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[A DevLife post]

There are dreams that are common for people; the one where you are flying, the one where you suddenly realize you have no clothes on and the one where you walk into college or high school class and there is a big test and you realize you haven't been to any classes all year.

Since I've been speaking at conferences, the last one of those has shifted, not once but twice.

I have often dreamt that I walked into a room to do a conference session and realized I hadn't even prepared it!

Last night I dreamt that I gave a new talk at a user group and was about to give it again about 1/2 hour later. I thought the talk had gone really well. While I was setting up to do the 2nd iteration of the talk, I asked someone (I think it was Dave Noderer) how he thought the first talk went. "Okay," he told me, "but I think it would have been nice if you had done some demos."

Luckily something woke me up from my sleep while I was trying to figure out how I was going to solve this problem with only about 10 minutes before the session started.

I do actually have a talk that is totally codeless; it is a session that explains some basic security concepts. But in this dream, I was doing a talk on ADO.NET, so no code demos probably wasn't such a good thing.

In December, Deer Leap Books in Bristol VT , a wonderful local independent bookstore, closed it's doors. It wasn't for lack of local support, but it still wasn't enough to compete with Amazon, etc.

Today, I saw in the local paper that another fabulous indy bookstore, The Book Rack & Children's Pages (this one in Essex, VT) is also closing. Very sad. I thought their formula was strong enough to keep them going. (Here's the article.)

These are wonderful community places. The store's owner is going to get involved with a recently formed organization called Local First Vermont, to help other Vermont businesses.

The Flynn is our major arts center in Burlington. They have an urgent need for some tech support. If you know anyone that can fill this, send them their way!

Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

Computer Support Assistant

Job Description

This is a temporary job needed immediately. This person will be responsible for on-site user support for various software and hardware related issues. We are looking for someone who has enough technical knowledge to relieve some of the technical support issues from the current staff. Some data entry may be required. The qualifications for this job include:

·        Experience supporting users in a variety of applications including Microsoft Word, Excel, and Outlook. 

·        Experience with Windows XP and Windows 2003. Experience with Macintosh OS helpful.

·        Experience supporting a variety of hardware issues including HP printer support.

·        Excellent troubleshooting and decision-making skills.

·        Strong communication skills and ability to prioritize and multitask.

High School Diploma and experience in Information Technology is a must.

30-40 hours per week, for 3-6 months.  Flexibility with schedule possible.

Send resume and cover letter to:

Carol Custard

Systems Support Specialist

Flynn Center for the Performing Arts

153 Main Street

Burlington, VT 05401

Rev 01/29/07

Frances Allen's Turing award has rightfully created a big buzz as she is the first female in the award's 40 year history to get this incredibly prestigous technology award. (I love Larry O'Brien's comment about Grace Hopper (which Kate pointed out to me)!)

But you probably didn't hear that the Vermont Engineer of the Year award, which has been in place for 46 years went to its' first female recipient this year, too.

Katherine Norris worked at IBM for 38 years. She started in Fishkill in 1967 and moved up to Vermont to work at the IBM plant eleven years later. She retired only last year.

Can you imagine being a woman in Engineering at MIT in the 60's? That's not just engeineering, it's pioneering!

Read more in this Burlington Free Press article.

Yah - sounds like a paid message but really, I'm so loving PPT 2007. Here's one reason why...

[A DevLife post]

Did I really forget to blog this? I know I have sent out emails to VTdotNET members, but we now have TWO MSDN events in March right here in Burlington.

In addition to the "classic" MSDN event on March 13th (Vista/.NET 3.0/Office 2007 Development) [register here: http://www.msdnevents.com/march/]

...

there is the Chris & Bob Road Show.

Chris Bowen (our new D.E.) and Bob Familiar, also fo Microsoft New England, will be presenting a full day of .NET 3.0 development. It's free. it's at the sheraton. It's March 1st. Here are details and registration info.

You can thank Bove's Restaurant for this being on our schedule. Chris is an addict!

The Waltham Westin is our favorite place to stay when we go to Code Camp in Waltham, MA. The next one, Code Camp 7: Deer in the Headlights! is coming Mar 31 - Apr 1.

The Westin has  a great bar/lounge area so it's a nice place to hang out with all the CC geeks! Breakfast is pretty expensive, but there's always Dunkin Donuts!

The only problem is that it's a pricey hotel, but if you keep your eyes open, they will occasionally have specials. Last night, I happened to check (even though I already had a reserveration elsewhere) and the [online non-refundable] room rate for that weekend is now $92 before taxes.

So I've cancelled the other, and booked at the Westin along with my roomie, Laura Blood.

