The Towson Town Center Mall finally has a Microsoft Store. Well, kind of. On June 28th, 2014 a Microsoft Store kiosk opened. I kept telling myself I wanted to get some face time (excuse the pun) with the Surface Pro 3 before making a decision on whether or not it was for me. Some of the main concerns I had were with the overall size (it is now larger than the Surface Pro 2) and the Type Cover (stability, trackpad, keyboard, etc.). Regardless, I was finally able to give it a try over the weekend (for about a half hour). And here are my impressions.

From 1998 to 2007, it was pretty easy to predict the AL East. It was usually the New York Yankees in first, the Boston Red Sox in second, and the rest (Orioles, Jays, Rays) in whatever was left. And usually the difference between the Tier 1 teams (Yankees, Red Sox) and the Tier 2 (3?) teams was quite a lot. Typically double digit games behind. Sometimes 20 or more. Until 2014.

The loss last night to the Boston Red Sox after being up 5-0 going into the 6th was a lot of things.

Okay, a bit of an odd title I know. But this is where the intersection of programming and baseball happen. And when someone asks when does 0.1 plus 0.2 equal 1...you will know why. Read on.

If you are writing cross platform apps for iOS and Android using Cordova (formerly PhoneGap) it might behoove you to also port it to Windows Phone. It also might behoove you to use AngularJS, a JavaScript framework toolkit for developing single page applications. But there can be quirks...and this article identifies one of them.

With the news that Nolan Reimold will start the 2014 season on the DL, the Orioles 25 man roster is nearly complete. Here is my best guess at what the final roster will be come Opening Day on Monday.

The Orioles allowed 709 runs in 2013. Good for 13 shy of being league average, but when you really look into it...their starting pitching was actually fairly worse. And in order to contend in 2014, they are going to need some help.

Windows 8 was a necessary evil. Windows 8.1 is what Windows 8 should have launched as. Those two sentences sum up my takes on Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. But with that Windows 9 needs to remedy quite a few wrongdoings. But I want to point out that the Modern UI is not going to go anywhere. And nor should it.

The Baseball Writers Association of America voted in Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and Frank Thomas from the 2013 class. Mike Mussina was on the ballot, yet he only received 20.3% of the vote.

The Orioles just announced that they will be raising season ticket prices by 5%. Let that settle in for a second.

The last 2 years have been rather solid for the Baltimore Orioles. In 2012 they turned in a magical season culminating in taking the Yankees 5 games in the ALDS after winning 93 games. In 2013 they proved 2012 wasn't a fluke by winning 85 games.

The 2012 Orioles were the Cinderella Story for Major League Baseball. They went 93-69, snatched up a Wild Card spot, won an  unprobable game in Texas against Yu Darvish with Joe Saunders of all people on the mound. Their season was a success primarily because of one facet of the team: their bullpen. And it is because of that the 2013 season is ending in utter frustration.

Most of the time, when debugging locally in Visual Studio, we set a single startup project. But there are off chances where we need to run multiple projects on startup. Here is how.

The American League East has long been called the best (toughest) division in all of professional sports. But is it really the case?

Through 96 games this season, Jim Johnson has already made 47 appearances and notched 33 saves by July 14th, 2013. He has also had 6 blown saves for a total of 39 save opportunities. 

At the start of the season the Orioles were hoping that the 2012 season for Jason Hammel was not a fluke and that he was ready to take the staff ace designation by the horns.

They may be without Derek Jeter, Curtis Granderson, Mark Teixeira, and Alex Rodriguez, but we should not be feeling sorry for the Yankees.

Sometimes, just sometimes, it seems necessary to put decision making by both Buck Showalter and Dan Duquette under fire. And that decision making has to do with the roster management and usage of Pedro Strop.

Windows vs. OS/X. iOS vs. Android. Windows Phone vs. BlackBerry. Playstation 3 vs. Xbox 360. These are just a few examples of products and platforms that can be purchased that people feel the need to validate. So it is no surprise that the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One are already causing fanboi wars. 

The new Mac Pro design was teased today. And while price was not announced nor the release date nor if anything can be customized by the buyer....Apple did show off the overall design of the device. And it is both cool and very controversial. But what does it look like?

The Orioles are currently 2.5 games back in the AL East. Along with the Yankees. And the Rays are only 4 games back. In another words, the AL East is a coin toss. And the Wild Card is going to be tough to snag with the Athletics playing well. So the Orioles need some help to get them to The Dance. And not the kind of help that Alex Rodriguez got.

Remember that old saying? One ace pitcher away from a World Series? Certainly applicable to the 2012 rendition of the Baltimore Orioles. But what about the 2013 version?

On June 1, 2013 a struggling Jason Hammel threw a slider that hit Matt Tuiasosopo on the shoulder after giving up 3 home runs in a row...and was immediately ejected by home plate umpire Huner Wendelstedt. But was it necessary?

