Here, Doug Seven (did you know Doug swallowed the red pill) explains in his words what CodeZone is all about. Much easier to digest and comprehend than the marketing speak.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have a client who has crazy wonderful ideas about what they would like their software to do. They don't go by any rules of "what software should do". I told them from the beginning "just dream...I'll let you know what I can and can't make happen."

Sometimes these ideas are really hard to implement, sometimes not so bad. It's really gratifying when I get emails that say "this works great! I love it!!!"

http://www.AcehAid.org

...which would it be?

Lately, this thought has popped into my head every time I read a new post from Elizabeth Grigg's blog.

But of course, I would probably go into some type of withdrawal shock if I couldn't "blog surf" like I do frequently throughout the day. And I would stop being constantly challenged to learn a gazillion new things about programming which is the result of reading (or scanning or surfing or whatever) such a great variety of different blogs.

But Beth's blog is definitely a stop and smell the roses kind of thing...kind of like having the t.v. channel stuck on PBS.

http://www.AcehAid.org

What does it mean to Sponsor a Vermont.NET meeting?

What you do: Pay for the pizza and soda

What you get:

• Get your company logo on the homepage of our website (www.vtdotnet.org) during the time of promoting the meeting (and afterwards sometimes if I don't update for the next meeting right away)
• Get your company  logo and thanks to you in all emails that go out to our lists that are geared towards promoting the meetings. We have a member list of 200 members, as well as a meeting announcement list that is those 200 + 100 more. That's 300 people who have explicitly asked to receive these emails!
• Get your logo on our THANK YOU slide that is in the powerpoint deck that plays during the meeting "warm up" and that I review at the beginning of my meeting. More info on this...
• If you would like, we can have literature about your products available to attendees.
• Our undying gratitude.

Take a look at the upcoming meeting schedule. Where there is not an INETA Sponsored event (note the logo below the speaker's name), we can use a pizza/soda sponsor. Our meetings can have anywhere from 20 - 40 attendees though we have had 50 on a few occasions, so the cost of sponsorship varies.

I can't believe it took me three years to think of blogging for pizza for my user group!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Reading Jerry Delany's post about attending the Atlanta.NET meeting and a comment he made at the end about attending the Atlanta C# meetings because they are more advanced made me think of a problem I have been pondering lately with my user group , Vermont.NET, that is not uncommon.

We have been meeting for 3 years now - since Feb 2002. There are plenty of pepole in the group who have come frequently to meetings since the beginning and they are many who are pretty advanced. Yet we still have new people coming into the meeting all of the time. Of course, this is a microcosm of the whole programming community and not a new problem. I don't want to have to choose between sating the more advanced .NET programmers and ignoring the needs of those who are just moving to .NET.

What we are talking about (and I am waiting for someone in the group to grab this project and run with it...) is having a pre-meeting presentation that is more for beginners and then let the regular presentation continue to engage those who are interested in more advanced topics. There are many groups who do this so we can certainly learn from them. My idea is to have the beginner talks be done by user group members, which has so many advantages.

How is your user group dealing with the widening gap between .NET newbies and .NET pros?

update: I emailed Chris Pels who runs the Boston.NET User group and has been doing a 2-part meeting for two years. We will have an article on this in the April INETA Newsletter. If you aren't signed up for the newsletter (which you can do from the home page), they are archived at www.ineta.org/newsletters.

http://www.AcehAid.org

very cute!

http://www.AcehAid.org

An aftershock - 3 months after. 8.2 earthquake in the SAME spot as before. Hits at midnight, everyone of course fears another tsunami. Banda Aceh is the target again. Horror. Waiting to hear back from the folks in Bali...will post anything I hear...

update - you all probably know from the news, the earthquake has done a lot of damage in places (high death toll on the island Nias) but at this point, the fear of a tsunami has faded. Thank god. It is now morning there. Got word from folks in southern Indonesia who are awaiting contact with their aid workers in Aceh Province...

http://www.AcehAid.org

“Winter weather advisory in effect from 5 AM EST to 11 AM EST Monday.
Flood watch in effect from Monday afternoon to Tuesday afternoon "...

