i.e. Draper Woods Dr., Draper Heights St., Draper Way, etc).  Also curious is the fact that those Utes like to keep all of their street signs the same size.  So even long ass street names like "Everglade Mountain Way" got squeezed onto these fairly small signs.

Okay, I'm ranting again.

Well, anyways, I liked Utah.  I'd even consider moving out there.  If you have a chance, do visit and enjoy the sights.

The stunt that the Bush administration is pulling with this Dubai ports deal is simply genius (and of course, terribly disgusting from a political point of view).

About a month after I had gotten the job at Factiva, the recruiter that had brokered the deal called me up and took me out to lunch.  During that time, he had told me that one of the practices that they use when presenting candidates was to position the presentation in such a way that the client would see a few below par candidates to set up a candidate so that the last few candidates would all seem to be way above average.  In a sense, I was a closer in that there was no way that I could fail this interview given the setup that they performed (not that I needed it, the recruiter called and notified me that they hired me before I could even get back to my house, 20 minutes away).

This was confirmed to me by experience last year when I went in for an interview with JPMorganChase.  My goodness.  The guy they had lined up before me (due to a scheduling snafu, we both ended doing a "group interview" together) was a total moron.  Short guy.  Bad presentation.  Stuttering.  His main claim was that he built a website for his church using ColdFusion.  Wow.  Not to come off like an arrogant prick (which I probably am ), there was no way that this guy was going to even come close to getting the job over me.  (I declined, though, because I didn't like the manager and the environment didn't seem right for me.)

So what does all of this have to do with the Dubai ports deal?  It's fairly obvious that this has been planned all along by the Bush administration and in particularly, Dick Cheney as a setup for Halliburton to step in and take over control of the ports.  Could you imagine the outcry and resistance from the Democratic party and consipiracy theorists had they initially offered this deal to Halliburton?  The entire act was great.  Bush threatening veto (the man hasn't vetoed a single bill to pass his desk) was such a dead giveaway to the entire act and yet the public and the news outlets bought it up like a hot Christmas toy.  It was the perfect setup and the Democrats and some poor Republicans latched right on as planned.  After forcing the hand (having these Dem.s like Schumer give such a loud public outcry in the name of safety), it would look entirely partisan if they made the same outcry over Halliburton.

You can almost visualize Cheney in a dark room with a spotlight over his head, wringing his hands in pleasure at how this turned out as the media and the public ate it up.  The man is genius.  Using the simplest of psychological tricks to get the media and masses to do his bidding.  Jedi Master indeed.

I feel like I have ADD today.

Focus! (as if that helps)

My mind has pretty much been in cruise control mode the last few days...can't think about technical things.  Perhaps it's just too much excitement and anticipation.

I'm changing jobs (yet again) by choice and necessity.  The passing of another slice of my professional life brings with it additional wisdom and bonds.  I'm getting better at these things.  At the same time, I feel somewhat lost inside as well.  Like the new kid at the school (a situation with which I have much experience with).

I do wonder whether I'll ever find that place where I'll feel whole and I'll feel at home.  Surely, nothing in life is so perfect, but I don't know that I've even come close in the last few years.  The closest I've been was way back in the summer of 2000, when I was working for Captain (Mr. Ezra Hedaya) at a little startup with big hopes.  That was a great summer.  Learned a great deal and worked with great guys and gals.  I think I've been trying to capture that ever since...to no avail.

Such concepts of stability are seemingly archaic.  It's not just jobs, it's everything in life.  Lease a car.  Free agency.  Netflix.  I don't know that I mind it; it's not as if my peers with more stable positions are much happier than myself.  In fact, from a dollars and cents perspective, I've been better off than most of my peers.  For the first time, I'll be making more than my mom...a 20 year veteran of the Mainframe Era (of course this era never ended...the vestiges still flourish in financial and manufacturing industries).  More than that, this constant shifting has also shown me more possibilities and better opporunities.

