Digital Bridges is a program at Middlebury College and they are putting on a full day workshop wtih professionals from many different businesses that either do business on the web or provide infrastructure. Sounds interesting.

Here's more info on the event.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am doing this talk at Visual Studio Connections on an inspiration from my painful experiences of diving into C# on occasion. There are a bunch of things that bite me over and over since I don't use C# consistently enough. I also remember spending about 1/2  hour trying to figure out how to say "OR" in C#. Lots of syntax things like how to construct IF may not seem hard, but if you have been doing it a different way for 5 or 6 years, it really is hard to sort out brackets here, parens there, brackets sometime, not others. And all of the problems that cause compile time errors that are not picked up by intellisense are huge pain points as well, especially when the compile time error message isn't really telling you what the problem is. Sure there are extensive books on the differences, but I am just going to try to point out the things that a VB6 dev probably uses the most frequently and the most naturally, and try to ease some of the pain of the transition. This isn't so much for the purpose of converting VB developers to C#, but being sure that folks are at least somewhat fluent in C# even if they go the route of VB when they make the move to .NET. This talk will actually be pretty much the same as if I were doing it VB.NET vs. C# as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Strategies for Winning Government Contracts - Practical Tips and Hands on Help for Small Business

Wed Jan 26

8:30 am to 4 pm

Capitol Plaza Hotel, Montepelier, VT.

More info

brochure (hang it by the water cooler!

http://www.AcehAid.org

lucky us!!! Rob Howard is coming to Vermont.NET on February 21st. We are getting a Black Belt ASP.NET Tips & Tricks talk. This is happening thanks to INETA as Rob is an INETA speaker.

I had tricked Rob into coming here with the promise of some fun snowboarding at near by Sugarbush, but unfortunately he had to change his plans and is now doing a quick overnight trip. This also means that we couldn't schedule him with other "nearby" groups - such as Montreal (2 hrs away) or Boston area (3.5 - 4 hours).

http://www.AcehAid.org

Why being stubborn is good when you are a programmer

I agree. Though actually I have always said I am stubborn and lazy. Stubborn is the "I will NOT let the computer win" part, and lazy is the part the makes me not want to write the same code over and over again. We all know that it takes more time to write reusable code than to just whip out some code to solve a particular problem. But it's worth it to make it reusable so you don't have to do it again. Or to write code that will automate more processes. Etc. Lazy, I say.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Thom Robbins should be very proud of his Code Camp idea that he started last May. Not only are Code Camps starting to pop up around the country, but here is one proposed for down under.

http://www.AcehAid.org

From Chris Pels' blog:

The IRS has enacted a new law which allows individuals to deduct contributions to recognized charitable organizations for Tsunami relief on your 2004 tax return even if you make the donation through 1.31.2005. Usually those contributions would have to be made by 12.31.2004. Read the IRS guidelines on what determines if an organization would qualify before making your donation. This is a great opportunity to help so many people in need and qualify for a deduction as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Perhaps, it's true (and hopefully just momentary...)

I have LOST MY MIND!

this works just fine:

Dim conn As SqlClient.SqlConnection = New SqlClient.SqlConnection("server=myserver;Trusted_Connection=True;Database=pubs")

Dim cmd As SqlClient.SqlCommand = New SqlClient.SqlCommand("select * from authors", conn)

Dim da As New SqlDataAdapter(cmd)

Dim ds As New DataSet

da.Fill(ds)

Dim ds2 As New DataSet

Dim t As DataTable = ds.Tables(0).Copy

ds2.Tables.Add(t)

what happened to the “DataTable belongs to another dataset“ exception? Was it only in 1.0 and I just never tried it again with 1.1? I know I struggled with this forever a long time ago.

oh do I need a vacation.

Rather than just searching for workarounds or whining about this problem in my blog, I have submitted a suggestion in the Product Feedback Center. If you think this will help you, go vote on it. If you think this is a stupid idea, go vote on it.

Problem Statement:	Opened by Julie Lerman on 2005-01-16 at 11:53:05     In .net 1.1 we had to find workarounds to get a copy of a DataTable that is part of one DataSet into another DataSet. Many devs wasted a lot of time with Copy and Clone thinking there *must* be a way. In .NET 2.0 it looks like the best way to do this now is with CreateDataReader, Load into new DataTable then add DataTable to DataSet.
Proposed Solution:	Create DataTable method that will create a new DataTable that does NOT have the connection to the parent DataSet? Either a method or a parameter of Copy? Thanks.

http://www.AcehAid.org

In preparation for the ADO.NET 2.0 talk I am doing at ASP Connections in March, I am now looking at ADO.NET 2.0 from the perspective of a web developer and how some of these features will specifically enhance web development. It's an interesting way to look at it since every type of database programming with .NET benefits from these changes.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have written before about the wonderful new parameter of the DataView.ToTable method - DistinctRows.