:-(

http://www.AcehAid.org

Kate Gregory notes that the speakers list (check the dropdown) on the TechEd site is filling in. She also already did the Brian count. There are (just guessing by names) 8 Brians and 11 women, so maybe the ration (I decided to leave that typo in tact since it made me laugh) is increasing? This has become fondly known as the Brian Factor.

What is nice to see is that after the early indication that a lot of the 3rd party (aka Non-Microsoft) speakers who are frequent TechEd speakers were not on the roster, it seems to have improved. I see lots of people that I know are not MS employees on the list. That's good for the community I think. PDC is the all Microsoft event. So an apparent reduction for TEchEd had (understandably) ruffled some feathers and egos.

http://www.AcehAid.org

It's starting to become a pattern

I "lost" my Pocket PC at DevTeach in Montreal. I think I accidentally left it behind in the hotel room and it was never to be seen again - or something like that.

After spending 45 minutes showing the very nice young waitress at the New York Sports Grill who is attending art school my TabletPC and letting her play with it, I managed to leave the stylus behind. Someone probably just picked it up thinking it was a cheapo pen. By the time I was getting ready to board the plane and realized I didn't have my stylus, the restaurant was all closed up. That's the $32 stylus that handily fits right into my tablet. Darn! Luckily I have a beautiful Wacom Executive pen.

I left my handy little retractable ethernet cable behind while at Code Camp. That was one my MVP Lead gave to me last year and it is a great thing to have.

I "lost" my laptop mouse at DevConnections. I'm 98% sure I left it in my room on the desk when I went downstairs.

Lucky for me I had some MVP bucks left so I just went ahead and replaced the last two items. I try try try to look behind me whenever I leave a room where I have stuff. Really I do. I have another pocketpc but I don't even use it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have posted the powerpoint for the C# for VB Programmers session that I gave at Visual Studio Connections earlier this week. They are located on this page: www.thedatafarm.com/talks.aspx.

The disclaimer I gave at the start of this talk is that I am a VB programmer mostly, and not a C# programmer. The presentation is to help VB programmers with some of the very common mistakes that we make when working in C#. I am in no way a C# expert. In fact, one person who attended this talk, while marking that my "knowledge of the topic" was not "excellent" on the eval, did comment that my lack of expertise in C# actually made the presentation more useful. Spot on, baby!

http://www.AcehAid.org

(writing in lower case in honor of my subject: casey).

casey has a fun post which a list of pros, cons and moots about writing for msdn online.

out of his, i will pick one from each category that i agree or disagree with

pro: getting paid (no brainer)

con: waiting for the article to go live. as you may have noticed, i have nothing on msdn online, though i *have* actually written three articles and am working on a 4th. Though, heck, that's nothing compared to print!

moot: he lists the due diligence paperwork as moot. eliot, did you hear that? hahahaha. I'd definitely put the paperwork in the con list! though, since the paperwork makes getting paid possible, perhaps that's how it balances out to a moot for casey.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Ahh - Malek is finally going public with his big news!

http://www.AcehAid.org

And why do I, a person who can do no more with  C++ than spell it, care? Because if I'm lucky, Kate will be speaking at C++ Connections which is part of the DevConnections conference in the fall. I'm speaking at the VS Connections and ASP.NET Connections shows.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I've been perusing the awesome list of BOFs submitted, but there is something that is nagging me about it. I think of the BOFs as a way for community people who don't normally get the opportunity to present at conferences (or who may not want to present!) a chance to lead a discussion about a topic near and dear to their hearts. So far, most of the submissions are from a lot of Microsoft people and some rock stars from the community.

But this does not mean that you need to be a 'Softie or a well-known .NET person or an MVP or anything special to submit a BOF. Don't be shy! Step up to the plate! The submission deadline ends in a few more weeks! That seems a little early, but it is tied into TechEd's planning schedule.

Remember that the BOFs are not presentations and there will be no projectors. It is just a planned discussion and whoever submits it merely leads the discussion.

