I just watched an update on residents returning to aveland to find nothing, just nothing left. (search their videos for "Waveland 30 days". It is really sad. As soon as I closed the video, I got a blog referral in my inbox from someone who had linked to a photo I put on my site in January... of Aceh - also obliterated, with nothing left but a very strongly built mosque. That was a really odd juxtaposition of looking at both of those things at the same time.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Yesterday I had to make some updates to a friend/client's Access 2003 application. We had some problems with me emailing her updates that were daunting to her and one that was definitely mystifying to me! I do know that you can't just email MDB files, but these problems were different than that.

The daunting (to her) problem, I was able to solve thanks to this recent discovery. I had zipped one of the MDB files and she needed to unblock the zip file and then unblock the MDB file.

The other problem, I couldn't solve until she sent me her file. For a second solution, I sent her a small MDB file that contained only a handful of objects for her to import into her MDB file. Rather than zipping, I just renamed the file to whateverfile.mdb.myname and emailed it. She removed ".myname" from the file and imported the objects into her other file. But she got some wierd results when running the macro, which opens four queries then a report. As I couldn't understand her explanation, I had her send me the file. What I discovered was that all of the relationships between tables that were defined in the queries had been stripped out! I don't know whta process did this. I had no problem at all doing the import locally and then returning the full file to her. Very odd.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Our neighbors are selling their house. They are just up the road from us. I would add to their description below that there are over a hundred acres of woods behind the house (each of us on the road own a chunk of those woods) with trails for hiking, dog walking and cross-country skiing. (But not for snowmobiles or ATVs or hunting.)  You can walk through the woods right to a trail head to get onto the Long Trail, too! There is also DSL available on the road, but no cable. The DSL has been excellent for me with my demanding web access needs. Plus, of course, you will be able to attend meetings of Vermont.NET every month. We are a 4 hour drive from Boston, 3 hours to Montreal and from the Burlington airport, a 50 minute flight on Jet Blue to NYC. Burlington's airport has lots of airlines with connections through the usual hubs.

.

Close to nature & an easy commute to Burlington, Middlebury, and the Mad River Valley, our bright and sunny Timber-Frame home is in move-in condition. Three bedrooms, 2 ½ baths (one w/ jetted tub), recently updated kitchen (w/ new flooring & stainless steel appliances), hardwood floors, finished basement, wrap-around deck, large Post & Beam shed, nearly 13 acres, mountain views – and more! 

In one of Huntington’s “coolest” neighborhoods. 

HUNTINGTON $303,000

Give us a call!
email: silvercoffey at aol dot com

Sony has a new TV - very pretty - called Bravia. What I can't figure out is the ad I saw on cnn.com that said something like "the first television in history designed for men AND women."

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have to work on a client's old Access program today. That means I have to take a short break from working on Indigo. It's really painful to give up playing with new toys, to fiddle with something old and boring. However, this client was my very first consulting client ever and not only is she still a client 19 years later, but a dear friend as well. So for her, I can do Access. It's all about love.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

This past spring, I shared this photo of Rich up on a tall ladder washing our windows. That didn't work. I didn't have a heart attack and die. So he's at it again. Now he is washing and staining the house. He was going to do the scary part while I was at PDC but that got put off by another attempt at giving me a heart attack. The day before leaving for l.a. we went hiking and he had a very bloody scary in the emergency room for 6 hours accident. Somehow he convinced me on monday that he was okay (and in much better hands than mine wiht our neighbor nurse taking care of him) and I did go to PDC. So, that attempt at getting rid of me didn't work either. But he didn't get to do this job while I was away. He's doing it now though. And I can't even look up at him. At least from a distance I can handle it.

 

Okay - so now I am already regretting my rash jump on buying the Nano. Everyone I know who owns an IPOD of other flavors LOVES them to death. So I confidentenly forked out an insane amount of money for the Nano, rather than going for one of the more familiar Microsoft friendly MP3 players.

I too have a very scratched up screen. Not broken. I haven't pushed the battery test yet. Doesn't sound like there is a happy future for us dopes.

Update: Now here's a guy who knows how to care for his Nano with a case made of duct tape and toilet paper. Think he's a Vermonter? Is his post for reaL?

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Sounds like Paul Glavich was trying to manually process an incoming email message and get it into the pipelline. Finally he gave in and used the built in goo: Pipeline.ProcessInputMessage(soapEnvelope) and WSE did it's magic. Apparently it was some white spaces that were eluding him, but the WSE method knew how to deal with them.  BTW - he's doing this in WSE3, but this is also a class and method available in WSE2. I have never had to use it before, so this is a great thing to know.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I don't know if it's because I'm a programmer or if the Vermont frugality has seeped into my bones in my six years of living here, but I have a hard time when it comes to parting with my hard earned moolah. So last week was quite an anomoly as I managed to justify purchasing an IPOD Nano, a new external hard drive and a new digital camera. The justification was size. These are very small [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Getting behind on blog reading can be detrimental to your health.

