Once inside the stadium gates, we made our way over to some lines of fans waiting for autographs. There was an extremely short line for who we later found out were Kansas City Chiefs players, and then a very long line for Lofa Tatupu and rookie wide receiver Deon Butler. We waited in the latter, and eventually got autographs from both, and then a photo with Lofa holding my daughter (while she was wearing her Lofa Tatupu jersey!).

We later ended up getting to meet, talk to and get autographs from Nate Burleson and Bobby Engram as well. Better still, once we finally made our way to our reserved box seats along the third base line, Bobby made his way along the edge of the field to shake hands with people in the front row, so we got to shake his hand again and he personally thanked us for coming out and supporting his cause.

Shortly after that, the home run derby started, of which I took plenty of pictures. One of my favorites ended up being this one of Nate Burleson, which I think caught the spirit of the event despite the fact that the hit quite obviously wasn't a home run:

The fact that Nate didn't hit a home run at that at bat may have been irrelevant anyway, since I think Lofa Tatupu's, Darryl Tapp's and Leonard Weaver's derby win was a foregone conclusion at that point.

Once the game got underway, it ended up being an explosive offensive battle. Case in point: Bobby Engram's home run very early in the game. There wasn't as much shenanigans (e.g. tackles to the ground and extra players in the outfield) as last year's game, but it was still very entertaining. It was good to see Marcus Trufant on the field, too, though he spent the majority if not all of his time signing autographs rather than actually playing in the game.

When all was said and done, we had a great time, our daughter Heidi had a great time, we got lots of sun, and I'd say everyone who participated had a lot of fun, too, including the losing "home team" (Bobby Engram's team of "non-Seahawks" ended up winning with a late-game surge).

I'm kind of thinking that he will, but I'm really hoping that Bobby Engram decides to bring the event back for a third consecutive year next year. I'd love to go back and experience such a great family event for a great cause next summer.

This time around, the match was much more exciting and definitely more offensively powered. After all, there were six goals scored in total when all was said and done, as opposed to the two goals in the first match I attended. The main problem with the offensive nature of the match was that the Sounders FC couldn't quite hold it together once they had built up a two point lead, 3-1. That lead to a heartbreaking draw, and then this.

Despite the falling apart, though, the match was a lot of fun. It was also good to spend some time with Mike, who will be leaving the area and heading east to take root in Spokane this weekend. Perhaps I'll be able to get him out this way again in the future for another Sounders FC match, or better yet, a real football game.

Happy birthday, King. We miss you.

I just purchased Field Box tickets to the Second Annual Bobby Engram Celebrity Softball Game this coming Saturday at noon. If you'll recall, my wife and I went last June and had an absolute blast.

I haven't been shy about my admiration for Bobby Engram in the past, and after he was picked up by the Chiefs back in March, I worried that, in addition to not being able to see Bobby in action at Qwest Field on Sundays, we might not get to partake in another one of these softball games. Fortunately for all us Seattleites, Bobby remains dedicated to the city and has helped make this event happen a second time.

This time around, the game will be played at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, and I'm planning on bringing my camera again, so I should hopefully have more photos to share after the event. If you're anywhere close to the Seattle/Tacoma area and are looking for something fun to do this weekend, don't pass this up. Not only is it sure to be a good time, but it's also for a great cause.

When we arrived at our front row seats in section 135, we were pretty blown away by the view. We weren't on the midfield line, but that was because there was an obstruction at that part of the stadium where the stands meet the field. The following photo gives a pretty good idea of where we were seated:

As part of the opening ceremony, and much to my surprise and delight, Seahawks head coach Jim Mora was presented with The Golden Scarf:

Shortly thereafter, the starting lineups were announced and the starting eleven made their way onto the pitch. At that point, my friend and I began to realize just how close to the on-field action we were. We were literally only about ten yards away from head coach Sigi Schmid the entire match, and at one point, the guy sitting to my left actually caught a ball that had been kicked toward the stands. I'm glad it went in his direction 'cause I was too busy fumbling around with my camera to even notice that there was a big soccer ball flying at my head.

The first half of the match ended up being a little slow at times, especially after the visiting opponent and reigning MLS champions Columbus Crew scored their first and only goal in the early goings of the half. That put a bit of a damper on the crowd's spirits, as did a missed penalty kick on the part of Freddie Ljungberg later on in the half.

The second half, however, was a different story entirely. Not only did the Sounders FC get an equalizer, thanks to Nate Jaqua, but the energy level rose and they ended up going on the offensive for much of the remainder of the match. Unfortunately, the end result was a 1-1 draw, the fifth draw in a row for the Sounders FC.