The BOF site is hosted by TechEd, but the whole BOF organization is being run by INETA (thanksk to the great efforts of Stuart Celarier) and Culminis.

http://www.AcehAid.org

casey chesnut, the e.e. cummings of our developer community, has written a cool article on converting windows journal notes to xml, svg and onenote. that is pretty handy sh*t to be able to do. since I have never used svg and one note, i think it's time I looked into this. and who better to learn from!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am starting to realize that this tighter integration of ADO.NET and SQL Server means that I am going to have to get much more knowledgeable about SQL Server. I have been (to coin a great book title) a "reluctant DBA" for a long long time. But now that we can do things like BulkCopy in ADO.NET 2.0, something I have NEVER done in SQL and know nothing about, I am in danger of crossing lines that I don't know even exist. I had a long talk about this with Gert Drapers while I was at DevConnections. Just with the Bulk Copy alone, I have to be mindful of record locking etc etc. I would never have known that and created problems by misusing the bulk copy class in ADO.NET 2.0.

Gert also told me something that made me happy happy happy. As I have been learning and teaching about ADO.NET 2.0, I find myself having to list (or point to) many caveats with MARS since it is on by default. I have wished it would be off by default and Gert tells me that by RTM it will be. That is a good thing. Here is a great MARS FAQ post by Angel Saenz-Badillos of the ADO.NET team.

http://www.AcehAid.org

(by way of Loren Heiny)

VBInk (with links, a blog and forums) - focuses on doing tabletpc development with VB. I'm not sure if I personally think it's necessary to get so granular - since the concepts are all the same, but it does make it easier if you are more experienced in VB and want to focus on what you are learning in the Tablet SDK. I know that when I first did the Hands on Labs and they were in C# (now there are VB versions), I actually thought that the delegate I set up to create an event handler for one of the ink events was (gulp) part of the tablet API code! (I know better now - but that's what happens when you pile learning curves one on top of another...)

A little digging around (why was this necessary?) points all of this back to Stein & Associates and there are real people's names on that site: Dan and Kimberley. It would be nice if they were a little more transparent on the VBInk site so we know who it is that is actually doing this site. That's the whole point of having community... so that we can have personal relationships with each other. (hint hint )

http://www.AcehAid.org

For those that attended my afternoon workshop at ASP.NET Connections on Sunday, thanks so much for coming. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy teaching that particular session and I hope everyone got a lot out of it. I know from talking to a bunch of you that you did!!

I have posted the powerpoint for this 3 hour talk on my website on the presentations page. It isn't much different than what you have in the printed book. Look for the ppt link under the session entitled "Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2".

I will post the code from the demos shortly. [update: these have been posted on 3/26]

http://www.AcehAid.org

Larry and his wife live in Hawaii. For a reason. This is an amazing story!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Since I plan to attend Wintellect's Devscovery in Reston, VA in early May, I have submitted talks to the Code Camp that is that Saturday (May 7th) in the same building as the Devscovery conference.

The website for Devscovery is pretty funny. It says "our aim is to have you beg us to stop cramming information into your head."

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am just catching up on a lot of posts and see that pricing announcments were made regarding Team System. I had heard  about the new SKUs for MSDN Universal a while ago and scratched my head about small or independent consultants not having easy access to learn some of the tools that will be priced way over their heads (6 month trials notwithstanding...). But one of the interesting points about this is that Microsoft is clearly aiming the VSTS stuff directly at the large enterprise shops and the benefit is that, as Jonathan Cogley and Eric Sink note, they are not leaving the market for 3rd party tools like NUnit and SourceGear mostly in tact.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Funny to see a CNN report on Mud Season!

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.cnn.com/2005/BUSINESS/03/23/blackberry.rim/index.html

http://www.AcehAid.org

I got home in the wee hours of the morning from a fantastic 5 days at DevConnections in Orlando. The conference was, as always, just great. (Note that the spring 2005 show is getting archived. Watch this page for links to that show.) It was held at the Hyatt Grand Cypress which is a real paradise-like resort. Shirley and Gary Brothers run such a top notch show. I was very happy with my presentations and I ended up doing my session on What's new in ADO.NET 2.0 twice. Unfortunately that extra session was due to the fact that Dino E was unable to make it. Of course there is just no way anyone can duplicate Dino's effervescent presentation style - he is truly unique (in a wonderful way).

