http://www.panopticoncentral.net/archive/2004/11/02/1934.aspx

Posted from BLInk!

Aaron Junod has posted a Windows/Cisco Admin job in the Hartford, CT area.

Posted from BLInk!

Just for fun, I'm going to put the latest CTP of Visual Studio on my laptop that I will be using for my What's New in BCL Whidbey for ASP.NET developers presentation at next week's ASPConnections. Maybe I'll even try to run SQL 2000 Developer Ed. and sql 2005 express side by side. Just have to watch out for that sqldmo problem (though maybe it's fixed now) 

Posted from BLInk!

Hooray John Bristowe for the WSEFAQ. This will be a great resource.

I highly recommend you (John) peruse the newgroups to see what types of questions people are asking - especially the over and over ones like "X509 is not an option for me/my company ...now what?" Aaaargh!

Posted from BLInk!

I've been looking for news on this all morning and the Burlington Free Press finally has this on their website.

Preliminary results: Voters reject technical academy
Updated 11:14 a.m.

FREE PRESS STAFF REPORT
Preliminary results show a ballot proposal to build a new Regional Technical Academy was defeated 43,834-34,371 Tuesday, Melissa Hersh, the project manager for the academy, said Wednesday morning.

Slightly more than 56 percent of the votes opposed the academy proposal, while 44 percent supported it.

Voters in 25 districts in northwestern Vermont cast ballots on the proposal Tuesday. Ballot counting went well into early Wednesday morning. Officials had difficulty with the counting machines and some ballots had to be counted by hand because they had been folded.

Hersh cautioned that the results were preliminary, and poll workers still had to make sure all the ballots matched names on the voter checklist. She said firmer figures would be available late this afternoon.

The $44 million project would have merged the Essex and Burlington technical centers into a full-time, two-year academy. Planners had envisioned the school eventually becoming a four-year diploma granting institution.

Posted from BLInk!

I can see it brewing already. One of the interesting things about our community is that it has brought a lot of people together who have in common our absolute passion for programming and technology which is an incredible thing as it crosses every divide I can think of.

However, I think that sadly, the politics of the u.s. is right now driving a huge wedge between people and as many (like myself) can no longer hold their tongues about their feelings, I worry about the animosity that it could create between us. I know that I have many strong and respectful relationships with people that have different political views than myself and I have no worries about those relationships. It's the people that we don't know well, as we hold up our political badges and that becomes our key identifier.

We'll probably get past it after a few weeks and get back to our programming rants and raves but for now, be careful about who you target with your criticism - let's not get personal.

Posted from BLInk!

Hypocrisy, I say!

Posted from BLInk!

It was snowing this morning when I first looked out the window. I thought maybe hell had frozen over, but then it stopped - so maybe not quite yet....

Posted from BLInk!

Thanks Benjamin for this info on how to encrypt a UsernameToken. I didn't happen to see it anywhere else. I mostly liked looking at the soap message to see the effect (note that username="John", password="Doe" and I am hashing the password in both cases and then encrypting the UsernameToken in the AFTER). Cool! I love this stuff. It's like a big game. Based on the length of the encrypted UsernameToken, can you tell what I used to encrypt it with?

BEFORE

Posted from BLInk!

Dave Burke found it first! (how fitting )

Posted from BLInk!

Geeze since March! Subscribed. Their second post is about what I need to do: dynamically embed an image into a report at runtime. Of course, it's on www.ASPADVICE.com!

Posted from BLInk!

You probably know that Crystal was bought by Business Objects last year. Crystal is a great product with a horrible support reputation. That's not about individual support people (I spoke with an awesome one last night) but just an overall problem. I have suffered plenty as well. I will never get past the experience of upgrading from 6.0 to 8.0 and how it horribly shattered many of my client applications and the deployment nightmares I went through (and my famous $500 phone bill for calling the free support line in Canada). And still, when I do have a problem, I sometimes cannot find the solution to it (granted at this point I have wierd problems, but still....)

But they are really trying. Now they have a .NET Developer Zone. It's still a work in progress, but the more we use it, the better it will get.

I know that we all want it to be a good resource. So use it and if you don't like it, let them know about it. Let them know what they can do to make it good so that we don't roll our eyes when talking about Crystal Reports.

This is the tool I have used for years and am still using it even though I do keep looking over at ActiveReports and SQL Reporting Services. The hook for me is I know how to use Crystal. I only run into trouble once in a while, but I just don't wnat to have to spend 4 hours researching a problem and still not come up with a solution.

Posted from BLInk!

Well, you can't really vote more than once...JUST VOTE! Vote Vote Vote Vote (of course, I mean if you are a u.s. citizen). I bet there are a LOT of people around the world who wish they could vote in this election.

Posted from BLInk!

Did I happen to mention that I have WSE2 running in a production app? We are replacing the old version of the app with the new one a few users at a time at the client site and on the laptops as well as at the few remote sites. They won't know the difference, but I sure do!

Posted from BLInk!

I have been trying to figure out why my crystal reports are mysteriously growing to 2+MB in one of my applications. Ummm DUH - I kind of forgot that I had embedded a watermark in them and that file is over 1MB. I actually got them to call me to help me about it (awesome tech support guy who has been with Crystal for 7 years). I think sometimes I am too quick to get aggravated by Crystal.

Now I have to figure out how to either shrink the watermark or I was told I can deploy the rpt files outside of the dlls.

Update: not so dopey. Even if I use a 30KB jpeg for the watermark, it still get's morphed into an OLE bitmap and makes a 400KB dll with a crystal report in it go to 2MB. It's just how it works.

Posted from BLInk!

I have always had problems writing cd's. This is with 2 different cdr's and lots of different software over the course of many many years. I would have to toss about 2 cd's for everyone written. So I basically avoid it like the plague. But I just downloaded an ISO image and discovered that Windows XP has built in software and I don't have to struggle any more. I just dragged and dropped the file to the cd in windows explorer and xp handled the rest. Finally. Thanks to whomever put that in there.

Of course I still have to test that it worked...

Okay I confess. I literally copied the ISO so I had to toss 2 cd's after all. Then read the in your face ISO instructions and downloaded ISO Recorder (note there's an XP and a new XPSP2 Beta version) and also note this is shareware. If you use it enough to justify thanking the creator, click on that PayPal button. This makes it pain free - right click on the ISO file and you're almost done. Thanks Alex!!

Posted from BLInk!

Going to Vegas for DevConnections? Looks like 70's during the day, 50 ish at night.

I will also be going to Zion National Park for the weekend. A little colder there.

Posted from BLInk!

no not mine (that went back to my client, remember?), someone else's. Brand new acer c111 (or c112).

Posted from BLInk!

it's just a time thing. I say it's evolution, not revolution.

Softwaremaker has gone the dasBlog route and his new [must read if you are doing anything with WSE] weblog is here: www.softwaremaker.net/blog.

Posted from BLInk!