It's starting to become a pattern

I "lost" my Pocket PC at DevTeach in Montreal. I think I accidentally left it behind in the hotel room and it was never to be seen again - or something like that.

After spending 45 minutes showing the very nice young waitress at the New York Sports Grill who is attending art school my TabletPC and letting her play with it, I managed to leave the stylus behind. Someone probably just picked it up thinking it was a cheapo pen. By the time I was getting ready to board the plane and realized I didn't have my stylus, the restaurant was all closed up. That's the $32 stylus that handily fits right into my tablet. Darn! Luckily I have a beautiful Wacom Executive pen.

I left my handy little retractable ethernet cable behind while at Code Camp. That was one my MVP Lead gave to me last year and it is a great thing to have.

I "lost" my laptop mouse at DevConnections. I'm 98% sure I left it in my room on the desk when I went downstairs.

Lucky for me I had some MVP bucks left so I just went ahead and replaced the last two items. I try try try to look behind me whenever I leave a room where I have stuff. Really I do. I have another pocketpc but I don't even use it.

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I have posted the powerpoint for the C# for VB Programmers session that I gave at Visual Studio Connections earlier this week. They are located on this page: www.thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx.

The disclaimer I gave at the start of this talk is that I am a VB programmer mostly, and not a C# programmer. The presentation is to help VB programmers with some of the very common mistakes that we make when working in C#. I am in no way a C# expert. In fact, one person who attended this talk, while marking that my "knowledge of the topic" was not "excellent" on the eval, did comment that my lack of expertise in C# actually made the presentation more useful. Spot on, baby!

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(writing in lower case in honor of my subject: casey).

casey has a fun post which a list of pros, cons and moots about writing for msdn online.

out of his, i will pick one from each category that i agree or disagree with

pro: getting paid (no brainer)

con: waiting for the article to go live. as you may have noticed, i have nothing on msdn online, though i *have* actually written three articles and am working on a 4th. Though, heck, that's nothing compared to print!

moot: he lists the due diligence paperwork as moot. eliot, did you hear that? hahahaha. I'd definitely put the paperwork in the con list! though, since the paperwork makes getting paid possible, perhaps that's how it balances out to a moot for casey.

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Ahh - Malek is finally going public with his big news!

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And why do I, a person who can do no more with  C++ than spell it, care? Because if I'm lucky, Kate will be speaking at C++ Connections which is part of the DevConnections conference in the fall. I'm speaking at the VS Connections and ASP.NET Connections shows.

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I've been perusing the awesome list of BOFs submitted, but there is something that is nagging me about it. I think of the BOFs as a way for community people who don't normally get the opportunity to present at conferences (or who may not want to present!) a chance to lead a discussion about a topic near and dear to their hearts. So far, most of the submissions are from a lot of Microsoft people and some rock stars from the community.

But this does not mean that you need to be a 'Softie or a well-known .NET person or an MVP or anything special to submit a BOF. Don't be shy! Step up to the plate! The submission deadline ends in a few more weeks! That seems a little early, but it is tied into TechEd's planning schedule.

Remember that the BOFs are not presentations and there will be no projectors. It is just a planned discussion and whoever submits it merely leads the discussion.

The BOF site is hosted by TechEd, but the whole BOF organization is being run by INETA (thanksk to the great efforts of Stuart Celarier) and Culminis.

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casey chesnut, the e.e. cummings of our developer community, has written a cool article on converting windows journal notes to xml, svg and onenote. that is pretty handy sh*t to be able to do. since I have never used svg and one note, i think it's time I looked into this. and who better to learn from!

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I am starting to realize that this tighter integration of ADO.NET and SQL Server means that I am going to have to get much more knowledgeable about SQL Server. I have been (to coin a great book title) a "reluctant DBA" for a long long time. But now that we can do things like BulkCopy in ADO.NET 2.0, something I have NEVER done in SQL and know nothing about, I am in danger of crossing lines that I don't know even exist. I had a long talk about this with Gert Drapers while I was at DevConnections. Just with the Bulk Copy alone, I have to be mindful of record locking etc etc. I would never have known that and created problems by misusing the bulk copy class in ADO.NET 2.0.