Thanks to everyone who attended my talks. It is your response to them that inspires me to keep doing this! Don't forget to email me those questions and I will blog the answers!

The 2nd ADO.NET 2.0 session was in a one hour slot and we somehow managed to get through the whole thing at a fast  pace since there just wasn't anything I was willing to cut out. As expected, I heard gasps and applause when I showed how SQL Server Query Notification was tied into ADO.NET and ASP.NET.

I had two sessions that were challenged by being scheduled at the same time as an Indigo session by Ari Bixhorn and a live recording of .NET Rocks. Three of my talks were held in the humongous 500 (looked like it a least) seat ballroom -- though I encouraged the 30-40 or so attendees to sit up close.

I also got a hot off the presses copy of the updated (for beta) version of Alex Homer, Dave Sussman and Mark Fussell's new ADO.NET and System.XML 2.0 book from A-W, which I perused for additional insight before my ado.net 2.0 talks.

I did a 1/2 day workshop on Sunday which was teaching Web Service Security Fundamentals (the cryptography stuff) and an intro to WSE2.0. Although it wasn't heavily attended, it  went great and I think everyone there really got a lot out of the session. I LOVE doing that talk. And the more I do it the more fun it is to do. The more fun it is for me to do the more fun it is for the attendees. The 1st part of the talk - the crypto stuff - has become my "I want to teach the world to sing" talk. Perhaps I'll look into doing a webcast on it. I do have an article coming out on MSDN Online with that content.

Also of course, hanging out in the speaker lounge with so many of my friends (old and new) is just the best best fun. The expo was great and I had fun hanging out with Dave Noderer at the INETA booth (thanks to MSDN for that). Stan Schultes also drove down from Sarasota for dinner one night.

Anyway - thanks again to everyone attending my talks (and especially to Chandler from Vegas who was grinning from ear to ear throughout the entire ADO.NET 2.0 session!) I will be uploading my powerpoints and demos to my website on the Talks page, here.

I will be presenting at DevConnections in the Fall in Las Vegas. The line up right now looks like this:

Leveraging SQL Server 2005 Query Notification in ASP.NET 2.0 and ADO.NET 2.0
Both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2.0 take advantage of SQL Server 2005's Service Broker. Although ADO.NET 2.0 is only able to receive query notification from SQL Server 2005, ASP.NET 2.0 has an implementation that will also know about database changes in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 7. This session will demonstrate how to receive notifications through both ADO.NET 2.0 and ASP.NET 2 as well as cover the pros and cons and the many rules surrounding Query Notification.

A Look at WSE 3.0
WSE 3.0 is slated to be the last version of WSE prior to Indigo. It is also the first release of the Web Services Enhancements that will be fully interoperable with Indigo and incorporates more of the WS-* specifications than previously. Come to this session to see highlights of WSE 3.0 as well as how it relates to what we know about WSE 2.0 and to the upcoming Indigo.

Customizing the debugging experience in Visual Studio 2005 with new Debugger Attributes
New features in .NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005 allow you to take more control over how information is displayed about classes while you are debugging. Debugger Visualizers are custom user interfaces that can be written to display information about .NET classes or your own custom classes. The new debugger attributes can be applied to your classes to define the formatting of debug info displayed in the watch windows. This session will walk through how to write and deploy custom visualizers as well as how to leverage the new debugger attributes found in the System.Diagnostics namespace.

Hopefully I'll also be doing the C# for VB Developers talk again which is a look at syntax and some IDE differences as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

[From ProgrammingfromHome.com]

Part time programmer
Seeking programer to develope a order entry application with web input and output capabilities. VB.NET MS SQL SERVER DATABASE EXPERIENCE 

The employer posted this job on:   3/23/05

Special Benefits Include:
- Full Telecommute (work at home)- Will consider applicants on a part-time basis- Independent contractors may respond

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

If you are going to be at DevConnections this week, come by and visit us at the INETA booth!