Steve Johnson, Jair Jurrjens, Kevin Gausman, Jake Arrieta, Zach Britton, Josh Stinson. What do they all have in common? They're part of the not-so merry-go-round going on in the Orioles rotation. 

Another save chance, another blown save for Jim Johnson. His most recent being a blown save and a loss against the Toronto Blue Jays while starting with a 3 run lead. His first 3 run save situation that resulted in a blown save. But what is wrong with Jim Johnson?

Well, it was bound to happen. Looking back on the 2012 season, it is easy to point out one of the most successful pieces to the team: the bullpen.

The Baltimore Orioles are in the midst of their longest losing streak of the season. During this losing streak, they have seen their All Star closer blow 3 save changes in a row.

It may seem like heresy, but when your main job is DH (see: designated hitter) your job is to hit. And as a 29 year old without options that is currently batting 188, Nolan is quickly running out of time.

With the recent (bad) news of Wei-Yin Chen most likely heading to the DL with the dreaded right oblique strain, I think it would be a fun exercise to take a step back and look at the state of starting pitching for the Baltimore Orioles as an organization.

To those that think the NBA has image problems, it is time for "The Shield" to be put under further scrutiny. 

Google is in a precarious situation here. On the one hand, they have turned into the Windows of the smartphone world. That is, the sheer number of devices running Android is much akin to the sheer number of devices running Windows. That is a great problem to have. A not so great problem to have is when one particular company dominates that market.

Microsoft and Apple have been in a constant battle since their creations in the mid 1970s. What has originally been a battle of operating systems has now escalated into a battle of ecosystems. But there is one war that has been quietly going on in the background: the retail store.Microsoft and Apple have been in a constant battle since their creations in the mid 1970s. What has originally been a battle of operating systems has now escalated into a battle of ecosystems. But there is one war that has been quietly going on in the background: the retail store.

Pardon the corny name, but it is a microcosm of the career of Jake Arrieta. And it is very much reminiscent of the kinds of pitchers that plagued the Baltimore Orioles in the past.

Aside from being a horrendous experience for the city of Boston, the runners and watchers of the Boston Marathon, the citizens of the New England area, and the United States as a whole....this entire crisis showed us as a country a lot of things.  

It is a tough pill to swallow. The so called cavalry for the Baltimore Orioles was supposed to be that of Brian Matusz, Jake Arrieta, Brad Bergesen, Chris Tillman, and Zach Britton. But where are they now?

TJ McFarland was selected by the Baltimore Orioles during the Rule 5 draft in December of 2012. He was selected 23rd overall and spent his entire career in the Cleveland Indians farm system. So how does he fit in the plans for the Baltimore Orioles in 2013?

Like clockwork you have a small contingent of Orioles fans calling for Adam Jones to stop chewing gum, and in effect stop blowing bubbles while playing baseball.

Bases loaded. Two outs. Tie game. Bottom of the 7th in Yankee Stadium. Pedro Strop in to face Vernon Wells. Pedro goes 2-0 and is faced with a situation where he has to throw a fastball. What happened?

There are certain security features that comes installed by default on IIS (Internet Information Services) on Windows. The one that is not often talked about is the Request Filtering role service. And that is usually for good reason.

We have been down this path before. It seems that there is always a new browser war. It started off with Internet Explorer and Netscape, evolved into Internet Explorer and Mozilla, and now it is a muddled mess of desktop, smartphone, and everything in between. But do not for a second blink (pun intended) or you might forget that the desktop is still in the middle of a browser war.

The Mail, Calendar, People and Messaging suite of apps in Windows 8 have been updated, and while it is nearly a very positive welcome set of changes, there is one side effect: Google calendar support is removed entirely.

People say you are not buying into a phone, you are buying into an ecosystem. To that end, it is important to analyze competing services between two of the biggest companies: Microsoft and Google.

You may have heard it by now. A couple male attendees make some chauvinistic jokes in mixed attendance at a PyCon conference. A female attendee takes offense. She takes pictures. Uploads them to Twitter. And puts the male attendees on blast. Time goes by, one of the male attendees is fired by his company, the female attendee ends up getting fired by her company, and in between DDoS attacks occur. And it is all topped off with death threats, racist and sexist comments, and everything in between being directed at the female attendee. Read on.

The hub bub earlier today is that MLB could not reach agreement with the NFL on the Ravens/Orioles debacle. But as some people in Baltimore are trying to make it, it seems that this is an us vs. them situation. More appropriately: an Orioles vs. Ravens issue. This could not be further from the truth.

Windows 8 can be a little confusing, not just from a perspective of creating an entirely new UI as the landing screen for users, but also from the beginning when picking an OS version.

