I have postponed, cancelled and delayed this appointment [to remove an ancient filling and replace it with a new one] three times now. Oooooh the torture (and to top it off, the expense). But I can avoid it no longer. Off I go... whimper whimper whimper...

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Burlington Vermont's Champlain College is definitely on the cutting edge of  I.T. Education, so it does not surprise me to see this new degree program that they are offering.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

The agenda for TechEd South Africa is now online.

I see that two of my session will be in Session Room 1 - the big room. This room as a capacity of 800 people (okay not so bad as TEchEd US where it's more like 8,000). But still.... gulp.

The fun begins on Sunday evening at 7pm (Oct 23) with the welcome party!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I had the good fortune of having Melanie Spiller edit a recent article for the upcoming CoDe Focus issue on Tablet PC and Mobile PC Development. (Free issue by the way, subscribe here).

One of the habits she noticed was my use of the word "actually". We talked about it a bit and she happened to mention that another problem word is "basically" which, she told me, people use when they are guessing. That actually (see, I use that a lot) makes a lot of sense. Of course, being THE editorial blogger for technical authors, I was able to find a blog post where she talks about "actually", "basically" and some other oft misused adverbs.

I wonder what she thinks of the infamous "So..." that begins every sentence of Microsoft employees when they answer a question...

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Damir Tomicic, who heads up INETA Europe, created such a wonderful video of his trip to PDC that I wish it was much longer than 3 minutes. Microsoft EMEA chartered a flight to L.A. from Austria or somewhere (which was dubbed "EMEA @ PDC"), so the video starts with a plane filled with geeks. [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

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I had to laugh when I read this post. It all sounds so familiar!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Everyone has them - the performance anxiety dream. You know, the one where you are back in college or high school and walk into a class to find there is a test or pop quiz. Then suddenly you realize that you have somehow managed to not have attended any of the classes all semester and are totally unprepared. This dream has shifted for me recently because of my nasty habit of presenting at conferences. I have had the new version of the dream more than once and had one yet again last night. This time it was my Indigo talk at TechEd South Africa. I was up on the stage with one minute before I had to start. My computer wasn't even started up. Then suddenly I realize, though I have my deck prepared and written all of my demos,  I have never once practiced them. I will be doing it totally cold. (Worse yet for this conference - the talks are only 45 minutes to allow 15 minutes for Q&A.) And Don Box is in the audience. Egad! I'm sure I'll be using that many many many hours of travel to go over it about a thousand more times. And that's only one of three, no really 5 (including an Atlas and an Indigo demo at the Futures panel), that I'll be doing. I'll be the crazy person talking gibberish up in the front of the plane.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I'm not kidding.

By changing a WCF binding from basicHttpBinding to wsHttpBinding, bingo bammo magic right before my very eyes! My messages were encrypted. I did nothing else.

Here's where I got my inspiration...thanks Ami.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Here's a new Channel 9 video with all my buds on the Tablet Team.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

As I am tightening up my Indigo demos for TechEd South Africa, I am going over a bunch of posts by Michele Leroux Bustamante which is helping me sort out "just getting it to run" vs. "writing services properly". [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I really enjoyed presenting at the CNY .NET Developer Group last week. It was a nice surprise to discover that the meeting was held about 2 miles from where I lived until I was 10 years old. This was the third meeting of this new group and the room was filled to capacity (about 20 or so) which is rea lly impressive for a new group. Andy Beaulieu, the leader of the group, has been getting great attendance since the group started and he should be congratulated. It's a great thing to have a resource like this and it is clear that Syracuse has been needing it for a while - there is a lot of technology going on there. I spoke about ADO.NET 2.0 and Andy has posted my session powerpoint and code demos on the user group site. They are on my own website as well, on the Presentations page.

Syracuse is easy to get to and I highly recommend this group to speakers who are willing to make the trip. The group is only 1.5 hours from where my parents live and I still have family and friends right in Syracuse, so it's a fun trip for me. Another hot item that may make it worth the trip is the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que.