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

I'm doing my last minute org for DevConnections and making note of the times of my talks.

• Sunday 3/20: 1-4 PM Web Security for Dummies and WSE 2.0 Introduction
• Tuesday 8am - 9:15 am  ASP.NET Beyond System.Web Namespace
• Wednesday 8am - 9:15 am C# for VB Programmers
• Wednesday 1:30 - 2:30 What's New in ADO.NET 2.0 (just noticed this is only one hour!)

My husband is laughing over the 8am talks. At home I am not an early riser, but he doesn't know that when I'm travelling I tend to get up at 6 am or so. (shhh, don't tell)

I will also be manning the INETA booth  Monday from 9-9:30 and Tuesday from 10:45 - 11:15.

http://www.AcehAid.org

.NET plumber, John Bristowe's, twin sister Ashley having a baby. John is very close to his sister and I always love seeing how proud he is of her and that he is able to share that with the world on his blog. Not a lot of guys do that.

His latest post was written as he was leaving to go to the hospital with Ashley and her husband last night, so hopefully by now, he's an uncle.

Congrats Uncle John!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Beth Massi points to a xml data visualizer on GotDotNet that you can use today in VS2003. Since she is speaking at DevTeach, I hope she'll get to come to my session on Customized Debugging in VS2005 so I can show her the debugger visualizers. Of course she may not be able to wait so in that case, I bet anything she subscribes to CoDe Magazine and can read my article in the current issue! hee hee

http://www.AcehAid.org

And I don't mean he's going to another class! Awesome Kent! Big Congrats!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

It's been nearly 3 months since the disasterous tsunamis destroyed many countries, killed nearly 200,000 people and displaced millions. In the weeks after this happened I was very involved with an organization in Bali, Indonesia that was doing amazing relief work in Aceh Province. They continue to go strong but have shifted their efforts to Recovery. I was their "website medic" for the first month and was doing what I could in Frontpage to be posted to their Linux server, basically taking little pleas for this getting this and that information quickly onto the site. Now they have a real web designer on board, Sylvia Tu, as well as some breathing room to think the content through rather than just be doing crisis management on the site. The website is looking fantastic and there is all kinds of excellent information and stories about what they are accomplishing. I know most of the world has gone on with their lives and forgotten the millions still in need. Keep track. Pay attention. Maybe they'll again need something that you can help with.

www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

Thanks Mike G for pointing this out.

With verification/validation from Brad Abrams (Microsoft), Paul Vick (Microsoft), Tyler Whitney (Microsoft) and Erik Porter (MVP), Cory Smith has put together an excellent document on VB.NET Coding Guidelines. We all tend to get lazy and should probably take a look at this monthly!

Why this is on his blog and not on the VB Developer Center, I'm not sure. Yo, Brad!!! Lookee here...

http://www.AcehAid.org

I don't remember seeing this in the past, but the Feb CTP bits have a hissy fit if you change the name of a control on a web form or windows form. Web Forms want to refactor your code behind for you. Sometiems it hangs. WinForms throws a whole lot of compile time errors to the Error reporting system, but then gives control back with nothing lost. Beware...

http://www.AcehAid.org

I'm fiddling around with nullable types in Whidbey and just discovered a DataRow property that is not even new, but I had never known was there (or maybe it flew by me once but it didn't stick in my brain):

DataRow.IsNull("mycolumnname")

Obviously invaluable when dealing with value types.

