I have a version of NAntRunner working in Visual Studio 2005.  I was questioning whether there was a real need for NAntRunner in Visual Studio 2005 considering we now have MSBuild, but NAnt is just plain better and I've just gotten too used to running Ant builds from Eclipse.

Unfortunately the conversion from Visual Studio 2003 to 2005 is not exactly just a registry edit since you must recompile the plugin in Visual Studio 2005 to reference EnvDTE80 and remove the Office.dll dependency (see this MSDN article: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms165634(VS.80).aspx).  The one nice thing about VS 2005 is that the add-in facilities are easier to work with so I was able to eliminate several of the C++ based hosting projects/dlls.  It seems to work just fine, but I still need to get the configuration loading/saving working.  I also need to fix the installer project to reflect the xcopy based VS 2005 add-in deployment model.

I've been catching up on my DVR'd 24 episodes, and I came across a part where pair programming would have helped them out tremendously at CTU.  Kind of funny that was the first thing that popped in my head.

About a year ago, when .NET 2.0 first came out, I was toying with the idea of using the WWF for an internal ASP.NET application at work.  I finally decided against it last spring once it was decided .NET 3.0 would be required for WWF; .NET 3.0 wouldn't RTM for several months after the end of the project.  I haven't thought about WWF since then, that is until this weekend.  I've spent most of my free time this weekend immersed in WWF, and I must say that so far I'm really liking the technology much better.  I can finally see it being really useful in cases, especially in cases of long running workflow.

Originally I couldn't find much information on the WWF, I only had the Presenting Windows Workflow Foundation book, which I found not all that useful.  It was more of an overview rather than how to really implement anything - but it was better than nothing.  However I have found some articles recently posted by Scott Allen that are absolutely fantastic.

It's been several years since I've used Doxygen, but Ayende reminded me of its existance today.  I spent 2 minutes downloading it, setting it up, and then finally running it.  I forgot how fast Doxygen is, and the quality of the output is now very good on C#.  I will definately start using Doxygen again, its just so darned fast and simple.

I couldn't resist any longer, I needed to update my home PC's peripherals to the 21st century.  It’s so hard for me to stop being cheap at times, but I convinced myself this was an investment in the future; a way to entice myself to work on some personal programming projects to enhance my skill set.

The biggest change was the new 22" Acer LCD wide screen which replaced both my 20" Dell CRT and 21" Sony CRT.  I was a little worried about going back to a single monitor, but the shear size of the new display makes up for it.  This new screen is very bright, clear, and inviting - best money I've ever spent on a display device.  My ATI Radeon X850 just needed a driver update, and I was off and running in 1680x1050.

My second favorite upgrade is the new keyboard and mouse.  I replaced my old Logitech keyboard and mouse with a wireless Microsoft Natural keyboard/mouse combo.  I really like the wireless freedom for the mouse, and the new natural keyboard feels absolutely great.  I can finally type without making way too many typos - I can only really type on natural keyboards anymore (my last one broke so I was stuck with the regular old school Logitech one for a while).

I also replaced my old Logitech 4.1 speaker system that had a broken front left channel with a new Logitech 2.1 system.  I found that the two rear speakers were hard to position, so I opted to just drop them on my new speaker system.

And to further reinforce the newness/change in my home PC system, I turned my desk 90degrees and doubled the amount of RAM in my PC.  My desk now has lots of room on it mainly from removing the two hulking 20th century CRTs.  Maybe next summer I'll get a new dual or quad core system with Windows Vista, which since I actually have decent peripherals will be that much better.  Man, I love this keyboard.