Had I read this a little earlier, I may not have wasted time installing the VS2005 RC bits and SQL Server on a VPC.

Luckily I found this before beginning my second install.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I just ordered some Moleskine notebooks for my mom (a writer) on Amazon. Apparently it goes through a store called MindBodySource.com. So I browsed directly to there site, and the home page is filled with ummm, adult toys! Tee hee. Really, I just got the notebooks! I swear!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

In the past 15 30 45 minutes, I have had about 500 1000 1500 aaargh or more trackback emails dump into my email box. Bastards.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

VBSR SOLO Circle is a group of independent business people from a wide variety of industries who get together monthly to discuss things that are specific to working SOLO.

Come one, come all, and gather to discuss the really knotty thorny subjects that arise when Solos have to confront tough ethical issues.

Some points to ponder: What's YOUR code of ethics? What kinds of issues/ subjects/ problems make you concerned about ethics? Let's have a discussion about raising (or lowering) the ethical bar -- where is it now, and where should it be?

Solo and UVM professor Annie Viets will lead us in a discussion of the issues we've faced (or are facing) and strategies for making the right decisions.

When:
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
4:30 - 6:00 pm

RSVP: Info@vbsr.org   (and for more info or directions) Your first Solo Circle is free, a la carte is $10, or you can buy a Circle pass from VBSR for $20

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Crazy for Atlas? The latest VSI to create an Atlas project using VS2005 is online here. You can still get bits for Beta2 as well.

(thanks jhawk)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Many of us spent a LOT of time rooting around the damned JS files

If it hadn't been for ViaVirtualEarth, I would probably have bagged working with VE.

But now, there is an SDK. It's pretty light, but something. And there is a new search control I heard about during PDC. You can get that in the SDK area as well.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Sara has been at a few of the various "women who code" bofs. She's pretty awesome. Bill was rightfully wowed by her when he met her recently.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Hannes Preishuber drove from PDC in L.A. to Seattle (by way of Vancouver) for the MVP Summit. In LA he was gathering ideas of things to see and do on the way. Here is his  very quick recap of his 2500 mile journey.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

coooooool

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Well, as expected the 4th Code Camp pulled together by our most awesome D.E., Thom Robbins, was fabulous. I had to basically breeze in and out as I fine tuned my talks until noon on Saturday, drove the 4 hours to Waltham and gave 2 talks. Then gave 2 more talks the next morning, hung around for a bit and headed back to Vermont. With my focus on 4 topics it was hard to absorb content from other people's sessions which was a big disappointment. There were so many great people talking about very interesting and valuable things. I still haven't figured out how Sam Gentile pulled off doing 3 talks in one day! I think a few other people did this too. Amazing. I was most disappointed thought to miss Dave Burke's session on Building Smart Client Apps in .NET 2.0. He is reluctant to present at his very own user group but I will keep pressuring him (mwuahaha) to get him to do this talk for Vermont.NET sometime in 2006.

There was a crew from Vermont - over 10 people from Vermont.NET, which is the most who have made the trip of all four Code Camps.

I really enjoyed not only seeing old friends, but meeting in person for the first time some folks who I have communicated a lot with on email. In particular, Phil Denoncourt, who runs the New England C# group and Andy Beaulieu who started CNY Developers in Syracuse New York (my home town) where I am going to speak next week.

I loved doing my sessions. One on Virtual Earth where I made sure everyone was familiar with the awesome resources on ViaVirtualEarth and showed them some of the tricky things I have had to figure out in my Virtual Earth does Ink app. I think what made the deepest impresssion on those in the session was seeing some of the various imaginative and useful web applications people have done using Virtual Earth. It really helps get the ideas rolling. I will write another post with specific links for this talk.

 I also did two "standards" which I am very passionate about - new goo in ADO.NET 2.0 which was followed by an impromptu lunch time session digging further into Query Notification and the other is my attempt to teach the world about some of the crypto tools that are key for doing Web Service security.

The fourth talk is a new one for me: What's new in WSE 3.0. I really love what the team has done with this new version of the WSE API and love being able to share this information.

Again, I will write a separate post with links to resources, decks and demos for these talks.

But what is most important about Code Camp is to thank Thom Robbins. He pulls off a 2 day "conference" with 80 sessions and over 500 attendees as though it was absolutely no effort at all. Get the speakers to commit to sessions, create a schedule, order some pizza and sandwiches and the rest just seems to happen all by itself. Or so he likes us to think. Thanks Thom, once again.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org