I have a nasty cold and can't go too far from the kleenex today as I have a runny runny nose (in between some impressive sneezing fits). I am getting really sick of my nose being so runny.Where on earth does all of that stuff come from anyway. Are my brains melting? Thank goodness for Puffs Plus or I would probably have no skin left on my nose by now!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I blindly downloaded the standard version of VS2005 Beta2 because the only other option was Team System (not for me and also a an extra GB which would have added at least 6 hours). Mike Gunderloy pointed out that this is standard and we don't have access to Professional as yet, so I went and checked the product version comparison chart for a reminder.

Here are the key differences between Standard and Pro

User Experience="Streamlined" instead of "Full" - I have no idea what this even means!

Deployment Tools - Standard has "Click Once", Pro says "Yes" (probably MSI Installation as per current versions)

Extensibility: In Standard you can only consume extensions, but not build them

Reporting: Standard has Crystal. Pro also has SQL Reporting Svs

Debugging: Standard does NOT have remoteo debugging

SQL Server: Standard does not have the explorer for SQL Server and there is no SQL Server 2005 integration

Included with intstall: Pro has SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows 2003 Server Developer Edition included. Standard does not.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Beta2 is already available to non-MSDN Universal Subscribers. You can order a DVD from Microsoft by starting at the VS2005 home page.

Also for a limited time, orders in US & Canada will get free shipping  & handling on the discs.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Loren talks about the great response to the inkable comments on Channel 9 and some of the feedback on slashdot from it. Besides the obvious illegible handwriting, the other issue is being able to search the text. That's a biggie becuase those ink comments are probably just GIFs by the time they get posted.

Two thoughts popped into my head while reading Loren's thoughts.

1) Journal can search on ink - so obviously the inkdata combined with sdk functionality allows for that. One of my favorite things to demo to developers in Journal is to write a sentence in a circle and then have Journal search for one of the words that is sideways and curved.l

2) The ink data is likely being stored in that GIF (fortified GIF persistance format also persists the ink data). But how on earth can google find it? We need an API that exposes the ink data. That is, of course, assuming that all of the writing is recognized properly.

I'll have to look into the project that Layne is working on that Loren mentions in his post.

http://www.AcehAid.org

TechEd has sold out. I also noticed this a few days ago, but Kate's blog post was too funny to pass up.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Vermont-based NRG Systems, which is a big player in the windmill industry, was growing rapidly and needed a new building. They decided to 'walk the walk' and ended up creating an unbelievably environmentally friendly commercial building. They are in Hinesburg, VT, near where I live. They have a whole section of their website dedicated to sharing info about this building which is really fascinating.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Visual Studio 2005 Beta2 has been released to MSDN Subscriptions Downloads.

It is available in various flavors with and with out Team System bits.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Baseball fever that is. I'm looking at the cover of the May issue that arrived today and having a good laugh at the baseball theme that runs through the titles of all of the articles on the cover. Very silly, you guys!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Dave Noderer, who does so so so much for INETA and for the Florida user group community was interviewed in this newspaper about how he makes his business work by working with lots of independent contractors. Here is the article.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Bhagvan Chougule left a comment in one of my blog posts asking how I got WSE2 to install as part of my application install for an app that uses WSE2. I remember having a hard time figuring it out the first time, too, since I had never done this with any types of apps - not just WSE. So I thought I would show here how to do that.

First, if you right click on the setup project, you can choose View/Launch Conditions

Once you are in there, you can add launch conditions. I added a "File Launch Condition" which created a folder called "Search Target Machine".

Here is how I set it up.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I know our DCC fights for us, but it's tough not being a top tier market. I just checked the city list for the newest MSDN Events spring tour and Burlington is not there, again. At this point, outside of the VTdotNET user group events, Microsoft doesn't come to Vermont anymore. There is so much going on in the Boston area because they can easily get 500+ people at events. Burlington draws only 50+ people and sometimes that is really hard to achieve. I know I spend a lot of energy trying to get the word out. They always schedule Albany, NY though I have no clue how that does. But the closest events to us are over 3 hours away. I know from experience that, in this market, it is more likely to get people to a mid-day MSDN event than a weekend anything (eg Code Camp), so that route is not really an option.

