DevConnections (combination of 6 conferences: ASP, Visual Studio, Mobile, Sharepoint, SQL Server and Office) is only a few weeks away. I'm going out to present 2 sessions for ASP Connections (Managing & Deploying ASP.NET 2 Sites and Asynchronous ASP.NET), one for Mobile Connections (an advanced Ink on the Web talk) and a 1/2 day post-conference workshop on Advanced ADO.NET 2.0.

I'm sorely disappointed that my flight schedule is having me miss the Monday night keynotes, especially this one that Scott Guthrie and Brian Goldfarb are giving: Windows Vista, the 2007 Office System, and ASP.NET AJAX.

There is going to be so much going on at DevConnections, including some Microsoft "hear it for the first time in the U.S.") announcements from Microsoft. I hope I don't end up holing myself up in my room trying to perfect my talks again (so that means they need to be perfect before I go to the airport! ). Of course, there's always the lure of the gambling tables and the girlie shows (just kidding - not really interested in either), but still Vegas is certainly a fun place to be when you do want to take a little break from the geek fest!

From Russ Helfand, creator of the CSS Friendly Control Adapter Toolkit, announcing a new version! (Of course, this comes just weeks after my article about them in aspnetPRO is published , but I knew that was coming...)

I'm pleased to announce that we have upgraded the CSS Friendly ASP.NET 2.0 Control Adapter kit.  The new release is Beta 3. 

The whole kit now serves as a sample of designing markup and CSS that scales gracefully. This includes scaling of the menus, trees and forms.

All forms rendered by the adapters (think: membership controls) now implement a solution for the accesskey issue. It’s simple but incredibly effective… and totally addictive.

There are other things in beta 3 besides accessibility improvements. The TreeView adapter now restores the tree’s expansion state. That’s a huge usability improvement but more importantly it’s our first demonstration of an adapter that leverages the ASP.NET view state framework.

To get familiar with all the new features, please read the "what's new" section of the kit's home page at http://www.asp.net/cssadapters.  Also, try out the "quick cool demos" listed in that section.  They are:

I don't pay much attention to Facebook (could it be that I'm about twice the age of the average user? ), but thought it was intersesting that they expose web services for devs to tap into. Here's an article on DevSource by Tim Stevens called Using the Facebook API: Social Networking in .NET
.

I finally discovered a better way to debug javascript, after 5 years of clobbering my way through this process. [Read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

I know very few people who can write sentences like this:

"I've been messing a lot with time zones lately, planning my trips to South Africa, Spain, and Denmark...." [http://www.gregcons.com/KateBlog/TimeZones.aspx]

This represents TechEd South Africa, TechEd Europe and then some more .NET love in Denmark. It also represents quite a lot of frequent flier miles!

I am 99% with Kate on this one. I've always wanted to go to New Orleans and was excited about the added aspect of TechEd 2007 having a major impact on the city's economy. The only thing Kate & I disagree on is that I'd like to see it in Burlington, VT. Of course, Burlington has no means of hosting an event even 1/4 this size. Oh well. Hawaii?

I spent 2 1/2 hours yesterday trying to arrange a warranty replacement for a Dell monitor. The first hour was used merely trying to find the right means of contacting Dell for this problem. In the end, I succeeded, but there is something seriously wrong with how their info is managed... read more...

[A DevLife post]

I have WS-FTP Pro 7.0 on both multiple computers as well as the newly released IE7.

One computer has no troubles. The other gives me this interesting error when I try to start it up:

The only solution is to click ok and then kill the app from task manager.

Luckily, I found this thread in the Ipswitch forums (which also decries a lack of support from WS-FTP) where a user (who is clearly a pit-bull and chose not to give up on finding a solution - thank you Suzy!!!) has managed to find how to fix the problem, which calls for "hiding" an outdated file.

navigate to where your WSFTP is installed e.g.
c:/program files/ipswitch/ws_ftp professional
and rename PSAPI.dll to PSAPI.dll.old and then reboot

It worked. Yay.

We offer competitive salaries, medical, dental, 401K, and more in a dynamic yet relaxed work place. www.nexusenergy.com.

A pointer to a great blog source of Vista Tips & Tricks and my husband's (a non-techie) upgrade to IE7... read more...

[A DevLife post]

The schedule for this weekend's Code Camp in Waltham, Mass is live. This Code Camp will be packing all of the sessions into one day - Saturday, rather than spread out over two.

If you haven't registered to attend yet, you can register here.

I'll be doing three talks throughout the day:

9am: Managing and Deploying ASP.NET 2.0 Website: This talk is aimed at sorting out all of the options for creating, compiling and deploying ASP.NET 2.0 websites along with tips for making the best choices.

1:15 pm: Persisting Ink on the Web. If you are interested in creating ASP.NET Web apps with ink capabilities for Tablet PC users, this session offers a slew of information about what to do with the ink once it's collected. Handling ink in a website is very different than working with it in a windows application. This session will deal with things like how to deal with postbacks, sending the ink to another web page, storing ink into a database and retriving it and getting ink to and from web services and more.

