Tuesday, May 31, 2005

I am really excited to announce that I am going to be writing some of my blog posts for the DevSource website, which is a Ziff-Davis online publication! Editor, Esther Schindler has done a wonderful job in creating this technical resource targeted to .NET Developers. There are lots of great articles (including the fun .NET Rock Star series :-)), contests where they give away cool stuff like Acer Ferrari laptops or Dell flat panel monitors and forums. When I post a blog over there, I will make note of it over here. The blog should be up any day now.

The purpose of this blog is to give a developer's perspective to things - some of the pain of being a developer, my thoughts on what's going on in the community, my take on some buzz, etc.

I even had a new picture taken for it. Big huge thanks to Wintellect's Mark Kovalcson, a serious photographer on the side, who brought his big camera and a light to the MS Reston office during Devscovery to snap a few photos. My buddy Sara Faatz even let me borrow some makeup, but it's laughably light and you probably can't tell I actually did that. Yes, I put make-up on folks, just for you!!!

As soon as it's live, I will let you know. I'm looking forward to posting some TechEd blogs there as well.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 2:38:52 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Rather than drive up my nice, short, paved driveway to drop off some small envelope-sized packages, the DHL guy sticks one of their honker envelopes to the side of my painted mailbox. My green mailbox. The green is paint. Now I have a foot long 1/2 inch high stripe from trying to peel the darned thing off.

Hello? Duh!!!! Yes I called them. I think I need to bill them for all of my wasted time...



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 2:13:19 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
Dead Creek is a very special place in Vermont and not far from where I live. It's hardly dead! It is a wildlife refuge and one of the locations of the Bald Eagle restoration project. Rich and I took the canoe there yesterday and had a lazy beautiful paddle up the creek. It is wide open, with views of the Adirondacks along the west. