We Vermonters and flatlanders who live in Vermont are a bunch of tightwads when it comes to spending our hard earned money, so paying $200 for one night in Waltham for code camp was more than we could bare.

I finally gave in and booked ar oom at the Homestead Suites. What the heck. It's clean it's new it's safe and it is 1/2 the price of the Westin. No gym. Internet is $10 (so what?).

Plus the rooms are Suites, so who needs the Westin lounge anyway.

PARTY IN DAVE'S ROOM!

From a short walk today

Maples by our mailbox.

Looking down the road towards the valley.

Daisy (left) and Tasha (right).

A surprising discovery. This is a wasp hive that is about 1 1/2 feet tall. Luckily, nothing was buzzing around it so I could go up and take a picture!

Vegas used to be known for it's $5 dinner buffets and other bargains that made it a fun and very inexpensive vacation. The few times I've been there (for conferences only as it's not really my dream vacation spot), I've been astonished at how pricey everything was - especially the Vegas shows, which I just can't bring myself to buy $100+ tickets for. Markus Egger had a wake-up call when trying to plan a recent weekend in Vegas and says "who wants to stay at the Venetian when gong to Venice is cheaper?" Hear! Hear!

This is one of the most frequently asked questions on the newsgroups.

Since Verisign and Thawte do not speak "message-based security", people are always confused about buying SSL Certificates for doing WSE or WCF.

It's not just the vendors. Sometimes the people responsible for your networks are also hard to convince since message-based security just does not make sense in their world. They may not know which one is right either.

What have you had success with? What actual certificates (literally the name that the vendor applies to the cert) have you purchased from which vendors? There's a myriad of choices, but it's never easy to pick.

I was so I spent some time trying to get everything sorted back out again. Here's my take on it...

[A DevLife post]

I recently attended a meeting in Burlington aimed at small businesses to give them some ideas about what they can be leveraging on the web.... [read more]

[A DevLife post]

I just accidentally wrote a line of code that looked like this:

private boolean MyMethod(byval x as someobject)

Yes I was going for VB, but I've been doing a bunch of C# coding lately. At least I didn't hit the semi colon, too!

The funny part is I although C# doesn't come very naturally to me, there are definitely some syntax things I love. Though I still have a really hard time getting my brain to grok code like Kate writes (though that's pure C++...)

It was announced a few days ago that Bulgaria and Romania will become part of the European Union on Jan 1

So I'm sure there will be a big excitement when we arrive in Bulgaria next weekend.

Martin (who lives in Sofia) has links to more details.

By attending DevReach in Sofia Bulgaria Oct 9-10, you will be entered in the drawing.

Pretty amazing!

Google Toolbar has a new feature called notifications.

It took me a while this morning to realize that this was the service that was preventing me from starting up a 16-bit application (FoxPro 2.6).

I had turned off all types of stuff, but when I killed the process for the GoogleNotifications in my task manager, voila, the program opened up.

Just a word to the wise....

I wasn't there to witness it but I have heard from DCC Susan Wisowaty that there were 110 people at the MSDN event in Burlington yesterday. Another attendee told me she had heard it was 117. This is pretty phenomenal for a city that got axed from the schedule due to poor attendance. This is pretty phenomenal for city with a population of 50,000. This would be a good number for an event in NYC or Boston!

So, for anyone who thinks that Vermont has nothing but farmers, hippies and ski bums as it's population, think again!

 Vermont SQL Server User Group

Thanks to hard work by Chris Pels and his posse, you can now register for Code Camp 6 (as attendees and to submit sessions as a speaker).

www.thedevcommunity.org

It's Saturday & Sunday, Oct 21 - Oct 22

In the past month, I have made a number of short trips that allowed me to get away with a small carry-on bag. My big problem was that I couldn't bring toothpaste with me. I hated the idea of buying toothpaste at my destination, using a touch of it and then throwing it away. I even felt guilty doing the same with teh travel-sized toothpaste that the hotels gave me. Use a small amount and then it gets thrown away. The packaging is my real issue - I am always at odds with the convenience of our disposable habits.

On the other hand, the hassle of checking my bags just so I could have toothpaste.

My deodorant is a solid, my face soap is a bar, hotels have shampoo and I don't wear make-up. So it was really just the toothpaste that was making me dizzy.

So I was happy to see this today even though my next three trips are long ones that I will be checking my bag for anyway.

I was flipping through a magazine and getting lots of great programming advice from the article highlights. Then I realized I wasn't even looking at a coding magazine! [read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Sometimes I feel like I learn .NET one little method at a time. Today I had to do something I'd never done before and the solution was not obvious at first. [Read more ....]

[A DevLife post]

The leaves are wierd this year, so if you plan to come to Vermont to see them, definitely check out the official website to get you in the right place at the right time.

http://www.vermontvacation.com/seasons/fall.asp?bfp090601

I was looking on the United Airlines website at the prices of possibly flying to Seattle in December and had to laugh when this option popped up in the list.

For those of you who are comma challenged, this translates to 14,763,950 dollars. Oh, and this is in Economy. I wonder what the Business Class version of this flight costs?

PKC Corporation (which is a very cool company with a product developed by a man who is constantly rumored to be a Nobel prize-winner, which would be deserved, but he's not really) in Burlington is looking for a Sr. Web Developer, a Sr. Software Developer and a Technical Writer. They are a .NET shop and have been so for many years.

Find the details here (note the aspx extension on the page ).

Company
Founded in 1998, Sageworks, Inc., a Research Triangle Park-based firm, is one of the fastest-growing software and information companies in the United States. The firm has many Fortune 500 clients as well as over 4,000 accounting and financial institution customers. The company's recently patented artificial intelligence technology is the first in the World to convert financial data/numbers into concise, plain-language evaluations of business performance. To learn more, visit our corporate website at www.sageworksinc.com.

Environment
Sageworks is comprised of focused and results-oriented people who get things done. The people at Sageworks are very friendly and down-to-earth, but we are also committed to achieving our long-term objective - which is to fundamentally change the way people and companies gather and use financial data. As such, we work hard but we operate in a flat organizational structure where people are given great latitude and responsibility.

Job Qualifications
We are hiring talented software engineers to help us develop new products in the financial and banking markets. We are seeking highly motivated and intelligent software developers to help us leverage and build upon our core expert system. Experience in Microsoft technologies is required, .NET experience is a must. We seek developers who "code to live and live to code"; they must be passionate about software development. Finance and accounting experience is a plus.

Job Description
The position will require software development work:

1. The individual may perform testing/QA work initially as part of their job training.
2. The individual will perform the mundane (fix bugs) as well as the exceptional (build World Class applications).  

Technical Qualifications

.Net Framework, 1.0 & 2.0, OO methodology

C#, ASPX, JavaScript, XSLT, SQL Server 2005

The positions are located in Burlington, VT. Some travel to Raleigh, NC will be required.

Contact: Tim.Keogh@ProfitCents.com