I know the MSDN Event tour is also tied into other events - management and ITPro  - and it is not so much becasue we don't have enough developers at the MSDN Event, but the day as a whole, is probably not very cost effective.

Pretty much a cryin shame.

http://www.AcehAid.org

IDEP FLASH UPDATE #15 - April 12th, 2005  
From : Yayasan IDEP & Yayasan Andaru Selaras
Re : Tragic sinking of the Endless Sun Vessel

The Cahaya Abadi (Endless Sun), a private relief boat delivering aid to Aceh and Nias has sunk off the coast of Nias on April 11 at 14.00 local time.
 
The 700-ton vessel had just finished offloading a cargo of rice and aid to the village of Afulu on the south coast of Nias, North Sumatra, Indonesia when it struck an uncharted reef in a heavy swell. The boat sunk within twenty minutes. Some of the Indonesian crew of 15 and 5 volunteers swam safely to shore and the others were picked up by fishing boats. All are safe.
  
The Cahaya Abadi had delivered some of the Yayasan IDEP aid and 87 tons of rice donated by the World Food Program to four isolated communities in Nias before the incident occurred.  It had just completed its fourth rice delivery when the accident occurred. The vessel was still fully loaded with food, household and reconstruction aid intended for Aceh when it sank 600 meters offshore.
  
The vessel, leased by Yayasan Andaru Selaras (a Jakarta based NGO) was carrying relief goods from Yayasan IDEP, the World Food Program, Project Concern International and other donors.
  
“We are grateful for the good news that no one on board was seriously injured,” says Petra Schneider, Executive Director of Yayasan IDEP a Bali based NGO.  “We are committed to continue our Aceh aid and recovery projects with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and staff.”
   
The many major earthquakes in the immediate area since December 26 have created an unstable seabed situation with uncharted, difficult to navigate coral reefs.
 
“Crew and volunteers were aware that they were entering a dangerous and volatile situation,” says Chris Gentry, founder of Yayasan Andaru Selaras.  “I want to thank those who have put their lives at risk for the people of Aceh and North Sumatra. Despite the trauma and hardship they have experienced their commitment has not waned. Aid delivery in this difficult time will continue”.
   
 The crew is being evacuated by World Food Program helicopters now. The vessel was a total loss.


  
Among the tons of relief cargo lost undersea were the following items intended for IDEP’s project in Sama Tiga (Aceh) and IDEP is trying very hard to quickly replace these goods as the people there were promised that these items were coming soon aboard The Endless Sun.  Last week, the vessel, en route to Sama Tiga, was re-routed to Nias to deliver rice to isolated coastal communities in need of food, after the March 28 earthquake.

Please help us replace these items for the villagers of Sama Tiga:

• 3,000 Kerosene stoves,$3 each, for a total of $9,000
• 800 “Aid Buckets” total $16,000
• 361 Household kits total $7850
• 340 Food kits total $7540
• 100 Fishing kits total $1224
• 1 trail bike (for delivering goods to villages without roads): $1,500
  

If you can help, please contribute today.

How to help IDEP replace these items…
  
By CREDIT CARD  - Via PayPal, an internet payment system which allows you to make payments from 45 countries  (not including Indonesia - if your credit card billing address is in Indonesia this will not work).  Go to www.idepfoundation.org/aceh_aid.html and follow the instructions there. (Tax deductible for US taxpayers.)
    
By CHECK (in US)  - Via Tides Foundation. Make check payable to “Aceh Aid / Tides Foundation” and mail to Byron Miranda, Accounting, Tides Foundation, P.O. Box 29903, San Francisco, CA 94129, USA. (Tax deductible for US taxpayers.)
       
