Tuesday, March 21, 2006
My sister called today as they were driving through the Mojave Desert on their way to San Diego. She told me that she saw a sign at a gas station that said "Last chance to pee." Seriously.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 6:53:57 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Watching the Tim O'Reilly/Bill Gates conversation on the Virtual MIX website, I was struck by Gates encapsulating the direction of software as "the internet as an operating system". [Read more ...]

[A DevLife post]



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Tuesday, March 21, 2006 4:20:29 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, March 20, 2006

I was just on the MSDN Speakers page to grab a pic of Burlington based Susan Wisowaty who is one of the MSDN DCC's and noticed something really fun that they have done to the site.

All of the DCCs have straight photos - serious and wearing their Microsoft shirts. But when you hover the mouse over the pictures, you see a real picture of that person. Bernard Wong competing with the sun in an ultra-bright t-shirt (you can always pick him out in a crowd!) ; Susan in her moto-cross gear :-), Russ Fustino in his tool-man garb, Rory Blyth being, well, Rory; and more. It's really fun since I know a bunch of these folks. Go check it out!

Susan will be presenting on Avalon (WPF) at our July 17th Vermont.NET meeting. Before she worked for Microsoft, she showed up at meetings in her leathers more than once!

Monday, March 20, 2006 5:47:18 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Between the weblogs.asp.net feed and a variety of other individual feeds that I am subscribed to, I'm getting lots of good info streaming in from Mix.

My favorite comment so far was by Andrew Stopford who noted that everyone's reading name badges as they pass each other ("do I know him?" "do I know her?" "should I?") but that Tim O'Reilly read his badge but kept walking. Heck, I would have expected the same. Though the day Bill Gates stops on the stairway to say "Hey, Julie! I've been hoping to meet you someday!" is the day that I can say "my work here's been done" and go back to being a potter and pursue my other life dream at the same time. ;-)



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 4:05:17 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

In addition to sharing all of the great computer and programming knowledge that breeds in his amazing brain, Scott Hanselman has always been very "out" about his diabetes in an effort to share his lessons, spread what knowedge he can and aid in pushing the envelope with respect to the technology that exists for those with diabetes.

Now Scott, his wife and Team Hanselman are walking in a fundraiser for the American Diabetes Association. There are a lot of reasons to support him in this, whether it's in thanks for all that he has done for your own personal programming skills, his contributons to the .NET community, because Scott's just a great guy or even just to support a really good cause.

Read more on Scott's blog and find out how to help Team Hanselman acheive their goal of raising $10,000.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 2:35:13 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

We all now google as in "go google it".

But I learned a new usage for google as a verb: "we've been googled" as in Google bought the company. No, not *my* company.

But here's a coupla happy guys from Boulder Colorado who's company, @Last, makers of SketchUp, got Googled thanks to an add-on for Google Earth!



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 1:40:39 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Has this ever happened to you? An idea pops into your head and you open up your web browser to check it out. But because the home page of your web browser is pointed to a news website, the minute you see the home page filled with news (good and bad) you completely forgot what it was that you had meant to look up only one second ago.

This happens to me way too often.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 1:14:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Two new contests were announced.

Made in Express  $10,000 for the most clever app written in VS2005 Express and/or SQL Server 2005 Express.

Mash it Up with Atlas Smartphones and XBOX 360's are the giveaways for getting up to your eyeballs with Atlas and doing something cool. The newest Atlas CTP was just released, too! more on atlas.asp.net.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 12:00:25 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Michele Leroux Bustamante has posted code samples from her sessions at SD West. The posts keep coming and coming. I think she did something like 40 sessions! Not really, but it looks like she did 5 regular sessions and 2 half day sessions. I do not know how on earth she manages that. It must be an IDesign thing, since Michele and Brian Noyes and Juval Lowy also do a zillion talks each at DevConnections.

Speaking of DevConnections - it's only in 2 more weeks! April 2-5. I'll be doing three talks this time, Advanced Data Access in ADO.NET 2.0, Building WSE 3.0 Secured Web Services that can talk to WCF and Five Supposedly Scary things in .NET. I have taken liberties with the actual session titles, but that's the gist of it. There is going to be a lot of amazing content.

At the end of the month, Michele and I get together again, along with Jason Beres, Scott Hanselman and Bill Hatfield to present a full day of talks at Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee. This is a full day user group event put on by the WI.NET Users Group.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 20, 2006 11:45:53 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, March 18, 2006

From Larry O'Brien's blog:

Oh well. The writing had been on the wall, but today it's official: Software Development magazine, which I founded in 1992, has been absorbed by Dr. Dobb's Journal and will cease publication. Ironically, SD was born when Dr. Dobb's absorbed Computer Language after Miller Freeman (now CMP) bought DDJ. Between the two events, that means more than 150,000 subscribers who signed up for Computer Language or Software Development and winded up with DDJ. Just saying.

Larry also has some follow up posts:

The Imminent Death of Developer's Magazines Commenting on a blog post by Eric Sink
Why DDJ Won't Change:Commenting on a blog post by Joel Spolsky



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Saturday, March 18, 2006 10:24:51 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

DevSource has started  new video interview series called Great Minds in Development. This is not more podcasts featuring our friends in the .NET community chatting away, but interviews with some of the thought leaders in the development world. The first video is online... [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Saturday, March 18, 2006 10:00:38 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, March 17, 2006

My parents had to put down one of their dogs earlier this week. Beautiful Inka. Two days later, the owners of Alex, one of Inka's brothers, had to put him down, too. Inka and Alex were 10 1/2 which is pretty old for a newfie. They were from a litter of 13 that I will never forget -good ol' Pippa had all those puppies all at once.

