Some big brains duke it out over objects vs databases at the DevTeach panel. Read more...

What fun to be here at DevTeach! The day started out with being woken up by the slamming of the door of a nearby hotel room - a good thing in my case since it was 7:45 and Alan Griver's LiNQ keynote was at 8am - and NOT to be missed! I took a lot of notes during his talk and I'm even more excited about LiNQ now. I'll write more about that in another post.

There is a fantastic collection of speakers here - many of whom I've become friends with over the years coming to DevTeach (and from whom I learn a lot).  Also the .NET community in Montreal is wonderful. Since I live nearby , I get to come up occasionally and am always treated to a great time by this incredibly friendly bunch!

A special thanks to Etienne Tremblay who showed me how to get my VPC talking to my laptop through a loopback adapter! Etienne was even doing a talk on virtualization today, but it was in the French track.

The weather is great. The Marriott where the conference is is a really nice hotel to be in. There are about 300 attendees this year and lots of people from across Canada.

I did a talk on writing web services today to be able to be used by wcf tomorrow to the usual small crowd of web service developers. Even though there aren't a lot of people doing WSE, they still want and need help getting it working and just because WCF is coming, people still want and need to secure their web services today. I almost missed dinner because I was so enjoying answering questions after my session of a developer who has to port his vs2003/wse2 apps to vs2005/wse3. I have been there and done that and just wanted to give him a brain dump.

Unfortunately, I have a whole bunch of work to do for some clients remotely from here, so I better get on it before I fall asleep!

WCF is so hip, even water is getting in on the act!

(sorry, just couldn't resist )

Though I sadly had to miss this weekends Code Camp 5: Code Frenzy in Waltham (stay tuned here for a report from Dave), I will get 3 days of communing with geeks up in Montreal at DevTeach. This is DevTeach's fourth year. It is a fun smallish (200-300?) conference in a beautiful city with a host of top-notch speakers. I am proud to be countedin the ranks of this great group of presenters.

The pre-con is today, the post-con on Friday, with the main conference running from Tuesday through Thursday.

Rich & I picked Alan Griver (who after successfully overseeing the phenomenal implementation of data tools into Visual Studio, has now moved on to his second love, working with he developer community)and the brilliant and [oh my god] energetic Beth Massi up at the Burlington airport last night and after a stroll on the Burlington waterfront, took them to Burlington's phenomenal traditional Chinese restaurant, A Single Pebble.

We will drive up to Montreal this afternoon and Alan is doing the keynote tomorrow morning. Beth and I have three talks each over the next three days. Thursday afternoon we head back to Burlington for the VTdotNET meeting.

It's a beautiful time of year to go to Montreal and I'm really looking forward to seeing so many people - speakers and attendees - (note to self - stop at Lake Champlain Chocolates on the way up to get some truffles for Kate) as well as attending sessions myself.

Now that I finally have some time to write a new version of the VTdotNET site, I wanted to try to get my hands on as many of the new key ASP.NET 2.0 toys as I can. [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

This little guy was wobbling through my front yard a short while ago.

(Here's a short video I also took with my camera in case you've never seen one before - 25 seconds about 1MB.)

There's a part of me (and most people who live around here) that has very evil thoughts when we see these little buggers, because we know the pain they can inflict on our curious pets and children. Apparently the most efficient means of doing this involves something like a baseball bat. Horrors! I could never.

I know that hungarian notaton is supposed to be totally uncool now, but I am just not giving up using it on controls so I can easily tell the difference between buttons, textboxes etc when I'm reading my code (or coding my code).

From hereonin (is that one, two or three words?), this blog post from Charles Petzold is what I will point to anytime somebody gives me sh*t for continuing to do this.

We got a call from our neighbor telling us there was a moose heading up the road. So we ran out and there it was just at the corner of our property. I ran back to get my camera while Rich and our neighbor Tom watched him (I think it was a male). It was bent down on it's front knees eating grass.

Though it wasn't quite dusk, I couldn't get a good picture. The flash, I now realize, was focusing on the white street sign and everything else was dark. Without the flash it was blurry. So I tried a movie. The light was perfectly fine for that somehow, but my shaky hand and the fact that my best attempt to walk towards the moose steadily was unsuccessful, rendered that pretty shaky. You can see if you want, though. It's more like your typical loch ness monster video. I sure wish Shelley had been here! (Of course I think that every time I want to take a picture of something special to share.)

It was a young moose - probably a yearling and not afraid of much - typical for moose. There are enough moose around that there is now a moose crossing sign down on the main road about 1 mile from our house.

