This was waiting for me when I returned from my latest trip this week

http://www.AcehAid.org

TechEngage is aimed at unemployed or underemployed developers. Connie Marthinsen, who runs the big .NET user group in that area  - TRINUG (hey, how did they get Brad Abrams as a speaker for March??? ) and is our INETA liaison for North and South Carolina is heavily involved in setting this event up. (She is also involved with the upcoming Raleigh NC Code Camp) TechEngage Boot Camp is a very interesting concept. You can read more here.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Gregory Consulting is one of the top small .NET consulting firms in Canada and Kate is an incredible person to learn from ...not only about programming but this is a woman who has become a true mentor for me. They are looking for an experienced, roll up your sleeves and get to work, developer. Check it out...

Posted from BLInk!

Well, Duncan's are hard shoes to fill, but I am happy to see that Brad McCabe, formerly of Infragistics, has landed in this footwear. I know a LOT of people who were interested in the job of being the content manager for the VB Dev Center, but all too stubborn to move to Seattle. Congrats to Brad and to MSDN for nabbing him!

Posted from BLInk!

If you are interested in debugging, this should be a great chat - with the debugger team...

http://www.AcehAid.org

Now that Omar has turned me on to the perfect earphones for flying, I think it's time to buy either an MP3 or IPOD. I want to listen to dotNetRocks of course, maybe some podcasts and some of my own music cd's. If you know that I'm a Libra, you know how hard it is for me to make decisions. Feel free to comment!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I didn't realize I had to do a 1099-Misc for someone I subbed last year, but it isn't as hard as I thought.

You have to have real paper forms from the IRS (or your accountant, or the business supply store) because they are red. These are the ones you send to the IRS. The black copies go to the Vendor.

Quickbooks can print them out if you have it set up properly. I had to mark this vendor as a 1099 vendor and then in Preferences/Tax I had to associate the "Nonemployee compensation" box with the account I used to pay the vendor from - in my case "Subcontract: Programming".

You also need the vendors tax-id. That could be a SS# or an EIN. If you want to be official, you can have them fill out a W-9 that you can download from the www.irs.gov website and give that to you.

Don't forget that you need a red 1096 as well. It is basically the "cover sheet" for the 1099's that you submit to the IRS.

Remember - I am not an accountant, just another business owner. This is only basic heads up info, but check with your accountant first!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

If you have been following the saga of Rob Howard trying to get to Vermont for our 6pm meeting where he was our INETA speaker... Rob was stuck in Chicago waiting for a flight that kept being delayed and delayed. We finally decided he should turn around and go back to Dallas. I think we made the right call!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I realize that I have started referring to the high level policy files you create by clicking on the check boxes in WSE2 Config Settings Tool as “click click policies”. I think I'm going to coin that phrase for myself!

Jerry Dennany sums up his experience with working with WSE2 for a while.

I have to agree with much of what he is saying which is why I have been working hard to try to digest as much as I can and spit it out for other developers to save them some of the pain of learning how to leverage WSE2 beyond just clicking a few checkmarks in the config tool.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Boo hoo

Rob Howard's flight from Chicago was delayed again so as there was no point in him arriving very late and then flying out tomorrow morning, I sent him home to Texas and 85 degree weather.

After a quick concensus of those who rsvp'd, many people said they weren't going to come now (no star, icchy weather, and half of Vermont has some bug anyway - but they *were* going to come if Rob had made it...) so we have cancelled the Vermont.NET meeting.

Rob and I are both very sorry.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Based on the current United schedule, we will start the meeting at 6pm and Rob should arrive at about 7pm with Roman Rehak.

The first hour of the meeting will have the usual "what's going on" and then I will facilitate a free for all .NET Q&A until Rob arrives.

http://www.AcehAid.org

(responding to some emails and phone calls) really - here's why

flight 7960 is en route. It left Burlington one hour late and will arrive in Chicago only 25 minutes late.

It is the same plane, it arrives at gate E2 and Rob's flight departs from E2.

I think they said 3:30 because they did not know when the Burlington flight was leaving (there were computer problems).

Hang in there. Let's give it some more time to shake out.

http://www.AcehAid.org

so far so good. The plane from BTV to Chicago left only a few minutes late. That's the plane that comes back here later with our speaker on it! And currently Rob's flight is scheduled to arrive only 20 minutes late.

http://www.AcehAid.org

My dear friend and college roommate was highly impacted by Hunter S. Thompson's work when we were in college -- I believe even writing one of her two senior theses (she was a double major - my brilliant friend ) on something that involved reading a lot of his work. She went on to do her post graduate work at Medill School of Journalism and is, of course, a journalist who I know will someday get a Pulitzer!

Of course I thought of her immediately this morning when I read that Thompson had killed himself. I thought that my friend's reply was a nice tribute in her journalistic shorthand...

i can't blv he did it. i always admired him and thought of him as an icon but only in last couple years  did i come to totally appreciate and read a lot of his stuff. i wanted to have a beer with him at woody creek tavern but i guess that won't be happening...

http://www.AcehAid.org

Watch here for updates on meeting status! I will feed them to the VTdotNET site as well.

Rob Howard is scheduled to speak at Vermont.NET tonight. Everyone is very excited and I have a lot of RSVPs. But now we have a snowy blustery morning and a forecast for it to be like this all day. Rob's flight is due in at 5pm and the meeting is at 6pm.

I did just speak to Rob on his way to the airport in DFW and he's going to go for it, at least as far as Chicago then we'll figure it out from there.

We can watch his Chicago -> Burlington flight status here. And the weather forecast here.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Alex Lowe has just joined Telligent Systems. I'm sure he will be missed as a D.E. in the Michigan and Ohio area, but what a perfect fit!!

Alex has a new blog here

http://www.AcehAid.org

This is such a nice post from Sam Gentile, that I had to point it out...

http://www.AcehAid.org

New Location! VSLive Boston
June 28-July 1 (Web site to be posted soon, check www.vslive.com for updates)

http://www.AcehAid.org

update: However, for the purpose of testing out some basic ink functionality when developing ink-enabled apps, without having to go out and purchase a tablet pc, this might do the trick. I don't think (from my one minute of testing - let's be clear about that) that this will be good if you are testing intensive functions that depend on granularity such as breaking a stroke down or working with stylus input.

http://www.AcehAid.org