We put a little rememberance of Inka and Alex on the home page of my parent's kennel website.My mom, dad and I had fun writing this and giggling about these beautiful dogs who have such big personalities. So much easier than bawling some more. www.blueheavennewfoundlands.com



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, March 17, 2006 9:43:36 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

People always ask me what we do up here in Vermont. Well, here are FOUR jobs related to .NET so we aren't just boiling syrup and milking the cows all day, y'know! I noticed these local IT jobs in 7Days this week. One is a .NET Developer job that I have posted before. Here's a link right to 7Days classifieds for IT jobs.

1) I see my favorite local software company, Synergy is hiring again. I worked there when they were just porting to VB6 and frustrated because .NET was released while they were in the middle of it. But now they are looking for .NET developers. Yay!

2) Blue House Group - a local consulting company that does great work and is in hip little Richmond, VT (12 miles from Burlington) has a web designer positions (as well as a few other jobs). They are also knee deep in .NET at Blue House along with the other technologies they use.

3) HazMed has a .NET Developer (C#) postion that is in 7Days but not on their website. They do have a SysAdmin job on their website.

4) ASP Developer wanted (.NET skills a plus) at CPA Site Solutions.

 



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, March 17, 2006 11:01:59 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
TFS was released today for those that have been waiting. I know someone in my user group was asking about this recently. More from Soma.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Friday, March 17, 2006 10:50:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, March 16, 2006
Is winter back? Well, it's pretty but I can't go out and ski in the woods even though we got lots of fluffy snow overnight and this morning. My skis would just go right down to the rocks and grass. Oh well. Bad for the maple syrup makers right now but its still early. They require cold nights and warm days for the sap to flow (up to the top when it warms up, down to the roots when it cools down.... each pass is a chance for the sap to flow out of the taps). But we had days and days of warm days and warm nights and now cold nights and cold days. Neither is the right combination! I did see the thick plumes of smoke coming out of a sugarhouse on monday. I wanted o stop and roll down my window so I could smell the sweet sugary smoke, but it wasn't an option at the time. Did you know that it takes 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup?

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Thursday, March 16, 2006 10:54:36 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Someone asked me about ADO.NET indexing which encouraged me to write about some of the amazing results of some performance tests I have done comparing VS2003 and VS2005's DataTable indexing. [Read more...]

[A DevLife post]



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Thursday, March 16, 2006 9:53:59 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I am astonished that INETA has had to go so far as to have a prize drawing to encourage user group leaders to report on the health of .NET user groups (thereby also helping INETA to show it's sponsors what type of reach they are getting which is a VERY reasonable thing for a sponsor to ask).

Once a month, it is a tiny itty bitty task. All they ask is that you identify yourself, your user group, the date of your meeting and the # of attendees. Additionally, they ask what your current membership count is and if you are so inclined, you can even leave comments.

One minute? Two?

So why is it hard to get u.g. leaders to do this? Do you find it invasive? That's the only thing I can come up with because certainly it's not much of an imposition. Even if INETA did nothing more than provde the speaker bureau - that's huge. And this is just about the only thing they ask in return other than eval forms when they send a speaker (and pizza) to your group three times a year. So what if they ask every month - not just months that you have INETA speakers. And even with that, you cannot imagine the time and energy that the INETA volunteers put in to running this organization. And for what? For you - for your user groups. So a little survey each month is not much to ask as far as I'm concerned. I'm very happy to share that info with them.

Really, I am very curious why bribery is necessary? Not that I would turn down a $100 gift card for my user group (though I wish I could use it at the local pizza joint)!

Feel free to leave comments or link back to this post if you want to blog a reply.



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Thursday, March 16, 2006 8:26:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, March 14, 2006

I took Tasha and Daisy to the vet today. They are both newfoundlands. Tasha turned 12 in December and Daisy turned 11. Tasha was a "rescue" who I adopted when she was 2 1/2 yrs old. She had come from a home where she literally had lived in the back yard her whole life. She was kind of naughty when she first came to live with me having never had any freedom - so she ran away a lot. But I knew that if I couldn't get through to her, nobody would have enough love and patience to do it. So I took her to dog training and let her sleep on my bed. Soon she loved me so much she just wanted to be good and grew up to be a quintissential newfie - the gentle giant. Now Tasha is 12 years old, which is very unusual for a newfie to live this long, and other than some "old age" stuff ... loss of muscle mass - most noticably on her head, a little swelling around the knees and having slown down a little -she is in really great shape. She's happy, healthy, still runs around and has a great appetite. Even her eyesite and hearing are still awesome. Today at the vet, after verifying all of this to be true, he also told me that her heart was perfect. PERFECT! :-)

Daisy is 11. We kind of stole Daisy from my parents two summers ago. She came for a visit and stayed. Daisy is astonishing in her own right. Except for grey eyelashes and a grey mustache, she looks and acts and moves like a five year old dog. When we go outside in the morning she jumps up and down until I throw her bumper for her which she races after and then prances around with when she gets it. Daisy floats up and down stairs - very different than Tasha who has to kind of bounce her back legs together to get up and down. She too is an amazing dog and this very experienced vet finds it hard to believe she is 11 years old.

I just needed to record that.



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 2:25:42 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, March 13, 2006

Though the camera seems to be trained on the speaker and never the screen. I keep waiting to SEE what he's talking about. Maybe someone will notice and do something about it.

Maybe by the time Sahil Malik is on a little later, they'll have it fixed

http://www.ajax.sys-con.com/



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Monday, March 13, 2006 10:30:44 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, March 11, 2006

I was at a party last night and someone asked me “so, have you got an Origami yet? Heh heh.” [Read more...]

[A DevLife post]



Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org
Saturday, March 11, 2006 9:06:01 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  |