For now, at least, I'm looking forward to the possibilities and the future.  New people, new places, and, most importantly, new opporunities to show 'em my stuff.  My brain is exploding with ideas with no guidance to shape them and bring them to fruition.  Had I known what I know now, when I worked for Captain, we'd all be rich men by now, I think.  At the same time, I never feel like I know enough.  There's always too much to read, too much to learn, and too much to explore...bookstores make my head want to explode; I actually feel anxious when I walk into one.  The sight of neatly stacked books makes me feel like I have tons of catching up to do.  Too much to do.  I actually feel guilty when I walk out of a bookstore without a purchase.  As if I've somehow lost a leg of some imaginary race for wisdom and knowledge (but I always get over it once I'm break the plane of the exit ).

One step at a time, I guess.  My brain is always thinking into the future, which makes it hard to focus on the now, at times.  I find it weird that some of my peers seek my advice when it comes to careers...I myself seek it from those with more experience in these matters than myself.  I don't know that I want to buy into all of what they are saying (of course, I'll regret this in a few years).  But I always try my best to offer whatever insights that I have when I do get pinged (not much ).  It's always interesting to see where some of those midnight debaters and GoldenEye marksmen are today

So, how is life?

This was from about a week ago. There's an extra computer now, an old AMD based machine that I'm using as a source control server. Way too cramped now. Priority #1 when I get a new house: office.

Came across an incredibly deep editorial by Devin Faraci on why "V for Vendetta is the most dangerous film of 2006".

What’s happened in the world in the last few years is that we’ve had our dialogue taken away. Remember when conservatives freaked the fuck out about the PC movement – where they took offense at the idea that maybe it wasn’t cool to use unpleasant racial or sexual remarks? When they decided that being polite was some kind of liberal conspiracy? Well, we live in a world which has become PC times a thousand, where to even question the US occupation of Iraq or the way that the War on Terror has been fought is to be un-American. If you try to even begin to understand why a huge percentage of the Middle East hates us, you’re a jihadist sympathizer. Why do you hate America so much with your questions and refusal to just accept the party line? But for the love of God, don’t tell me I can’t call gays “faggots,” because that’s PC nonsense. V For Vendetta seeks to dynamite open that blocked dialogue and to confront us with many issues – what is our security worth? Is terrorism inherently evil? What the hell is terrorism anyway?

V isn’t the only place these questions are being asked. Last week’s episode of Battlestar Galactica impressed me as it showed heroic human resistance fighters on Cylon-occupied Caprica blow up a café full of quite possibly innocent human-looking Cylons. Show creator Ronald Moore and his writers are no dummies – they took the characters we sympathize with, that we understand, who have been almost driven to extinction by the unspeakable aggression and brutality of the Cylons, and put them in the position of a Palestinian terrorist. We never saw what any of the Cylons killed in that explosion had done before. They may have been administrators or accountants – at least one was a barista. But the human resistance didn’t care if they had had a direct hand in the attempted genocide of the human race – they were complicit, guilty by association. And brilliantly the show puts us in the mindset of a terrorist. That's the beauty of what art can do, and how it can present to us new ways of looking at issues we thought we had already covered.

Some would say that’s glorifying terrorism; smarter people would say that’s examining how terrorism happens. Which is V? I think in the end it’s riding a fine line; it’s not explicitly condoning terrorism, but it is making the argument that sometimes the people need to commit violence against the state. Ironically, this is a statement that conservatives should agree with – it’s the basis, they say, of their impassioned defense of the Second Amendment. Violence against the state will always be classified as terrorism – by the state. If the modern concept of terrorism had been in vogue in 1776, I can guarantee to you that that would be how the Revolutionaries would have been smeared by the British. Instead they had to stick to the usual old-fashioned lines of treason and such. In the end the American Revolution was the illegal use of violence to make political change – and if you don’t believe it was illegal, I suggest you do some reading as to find out why the signing of the Declaration of Independence was such a big deal. Each man who signed that document essentially signed his own death warrant, should he be captured – the British didn’t recognize American sovereignty and saw the Revolutionaries only as traitors who would be hung.

I definitely recommend reading the rest of it. Very well written and puts into words some thoughts that at least I've been having about some of the policies that are coming out of the Bush administration these days.

Very much looking forward to this movie.

I've never been much of a television guy, except for news and sports, especially "reality TV" shows.  But two shows have really caught my attention recently: Dancing with the Stars and Project Runway.

