With most conferences,speakers need to submit their powerpoints way in advace of the conferences. Attendees are provided with books filled with the printouts of the decks so that they can take notes during the conference. It is not uncommon with a new talk to fine tune it between that early preparation and the actual time you your presentation.

Though this has only happened once, it struck me (and stuck in my brain) when an attendee wrote on an eval that it was a pain that the slides in my talk were different than the book.

So this time around,rather than hoping that I'm going to remember in the middle of a talk and say "oh, I changed this slide a little (for your benefit)" I am just putting tiny little notes on the bottom of modified slides: "This slide is slightly modified from the original printed version".

Hopefully that will mean one less negative comment this time around!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I now have built three VPCs to be used as bases for various testing. I can make a copy of a VPC and then use that copy to install "dangerous" bits - eg betas, ctps etc.

My first VPC is a clean Windows XP SP2 system with all of the current updates.

My second VPC is that plus .NET 2.0,  VS2005 RTM and SQL Server Express RTM. I can the throw things like Atlas or WinFX on top of them. It took quite a long time to install this. So I won't have to do that again.

My third VPC is #2 PLUS the WinFX February CTP Components , SDK and VS2005 Extensions for WinFX. I plan to experiment with WCF (and need a very clean copy of this for a DevConnections session) with and without Atlas installed on top of it (ergo I want two) and also WPF.

I spent about two days creating them and then tucked them away onto my 200GB drive. Then I can make a copy on my external hard drive and go to town.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

My quiet (snowless boo hoo hoo) winter at home is winding down. Soon I will have to start tugging at the roots that have been deeply embedding me into my beautiful little place in the world and flit about the country ...err continent, that is.

It all begins again in about a week.

April 3 - 6: DevConnections in Orlando (I have 1 talk at ASPConnections and 2 at VSConnections)

April 10: Not a trip, but I'll be presenting at Vermont.NET!

April 11-13 - Maybe attend  Devscovery in NYC.

April 22: Deeper in .NET in Milwaukee.This will be new for me - a big one day user group event with myself and 4 other speakers that I am honored to be included with (Michele on Indigo, Scott Hanselman on ASP.NET seen through dasBlog, UI guru Jason Beres and ASP.NET book author Bill Hatfield)! I also get to spend a few days visiting a good friend.

May 2: Huntsville, AL to speak at the HUNTUG User Group run by Lori McKinney (an INETA event). I am looking forward to this as well, though I won't be doing the usual INETA speaker visit to the nearby Space Museum. nor two attractions that are more up my alley: Cathedral Caverns State Park and Burritt Museum.

May 9-11: Montreal for DevTeach! Yay yay! One of my favorite conferences. It's less than 3 hours from my house. Many of my friends are there as speaker and attendees and Montreal is beautiful in the spring! Then after that Alan Griver and Beth Massi are coming home with me for visit and Alan will be speaking at VTdotNET. Yay.

June - A whirlwind. I'm hoping to announce soon a Vermont Code Camp in early June. Then there's TechEd and then I'm off on a 10 day trip that is a combined vacation and INETA tour (with my hubby) to the Atlantic Provinces in Canada. I have always wanted to go to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and have been eyeing the Bay of Fundy in New Brunswick for years, as well. I will be visiting New Brunswick.NET, the .NET Nova Scotia and finally We Develop.NET in St. John's Newfoundland.

The list goes on. I have a whole bunch of INETA gigs scheduled through September already and am talking with Thom Robbins about a possible mini-code camp, too.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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!!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

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