By WIRE TRANSFER (the quickest way to get funds to IDEP)
Account Name : Yayasan IDEP
Account Number : 034.001229576.003
Bank : BNI (Bank Negara Indonesia), Cabang Ubud, Bali  
Bank Address : Jl. Raya Ubud, Bali - Indonesia  
SWIFT Code : BNINIDJA DPS
    
If you send a wire transfer please send an email to : donate@idepfoundation.org telling us your name, date of transfer, currency and amount, originating bank - as well as how you would like the donation listed if it is not the same as the name on the wire transfer receipt.
     
For additional information about donating to IDEP please contact donate@idepfoundation.org
We will be posting more information on our website soon. www.idepfoundation.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

(sorry, Mike, I just couldn't resist! really, I hope that cold gets better...)

Mike Gunderloy checks out Visual Studio Hacks. In case you don't know (that is, if you are living under a rock), Mike has written A LOT about Visual Studio, big fat granular books, etc,  and he says "So, you know - I got to about page 6 of this book before I learned something new."

Gotta love it

I gave away two copies of the book last night at the VTdotNET meeting and people were chomping at the bit to get their hands on it.

So James, when you decide you can retire a wealthy man from the sale of what I think is going to be a wildly successful book, can we still say "we knew you when..."?

http://www.AcehAid.org

Doug Reilly has started an interview series called database geeks every week.

This week he is featuring Terri Morton who is a frequent contributor on asp.net forums, an asp.net mvp and an aspinsider. Although that sounds pretty much all about ASP, Terri is a pro when it comes to database work in asp.net apps.

Here is the first interview!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Here's something a little different than the usual coding... Stephen Toub points to some job openings at MSDN Magazine. One is a developmental editor which is tasked to drive the content and quality of the magazine. Sound pretty cool!

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

I had to get a copy of one of my clients sql server db tables onto my local sql server. For some reason DTS was failing on a particular record and I couldn't identify the problem or the record or the error.

I finally gave up and went over to my whidbey box, set up an ADO.NET bulk copy and streamed the data from the remote sql server into the table on my local server.

(Without having to learn how to do a bulk copy in SQL Server)

What a great feeling!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have a client with one last holdout FoxPro 2.6 application. It manages all of their incredibly complex billing and is a work of art and works beautifully and someday we will upgrade it, not to make it better, but just because we will have to. But for now, just accept that fact and move on.

The woman who does the invoicing noticed an odd inconsistency that did not affect billing but a payroll report that was missing one person's 3 hour stint for a particular day  - one of 3 rows that made up one guy's particular day.

That report is created by a union of two queries. The first picks up all the data, the second picks up any body who didn't have any hours that week (10 maybe 15 extra). I looked and looked at this then broke the queries into two. The record was there. Ran the queries with the union, the record was gone and the row count was off by one.

I have been fiddling with this all morning (it's a disease, what can I say?) and there is no rhyme or reason for it. So I just bagged the union and did two queries and appended the results to each other.

But, no complaints. We are all ecstatic that this 8 year old program (which gets tweaked here and there from time to time) still works on the new computers and is great. Thanks to all who are responsible for that!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Someone who sat in on my C# for VB programmers session at Code Camp emailed with a little problem. DataSet.Table("myTable") was throwing the error

Error: 'System.Data.DataSet.Tables' denotes a 'property' where a 'method' was expected

It is such a common mistake we VB people make in C# because those parens are just totally second nature to us! Even I had to think about it a minute before I saw the problem! It's

DataSet.Table[“myTable“]

The funny thing was seeing a C# programmer complaining that in VB, everything is parens and it makes it hard to tell if we are referring to a parameter or an element, making a method call or getting info out of an array/collection. Great perspective!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Richard Hale Shaw is in town so we thought it would be fun to do a geek dinner.

Date: Thursday April 8th
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: NECI Commons, 25 Church St. Burlington

Note that if there are too many of us to get a table quickly, we will just go elsewhere on Church Street or environs. So try not to be late!!

 

http://www.AcehAid.org