I guess in the 3 years I have been doing .NET, I just hadn't needed it. My main production app has a sql server database that started out being used by VB5 then VB6, so I was used to not creating DateTime columns as nullable, or dealing with nulls directly in the stored procedures. Well, I'll be!

http://www.AcehAid.org

So I popped over to blog feed reader and I see "Got Indigo Day" in Boston. I can't see the whole post and I can't help thinking "who the heck is gonna do that?". Who in Boston knows Indigo well enough already to present on it on behalf of Microsoft? Will they just be reading a script or something? Then I scroll down and get a big aha! moment -- it's David Chappell. Okay, I'm conviced!  

http://www.AcehAid.org

Rod has his downloads from Code Camp on his website (www.dashpoint.com). The SQL Server 2005 DataTypes with VS2005 presentation he did at VTdotNET on Monday night are included in the MSDN Code Camp downloads.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I'm curious to see if anyone that I know who is coming to DevConnections is signed up for my pre-con workshop. It is a special workshop, not included with the regular conference. I am *so* looking forward to this session!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I want to keep reminding folks attending DevConnections that my talk titled "C# for VB6 Programmers" will be just as useful for VB.NET programmers (who likely came from VB6 anyway).

I got more confirmation of this when doing it to a packed room at Code Camp III which chose to stay an extra 45 minutes during lunch just so we could experiment some more.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I just bought more memory for both of my laptops.

I removed 256 chips from each of them. I can't think of anything to do but throw them in the garbage except that I see crucial sells the one I just took out of my Toshiba M200 for $43.00 and the ones I took out of my compaq are also $43 each. So that adds up to $129 and suddenly maybe I don't know if I should just chuck 'em. Perhaps I'll give  them a try on ebay...

Posted from BLInk!

The INETA Newsletter archive page also now has links to watch

the INETA Video

INETA on MSDN TV

and listen to INETA on DotNetRocks

more to come...

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Alex P doesn't like this book. He is absolutely entitled to his opinion. What I don't understand is his position that Francesco Balena has no credibility and that his position as an RD is of little value. Balena is a well known and respected author in the .NET world as well as pre-.NET Visual Basic. And RD's aren't selected based only on their good looks. Many of them also happen to be some of the top in their field technically, which is why Microsoft allows them to represent MS as such. I see nothing wrong with expressing one's opinion, but I think the [unjustified and unqualified] personal attack is pretty crappy.

http://www.AcehAid.org

If you have been and continue to be using pre-release versions of .NET 2.0, Kit George has pointed to this download which will list the APIs that are in existing bits that will not make it to the final RTM version. Definitely pay attention to this!

Clarification for those who may need it: These are NOT v1.x APIs, but APIs that are new to .NET 2.0 that have been in the current beta and other pre-release bits and will probably be in the Beta 2.0 as well. But they won't make it to the final release.

http://www.AcehAid.org

well, a simulator - but the thrill is far from simulated. Here's Jeff's post. I love reading about his passion for planes.

http://www.AcehAid.org

• Avoiding Boxing in Classes Implementing Generic Interfaces through Reflection [Dave Fetterman]
• How Did System.Decimal Change from V1.0 to V1.1? [Anthony Moore]
• CodeDom now supports a way to generate code for CodeTypeMember [Vinaya Bhushana Gattam Reddy]
• Regex and Balanced Matching [Ryan Byington]
• Potential additions to the Math class [Katy King]
• RegexOptions.IgnorePatternWhitspace [Ryan Byington]
• DirectoryInfo.Name lacks security checks [Ravi Krishnaswamy]
• What are the New DateTime Features in Whidbey [Anthony Moore]
• IO Exceptions will now reveal FullPath (if you have PathDiscovery access) [Ravi Krishnaswamy]
• A Tracing Primer - Part I [Mike Rousos]
• Writing a Useful Windows Service in .NET in Five Minutes [Dave Fetterman]
• Testing Managed ACL for IO [Lakshan Fernando]
• Synchronization in Generic Collections [Brian Grunkemeyer]
• Fixing bugs with compatibility in mind - an IO experience [Lakshan Fernando]
• Best V2.0 feature in the .NET Framework: A BCL Poll [Kit George]
• Come and Meet the CLR team! [Kit George]
• The .NET Vision (aka: the big picture): what are we working towards? [Kit George]
• An intro to CodeDom [David Gutierrez]
• SafeHandles: the best V2.0 feature of the .NET Framework [Ravi Krishnaswamy]
• The Base Class Library Program Manager (PM): a job description [Kit George]
• PerformanceCounters: reading the disk counters [David Gutierrez]
• The SLAR on System.Convert [Brad Abrams]

http://www.AcehAid.org

"SQL Server Setup could not connect to the database service for server
configuration. The error was: [Microsoft][ODBC Driver Manager] Data source
name not found and no default driver specified"

I had this problem and found the solution the other night over on Niko P's blog...