Posted from BLInk!

Michael Swanson blogs that the PDC DVDs will be going out in early November which is pretty fast turnaround considering that they have ended up with 4 dvds worth of content. But even more exciting is that they will host all of the session videos online and free for all (for 6 months)!

(by way of Owen Allen)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I'm happy to see Steele Price's name in the latest round of MVPs.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

There was a problem with SqlDependency pre-Beta2 which created headaches for anyone trying to use it as a non-admin. It also created headaches for programmers at Microsoft who were in charge of it. They finally reworked some of the plumbing in order to get past the permission issues. In this DataAccess blog post, Sushil Chordia not only explains why the problem existed, but what they did to fix it, how to use SqlDependency now (most changes were in the plumbing, but you do have to do some minor changes in your code) and also what permissions are necessary in SQL Server to get it working.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I need to stamp this onto my brain so that it flows from my tongue as readily and thoughtlessly* as the word "Indigo":

"Secure, Reliable, Transacted Web Services"

*thoughtlessly as in: I don't have to stop and think "what is that phrase again?", it's just there...

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

A few weeks ago as I prepared for the weekend Code Camp IV in Waltham, I was going back and forth finalizing my four presentations, three of which were on topics that couldn't be farther from each other. Two talks were related to Web Services: WS Security Fundamentals and Overview of WSE 3.0. A third talk was on data access and the last was on adding TabletPC inking capabilites to the online Virtual Earth mapping application. My brain was everywhere.

I am feeling the same today as I am working on my three talks for TechEd South Africa. Two are somewhat related but still very different: Overview of WSE 3 and Introducing Indigo/WCF. The third is a data access talk on ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005 Integration. But of course this as much fun as watching t.v. while constantly clicking on the remote to change channels. Very natural.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I murdered my TabletPC functionality on my Vista laptop when I hacked the glass onto it. So I can't play with all of the awesome new TabletPC features. Very disappointing and I am looking forward to a remedy. In the meantime, I can oggle the 123 screenshots that Peter Rysavy did showing off the Tablet tools on Vista over here. Thanks to Lora for the link..

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

There are many developers in Pakistan and we have 15 user groups from Pakistan registered in INETA.

Though I haven't seen anything yet on some of the blogs I know such as on INETA Pakistan, or DotNETPakistan, Stephen Forte has some links to some of his friends there. Stephen speaks at conferences all over the world and leaves a wake of new friends everywhere he goes.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Programming Virtual Earth

• This was a chalk talk, so there is not a formal powerpoint or demos. Check the Virtual Earth category on my weblog for any code samples or insights I post.
• Microsoft's implementation of Virtual Earth on MSN
• www.viavirtualearth.com   Developer Center run by Dr. Neil Roodyn. Contains articles, references and a gallery of sample applications.
• Virtual Earth on Channel 9
• javascript files for programming Virtual Earth  MapControl.js   ve.js

What's new in ADO.NET 2.0

There are 3 pages of resources (articles, books and blogs) at the end of the powerpoint presentation, which can be found on my Talks page. Scroll down to "What's new in ADO.NET 2.0".

Note that the rules for getting SqlDependency to work for non-admins is now in the powerpoint and can also be found here on the Microsoft Data Access blog.

Demystifying cryptography tools used for WSE, Indigo and beyond

I have modifed the presentation from earlier versions. Please find it on my Talks page under "Web Services Security for Humans: Security Fundamentals prep for WSE and Indigo".

What's new in WSE 3.0

1. MSDN WSE Developer Center
2. Multiple videos from WSE 3.0 SDR are all found on the above page
3. Security and messaging Hands on Labs available on above page
4. What's New in WSE 3.0 article by Mark Fussell

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have uploaded the powerpoint for Overview of WSE 3.0 that I presented at Code Camp IV in Waltham.

You can find them at www.thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx. Scroll down the page for "Overview of WSE 3.0".

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org