Interestingly, the new DataTable that is created still has ties to the parent DataSet. So if you want to add it to another DataSet you will have to use the DataTable.Copy, rather than the new DataTable, itself.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

(I have modified this post)

When you move a DataTable's guts into another via DataTableReader, DataTable.CreateDataReader and DataTable.Load in ADO.NET 2.0, you don't carry over the DataSet parent hook and therefore you can add this 2nd DataTable to another DataSet without having to worry about using Copy. Just a little itty bitty thing.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I submitted some abstracts for Code Camp III. All of the Code Camp submissions are being displayed here on Thom Robbin's site. You can submit abstracts up until the end of January and then Thom, myself, Chris Pels and a few others will start building a schedule. Since Rod Paddock is beginning his little North American User Group Tour at Vermont.NET on the Monday following Code Camp (March 14th), he has also put some sessions in for Code Camp. So now his tour will be extended even more. We should start tracking his tour on MapPoint - Waltham MA, Burlington VT, Montreal QC and then Toronto ON are on the list so far!!

I was happy to see a submission by my pal Dave Burke!! He has been doing some amazing things with customing .Text for his own blog site, so his session is to share some of the things he has learned about custominzing .Text.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

Susi  Johnston posted a picture and an explanation of an elephant helping the Aceh Aid at IDEP volunteers in Aceh Province. Here's the picture.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I'm watching Josh Ledgard giving a tour of all the cute guys (and girls, too, yippee!!)  on the VS Core Team 

I just wanted to lay this quote down that came out of a conversation on debugging:

"there's no correlation between the size of the error and the effect it has on the product"

Having been a programmer for over 20 years I can only say "amen" to that comment.

As always, this inside look is really interesting and enlightening.

Okay, back to watching some more!

ooh - looks like hte BCL team is on channel 9, too! Kewel!!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

The FBI is scrapping may scrap a $170million dollar investment in a failed custom software application. One hundred and seventy million dollars to write a computer program? And it's SO bad that they are trashing it? Aaaaaaaaiiiiiiiiiiiiiiieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! How do companies (the company that has $170M in their pocket) get away with this sh*t? I heard the story on NPR but it's not online yet so here's a CNN link.

From that CNN article: Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called the program "a train wreck in slow motion."

http://www.AcehAid.org

Werner Vogels has just been named CTO of Amazon.com.

We can all say "we knew him when"....

http://www.AcehAid.org

Richard Sprague wonders why Text To Speech does not get more attention. I thought I would share a valuable use of this technology.

I had to implement a TTS solution years ago in a VB6 app and it solved a huge problem for my client. I used Chant's fantastic SpeechKit package to accomplish this.

The problem was that we create a daily schedule for technicians out in the field. At that time we were not yet publishing the schedule to the web (of course, we are now). So, in order for techs not to have to come into the office just to get their info, each one of them had a special extension on the phone system. At the end of the day, the scheduler would have to dial each person's extension and leave them a voice mail detailing everythign they would need to know about the next days' work. In the summertime, there are about 70 field technicians. This solution was great for the techs but not so for the person who had that horrible chore.

I figured out how to take the data that was getting pushed onto the big schedule report and use Ms. Microsoft Mary (this was before the huge revision of the MS Speech tools) to "read" the information into individual WAV files. The tricky part was finding a DOS utility to convert the wave files into the format used by their voice mail system. Because of the many hurdles I was told by many, including the company that owned the voice mail system, that this project couldn't be done. But my client had faith in my pit bull like qualities when I am told "can't be done", and I persevered. Although still Mary has to "read" the info in real time, we run multiple instances of my app and she can do the whole process in about 20 - 30 minutes while the scheduler is able to do other tasks.

This has saved my client about 2 hours a day, 5 days a week for the past 4 years or more years. It was well worth the effort.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Thom Robbins is posting the session proposals for Code Camp III, Mar 12-13.

Follow the "call for speakers" link on that page to submit your session proposals!! They can be formal presentations or informal chalk talks.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Union Mutual of Vermont Companies

Insurance Company, Montpelier Vermont

ANALYST PROGRAMMER

     The successful candidate will be highly motivated and possess strong analytical organizational and communications skills.

     Qualified candidates will have an appropriate 4 year degree or equivalent work experience developing and maintaining web based applications. Ability to program in a team environment utilizing ASP.NET, C#, Microsoft SQL and AS/400 databases is required. A strong foundation in HTML, web standards and security is desirable.

     We offer a challenging position in a professional working environment with competitive salary and excellent benefits including pension and 401K plans.

     Qualified candidates are encouraged to submit in strict confidence a resume with cover letter to:
Union Mutual of Vermont Companies
VP - Information Systems
PO Box 158
Montpelier, Vermont 05601-0158

or submit to Resume2005@umfic.com

http://www.AcehAid.org