I think what catches my attention about these shows is the incredible amount of creative energy and passion displayed by all of the participants.  You'd figure that a guy like Jerry Rice, the greatest wide receiver ever, would have been through it all and experienced all of the emotion and passion that comes with competition.  And yet, you can just see how much he's enjoying himself and really, really working hard at this competition.

Drew Lachey is also amazing.  Like all of the other competitors, he is really, really into it and really driven.  (Just watched his final dance, non-freestyle, and it was amazing, perfect 30!).

The person that I'm more amazed by is Stacy Keibler.  Wow, she is beautiful.  Beautiful body and, more importantly, amazing skill.  Of the non-professional dancers, she is definitely the best one on the show (Drew is second).  Seductive, silky smooth on the floor, and absolutely amazing in all respects. 

When asked about this experience, Stacy said:

"This is the first thing I've done in my life where I have fans who are children and women, instead of just men...If I had the chance to do it again, I wouldn't think twice.  It reallly has changed my life.  I've been offered movies and I'm auditioning.  I kind of wake up every day with a smile on my face and pinch myself."

Maybe more schools should add ballroom dancing to their curriculum?  But to be sure, this is great, enjoyable television.

I also caught a short piece in USA Today on Dolly Parton's Oscar nomination for her song Travelin' Thru written for the movie Transamerica, a movie about a pre-operative transsexual.  Now I've never really known much about Dolly Parton, but this piece really boosted my respect for her a hundred-fold.

"Some things are strange to me, and some things are odd," says Parton, 60.  "But I don't condemn.  If you can accept me, I can accept you."

"Having a big gay following, I get hate mail and threats" she says.  "Some people are blind or ignorant, and you can't be that prejudiced and hateful and go through this world and still be happy.  One thing about this movie is that I think art can change minds.  It's all right to be who you are."

Just thought I'd share

This is definitely something I'm going to have to download and play around with in the next few weeks.

I'm feeling a mighty JavaScript kick lately.

What's interesting is that the more C# evolves, the more it starts to resemble JavaScript.  What with anonymous methods, type inference (it even uses var), and the LINQ syntax, my JavaScript juices are flowing.

There are a few things that I never wrapped up with my JavaScript development experience.  I think the most glaring one is JavaScript inheritance.  Some would argue that JavaScript inheritance is purely fluff (see second comment); it's not needed and JavaScript is probably more powerful for not adhering to OOP principles.

I dunno...it seems like one of those things that would be useful for building certain structures and UI elements.

I've been aware of Douglas Crockford's implementations for quite a while now.  I came across it when I first picked up on JSON about a year and a half ago, but I never particularly liked it since it "looked weird".  So today, as I was looking around to see if any alternatives have risen due to the recently revived JavaScript development, I came across a posting on SitePoint.  I rather like the simplicity of it all and it looks like it works, so I'll have to keep that in mind if I need to use it.

As I'm also thinking about writing a major web based rich UI application in the next few months, I've also been looking at some of the JavaScript libraries, toolkits, and frameworks that are out there.  I came across the Dojo Toolkit today and it looks fairly interesting.  I especially like the bind() syntax.  However, the toolkit does seem somewhat incomplete at the moment...I'll have to take a look at it in more detail and see if it has the features I need.  It's currently lacking any demos, which makes it hard to evaluate without a deep dive.

This brings up another interesting issue that has annoyed me with the proliferation of all of these JavaScript and AJAX libraries: instead of pooling talent and building The Best Possible Solution, we have teams going off left and right building 15 different impelementations of the same thing with 15 different design principles and 15 different philosophies.  Now this isn't necessarily a bad thing, as there are times when you would prefer a lighter implementation to a heavier one, for example, but it would make a hell of a lot of sense to have at least a common convention in terms of naming, package layout, and what not.  Ideally, what I'd like to see is some of these development tracks merge so that we may have more complete frameworks/libraries/toolkits.  Have one mega package that comes in mega-lite flavor, you know? 

With so many libraries/frameworks floating around, it makes it difficult to find the exact set that does what you need and if you do, you need to start worrying about whether they'll play nice.

I'll stop, because I'm just ranting now