The NFL and Roger Goodell are pushing their agenda. Hard. And in that process they are flexing their muscles and doing everything possible to run a smear campaign against MLB and the Orioles....

We hear it all the time whenever a surprise team in the NFL does better than they are supposed to: the NFL has parity. But is that really the case?

Everyone is so quick to announce a market as a being dead....but are they ever right?

Chrome OS needs to merge with Android to be taken seriously. 

When working on sites with multiple languages, Umbraco developers typically use the Dictionary framework built into Umbraco. However, when working on deploying a site with a host of dictionary entries, how do we best accomplish this?

To say that the Sony PlayStation 4 event yesterday was disastrous is putting it lightly. The media is putting Sony through the gauntlet...

The Chromebook laptops have been getting a little press lately due to multiple manufacturers picking them up. But the real questions seem to be: should Microsoft be scared? Or are they just the new Ubuntu laptops?

The internet is abuzz with talk of the 64GB Surface Pro reportedly having only 23GB of free space. But how is this the case? Read on to find out.

Apple is trying to plant iOS elements in OS/X. Google is trying to merge Android and Chrome OS. Microsoft is trying to make a consistent UI across all of their devices...

The Orioles decided to let Mark Reynolds walk after putting up a collective 0.8 WAR over the last 2 years in Baltimore, but who will be taking his place?

Hold on if you heard this before: The BWOA screwed the pooch.

A few updates were made to the Check Your Gun Stats site including the following: assaults per capita for state and country, some additional styling, condensing of table columns...

Windows Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer Tami Reller announced that Windows 8 has sold 60 million licenses to date.

CheckYourGunStats.com is my current side project. It is a site to view crime rates, murder rates, assault rates, and robbery rates for the USA as a whole as well as each individual state. Here are some updates....

Steam recently released their latest hardware survey, and its results are obvious but still interesting.

Windows 8 is a lot of things to people. But one thing it definitively is is the new direction of Microsoft. It is revolutionary for the PC industry and at the same time transitional. 

Omar Vizquel is/was many things: a great teammate, a class act, and a phenomenal defender. But one thing that he should not be is a HOFer.

Sick of having to create a new email address whenever you want to associate a specific email address to a service?

Homicide statistics. Events. State. Federal. Gun regulation. Reform. And everything in between. Those are going to be the center piece of a new web based project that I will be working on.

This one is a real simple tip. Do not draft or play a Ravens wide receiver. They are inconsistent. Case in point: Anquan Boldin, Torrey Smith, and Jacoby Jones.

Well, it took a short amount of time. But Wendy with her "Mozzarella La La La La La" commercial has now ousted Flo from the most annoying (and played out) commercial character position.

In case you are wondering how to get the port that your SQL Server instance is listening on...

Metallica is better than your gym music. Pull a Bart Simpson and write that on a chalkboard for an hour if you don't agree. As a matter of fact, do it if you agree so you will never forget.

I like the Start Screen. There, I said it. But it is not perfect. Not yet. There are improvements that can be made to make it better. And here is one.

Over the years I constantly try to create and shape my own personal mission statement. And every time I came up with something it just felt forced.

The Orioles missed out on Josh Hamilton, they missed out on resigning Mark Reynolds, and it appears they will not go after Nick Swisher. So what are the Orioles to do about the elusive middle of the order bat?

The 2012 season was one of the most exciting and memorable years in Baltimore Orioles history. Now you can relive all of the exciting moments, one-run nail biters, extra inning thrillers and the return of postseason baseball to Birdland.

I am sorry, but I do not want to be an emperor. That is not my business. I do not want to rule or conquer anyone...

The Kansas City Royals have a pitching rotation. Let that settle in for a second. Ok? No? I'll say it again: the Kansas City Royals *finally have a pitching rotation...

How to have a non-www domain permanently redirect to a www domain in ASP.NET (for SEO benefits) using your web.config....

In certain cases, images that are generated by your typical resize/crop methods in the .NET world (it's usually the same code snippet that has been recycled across the internet over the last 10 years, it seems) could have a "ghost" border around the edges of the image.

What did Eric Schmidt say about Windows 8/Windows Phone 8 that makes him pull a Tim Cook?

The Surface. Just the mere sound of it can elicit all kinds of reactions from people....

Gabe Newell continues to get pie in his face. Per The Verge: Microsoft revealed today that the company has sold 40 million licences of Windows 8 to date. Tami Reller, the Windows Chief Marketing and Financial Officer, revealed the figure during a speech at Credit Suisse 2012 Annual Technology Conference.

Why do some blogs/tech sites disable comments for their articles? It's one thing if the article is a simple news announcement, but an editorial?

Ever notice how sometimes when you're using your touch device and you click on a particular field and the onscreen keyboard changes a bit?

I propose a new meaning to OTC. Pretty much everyone know it to mean "over the counter", but how about something new? Something original?