After it wandered off into the woods, Tom and Joe (another neighbor who had come down the road to see) were excited because they could hear a woodcock in the woods. I couldn't recognize it's call among the peepers. Eventually it came out of the woods, circled around above us and then landed in our front yard and continued it's mating call (umm - no that's not why Tom and Joe were excited). Now I could easily hear it's crazy call. There is a good recording of the sound on this page from the SUNY Stony Brook website. It's the 3rd from the bottom.

The woodcock has a crazy mating ritual which includes a lot of big spirals in the sky. We'll be watching out for him in the next few weeks. Him and the darned porcupine that was also wobbling up the road during all of this. That is something we can do without.

Sitting in front of a computer all day and all night has it's downsides, not just on your social life, but after years and years and years, it can (along with age, of course) wreak havoc on your vision. I've always had 20/20 and not needed glasses. I finally got some glasses for the computer a few years ago and haven't used them a lot because they give me headaches after a full day. But now I suddenly can't even read road signs any more until I'm about 5 feet away. Afte months of complaining about this latest threshold and thinking minor adjustments to my environment will correct the effects of strain on my eyes (with my husband laughing at my denial as I near the age of 45 (6 more months - eeek!) I finally went back to the opthamologist today.

And the results are that my vision is still 20-20. So why can't I read any more? Why is the world a blur? Apparently, the optical profession is discovering that this meaurement and stigmatism are NOT the only two factors that effect our eyesight. And although I have no stigmatism and my eyesight is 20-20, I can still be having bad problems with my eyes. There are depth perception issues and even some double vision. So we'll try a few new prescriptions (yes I am talking BIFOCALS - well, transitional lenses)and I have to be more consistent in using them and I get to also have a pair plain old reading glasses at my bedside for reading at night. In that case, the magnification is really the only help I'll need.

The May 2006 INETA NORAM Newsletter is out and there is a wonderful article in there by INETA Speaker Kathleen Dollard on a recent 3-user group tour to the Gulf Coast region. Kathleen also donated all of her honorariums for the user group events to local organizations and makes some suggestions how we can continue to help this still devasted area.

Also in the newsletter is information about the success of Deeper in .NET which was a full day event put on by the Wiscosin .NET user group. Scott Isaacs is eager to share with other user group leaders his secret to success!

The 2nd Alabama Code Camp was held recently also and there is an article written by Huntsvillian (had to becareful ont to type Huntsvillain) Dan Wygant about that event as well. The article is accidentally anonymous. I'll update this post when I get the name of the person who wrote it. Maybe we can get the online editionof the newsletter updated, too.

If you are not on the list  to receive the newsletter you can read it here.

I've been reading Eric Sink's collection of blog posts and articles (with additional commentary) in his recently published book "The Business of Software" (APress) and I'm very pleased that these have been published this way. Though I have seen many of these online, I don't believe I have actually read too many of them all the way through. This is such a big problem with anything on-line because when you are online there is so much info coming at you and it's too hard to stay focused. So if something isn't a quick read, you think "okay, I'll read it later" and later never happens. Then it get's lost, buried in the past. [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Today I flew from Burlington to Detroit to Huntsville, Alabama to speak at the Huntsville VS.NET User Group. Lori McKinney was a wonderful host. Lori reads my blog and knows about my donut woes and actually bought me my very own doughnuts (for people who leave the state to go to work!) - yes dOUGHnuts, not just donuts. She also put together a goodie bag of great Huntsville mementos. Huntsville is an incredibly historic city with amazing antebellum buildings juxtaposed against the space center where things like space shuttles are designed. Here's a Kate Gregory style photo of my treats except it's on the hotel room desk not the bed.

She was also thoughtful in putting some late night snacks in the bag which was great because I didn't eat very much pizza during the meeting and was a little hungry when I got back. Thanks Lori.

Although I hear that most of the INETA speakers stay at the Marriott by the Space Center so they can be near and go there before they leave, I opted for the Sheraton that is literally IN the airport. But I did get a post-meeting tour and got to see some rocket ships. Okay that was pretty cool!

The user group was great. I got some great feedback too  that will make me think twice about showing HOW Pablo Castro's awesome query processor works and just show it do it's magic. His code is so well documneted, that the few people who might want to see the internals can discover that for themselves later. Dave Burke would laugh. He teases me about the starry eyed look I get when I talk about ADO.NET and tries to remind me that not everyone finds the internals as fascinating as I do (which is very important to remember when speaking to a user group with broad variety of interests and experience. Korby Parnell swears that I said 'excited" 23 times in my 90 minute ADO.NET talk at Deeper in .NET. A little embarrassing, but hopefully in a good way.

There were definitely some ringers in the group who asked some questions I couldn't answer off the top of my head. With all of the high tech companies here, there are some amazingly smart people in the user group. I told them that if I wasn't a walking encyclopedia, at least I was a walking rolodex and I can find someone to answer the questions for me. So I will blog those q's and a's in the near future.

