Random thoughts on the last day of 2009

This is going to be a collection of random conversations, thoughts and memories from the year gone by.

1. Bar Stools

I posted an ad on craigslist for 2 bar stools at $45.
a guy responded saying he will give me 25 because there are other comparable postings.
I'm like, douche this isn't a flea market. If there are other postings that are within your price range, contact them.
45 for 2 new bar stools isn't much.

Shop at Amazon and support me

Time is running out folks! Shop the best online deals at :Amazon: and support me without doing anything extraordinary.

Avatar - the review by Roger Ebert

The story, set in the year 2154, involves a mission by U. S. Armed Forces to an earth-sized moon in orbit around a massive star. This new world, Pandora, is a rich source of a mineral Earth desperately needs. Pandora represents not even a remote threat to Earth, but we nevertheless send in the military to attack and conquer them. Gung-ho Marines employ machine guns and pilot armored hover ships on bombing runs.

Hmm, sound familiar?

U.S. Retail Sales Rose 1.3% in November - Staggering!

"While sales reached $352.1 billion last month,"

This number is staggering because I just did some simple math in my head.
From census.gov, the US population is approximately 308.1 million.
This article states that 352.1 billion dollars were spent on retail purchases in November 2009.
Ergo, each person, on average, spent: 352.1billion/308.1million ~= 1130 dollars

People, what's wrong with you? :-) I am quitting this software engineering job and opening up a retail store. My parents have their heads screwed straight - 3 stores and counting...

Hell is freezing over - Mozilla tells you how to switch from Google to Bing

And here's how you can easily switch Firefox's search from Google to Bing: link.

Wanna shop sample sales at Rue La La?

Here is how you get started with one of the best sites for sample sales: Rue La La

Happy Holidays!

Describing EC2 instances using the AWS SDK for .NET

Here is some sample code that shows you how to enumerate the EC2 instances currently associated with your AWS account.

DescribeInstancesResponse resp = ec2.DescribeInstances(new DescribeInstancesRequest());
if (resp.IsSetDescribeInstancesResult())
{
DescribeInstancesResult result = resp.DescribeInstancesResult;
foreach (RunningInstance inst in result.RunningInstance)
{
Console.WriteLine(inst.InstanceId);
}
}

Watch this space for more snippets of code that will help you manage your AWS resources using the SDK for .NET.