His blog is a great resource for SQL Server 2005 setup issues.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Friday, March 18th at 10 AM PST

This session focuses on the InfiNotes Note Taking Framework built by Agilix Labs Inc. as an extension to the Tablet PC SDK and Visual Studio .Net Development environment. Agilix InfiNotes is a collection of .NET controls that add rich ink note-taking functionality to new and existing applications. Simply drag the control from the toolbox and begin adding digital ink to your application immediately! You'll be amazed at how quickly you can develop ink note-taking features in your .NET application. InfiNotes Standard Edition is available free from http://www.infinotes.com and should be installed on your development environment along with the Tablet PC SDK, available at http://msdn.microsoft.com/tabletpc. (You do not need a Tablet PC to develop Tablet apps, this can be done right from your existing Windows development environment).

http://www.AcehAid.org

Boy did we have a blast! Rod  Paddock flew into Boston for Code Camp III where he did 3 back to back sessions on Sunday. He drove back to Vermont with Laura Blood and I. We forgot to pause in NH so he could "touch down" and claim he has been to NH, now. We met up for dinner at my favorite Montepelier restaurant, Sarducci's, with Mario Cardinal and Eric Cote, our GUVSM.NET buddies who were also at Code camp and on their way back to Montreal.

Yesterday Rod treated me to my first Best Buy experience. I have never been there before! Then I toured him around Burlington a bit and off we went to the meeting.

Rod did a talk on creating custom data types for SQL Server 2005 using VS 2005. He is a fantastic presenter.. I could tell that the VTdotNET members were  very interested and engaged because of the many questions. Jean Rene Roy came down from Montreal to pick up Rod since he was heading there next on his world tour. After the meeting Rod, Jean-Rene and Marc Heinzer who is doing awesome work at Gardener's Supply (the largest mail order and online ordering gardening supply company in the country), had a little more geeking out at The Daily Planet and off they went to Montreal.

Rod is speaking tonight at Montreal's Foxpro User Group and then tomorrow night in Toronto at the Toronto VB User Group. He started at home in seattle so he will have a lot of miles under his belt at the end of his mini-world tour.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

Database Production Support Consultant (1 year)

• At least 4-5 years combined using both MSSQL and Oracle RDBMS
• Experience with performance tuning and integrity via indexing, normalization/de-normalization, constraints, triggers, etc.
• Understanding of database security and implementation using views, column level permissioning, and roles.
• Experience with DTS, creation/maintenance of SQL jobs, and security from server to database (including use of NT Authentication as well as standard SQL login/password security)
• Excellent debugging and communication (both written and verbal) skills required
• Excellent organizational skills
• Windows command line scripting and UNIX shell scripting including Awk
• Ability to communicate technical issues in an understandable way to non-technical end users, and keep management informed of the status of issues.
• Database maintenance including backup and recovery, space management, and consistency checks
• Responsibilities to include monitoring existing production processes, identification of performance improvement opportunities in existing processes, completion of audits (daily through monthly), creation/maintenance of desktop procedures/instruction manuals for existing processes, assisting during testing of new processes, and maintenance of data dictionaries

 

Database Consultant (1 year)

• At least 4-5 years combined using both MSSQL and Oracle RDBMS
• Creation and maintenance of large data warehouse databases (up to 1TB)
• Extensive development of stored procedures (containing complex business logic) and views
• Experience with performance tuning and integrity via indexing, normalization/de-normalization, constraints, triggers, etc.
• Understanding of database security and implementation using views, column level permissioning, and roles.
• Excellent debugging and communication (both written and verbal) skills required
• Excellent project management and organizational skills
• Experience creating and updating technical documentation and following development methodology
• Windows command line scripting and UNIX shell scripting including Awk
• Experience acting as a liaison between non-technical business users to create appropriate business requirements
• Data analysis experience helpful