I guess this is the definition of a geek vacation, but I much prefer Dave Burke's idea of a vacation!!

Next week I will be going to Washington D.C. for a variety of things. First I am going to get a Wintellect brain infusion at Devscovery. That will be 3 days of intense learning with John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter (I wonder if Sara has warned him that I'm coming. Maybe I'll wear an "I Love VB" shirt. ) and some of the other Wintellects.

Then I get a day of rest with the Duthies and hopefully some real old-fashioned sightseeing! The next day (Saturday) is the Mid Atlantic Code Camp which I am sticking around for and was happy that the locals are letting me do some talks. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of my D.C. friends like Scott Lock and finally meeting Sahil Malek, Bill Ryan (unless he decides to go to Hooters or something) and some others that I have never met in person. If I'm super lucky, I'll aslo get a chance to see some of my non-geek friends I haven't seen in a while!

The line up looks awesome and there is also going to be a full day SOA track where they build an app. Heck, I'd almost skip my own talks for that! (Just kidding - I wouldn't really do that).

YOu can register for Mid-Atlantic Code Camp here. It's free and there's still room!!

Posted from BLInk!

I have been struggling with a printer jamming problem for months. I even spent $400 on getting it repaired (it's one of those big honkin' LaserJet network printers) and still the paper was jamming.

I have had the printer for 10 years and have *always* used plain copy paper. For the past 6 or so it has generally been Staples brand copy paper.

I finally gave in and bought some multi-use paper. It costs more than twice as much and the legal size, which I have to use a lot of, seems to have no options except for one brand ($$ Hammermill) that we found at Staples. (I will do some further searches for that on the web) The jamming problem seems to be much relieved.

However, I was on the phone with a client who had been having the same problem and after many many visits from their repair guy, they finally started questioning the Staples copy paper that they have had no problems with for years. They ended up on the phone with Staples who apparently admitted that (this is just second hand and I could be incorrect on that statement) the paper had degraded and gave my client credit for their recent purchases.

That is annoying. I wasted hours and hours and hours dealing with the jamming problems and $400 too!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I just gave in and bought a new machine JUST for testing. It is faster than my regular development machine at 3.2 ghz, is a P4 and comes with 1 gig of ram already. They just kept slapping all of these discounts on ($50 off on any Optiplex between $400-$500 and $50 any GX270 or SX280) and the whole thing was under $400, no tax, free shipping. Not too shabby. It is going to replace my current left over test box that is 700mhz and has 512 mb ram (and runs Whidbey Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 Developer perfectly fine thank you very much!!) It was definitely a satisfying purchase!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Anyone catch this in Chris Sells' post about the 2.0 version of his Windows Forms book?

we're not updating the VB.NET version due to poor sales for VB.NET-related titles in general

That is a shocker to me - that VB.NET books are selling less than C#. I wouldn't have expected it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Wally and I have been keen on ensuring that SqlDependency - which was pretty tricky to get working when I was first learning about it- still works. Of course it does!  I have a handful of SqlDependency demos in my ADO.NET 2.0 talk that worked just great with the Feb CTP bits (after a lot of figgerin' and head scratchin'). I only happen to have fired one of them up so far with Beta2.

The only change I noticed so far was that the OnChanged event is now called OnChange. (You will get a compile error message that says OnChanged is not a member of SqlClient.)

So other than that, my code that worked in Beta1 Feb CTP Bits remains the same and works charmingly.

In SQL Server 2005 the Service Broker is still not enabled out of the box on databases. So you have to remember to enable it with: ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks SET ENABLE_BROKER

I also noticed something funny but then it went away. In SQL Server Management Studio, my tables first were listed as Contact (Person), Employee (HumanResources), etc. But then after closing it and opening it again, they went back to Person.Contact and HumanResources.Employee. I don't think I changed anything, so I'm not sure what was up with that but will keep an eye out for it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=SDMHS95P%2fS&Dept=computers&CategoryName=cpu_Displays_FlatPanelLCDs_18%22

http://www.AcehAid.org

And now it is time to run through all of my demos and sample code that I have created on previous bits....

http://www.AcehAid.org

According to this article based on research commissioned by Hewlett Packard, emails do more damage to our IQ's than weed!

