I have looked at the benefits of the Load method on DataTables and DataSets that is in ADO.NET 2.0 in an article and a presentation that I have been having fun doing lately. Bill Vaughn gets really granular with the feature and proposes and interesting idea...

http://www.AcehAid.org

Day of .NET #6 in Chicago was today and so was Code Camp Charlotte. Next Saturday there is the Southern California .NET Technical Summit in L.A. and a Code Camp in D.C. Thom Robbins just announced plans for a Code Camp in NYC. There have reacently been ones in Philadelphia and North Carolina and they just seem to keep coming. I have been trying to list as many upcoming events as I can find out about in the INETA Newsletters. Definitely be sure I know if you have one coming up. It doesn't have to be in the U.S. or Canada even.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Last week I bought a new machine for my Whidbey testing. It was a total steal. It arrived by UPS while I was gone today but had to be signed for. But the driver was enormously kind to leave his cell phone # and luckily he was still in my neck of the boonies so I was able to hook up with him and get my new computer. Luckily it will be raining a lot this weekend and I will replace my old tired box that is still chugging away with Beta2 with this speedy little guy.

http://www.AcehAid.org

There are a few seat left at the Devscovery 3 day conference that I am really looking forward to going as an attendee. It is in Washington DC next Tuesday - Thursday. The whole 3 days is instruction by Wintellects Jeff Prosise, John Robbins, Jeffrey Richter, Peter DeBetta and Richard Hundhausen. Although the conference is already a steal at $900, I can tell you how to get another $100 off if you are thinking about going at the last minute!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Wow! This is great news. Andrew Duthie reports that there are only 25 seats left for next Saturday's Mid-Atlantic Code Camp!!

Register quick if you haven't yet and want to go!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

So I received my first CodeZone user group kit today. This is the one that goes to user group leaders. All of the digital content can also be downloaded by user group members who have signed up. In addition to digital content there are three books: O'Reilly's .NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide, MS Press ASP.NET Mobile Devices and MS Press .NET Compact Framework.

The very first thing I  thought of when seeing this was all of the people who are saying "CodeZone is out to replace INETA." This box is very different from the INETA swag mailings and I see no cross over here at all.

The whole thing is geared towards Mobile Development. The production quality of the materials is astounding and a almost a little frightening. MS EMEA outsourced the development of a full blown mobile application to a few development shops which are promoted in the little accompanying booklet in a way that actually looks like magazine ads - but that's fair, we all deserve recognition for our work.. However the fact that they are in the front of the booklet is actually very confusing and perhaps they should be put in the back. There is even a CompuWare ad on the back. The binder that it all comes in is super duper guper slick - but is generic enough to be reused for all of the CodeZone user group kits. Yes, the green girl is in there. I guess I'm not really the target market for this marketing effort - I have to say that the design doesn't really appeal to me, but as 40+ female, I am such a teeny little slice of the demographics - so I don't have a problem with that at all. I'm just a different kind of "hip". tee hee

So that was my first impression. I KNOW that the whole thing is really geared towards getting developers really excited about doing mobile development (translation: there is not enough going on yet) and presenting a fantastic sample solution that not only is chock full of great code, but an app that I will assume has great architecture ideas as well as the business analysis that went into the solution.

The kit contains 3 cds. One is the Mobile Development SDK, another is a compilation of webcasts, demos, powerpoints etc and the last is the WeRock sample application - emblazoned with the slick graphics. It sure doesn't look like a disc from the MSDN Universal Subscription!!

So I think what I will do is give away the entire kit to one lucky person in the group. However, I have that worry of raffling it off and someone who is not so interested winning it and then putting it on a shelf. Usually a good solution for that is having a bunch of things for raffle winners to choose from.

In the meantime, it will be a good vehicle for me to promote CodeZone at the meeting although right now that is the only value for *this* codezone site. Downloading the digital portion of the kit. In the future it will be a lot more.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I guess this is the definition of a geek vacation, but I much prefer Dave Burke's idea of a vacation!!

Next week I will be going to Washington D.C. for a variety of things. First I am going to get a Wintellect brain infusion at Devscovery. That will be 3 days of intense learning with John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter (I wonder if Sara has warned him that I'm coming. Maybe I'll wear an "I Love VB" shirt. ) and some of the other Wintellects.

Then I get a day of rest with the Duthies and hopefully some real old-fashioned sightseeing! The next day (Saturday) is the Mid Atlantic Code Camp which I am sticking around for and was happy that the locals are letting me do some talks. I'm really looking forward to seeing some of my D.C. friends like Scott Lock and finally meeting Sahil Malek, Bill Ryan (unless he decides to go to Hooters or something) and some others that I have never met in person. If I'm super lucky, I'll aslo get a chance to see some of my non-geek friends I haven't seen in a while!

The line up looks awesome and there is also going to be a full day SOA track where they build an app. Heck, I'd almost skip my own talks for that! (Just kidding - I wouldn't really do that).

YOu can register for Mid-Atlantic Code Camp here. It's free and there's still room!!

Posted from BLInk!

I have been struggling with a printer jamming problem for months. I even spent $400 on getting it repaired (it's one of those big honkin' LaserJet network printers) and still the paper was jamming.

I have had the printer for 10 years and have *always* used plain copy paper. For the past 6 or so it has generally been Staples brand copy paper.

I finally gave in and bought some multi-use paper. It costs more than twice as much and the legal size, which I have to use a lot of, seems to have no options except for one brand ($$ Hammermill) that we found at Staples. (I will do some further searches for that on the web) The jamming problem seems to be much relieved.

However, I was on the phone with a client who had been having the same problem and after many many visits from their repair guy, they finally started questioning the Staples copy paper that they have had no problems with for years. They ended up on the phone with Staples who apparently admitted that (this is just second hand and I could be incorrect on that statement) the paper had degraded and gave my client credit for their recent purchases.

That is annoying. I wasted hours and hours and hours dealing with the jamming problems and $400 too!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I just gave in and bought a new machine JUST for testing. It is faster than my regular development machine at 3.2 ghz, is a P4 and comes with 1 gig of ram already. They just kept slapping all of these discounts on ($50 off on any Optiplex between $400-$500 and $50 any GX270 or SX280) and the whole thing was under $400, no tax, free shipping. Not too shabby. It is going to replace my current left over test box that is 700mhz and has 512 mb ram (and runs Whidbey Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 Developer perfectly fine thank you very much!!) It was definitely a satisfying purchase!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Anyone catch this in Chris Sells' post about the 2.0 version of his Windows Forms book?

we're not updating the VB.NET version due to poor sales for VB.NET-related titles in general

That is a shocker to me - that VB.NET books are selling less than C#. I wouldn't have expected it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Wally and I have been keen on ensuring that SqlDependency - which was pretty tricky to get working when I was first learning about it- still works. Of course it does!  I have a handful of SqlDependency demos in my ADO.NET 2.0 talk that worked just great with the Feb CTP bits (after a lot of figgerin' and head scratchin'). I only happen to have fired one of them up so far with Beta2.

The only change I noticed so far was that the OnChanged event is now called OnChange. (You will get a compile error message that says OnChanged is not a member of SqlClient.)

So other than that, my code that worked in Beta1 Feb CTP Bits remains the same and works charmingly.

In SQL Server 2005 the Service Broker is still not enabled out of the box on databases. So you have to remember to enable it with: ALTER DATABASE AdventureWorks SET ENABLE_BROKER

I also noticed something funny but then it went away. In SQL Server Management Studio, my tables first were listed as Contact (Person), Employee (HumanResources), etc. But then after closing it and opening it again, they went back to Person.Contact and HumanResources.Employee. I don't think I changed anything, so I'm not sure what was up with that but will keep an eye out for it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP.enfinity/eCS/Store/en/-/USD/SY_DisplayProductInformation-Start?ProductSKU=SDMHS95P%2fS&Dept=computers&CategoryName=cpu_Displays_FlatPanelLCDs_18%22

http://www.AcehAid.org

And now it is time to run through all of my demos and sample code that I have created on previous bits....

http://www.AcehAid.org

According to this article based on research commissioned by Hewlett Packard, emails do more damage to our IQ's than weed!

"The constant interruptions reduce productivity and leave people feeling tired and lethargic, according to a survey carried out by TNS Research and commissioned by Hewlett Packard."

Watch for new legislation to outlaw email!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am watching the webcast from the Toronto VB User Group's presentation of Pocket Build, their entry into the Canadian Inter User Group Competition. The task was to improve the quality of a developer's life. TVBUG came up with an amazing application to alert developers of build issues remotely. Not only does the app blow me away, but the presentation and the depth that they went to is amazing. It is a thoroughly designed and planned application. I just can't get over that they put togehter such a professional project.

More details and all of the links to the webcasts are here, on Sasha Krsmanovic's blog. Sorry I forgot this link earlier!!

I haven't watched the others yet, but apparently they were all very high quality, though everyone agreed that TVBug's had to be the winner.

Congrats to everyone.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Malek Kemmou, will no longer be "the guy from Casablanc" among us as he moves to Istanbul tomorrow (as a new Microsoft employee). Yesterday Stephen wrote about some departing shenanigans that I'm sure he strong-armed Malek into and today Malek gives us a beautiful poem about leaving the city he has grown up in. I look forward to the day that Malek can introduce me to both Casablanca and Istanbul.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.theserverside.net/cartoons/TalesFromTheServerSide.tss

http://www.AcehAid.org

I totally repaved my Whidbey test box with the intention of using Norton Ghost to create an image of a completely fresh machine before I install the beta 2 bits on it. The last step of the process is to install Ghost and it gives me the message:

"To run Norton Ghost, you must first install Microsoft .NET Framework 1.1"

There goes my pure and clean machine! I'll have to install .NET 1.1 and then uninstall it after I make my backup. Darn!

http://www.AcehAid.org

There were so many awesome submissions (speakers and topics) for the MAD Code Camp that poor Andrew Duthie and the track chairs had a really hard time fitting it all in. I made a bit of a nuisance of myself so that I would be able to present my ADO.NET 2.0 session (in addition to my WSE2.0 talk) which ended up meaning that Geoff Snowman, the local Developer Community Champion, gave up his session so that I could do mine. Thanks Geoff! I sure hope I was doing you a favor though!!

Also, my talk will be right before another ADO.NET 2 topic by Sahil Malik. He will be drilling into concurrency in ADO.NET 2.0, so that will be a great pair of sessions back to back.

Watch this space to see the session schedule which will be put up soon. The Code Camp is from 9am - 9pm with 4 tracks. It will be awesome. It is at Microsoft's Reston office. There is still plenty of room for more attendees, so go sign up!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I love this concept! Go DevTeach!!

Montreal
June 18-22

SQL Track (39 sessions)
.NET Track  (62 session)
FoxPro/Win32 Track (27 sessions)

http://www.AcehAid.org

Do you know that worldwide, INETA has (at the moment) 769 member user groups? INETA NORAM (that's North America, as in US & Canada) accounts for 250 of those groups. About 200 of them are in Latin America. APAC is about 120, Europe 130 and MEA (Middle East & Africa) is about 70. We have groups in places like Bulgaria, Iceland, Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Micronesia and even little ol' Vermont .

Anyway, what started me off was that I wanted to welcome a few of the new liaisons in NORAM: Rob Windsor from Toronto, Scott Spradlin of Missouri and Morgan Baker in Florida.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have DSL - with 1000K downstream, but these CTP downloads kill me.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I gave up on this problem many many months ago and my one touch is sitting in a corner of my office detached from anything. There is hope for me yet to solve my backup problems. I am sure that when I plug it back in, I will discover that it is formatted as FAT. THANK YOU KIRK!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Pretty pretty please???? Without having to install Team System? (or do a 20 hour download...)

http://www.AcehAid.org

it used to be the butt of a great joke by Leon Bambrick - with his now famous VB Refactoring menu, but now thanks to the genius of Developer Express, VB Refactoring is real and being offered by Microsoft as a free plug-in for VS2005.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have had a problem for a few years that when I vpn into a client's network, Windows Messenger automatically starts up and signs me in. Without even showing me anything in the systray. It's a little frustrating only because if I am VPNing in, that means I'm working and don't have time to chat.

I finally googled the problem today and discovered that there is a somewhat hidden setting in Windows XP which allows you to stop Windows Messenger from starting up on it's own. Here is the MSDN Support article on it.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Sahil lists a bunch of interesting (good and not so good) things that he is finding with beta2.

I have downloaded and not yest installed cause I realized I don't want no dang STANDARD bits!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Josh Trupin definitely hit on a pet peeve of mine with his editorial on invented words (eg "performant"). I blogged about that recently.

Another one that has been hitting my radar a lot lately is "asks" as in "what are your budget asks?".

We don't need to invent a word for this! What's wrong with "request" or some of the words from this list of synonyms?

appeal, application, asking, begging, call, commercial, demand, desire, entreaty, inquiry, invitation, offer, petition, prayer, recourse, requisition, solicitation, suit, supplication

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Nice to see this kind of forward movement! Cheers to everyone who has worked so hard on these specs.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Are you proud of knowing all the answers to obscure programming questions? Here's your chance to find out if you really are a geek guru.

Enter the DevSource Programming Trivia Sweepstakes, and you could win some really cool stuff. The Grand Prize winner will win a Dell UltraSharp 2005FPW 20" Flat Panel LCD Monitor! The runner-up gets a red iRobot Roomba 4100 Bagless Robotic Vacuum (to clean up after all those late nights of coding, where people slid pizza under your office door).

GO HERE

http://www.AcehAid.org

PC Magazine lists the top computing websites and amont their 17 picks, TabletPC Post is there! Woo hoo! Not only congrats to Lora Heiny, but to brothers Layne and Loren who have a hand in this as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have a nasty cold and can't go too far from the kleenex today as I have a runny runny nose (in between some impressive sneezing fits). I am getting really sick of my nose being so runny.Where on earth does all of that stuff come from anyway. Are my brains melting? Thank goodness for Puffs Plus or I would probably have no skin left on my nose by now!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I blindly downloaded the standard version of VS2005 Beta2 because the only other option was Team System (not for me and also a an extra GB which would have added at least 6 hours). Mike Gunderloy pointed out that this is standard and we don't have access to Professional as yet, so I went and checked the product version comparison chart for a reminder.

Here are the key differences between Standard and Pro

User Experience="Streamlined" instead of "Full" - I have no idea what this even means!

Deployment Tools - Standard has "Click Once", Pro says "Yes" (probably MSI Installation as per current versions)

Extensibility: In Standard you can only consume extensions, but not build them

Reporting: Standard has Crystal. Pro also has SQL Reporting Svs

Debugging: Standard does NOT have remoteo debugging

SQL Server: Standard does not have the explorer for SQL Server and there is no SQL Server 2005 integration

Included with intstall: Pro has SQL Server 2005 Developer Edition and Windows 2003 Server Developer Edition included. Standard does not.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Beta2 is already available to non-MSDN Universal Subscribers. You can order a DVD from Microsoft by starting at the VS2005 home page.

Also for a limited time, orders in US & Canada will get free shipping  & handling on the discs.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Loren talks about the great response to the inkable comments on Channel 9 and some of the feedback on slashdot from it. Besides the obvious illegible handwriting, the other issue is being able to search the text. That's a biggie becuase those ink comments are probably just GIFs by the time they get posted.

Two thoughts popped into my head while reading Loren's thoughts.

1) Journal can search on ink - so obviously the inkdata combined with sdk functionality allows for that. One of my favorite things to demo to developers in Journal is to write a sentence in a circle and then have Journal search for one of the words that is sideways and curved.l

2) The ink data is likely being stored in that GIF (fortified GIF persistance format also persists the ink data). But how on earth can google find it? We need an API that exposes the ink data. That is, of course, assuming that all of the writing is recognized properly.

I'll have to look into the project that Layne is working on that Loren mentions in his post.

http://www.AcehAid.org

TechEd has sold out. I also noticed this a few days ago, but Kate's blog post was too funny to pass up.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Vermont-based NRG Systems, which is a big player in the windmill industry, was growing rapidly and needed a new building. They decided to 'walk the walk' and ended up creating an unbelievably environmentally friendly commercial building. They are in Hinesburg, VT, near where I live. They have a whole section of their website dedicated to sharing info about this building which is really fascinating.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Visual Studio 2005 Beta2 has been released to MSDN Subscriptions Downloads.

It is available in various flavors with and with out Team System bits.

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Baseball fever that is. I'm looking at the cover of the May issue that arrived today and having a good laugh at the baseball theme that runs through the titles of all of the articles on the cover. Very silly, you guys!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Dave Noderer, who does so so so much for INETA and for the Florida user group community was interviewed in this newspaper about how he makes his business work by working with lots of independent contractors. Here is the article.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Bhagvan Chougule left a comment in one of my blog posts asking how I got WSE2 to install as part of my application install for an app that uses WSE2. I remember having a hard time figuring it out the first time, too, since I had never done this with any types of apps - not just WSE. So I thought I would show here how to do that.

First, if you right click on the setup project, you can choose View/Launch Conditions

Once you are in there, you can add launch conditions. I added a "File Launch Condition" which created a folder called "Search Target Machine".

Here is how I set it up.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I know our DCC fights for us, but it's tough not being a top tier market. I just checked the city list for the newest MSDN Events spring tour and Burlington is not there, again. At this point, outside of the VTdotNET user group events, Microsoft doesn't come to Vermont anymore. There is so much going on in the Boston area because they can easily get 500+ people at events. Burlington draws only 50+ people and sometimes that is really hard to achieve. I know I spend a lot of energy trying to get the word out. They always schedule Albany, NY though I have no clue how that does. But the closest events to us are over 3 hours away. I know from experience that, in this market, it is more likely to get people to a mid-day MSDN event than a weekend anything (eg Code Camp), so that route is not really an option.

I know the MSDN Event tour is also tied into other events - management and ITPro  - and it is not so much becasue we don't have enough developers at the MSDN Event, but the day as a whole, is probably not very cost effective.

Pretty much a cryin shame.

http://www.AcehAid.org

IDEP FLASH UPDATE #15 - April 12th, 2005  
From : Yayasan IDEP & Yayasan Andaru Selaras
Re : Tragic sinking of the Endless Sun Vessel

The Cahaya Abadi (Endless Sun), a private relief boat delivering aid to Aceh and Nias has sunk off the coast of Nias on April 11 at 14.00 local time.
 
The 700-ton vessel had just finished offloading a cargo of rice and aid to the village of Afulu on the south coast of Nias, North Sumatra, Indonesia when it struck an uncharted reef in a heavy swell. The boat sunk within twenty minutes. Some of the Indonesian crew of 15 and 5 volunteers swam safely to shore and the others were picked up by fishing boats. All are safe.
  
The Cahaya Abadi had delivered some of the Yayasan IDEP aid and 87 tons of rice donated by the World Food Program to four isolated communities in Nias before the incident occurred.  It had just completed its fourth rice delivery when the accident occurred. The vessel was still fully loaded with food, household and reconstruction aid intended for Aceh when it sank 600 meters offshore.
  
The vessel, leased by Yayasan Andaru Selaras (a Jakarta based NGO) was carrying relief goods from Yayasan IDEP, the World Food Program, Project Concern International and other donors.
  
“We are grateful for the good news that no one on board was seriously injured,” says Petra Schneider, Executive Director of Yayasan IDEP a Bali based NGO.  “We are committed to continue our Aceh aid and recovery projects with the help of our generous donors, volunteers and staff.”
   
The many major earthquakes in the immediate area since December 26 have created an unstable seabed situation with uncharted, difficult to navigate coral reefs.
 
“Crew and volunteers were aware that they were entering a dangerous and volatile situation,” says Chris Gentry, founder of Yayasan Andaru Selaras.  “I want to thank those who have put their lives at risk for the people of Aceh and North Sumatra. Despite the trauma and hardship they have experienced their commitment has not waned. Aid delivery in this difficult time will continue”.
   
 The crew is being evacuated by World Food Program helicopters now. The vessel was a total loss.


  
Among the tons of relief cargo lost undersea were the following items intended for IDEP’s project in Sama Tiga (Aceh) and IDEP is trying very hard to quickly replace these goods as the people there were promised that these items were coming soon aboard The Endless Sun.  Last week, the vessel, en route to Sama Tiga, was re-routed to Nias to deliver rice to isolated coastal communities in need of food, after the March 28 earthquake.

Please help us replace these items for the villagers of Sama Tiga:

• 3,000 Kerosene stoves,$3 each, for a total of $9,000
• 800 “Aid Buckets” total $16,000
• 361 Household kits total $7850
• 340 Food kits total $7540
• 100 Fishing kits total $1224
• 1 trail bike (for delivering goods to villages without roads): $1,500
  

If you can help, please contribute today.

How to help IDEP replace these items…
  
By CREDIT CARD  - Via PayPal, an internet payment system which allows you to make payments from 45 countries  (not including Indonesia - if your credit card billing address is in Indonesia this will not work).  Go to www.idepfoundation.org/aceh_aid.html and follow the instructions there. (Tax deductible for US taxpayers.)
    
By CHECK (in US)  - Via Tides Foundation. Make check payable to “Aceh Aid / Tides Foundation” and mail to Byron Miranda, Accounting, Tides Foundation, P.O. Box 29903, San Francisco, CA 94129, USA. (Tax deductible for US taxpayers.)
       
By WIRE TRANSFER (the quickest way to get funds to IDEP)
Account Name : Yayasan IDEP
Account Number : 034.001229576.003
Bank : BNI (Bank Negara Indonesia), Cabang Ubud, Bali  
Bank Address : Jl. Raya Ubud, Bali - Indonesia  
SWIFT Code : BNINIDJA DPS
    
If you send a wire transfer please send an email to : donate@idepfoundation.org telling us your name, date of transfer, currency and amount, originating bank - as well as how you would like the donation listed if it is not the same as the name on the wire transfer receipt.
     
For additional information about donating to IDEP please contact donate@idepfoundation.org
We will be posting more information on our website soon. www.idepfoundation.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

(sorry, Mike, I just couldn't resist! really, I hope that cold gets better...)

Mike Gunderloy checks out Visual Studio Hacks. In case you don't know (that is, if you are living under a rock), Mike has written A LOT about Visual Studio, big fat granular books, etc,  and he says "So, you know - I got to about page 6 of this book before I learned something new."

Gotta love it

I gave away two copies of the book last night at the VTdotNET meeting and people were chomping at the bit to get their hands on it.

So James, when you decide you can retire a wealthy man from the sale of what I think is going to be a wildly successful book, can we still say "we knew you when..."?

http://www.AcehAid.org

Doug Reilly has started an interview series called database geeks every week.

This week he is featuring Terri Morton who is a frequent contributor on asp.net forums, an asp.net mvp and an aspinsider. Although that sounds pretty much all about ASP, Terri is a pro when it comes to database work in asp.net apps.

Here is the first interview!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Here's something a little different than the usual coding... Stephen Toub points to some job openings at MSDN Magazine. One is a developmental editor which is tasked to drive the content and quality of the magazine. Sound pretty cool!

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org

I had to get a copy of one of my clients sql server db tables onto my local sql server. For some reason DTS was failing on a particular record and I couldn't identify the problem or the record or the error.

I finally gave up and went over to my whidbey box, set up an ADO.NET bulk copy and streamed the data from the remote sql server into the table on my local server.

(Without having to learn how to do a bulk copy in SQL Server)

What a great feeling!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have a client with one last holdout FoxPro 2.6 application. It manages all of their incredibly complex billing and is a work of art and works beautifully and someday we will upgrade it, not to make it better, but just because we will have to. But for now, just accept that fact and move on.

The woman who does the invoicing noticed an odd inconsistency that did not affect billing but a payroll report that was missing one person's 3 hour stint for a particular day  - one of 3 rows that made up one guy's particular day.

That report is created by a union of two queries. The first picks up all the data, the second picks up any body who didn't have any hours that week (10 maybe 15 extra). I looked and looked at this then broke the queries into two. The record was there. Ran the queries with the union, the record was gone and the row count was off by one.

I have been fiddling with this all morning (it's a disease, what can I say?) and there is no rhyme or reason for it. So I just bagged the union and did two queries and appended the results to each other.

But, no complaints. We are all ecstatic that this 8 year old program (which gets tweaked here and there from time to time) still works on the new computers and is great. Thanks to all who are responsible for that!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Someone who sat in on my C# for VB programmers session at Code Camp emailed with a little problem. DataSet.Table("myTable") was throwing the error

Error: 'System.Data.DataSet.Tables' denotes a 'property' where a 'method' was expected

It is such a common mistake we VB people make in C# because those parens are just totally second nature to us! Even I had to think about it a minute before I saw the problem! It's

DataSet.Table[“myTable“]

The funny thing was seeing a C# programmer complaining that in VB, everything is parens and it makes it hard to tell if we are referring to a parameter or an element, making a method call or getting info out of an array/collection. Great perspective!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Richard Hale Shaw is in town so we thought it would be fun to do a geek dinner.

Date: Thursday April 8th
Time: 6:30 pm
Place: NECI Commons, 25 Church St. Burlington

Note that if there are too many of us to get a table quickly, we will just go elsewhere on Church Street or environs. So try not to be late!!

 

http://www.AcehAid.org

Hey Vermont.NETters....

Here is fellow user group member, Dave Burke, talking about our Monday speaker, Robert Hurlbut and pointing to his Dot Net Rocks show. Check it out!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am likely one of many many people who are struggling with this decision.

PDC and the MVP Summit are 2 weeks apart, both on the west coast. This is really frustrating.

http://www.AcehAid.org

VTdotNetters -

Last call to register - Mini CodeCamp C# Special Edition with Richard Hale Shaw (@ Watham MA All day Saturday April 30th).

Done in the CodeCamp tradition and will benefit VB/C++ developers who want to get into .NET or C# programmers looking for an all-day refresher course.

(thanks SB for the copy/paste!)

p.s. Come to a geek dinner with Richard in Burlington on Thursday night (April 7). Watch this post for the location

http://www.AcehAid.org