Today I needed an AVL tree implementation for some time-based indexing of cached data.  Unfortunately, I can't use the wonderful-looking OrderedDictionary in the PowerCollections project since .NET 2.0 is not due out for a while.  I searched around without any luck, so I rolled my own.  It's been a while since I messed with tree-based data structures.  I was pretty pleased with its performance characteristics, even with millions of records.

I'm thinking about releasing it as a short-term alternative for people having to wait on 2.0 and Peter Golde's PowerCollections project, so I thought I write a short blurb about it and link to some appropriate sites to generate some referrals and feedback.  Anyone interested in using it?

For those unfamiliar with AVL trees, it's a self-balancing binary search tree. Its characteristics that are of interest to me are:

• self-ordering - values are stored and can be retrieved in order simply by traversing the tree, something a hashtable cannot give you.
• self-balancing - This ensures that search times are O(log(n))
• fairly straightforward to implement, as opposed to Red-Black, or other self-balancing BSTs

Again, if you're interested in using it, leave me some feedback and maybe I'll make it a sourceforge or GDN project.

That title probably doesn't mean what you think it means.

After using Gmail for a few months for my personal email, searching for things in Outlook is the worst kind of ridiculous.  Lookout is an Outlook add-in that indexes for email for super-fast (like less than a second) searches.  The company was recently aquired by Microsoft, and they are continuing to provide it for free.  I'm sure they are interested in integrating this kind of searching for everything.

I just installed it here at work because I was tired of waiting for a search to complete only to have it give me nothing.  If you use Outlook, I'd highly recommend it.  It takes a little while to index for the first time (especially if all your mail is on a remote Exchange server), but works great when it finishes.

Today, Becky and I celebrate our 5th anniversary!  Pretty hard to believe it's been that long.  Happy anniversary Becky.  I love you more each year.

We just got back from seeing The Bourne Supremacy with the Barnes.  It was really good, but they went way overboard with the handheld shots.  There were lots of the movie where I had to look away to keep from getting a headache.  Other than that it was really awesome.  I was pleasantly surprised to see the actor who played Eomer in the Lord of the Rings.

My advice is to sit toward the back of the theater unless you like motion sickness.  I really think the director, Paul Greengrass, could have conveyed the same effect without so much camera shake.  It was really distracting.  But, really, it was awesome.  I love that kind of movie.

I finally got the rest of the good pictures from our vacation up on the gallery [password: marklio].  I put them all under one main album with sub-albums for each category.  I tried to keep the album sizes under control.  There are way too many Busch Gardens pictures.  Enjoy!

[UPDATE: 03/09/2005] The gallery is no more.  I have removed the link.

I just uploaded the cream of the crop pictures from our 2-day Busch Gardens adventure to the gallery (as always, password: marklio).  Enjoy.  I'll have more from the rest of the vacation up at a later date.

[UPDATE: 03/09/2005] The gallery is no more.  I'm using Flickr to host my pictures.  Here's a link to the photoset for the Busch Gardens pictures.

I just had a guy knock on my door from the Democratic National Convention.  It was too annoying/funny/angrifying for me to not share the experience.  I let him give his shpeel for a few minutes.  First, he decried Bush for raising money to run a negative campaign against John Kerry, which I thought was pretty funny.  He then listed what he deemed to be the “issues” of the election.  Things like health care, social security, and what he called an “attack” on our constitution were among them.  Wow, yes! Those are the issues!  Based on that list, he wanted me to give him a check for $100.  He then showed me a “statement of support” form, which at first glance appeared to be filled out by people in my neighborhood.  On closer inspection, the handwriting had been laser-printed as part of the form.  When I asked him what Kerry's plans were for those issues, he pointed me to john kerry dot com (where later I couldn't find real plans for them either).  I told him I wasn't interested.  He then asked if I wanted to see George Bush defeated, to which I said, “no”.  He then turned and left.

If you find someone a similar person at your door.  I'd encourage you to press them on their candidate's plans for those important “issues“.  And if they have one of those phoney forms, I'd grill them about attempting to manipulate people.

Peter posted a pretty funny mis-quoted song lyric.  I thought I'd share a few more that came to mind.  Feel free to guess the real origin.

• The miggity-miggity-mac came to get Ahvorn.
• Your rap is Eagle-filled, the milk has been spilled.
• Here I am, watching like a hurricane - (like the eye of a hurricane watches?) Sorry B-Dub, I couldn't resist.

I know of some others, but I'll save them for later in case soem other people want to get in on the action.

We got back from Florida yesterday evening.  Becky's reaction has subsided and everything's pretty much back to normal.  I've got over 3 gigs of pictures to share.  I'm going to have them posted soon.  (Probably just the good ones).  Thanks to the Barnes for watching our house and cats while we were away.

Well, Ben's wedding was today and wouldn't you know it, Becky had an allergic reaction to something in the sea water.  She started to break out, so we went inside, and she swole up like a balloon.  When it was time for the wedding it was better, but her eyes were still really puffy.  But she went on anyway.  She just looked kinda oriental.

The wedding went great, and hopefully she'll be back to normal tomorrow.  It's late, so I'll just end it there.  We're having a great time.

We went to Busch Gardens today.  It was AWESOME!  We had a fantastic time.  I've got lots of cool pictures of things like gorilla charging, tigers playing, etc.  We walked like 15 miles or something...seriously, we walked alot.  They've got some great roller coasters as well.  A couple were closed though.  They're doing alot of new construction.

Well, I got fed up with the hotel we were staying in.  We got back and wanted to take a shower to cool off, but something was wrong with it.  I got them to give us another room, but the AC in that room didn't work well and made alot of noise.  So, we moved hotels.  Things are great now, and we're waiting for a tasty Dominos Pizza to arrive.

We're going to Busch Gardens again tomorrow to have more fun.  We probably won't stay as long though.