"The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard."

Watch for new legislation to outlaw email!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am watching the webcast from the Toronto VB User Group's presentation of Pocket Build, their entry into the Canadian Inter User Group Competition. The task was to improve the quality of a developer's life. TVBUG came up with an amazing application to alert developers of build issues remotely. Not only does the app blow me away, but the presentation and the depth that they went to is amazing. It is a thoroughly designed and planned application. I just can't get over that they put togehter such a professional project.

More details and all of the links to the webcasts are here, on Sasha Krsmanovic's blog. Sorry I forgot this link earlier!!

I haven't watched the others yet, but apparently they were all very high quality, though everyone agreed that TVBug's had to be the winner.

Congrats to everyone.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Malek Kemmou, will no longer be "the guy from Casablanc" among us as he moves to Istanbul tomorrow (as a new Microsoft employee). Yesterday Stephen wrote about some departing shenanigans that I'm sure he strong-armed Malek into and today Malek gives us a beautiful poem about leaving the city he has grown up in. I look forward to the day that Malek can introduce me to both Casablanca and Istanbul.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.theserverside.net/cartoons/TalesFromTheServerSide.tss

http://www.AcehAid.org

I totally repaved my Whidbey test box with the intention of using Norton Ghost to create an image of a completely fresh machine before I install the beta 2 bits on it. The last step of the process is to install Ghost and it gives me the message:

"To run Norton Ghost, you must first install Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1"

There goes my pure and clean machine! I'll have to install .NET 1.1 and then uninstall it after I make my backup. Darn!

http://www.AcehAid.org

There were so many awesome submissions (speakers and topics) for the MAD Code Camp that poor Andrew Duthie and the track chairs had a really hard time fitting it all in. I made a bit of a nuisance of myself so that I would be able to present my ADO.NET 2.0 session (in addition to my WSE2.0 talk) which ended up meaning that Geoff Snowman, the local Developer Community Champion, gave up his session so that I could do mine. Thanks Geoff! I sure hope I was doing you a favor though!!

Also, my talk will be right before another ADO.NET 2 topic by Sahil Malik. He will be drilling into concurrency in ADO.NET 2.0, so that will be a great pair of sessions back to back.

Watch this space to see the session schedule which will be put up soon. The Code Camp is from 9am - 9pm with 4 tracks. It will be awesome. It is at Microsoft's Reston office. There is still plenty of room for more attendees, so go sign up!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I love this concept! Go DevTeach!!

Montreal
June 18-22

SQL Track (39 sessions)
.NET Track  (62 session)
FoxPro/Win32 Track (27 sessions)

http://www.AcehAid.org

Do you know that worldwide, INETA has (at the moment) 769 member user groups? INETA NORAM (that's North America, as in US & Canada) accounts for 250 of those groups. About 200 of them are in Latin America. APAC is about 120, Europe 130 and MEA (Middle East & Africa) is about 70. We have groups in places like Bulgaria, Iceland, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Micronesia and even little ol' Vermont .

Anyway, what started me off was that I wanted to welcome a few of the new liaisons in NORAM: Rob Windsor from Toronto, Scott Spradlin of Missouri and Morgan Baker in Florida.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have DSL - with 1000K downstream, but these CTP downloads kill me.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I gave up on this problem many many months ago and my one touch is sitting in a corner of my office detached from anything. There is hope for me yet to solve my backup problems. I am sure that when I plug it back in, I will discover that it is formatted as FAT. THANK YOU KIRK!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Pretty pretty please???? Without having to install Team System? (or do a 20 hour download...)

http://www.AcehAid.org

it used to be the butt of a great joke by Leon Bambrick - with his now famous VB Refactoring menu, but now thanks to the genius of Developer Express, VB Refactoring is real and being offered by Microsoft as a free plug-in for VS2005.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have had a problem for a few years that when I vpn into a client's network, Windows Messenger automatically starts up and signs me in. Without even showing me anything in the systray. It's a little frustrating only because if I am VPNing in, that means I'm working and don't have time to chat.

I finally googled the problem today and discovered that there is a somewhat hidden setting in Windows XP which allows you to stop Windows Messenger from starting up on it's own. Here is the MSDN Support article on it.

http://www.AcehAid.org