4:45 pm: Handling Big Data in ADO.NET 2.0: Most demos and samples for ADO.NET deal with small amounts of data and simplistic functions. This session will take a look at how to design and code your data layer for dealing with real-world, high-end, data-intensive applications. We’ll look at some advanced patterns for handling more sophisticated scenarios such as updating huge amounts of data, leveraging middle-tier caching for heavy traffic Web sites, and an inmemory query processor that the ADO.NET team has built that we can use today. Much of what will be shown will leverage features of ADO.NET 2.0 as well as some of the performance improvements that have been made to the internals.

The new post cache subsititution functionality of ASP.NET 2.0 is one of the features of ASP.NET 2 that doesn't get a lot of attention, but I am quite fond of it. So I wrote an article about it for DevSource and it is now online. You can read it here.

The door bell rang this morning and when I went to answer, I saw the Jehova's Witnesses literature in the hand of the stranger at the door and had the usual dread of wondering how I can politely get her to not take up too much of my time telling me something I'm not interested in hearing. I really can't do it any other way, even when I know that by coming onto my property, invading my space, demanding my attention and time is more rude than I could possibly be anyway.

Luckily, it wasn't necessary. She handed me her materials and said "I'd like to leave you this important message". I said "thanks" and she just smiled, said goodbye and left.

At the hotel I am staying at in Sofia, a conference is now going on. It is a realtor conference. I talked with a realtor from Washington D.C. to find out what this conference is all about and was impressed with  the similarity of what we are both doing here.The conference is being held by FIABCI, which is an international real estate federation. The economy here in Bulgaria is really emerging, as we are discovering wrt the software industry here. Real Estate is the next wave, but the realtors here don't have the organization and business tools that are common in the U.S. and other areas of the world. MLS is a big example. The conference is a two-way street, with the local realtors teaching the internationals about the market here and the internationals sharing their experience and ideas with the locals. It's so familiar and the woman I talked with was clearly as excited about what she is doing here as I am about having come here to participate in DevReach. Here is a link to the actual conference.

I know that the software industry isn't the only one that is going global and has people who are championing it, rather than fearing it. But my personal experience is only limited to that and it makes me happy to personally see this happening in other industries as well.

I hope that someday INETA (and I am referring to all of the INETA regions as a whole) can realize the level and effectiveness of an organization like FIABCI.

VT Teddy Bear is looking for a .NET programmer.  It is looking for a .NET software developer with database backend experience.  The job descriptions should be on its web site soon.  Interested candidates should send cover letter and resume to:

The Vermont Teddy Bear Company®
Attn: Human Resources
6655 Shelburne Road, Shelburne, VT 05482
or fax to 802-985-1330
or email in MS Word format to jobs@vtbear.com

First of course I want to say how wonderful the DevReach conference was, how impressive the developer community is and what a great time we all had participating in it. It was totally worth coming all the way here.

In addition to the two-day conference, the Bulgarians have kept us busy. Here are some pics from the last few days.

Sunday night. Dinner at a classic Bulgarian restuarant where we had our first encounter with Bulgarian food ...

...and the famous Bulgarian Raika (brandy).

Monday morning. The start of DevReach! There were about 300 attendees at this conference. This is a pic during the keynote. You can see Goksin Bakir (raised arm) and Stephen Forte in the foreground. Although the conference was in English, the keynote was in Bulgarian. Luckily, someone was translating for us. Much of what we heard was about how strong the developer community is there which we were happy to be experiencing.

Monday night. We are driven up a long and windy mountain road for another amazing Bulgarian experience at Vodenitzata. More of the abundant and delicious food, more Rakia and this time also folk music and folk dancers as well as firewalkers! The taxi ride back to the hotel was a little wild - even for this ex-NYC dweller.

Tuesday afternoon. After finishing my talks, Stephen, Richard and I were taken to see the new Telerik offices. They building is not complete yet but it is going to be great. They have beautiful mountain views, lots of light and balconies galore. Here are some of the construction workers who are making this happen.

One thing about Sofia that is hard to get used to is the stray dogs. There are thousands of them. But they are part of the landscape, tame and somehow get fed and avoid the overwhelming traffic. There are 2 million people in Sofia, which is a lot more than the city was originally designed for. Therefore there it is pretty crowded but there is a ton of construction going on.

Tuesday night. After the closing panel of the conference, we went to yet another wonderful classic Bulgarian restaurant. No pics as I was travelling light that night. After that, the old farts went back to the hotel and I went on to a small nightclub with Angus Logan and Svetlozar, another one of the Telerik partners, to meet up with his wife and friends. I finally begged for mercy and was put into a cab back to my hotel, since I'm one of the old farts, too.

Wednesday was tourist day. Yay! Here is a view of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia built in the early 1900's to commemmorate the liberation of Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire. Of course,  you can't take picture inside, but needless to say, it was amazing.

We toured around Sofia all morning, visiting a Russian church and then a coffee shop, part of a chain that looks modeled after Starbucks.