Gert also told me something that made me happy happy happy. As I have been learning and teaching about ADO.NET 2.0, I find myself having to list (or point to) many caveats with MARS since it is on by default. I have wished it would be off by default and Gert tells me that by RTM it will be. That is a good thing. Here is a great MARS FAQ post by Angel Saenz-Badillos of the ADO.NET team.

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(by way of Loren Heiny)

VBInk (with links, a blog and forums) - focuses on doing tabletpc development with VB. I'm not sure if I personally think it's necessary to get so granular - since the concepts are all the same, but it does make it easier if you are more experienced in VB and want to focus on what you are learning in the Tablet SDK. I know that when I first did the Hands on Labs and they were in C# (now there are VB versions), I actually thought that the delegate I set up to create an event handler for one of the ink events was (gulp) part of the tablet API code! (I know better now - but that's what happens when you pile learning curves one on top of another...)

A little digging around (why was this necessary?) points all of this back to Stein & Associates and there are real people's names on that site: Dan and Kimberley. It would be nice if they were a little more transparent on the VBInk site so we know who it is that is actually doing this site. That's the whole point of having community... so that we can have personal relationships with each other. (hint hint )

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For those that attended my afternoon workshop at ASP.NET Connections on Sunday, thanks so much for coming. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy teaching that particular session and I hope everyone got a lot out of it. I know from talking to a bunch of you that you did!!

I have posted the powerpoint for this 3 hour talk on my website on the presentations page. It isn't much different than what you have in the printed book. Look for the ppt link under the session entitled "Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2".

I will post the code from the demos shortly. [update: these have been posted on 3/26]

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Larry and his wife live in Hawaii. For a reason. This is an amazing story!!

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Since I plan to attend Wintellect's Devscovery in Reston, VA in early May, I have submitted talks to the Code Camp that is that Saturday (May 7th) in the same building as the Devscovery conference.

The website for Devscovery is pretty funny. It says "our aim is to have you beg us to stop cramming information into your head."

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I am just catching up on a lot of posts and see that pricing announcments were made regarding Team System. I had heard  about the new SKUs for MSDN Universal a while ago and scratched my head about small or independent consultants not having easy access to learn some of the tools that will be priced way over their heads (6 month trials notwithstanding...). But one of the interesting points about this is that Microsoft is clearly aiming the VSTS stuff directly at the large enterprise shops and the benefit is that, as Jonathan Cogley and Eric Sink note, they are not leaving the market for 3rd party tools like NUnit and SourceGear mostly in tact.

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Funny to see a CNN report on Mud Season!

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http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/03/23/blackberry.rim/index.html

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I got home in the wee hours of the morning from a fantastic 5 days at DevConnections in Orlando. The conference was, as always, just great. (Note that the spring 2005 show is getting archived. Watch this page for links to that show.) It was held at the Hyatt Grand Cypress which is a real paradise-like resort. Shirley and Gary Brothers run such a top notch show. I was very happy with my presentations and I ended up doing my session on What's new in ADO.NET 2.0 twice. Unfortunately that extra session was due to the fact that Dino E was unable to make it. Of course there is just no way anyone can duplicate Dino's effervescent presentation style - he is truly unique (in a wonderful way).

Thanks to everyone who attended my talks. It is your response to them that inspires me to keep doing this! Don't forget to email me those questions and I will blog the answers!

The 2nd ADO.NET 2.0 session was in a one hour slot and we somehow managed to get through the whole thing at a fast  pace since there just wasn't anything I was willing to cut out. As expected, I heard gasps and applause when I showed how SQL Server Query Notification was tied into ADO.NET and ASP.NET.

I had two sessions that were challenged by being scheduled at the same time as an Indigo session by Ari Bixhorn and a live recording of .NET Rocks. Three of my talks were held in the humongous 500 (looked like it a least) seat ballroom -- though I encouraged the 30-40 or so attendees to sit up close.