What I learned from attending my very first Seattle Sounders FC match was that I'll probably never get better seats to any event at Qwest Field ever again; Sounders FC fans can be loud and energetic, but still don't hold a candle to the 12th man; and I definitely don't want that match to be my last.

For anyone who might be interested in seeing the rest of the photos I took at the match, they are all available on Flickr.

After I installed all the essential software (e.g. a web browser, an IM client, etc.), I started getting to the very work-specific software like Outlook, bug tracking software and IDEs/compilers. At my work, we still rely on Visual Studio .NET 2003 to compile the bulk of our code. We've got several components that rely on Visual Studio 2005 and even Visual Studio 2008, but because the majority of our code is compiled with the oldest of the three, there's really no getting around having it installed in order to do real development.

Unfortunately, it wasn't until I was well through the software installation process when I discovered the hard way that support for Visual Studio .NET 2003 was dropped in the Windows Vista time frame. It was at that point that I started debating whether or not I should reluctantly make the downgrade back to Windows XP.

Fortunately, before I decided on taking that last resort approach, I saw a window of opportunity in the new, separately-downloadable feature of Windows 7, Windows Virtual PC. If you've got the hardware to support virtualization, not only does the feature allow you to run a virtual operating system from within Windows 7, but it allows you to take advantage of a free, virtual copy of Windows XP via Windows XP Mode (or XPM). As I said before, the feature is pretty darn cool.

Not only is the feature cool, but in this specific case, it actually ends up being pretty darn practical, too. From within XPM, which has easy access to file shares available in the hosting Windows 7 environment, I was able to install applications that couldn't run in Windows 7. This is where Visual Studio .NET 2003 comes in.

You would think that it would be easy to install Visual Studio .NET 2003 in the virtual Windows XP environment, but you'd be wrong, at least for the Enterprise edition I was attempting to install. One of its prerequisites is the Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Extensions package (which seems a bit ludicrous in itself, but I won't go there). Unfortunately, installing this package actually requires access to the original Windows XP installation CD. But since I was running XPM which installed as a sort of application and definitely not via an actual installation disc, I was, needless to say, stumped.

With a little research, I was able to find that the problem is a known issue and actually affects anyone attempting to add or remove Windows components via the Control Panel. Fortunately for me, I didn't need to wait around for the Windows Virtual PC team to release a new build with a fix, but only because I had immediate access to an .iso image of a Windows XP SP3 installation CD.

Windows XP Mode can be set up to consider any .iso file as a virtual disc in its disc drive. On the main Virtual Windows XP window, I selected Tools, Settings from the menu. In those settings, I selected the DVD Drive section from the left pane. Then, in the right pane, I selected the "Open an ISO image" option and pointed to my .iso file, before hitting OK. If I didn't have an .iso file readily available, I could have also used a physical installation CD on my Windows 7 machine and referred to it similarly in the XPM settings.

After making the virtual drive available to my virtual OS, I was able to successfully install the Microsoft FrontPage 2000 Extensions package. Once that was installed, I finally met the prerequisites for installing Visual Studio .NET 2003 and was then able to install the rest of the application without a hitch.

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So much better than anything Lil Wayne ever did.

• One of the more immediately noticeable things about switching to 64-bit is that there are very few applications that are actually specifically compiled for the architecture. Of my entire arsenal of applications, the only ones I can remember finding off the top of my head are: Internet Explorer (this one comes with the OS and actually comes alongside the 32-bit version), unofficial builds of Firefox, MySQL, the TortoiseSVN Subversion client and 7-Zip.
• Whereas the typical 32-bit install of Windows houses many of its important DLLs and other files in the System32 folder, the 64-bit version of Windows also has a SysWOW64 folder that serves a similar purpose.
• Another interesting thing to note is that any non-64-bit apps, which as I pointed out earlier ends up being quite a few, are stored in a Program Files (x86) folder. Only the 64-bit applications are stored in the typical Program Files folder.

Though I'd only file the above observations under "notables," there have been a couple minor annoyances I've encountered along the way as well. For instance, for whatever reason, when I use the latest version of Notepad++ and I utilize the Find and Replace feature, after closing the associated dialog, a transparent version of the window remains on the screen. It only goes away when I restart the application. However, after posting to a forum about the problem, a solution was offered that makes the problem go away (unchecking the "Transparency" option in the Find and Replace dialog).

Way more annoying, however, was learning that the official version of Google Chrome is nothing short of unusable on 64-bit Windows 7. Fortunately, there is kind of a solution, as long as you're willing to use a cutting edge build of the browser. I've covered that in more detail over at Browsersphere.