Frances Allen, who has a grand legacy at IBM with her work in compilers was awarded the Turing Award this year. The award has been around since 1966. She's the first woman who has ever gotten it. Very cool. Thanks to Carl Franklin for making sure I didn't miss this!

After 17 years hobbling along on a now shaky FoxPro 2.6 application, it was time to pay the piper and write a shiny new program. Was it worth the effort? Heck yeah! Read more...

A DevLife post

After 8 INETA trips (speaking at 15 user groups), two code camps (both overnight trips), conferences in Orlando, Milwaukee, Montreal, Bulgaria and Las Vegas and then summit at Microsoft - all of this in 2006, I promised myself that I was staying home for the winter. After the last trip (in early December) I was not going to travel again until DevConnections at the end of March this year. Though it ended up meaning that I had to pass on the MVP Summit in mid-March, I've stuck to my promise. (I'm sneaking past the fact that I'll be doing a quick overnight in Albany at Tech Valley .NET (about 3 hours away) in mid-March.

But I can feel it starting again already. I have my reservations for DevConnections. The day after I return from Orlando, I have to drive to Massachussets for Code Camp for the weekend and then a few weeks after that I'll be flying out to Seattle (see I get to go after all ) in April to speak at the South Sound .NET Group in Olympia. I'm skipping MIX07 but of course contemplating TechEd.

I will really relish the next month in Vermont, even if I spend most of it in front of the computer. 

I didn't realize that the VTSQL meeting originally scheduled for tonight has been re-scheduled for Wednesday night. More info at www.vtsql.org.

At a recent check-up, my doctor reminded me that now that I'm getting to be such an old lady (okay, she didn't quite put it that way) I need to be more conscientious about my calcium intake. I asked her if the half & half in my coffee counted. No. How about the small bowl of ice cream once in a while in the evening? No.

I remember my mother telling me about a doctor appt she had in her late 60's (not so long ago) when the doctor complemented her on how strong and healthy her bones were. Her reply to the doctor was that it was thanks to all those cookies she eats, because when she eats cookies, she pours a glass of milk to go with them.

So after lunch that day, (thanks to my husband's habit of stockpiling cookies in the house (which is normally a really big problem for me)), I happily placed 2 Oreo cookies on my plate, poured myself a glass of milk, and fed my bones.

Since a few people have asked me in email (which is not a problem...), I thought I'd make mention that the next CTP for Orcas is the February CTP. It is coming out either late February or early March. This version, though still a CTP, should have all of the LINQ and EF stuff updated and incorporated, including the UI stuff such as the designer and the templates that we currently have to go back to the May CTP for, as well as some major enhancements to LINQ in VB, a LinqDataSource for databinding in web apps and more.

I have been using Quickbooks since it's DOS 1.0 version. I kid you not.

My pet peeve with this software is online banking. When I download my AmEx bill, it takes me a horrrrrrrribly long time to get the transactions into my register.

I paid $200 to upgrade from QB 2004 (?) to the newest version and even though there are some minor improvements, I'm still here looking at a few hours to deal with the many months of AmEx bills I have avoided getting in to QuickBooks. Every time I download and start working on it, I give up. So now they are piled up and of coruse I MUST get through them because it's tax time.

I think it will take less time to just sit here with my paper statements and enter them by hand.

Why can't they figure out a better way? I don't need a vendor account for every random gas station I go to in my travels. Maybe I'll try the aliasing and set up a "GENERIC GAS STATION" payee account and others.

Update: Now I see the benefit of the aliasing. The more info you have in there, the smarter it gets. It's not perfect, but at least I got through it a little faster than before.

Joe Stagner re-recorded all of the How Do I? videos for AJAX that he had created during the Betas. Now they are all updated for the RTM version of AJAX.  THese are really valuable for getting started (and more) with AJAX. There are 23 videos. THat must have been some chore. Thanks for re-doing them, Joe.

At this point I shouldn't be surprised by the valuable nuggets that are in the ASP.NET QuickStarts. Here's the latest one I wish I'd had taped to my wall for the past few years.

[A DevLife post]

As the snow was piling up and the wind was creating drifts, the pile of snow building up by our front door at one point literally looked like the shape of a car! Here it was the day after.

Rich has been out snowblowing and shoveling on and off for three days now (in between skiing on the new snow at Mad River, off course). He's just now attacking the pile. Check out the pink sunset in the valley, too. These are snow paths like I remember from my childhood.

You can now submit talks for the 7th New England Code Camp : "Deer in the headlights". If this were in Vermont, it might be called "Moose's knees in the headlights".

Read more at Chris Bowen's blog.

I've been farting around with an ObjectDataSource class that I can use with LINQ and bind to a GridView to do editing. Here's what I've got worked out so far...

[A DevLife post]