Friday, October 14, 2005
I figure if Don Box can do Indigo demos in VB, then I should do them in C#. That of course, will make my demo take a tad bit longer as I will likely have to compile a few times to find all of the VB syntax I typed into the C# code.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 3:55:32 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

This is a Wissif Wippif

(it's a Toyota Avalon in Indigo Bunting Blue - so an Indigo Avalon - WCF WPF... get it? I'm sure this is already an ancient joke but it sure had me and Kate giggling today)



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 2:06:05 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I have a 512MB memory chip for a Toshiba Portege M200.

They are on sale right now at Crucial for $50 so if anyone wants to buy mine, I'll sell it for a little less than Crucial. I bought this a little less than a year ago and the M200 is not my daily use machine. You know, only driven by a little old lady on Sundays. :-)



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 1:24:07 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
Here is an excellent article on using ADO.NET and SQL CLR inside of SQL Server: Managed Data Access Inside SQL Server with ADO.NET and SQLCLR. Besides the obvious code, there are things you should be aware of such as context connections, how transactions work and most importantly, when not to use ADO.NET in the SQL CLR. The article is by the ADO.NET master himself, Pablo Castro, who is the Technical Lead on the ADO.NET team.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 12:27:31 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

One of the talks I will be doing at Visual Studio Connections is "Deciphering C# for VB Developers". One of the BEST resources for converting your code back and forth is O'Reilly's C# & VB.NET Conversion Pocket Reference. I have a slide in the presentation devoted just to the book. Now I have dozen copies of the book to give away at the presentation. Thanks to Marsee Henon of O'Reilly!

Here is the description of the presentation

As a Visual Basic developer, have you ever searched for a code sample and then found one that is exactly what you need but written in the C# language instead? The differences between the two language syntax are substantially more than just semi-colons and curly braces. This session is intended to help you understand such idiosyncracies as backwards variable declaration, stringent rules for scoping variables and methods, compound assignment operators and more. This session will be given by a Visual Basic programmer who has felt the pain both deciphering and writing C# code and wants to help you avoid some of the same pitfalls.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 11:08:27 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

From the INETA website

INETA Announces New Board Members, Sheri Nawrocki, Matt Ranlett & Brendon Schwarz.

INETA ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF SHERI NAWROCKI AS VICE PRESIDENT OF MARKETING

Redmond, WA – October 4, 2005 – The International .NET Association (INETA), an organization that provides resources, services, and support for .NET user groups around the globe, today announced the appointment of Sheri Nawrocki as Vice President of Marketing for INETA North America.

“Sheri has been a valuable member of our team over the past few years and will do an excellent job leading our marketing efforts.” says Chris Pels, President of the North American Board of Directors. “Sheri brings a unique perspective to our team with her background in software development, marketing, and graphic design that will be invaluable.”

“INETA has done a great job strengthening the .NET development community with its efforts over the past several years and I am excited to have the opportunity to help the organization.” says Nawrocki. “This is a great group of volunteers and I look forward to working with them.”

INETA ANNOUNCES APPOINTMENT OF MATT RANLETT AND BRENDON SCHWARTZ TO INETA BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Redmond, WA – October 6, 2005 – The International .NET Association (INETA), an organization that provides resources, services, and support for .NET user groups around the globe, today announced the appointment of Matt Ranlett and Brendon Schwartz as Co-Vice Presidents of Technology for INETA North America.

“Matt and Brendon, or The Atlanta Regular Guys as many know them, have done exciting work in the Atlanta area with local INETA User Groups and have contributed to the success of the Community Activities Division of INETA” says Chris Pels, President of the North American Board of Directors. “We are excited about the energy and ideas the guys will bring to the Technology Division.”

“Matt and I are very excited about our new positions on the Board.” says Schwartz. “We are really looking forward to having a big impact on how INETA works with technology now and in the future” added Ranlett.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, October 14, 2005 8:31:15 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, October 13, 2005

I swear, not one word about Pakistan (or Guatemala for that matter) on the home page of CNN.com. MSNBC stil has a little something on the lower half.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Thursday, October 13, 2005 7:05:41 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Wednesday, October 12, 2005
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
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 11:21:46 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
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
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 11:19:13 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:45:49 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 10:14:17 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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]



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 9:46:20 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
I had to laugh when I read this post. It all sounds so familiar!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 8:31:58 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
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
Wednesday, October 12, 2005 7:19:34 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, October 10, 2005

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
Monday, October 10, 2005 5:09:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
Here's a new Channel 9 video with all my buds on the Tablet Team.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, October 10, 2005 2:34:21 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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
Monday, October 10, 2005 10:57:07 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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!
Monday, October 10, 2005 9:12:32 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

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
Monday, October 10, 2005 7:39:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, October 09, 2005

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



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Sunday, October 09, 2005 10:46:08 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  |