Overall, though, I have to say that switching to 64-bit has been relatively painless. If it has anything to do with the performance I'm getting out of my computer, then I'm more than happy with the switch. It's also nice knowing that I can upgrade from a few megabytes of memory to a few hundred. Admittedly, though, I don't see myself making that jump anytime too soon. ;)

If I come across any other interesting notes or oddities about running a 64-bit operating system, you know I'll be sharing it here. In the meantime, though, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend making the switch to anyone, especially if his or her computer's got the specs to really exploit it.

As alluded to back in March, I've been keeping track of all the issues, bugs, annoyances and pitfalls of the beta builds so that I could blog about them here. Hopefully this will prove informative for anyone who's considering giving Windows 7 a try, but mostly it's just a way for me to track all of the issues I've encountered and see if they've been addressed once I've upgraded to the Windows 7 RC build.

First and foremost, I'd be remiss not to point out that the builds I've been using at work and at home are stable. Build 7048 is much more stable than build 7000, but I haven't experienced any form of data loss on the latter. The main issue I noticed in build 7000 that went away in 7048 was the Blue Screen of Death. I saw a few of those on my work laptop, but actually haven't seen them since and certainly haven't seen them on build 7048. But I'm getting ahead of myself...

Windows 7 Beta Build 7000

The following are issues I've encountered with the 7000 build:

• The aforementioned Blue Screens of Death.
• At times, when using Firefox, the entire operating system shell would flicker in really ugly rainbow colors.

Windows 7 Beta Build 7048

Because I've spent a much higher percentage of time using build 7048 (since it's installed on my main computer at home), I've encountered many more issues. However, this list doesn't suggest that these issues aren't present in the 7000 build. In fact, they most likely are.

• I've noticed frequent messages that say something along the lines of "(Application Name) has stopped working..." and "Trying to find a solution..." This appears to be how Windows 7 addresses program hangs or crashes, but very rarely does it do anything useful for me, the user. I usually just hit "Cancel."
• On several occasions, the taskbar has gotten into a seemingly frozen state, in which the application icons are no longer animated and the time display seems to be completely hosed. However, in a few instances, the taskbar still remained usable nonetheless.
• I noticed that at some point between builds 7000 and 7048, the button on the start menu to shut the operating system down was renamed from "Shut Down" to "Shut down." Regardless, having a shut down button directly on the start menu without having to navigate a menu to shut the computer down is a nice improvement.
• Unlike previous versions of Windows, this version seems to lose its credentials to network shares rather frequently. In Windows XP, I could restart a computer on the network, and it would retain its credentials to shares on that restarted computer and allow me to view them without having to re-authenticate. Unfortunately, in build 7048 it appears that re-authenticating isn't even an option. I've always had to log out and back in to access the share again.
• One of the most critical and most annoying bugs I've encountered is the loss of all network connectivity while attempting to transfer files over the network. When I first installed build 7048, I still had my old PC on the network and wanted to just transfer important files from one to the other. I ended up having to resort to a USB stick instead because the network kept getting hosed and I'd have to actually restart the computer to make the problem go away.
• Another annoyance occurs when trying to save a file to a new folder. If you create a new folder, give it a name, and then double-click on the newly named folder, you get an error message saying "Folder New Folder does not exist." Of course it doesn't. I just renamed it! But anyway, the workaround is to either click away from the renamed folder and then double-click on it, or to just try a second time.
• I noticed that when you SHIFT-DELETE a folder to permanently delete it, bypassing the recycle bin, it takes a few seconds before it actually disappears. The first few times this happened, I thought maybe it wasn't working.
• Aside from the network connectivity problem, the other issue I really hope has been addressed in the RC build is the fact that it takes so long to generate the Programs menu in the start menu. The start menu comes up just fine, but if you click on "All Programs," it can sometimes take up to 30 seconds to render the programs list.

Aside from all the user interface improvements that are well-documented elsewhere, there are some nice little touches to be found in the beta builds as well. Here are a few:

• When transferring files, either from your PC to a USB stick, or from a digital camera to your PC, etc., if you move to other windows, you can still track the progress of the transfer via the taskbar. The icon in the taskbar is highlighted green (at least in my current desktop theme) from left to right according to the percentage completed. So if a transfer is halfway done, the left-most half of the icon in the taskbar shows up green. I love this feature.
• Another great feature also involves file transfers. If you attempt to transfer a file that is currently in use to another location, Windows 7, rather than letting the transfer fail, will let you know which application is currently using the file. This allows you to address the issue in that application and then continue the file transfer attempt.
• Being able to have full control over which icons are visible in the system tray and how each system tray application is allowed to notify you of new messages and events is a huge step up over previous versions of Windows as well.

The fact that I've been using the 64-bit version of build 7048 has presented it's own quirks and interesting tidbits, so I'll be covering those in a separate post soon. In the meantime, this is a pretty good state of affairs as far as my experience with the Windows 7 beta builds goes.