Thanks to the Huntsville VS.NET group for being so very warm and welcoming. And thanks to INETA for getting me here!

Software Engineer positon in the Lebanon, New Hampshire. The qualified candidate will work as a member of a software development team designing, developing and unit testing company applications. Company applications provide billing, account management and energy analysis functionality for utility customers.

Requirements
The successful applicant will possess the following qualifications:

• 2 + years software development and programming experience
• Experience in programming with VB.NET and/or C#, ASP.NET, JavaScript, XML and XSLTs
• Experience with SQL, source control software, and Visual Studio required. Experience with build and installation tools a plus
• Experience in maintaining code written by others
• Strong problem solving skills

We are looking for a candidate with some software development experience who is very excited about growing their skills within a fast-paced environment. The ideal candidate for this position is looking to develop software in a collaborative, team environment using solid software development processes and practices. They communicate well and also have good writing skills, as they will be called upon to document technical details. This candidate has strong personal management skills and is willing to handle multiple assignments that include new development and maintenance.
A BSCS or BSEE is strongly preferred.

If you would like more information regarding this opening feel free to call or send me a message.

Paolo Aurilio
Senior Recruiting Consultant
TechFind, Inc.
P.O. Box 626
Natick, MA. 01760

paolo@techfind.com

(508) 647-0111x14

The "News Quirks" column of this weeks edition of Seven Days (Vermont's weekly indie) has a interesting story on reducing the stress of public speaking. The story is at the bottom of the page.

I was flipping through the latets Forbes Small Business (May 2006) this morning and nearly fell out of my chair when I read the last sentence of this letter to the editor. It was in reference to a recent issue filled with a number of articles on women-owned businesses. I can't believe the guy actually signed his name and business name, too!

As a senior man in the small-business world (I'm 64), I read with great interest your articles about the growth of woman-owned businesses. You discount why men succeed at a greater rate than women - which I think is because men are more realistic. From the time they are little girls, most women are taught that looks, rather than learning to be smart, matter in business. Women cake on a fake face every day to alter their looks, yet expect everyone, especially men, to comply with feminine prerogatives. That has a chilling effect on business negotiations. Incessant narcisism is rampant in the feminine mind, and it can and does cloud business judgement.

Richard Royce
President
VenturEXPO Group
Pasadena, Calif.

I wonder if he knows that the Narcissism began with a man named Narcissus.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Alentus has always been one of the ASP.NET hosts out in the front of the pack. It is where my own website and also the Vermont.NET site is hosted for nearly 4 years.

I just happened to cruise to their home page and saw that it has been totally spiffed up! That struck me because I have watched their "visual branding" evolve over the years. They really now finally have a good solid look that evokes the professionals that they are.

I also see they're now hosting WordPress and DotNetNuke.

They now have a basic $8.95 ASP.NET 2.0 hosting plan. I tend to stay the heck away from hosting that is that low-priced because it is usually cheap for a reason. But this is no "budget" host. They are very technical and knowledgable about ASP.NET.

Though they offered to let me have some space on a test ASP.NET server before RTM, I have been too busy to update any of my sites. But a new VTdotNET site is in the works and it is time! Yay.

Kudos guys.

Last week I had to send in all of my paperwork for my business quarterly taxes. There's the 941 to the Feds,  a tax & withholding to the State of Vermont Dept ofo Taxes and one other to the Vermont Dept of Employment and Training.

I inadvertantently switched the checks for the two Vermont agencies, sending the E&T check to the tax people and their check to E&T. I am a sole proprietor ... these are not big checks.

I actually got a phone call from someone this morning telling me that she had the right form, but the wrong check and she was going to "pink it over" (office internal mail) to the tax department. A phone call! Can you imagine? So I called the other department which is more automated and won't be able to get their hands on the check I sent them - it will just get processed, but they will send me a refund. So I called the first woman back who was so nice and told her I would just send her a new check. No forms, no notes no explanation. She said just put my employer i.d. on the check and she'll know what to do with it.

I know people with larger companies have issues with doing business in this tiny state, but it suits me just fine!

I just took a look to see how the schedule is filling out for Code Camp 5 in Waltham, MA next weekend and was really impressed!

The stats

• 47 sessions
• 5 tracks
• 19 speakers
• 3 out of towners (I think that's right)
• 1 speaker who seems to be planning to do 6 sessions - maybe Thom is just supposed to select from them...

This is definitely something that's on my mind a lot. I'm not marketing person and it's not something I've been tasked with by a marketing person or the TabletPC team. It's just something that keeps popping up and is very interesting to me.

This weekend while visiting friends outside of Madison, WI after Deeper in .NET, I learned that my friend's partner, a painting contractor who is extremely non-technical, has a TabletPC. [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]