I also got a hot off the presses copy of the updated (for beta) version of Alex Homer, Dave Sussman and Mark Fussell's new ADO.NET and System.XML 2.0 book from A-W, which I perused for additional insight before my ado.net 2.0 talks.

I did a 1/2 day workshop on Sunday which was teaching Web Service Security Fundamentals (the cryptography stuff) and an intro to WSE2.0. Although it wasn't heavily attended, it  went great and I think everyone there really got a lot out of the session. I LOVE doing that talk. And the more I do it the more fun it is to do. The more fun it is for me to do the more fun it is for the attendees. The 1st part of the talk - the crypto stuff - has become my "I want to teach the world to sing" talk. Perhaps I'll look into doing a webcast on it. I do have an article coming out on MSDN Online with that content.

Also of course, hanging out in the speaker lounge with so many of my friends (old and new) is just the best best fun. The expo was great and I had fun hanging out with Dave Noderer at the INETA booth (thanks to MSDN for that). Stan Schultes also drove down from Sarasota for dinner one night.

Anyway - thanks again to everyone attending my talks (and especially to Chandler from Vegas who was grinning from ear to ear throughout the entire ADO.NET 2.0 session!) I will be uploading my powerpoints and demos to my website on the Talks page, here.

I will be presenting at DevConnections in the Fall in Las Vegas. The line up right now looks like this:

Leveraging SQL Server 2005 Query Notification in ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0
Both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 take advantage of SQL Server 2005's Service Broker. Although ADO.NET 2.0 is only able to receive query notification from SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 2.0 has an implementation that will also know about database changes in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 7. This session will demonstrate how to receive notifications through both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2 as well as cover the pros and cons and the many rules surrounding Query Notification.

A Look at WSE 3.0
WSE 3.0 is slated to be the last version of WSE prior to Indigo. It is also the first release of the Web Services Enhancements that will be fully interoperable with Indigo and incorporates more of the WS-* specifications than previously. Come to this session to see highlights of WSE 3.0 as well as how it relates to what we know about WSE 2.0 and to the upcoming Indigo.

Customizing the debugging experience in Visual Studio 2005 with new Debugger Attributes
New features in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 allow you to take more control over how information is displayed about classes while you are debugging. Debugger Visualizers are custom user interfaces that can be written to display information about .NET classes or your own custom classes. The new debugger attributes can be applied to your classes to define the formatting of debug info displayed in the watch windows. This session will walk through how to write and deploy custom visualizers as well as how to leverage the new debugger attributes found in the System.Diagnostics namespace.

Hopefully I'll also be doing the C# for VB Developers talk again which is a look at syntax and some IDE differences as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

[From ProgrammingfromHome.com]

Part time programmer
Seeking programer to develope a order entry application with web input and output capabilities. VB.NET MS SQL SERVER DATABASE EXPERIENCE 

The employer posted this job on:   3/23/05

Special Benefits Include:
- Full Telecommute (work at home)- Will consider applicants on a part-time basis- Independent contractors may respond

 

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If you are going to be at DevConnections this week, come by and visit us at the INETA booth!

 

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I'm doing my last minute org for DevConnections and making note of the times of my talks.

• Sunday 3/20: 1-4 PM Web Security for Dummies and WSE 2.0 Introduction
• Tuesday 8am - 9:15 am  ASP.NET Beyond System.Web Namespace
• Wednesday 8am - 9:15 am C# for VB Programmers
• Wednesday 1:30 - 2:30 What's New in ADO.NET 2.0 (just noticed this is only one hour!)

My husband is laughing over the 8am talks. At home I am not an early riser, but he doesn't know that when I'm travelling I tend to get up at 6 am or so. (shhh, don't tell)

I will also be manning the INETA booth  Monday from 9-9:30 and Tuesday from 10:45 - 11:15.

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.NET plumber, John Bristowe's, twin sister Ashley having a baby. John is very close to his sister and I always love seeing how proud he is of her and that he is able to share that with the world on his blog. Not a lot of guys do that.

His latest post was written as he was leaving to go to the hospital with Ashley and her husband last night, so hopefully by now, he's an uncle.

Congrats Uncle John!!

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