DevConnections is coming in a little over a week. Hooray! At Tuesday's lunch, there will be a bunch of tables reserved for women so that we can all get together and meet - attendees and the women speakers. That will be fun.

I remember when I first started going to conferences, I was so excited to see other women programmers that I just wanted to meet every chick that I saw in the hallways. This will be much more subtle and less embarrassing way to achieve that!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

One of my clients just had their ISA 2000 Server upgraded to ISA 2004 and were having some weird problems and finally got to the bottom of it - HTTP Request Filtering.

Symptoms

1) There was one ASP.NET 1.1 app that was having problems with buttons on new records that did a server.transfer. But on pre-existing records, the server.transfer worked.

2) In one of the ASP classic apps, we saw a pattern (pointed out by a non-programmer who asked "what about that ampersand?"!) where hyperlink requests with multiple query parameters failed but single query parameters succeeded.

The Pattern

Thanks to the eagle eyes of that user, I went back and looked more carefully at the asp.net app. Though the server.transfer involved only one query parameter, it was the page it was coming from that was the issue since the url doesn't change with a server.transfer. And indeed, the new records had multiple parameters but the pre-existing ones did not. (I wrote this app over 3 years ago, so I definitely wasn't too fresh on it!)

The Solution

So we went back to the i.t. guy and asked him to check the HTTP Filtering in ISA for either URL length or the ampersand and wouldn't you know it - the ampersand had come over from ISA 2000 (where it was ignored) and fallen into the list of forbidden URL characters!

Ha!!

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Brad Abrams has a long list of credits for the folks who helped him create demos for this MIX session. When I was at TechEd last June, I saw a totally awesome demo in a WCF Reliablility session that also had some top talent at Microsoft involved in building the demo. The Microsoft demos for the Indigo overview talk that has been done a lot by Ari Bixhorn takes a truckload of equipment and even a mini support team to run (whereas I had some ho-hum console apps when I did that at TechEd South Africa). I spend a ridiculous amount of time on my demos  but will never have anything like the ones these guys get to pull off for their nice shiny sessions. Sheesh.

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There's a guy who didn't waste any time!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Drag, drop and type. Ooh let's do that again. Drag, drop and type. What the heck could this be about? [Read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

 

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Resolution Inc.  in Burlington

Reporting Analyst
  As Reporting Analyst, this position will be responsible for the design, programming, and analysis of reports / applications to support Resolution’s external and internal customers. Relational database experience and data analysis skills are required, as is a great team attitude. At least 3 years professional experience required. Experience with IBM AS400, Oracle, SQL, and MS Access preferred. Relational database experience and data analysis skills are required, as is a great team attitude. At least 3 years professional experience required. Experience with IBM AS400, Oracle, SQL, and MS Access preferred.

Internet Systems Architect
Resolution, Inc. is seeking an experienced, high-concept, solutions sales person to expand its considerable presence in the broadcast, publishing, educational and association markets.

 Necessary Skills: -Strong HTML & CSS skills -Strong Javascript skills including AJAX and JSON experience -Ruby programming ideally including Ruby On Rails -Experience implementing redundant file, database and application services -General web tools and languages (Python, PHP, Perl, etc.) -Experience directing a small team in a fast paced environment -Database administration (MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle) -Unix / Linux system setup and administration skills -Experience with system monitoring and management tools (Nagios, BigSister, etc.) -Systems and procedure documentation (samples required).

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

The January CTP install notes recommend installing the WinFX components before VS2005, but according to Michele Leroux Bustamante, who has done a LOT of work with WCF, if you are working with the newer (non go-live) February CTP  release, it's okay to install all of theWinFX ontop of VS2005. This is great to know because I can store a copy of a VPC with WinXp and VS2005 already installed, then use it when testing new WinFX bits as they are released.

See Michele's blog post for links and installation order.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

My husband read the CNN article this morning about the Windows Vista delay. Reading "Unlike the current Windows XP, there will be no versions designed specifically for advanced 64-bit computing, multimedia computers or Tablet PCs" he interpreted that as no TabletPC capability for Vista, which is not true at all. In fact, he knows that I am using Vista on a tablet, but thought that it was going to be removed.

TabletPC functionality is built into Vista and will not be separate. That's all this means.

I wonder how many others will misinterpret that sentence?

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It seems like just yesterday that I was asking around about how Atlas interacts with WS-Security and other WS* compliant web services created using tools like WSE or WCF. And woudntchaknowit! The Atlas version that was released just yesterday has WCF extensions built right in for seamless communication with WCF.

Oddly, I came across the link on the Atlas site today not knowing that it wasa brand spanking new page, and therefore was feeling  a bit embarrassed that I had completely missed this before!

It wasn' until I saw Steve Maine's post that I realized it hadn't been up there for long!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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

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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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!

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

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

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

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.

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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.

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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

From Larry O'Brien's blog:

SD Magazine: R.I.P.

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

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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]

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