EB Game Night

Our gaming clan started a new event last night.  We are calling it EB Game Night.  Basically it is a way to try to kick start some traffic to our Enemy Territory Server.

Basically the idea is to have the server set up for fun.  Last night we had it set up with a christmas theme. 

All the axis players were the Grinch and everyone had santa hats on.  The grenades were snow balls and the landmines were christmas trees. 

Plus I put together a campaign of winter maps.  Thank god I tested them on Tuesday or that would of been embarrassing cause at least 4 of the maps I had picked didn't work and one was just outright terrible.

Overall I was quite pleased with the turn out...we had 18 people on at the same time at the peak of the night, not quite full but the most the server has had in a while.

The next EB Game Night will be next Wednesday December 6th at 7pm and it'll go till the server dies ... sometime around 11pm.

Come join us anytime on the server 69.31.15.31:27960.

Today's Big News: Sun to release Java under the GPLv2

The internet is abuzz today about Sun's announcement to release Java to the open source community.  So what does this mean?  Is it an admission from Sun that Java is a dying technology and this is a ploy to get developers re-enthused about working with Java again?

"Sun is hoping that this step will attract more developers, as well as extend the lifespan of Java." -Slashdot.

It'll be interesting to see how this works out for them as this may force other companies like Microsoft to open up more of their source in an attempt to drive participation from the developer community.  Isn't that why Ruby on Rails is the hot language?  Will we see Java on Rails in the near future? 

Related Links:

Sun Open Sources Java Under GPL (Slashdot)
Sun to Opensource Java and GPL it (Scoble)
Sun to Open-Source Java Under GPL v2 (digg)

Review of Microsoft Office Accounting 2007

Last night I posted about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007 and I gave it a look over last night.

It's Free that's about the only thing I found to be nice about it.

I was a little surprised (although I shouldn't have been) to see that it needed the .NET 2.0 framework.  It also needed SQL Server Express 2005.  The installer installed these automatically and I was a little miffed that it even installed.  This made the installer take forever.  I actually forgot I was installing it till it was done and came back into focus.

OK so I start it up.  This took forever as well.  I imagine that it was setting up the SQL Server database and initializing the application.  After this was done I had an interface that resembled the Office Suit particularly Outlook 2003.  Then the product activation screen came up :(

Of course you can spend a majority of your time setting this up for your business.  I just went with some basics things so I could see what it had to offer.

It's pretty robust to be honest, probably too much as it is in my case.  I was more interested in the Time Sheets, Quotes and Invoices.

I wasn't happy with the Time Entry Form...it was really complicated and it would require way to much work to get to that screen everyday...you would literally need to have that application open all day to be using it.

Thinking that I might be able to work around it if Invoicing was a breeze...then I realized why it's given away...it is TIGHTLY integrated with Microsoft Office and Invoices require Microsoft Word.

And as I looked around the application I found the many of the features required Word or Excel or Outlook.

And since I went Open Source on my Office Suite, Open Office and GMail this became just about useless for me.

Related Links:

Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
My Post about Microsoft Office Accounting 2007
OpenOffice.org
GMail