Later we drove to Rila - a 2 hour drive on roads that are under construction (paid for by the EU who wants them improved for people driving through Bulgaria to get to other EU countries... and note that Bulgaria beocmes part of the EU on Jan 1.)

I thought seeing the goats wandering freely by the side of the road (and later some cows and horses) reminded my quite a lot of my trip to South Africa last year. Even just the dry grass here makes it look like I could have taken the picture in So. Africa.

I saw this woman when we were headed up the mountain. Mostly everyone we saw was modern, but she is certainly the image many of us may have.

Before we went into the monastery compound, we had yet another huge bulgarian meal. You can't imagine the food that kept coming out of the kitchen. We finally begged for mercy even though it was all amazing. The glass that looks like it was milk was really yogurt. It is also a known hangover cure. The pitcher is yogurt, too.

Here are a bunch of photos of the monastery. Inside this cathedral we were astounded. (Again no pics in doors). I love the stiped paining everywhere - it reminds me of persian pottery.

The end. IT's late. I'll post some more in another day or two.

The best part of my journey to Sofia was flying out of Munich over the Alps. For a good half hour we were right over the Alps and not too far up in elevation, so we could see so much very clearly. The rocky craggy mountains, the mountain lakes and streams, the switchback roads going up a few of them.

I had a window seat of course.

At one point the pilot said that if we looked out the window of the right side of the plane (where I was) we could see the Mediterranean Sea, and lo and behold, I did!

I was fortunate to be seated with two world travellers so we had a very engaging talk. One works for EU Customs and is coming to Bulgaria to help their customs officials prepare for becoming part of the EU in January.

We are in a lovely, elegant hotel.

I loved seeing this when i entered my room, something that belongs in the MOMA. As usual, my photography skills don't do it justice.

I had a mentoring client ask me a question along these lines. She's very ready for the next steps after drag 'n drop .NET. I have been thinking all week about how she can learn the every day things she should know.  [Read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

By tomorrow afternoon, we'll know if I really make it to Bulgaria or not for the DevReach conference, but even though my flight, which I reserved on August 4th, is tonight, there still is no ticket.

Here's what happened.

Reservations made (8 weeks to go)

Booked flights on United.com travelling on Austrian Airlines from JFK to SOF 8 weeks in advance.

Flight cancelled (2 weeks to go)

Two weeks before the trip, I get an email from (not Austrian and not United but ) the person I was flying with to say the flights were cancelled.

I called United and they re-booked me on flights that were highly inconvenient but I was told there was no option. When I recieved the email confirmation, they had messed up the flights, with 6 legs rather than 4 and some of them showing flights TO Bulgaria on my return date.

I decided to call Austrian and learned that their reservations actually have office hours! 9-5 est. So I waited to the next day.

Booked on new flights/new airline

Austrian fixed everything up and got me on the flights that made sense for me, though now on Lufthansa,  and sent me a link to a website where I could see that my new flights were confirmed.

No tickets? (1 week to go)

One week later I get a call from United saying my flight was cancelled.

It turned out that they were telling me finally about the original cancellation and had no clue about the new flights that Austrian had changed me to.

Again, Austrian was closed, so this time I called Lufthansa directly.

I was told that I was still confirmed on the Lufthansa flights but no ticket had been issued and only United could issue the tickets.

So back on the phone with United who said that they had absolutely no record of the Lufthansa flights, no access to the seats I was telling them about and that Lufthansa had no right to confirm me on their OWN FLIGHT, since I had originally booked through United. I asked how it was possible that Lufthansa could not promise me seats on their own airplanes!

New tickets

Finally, a supervisor found my Lufthansa reservations and said they would fix evertyhing up and issue me new tickets.

No tickets (4 days to go)

A few days later I looked on the United site and it had a trip with 4 legs over (the two old ones and the two new ones) and 4 legs returning (again, 2 old and 2 new!)

New tickets

I called united again and after a while on the phone was told it was straightened out and I should see the correct information on the site if I logged out and logged back in. But even after two more days, that wasn't the case.

Flight info changed?

This morning, I received a phone call saying to call United about a change in my reservation. That did not make me happy. However, when I called, I discovered that this was for a completely different trip that is two months away. While I was on the phone, I asked about the fact that the site was still wrong about my trip that I"m taking today and was switched over to the international desk.

No tickets (day of flight)

After a few minutes on the phone with the next person, I learned that the new tickets had still NOT BEEN ISSUED. So I would have flown to JFK tonight (that is on Jet Blue), gone over to the Lufthansa terminal and been sent home.

New tickets

So.... now, I'm still on the phone with United being told that someone from United is talking to someone from Lufthansa to make sure it's all fixed up becuase it's way too late to do anything through the regular channels again.

For the amount of time I have spent on the phone dealing with this nonsense, I probably could have paid to fly in Business class after all.

I've learned my lesson about booking non-United flights on the United website. It's still not settled and I'm really glad I'm not an A-Type personality or I may have self-combusted by now.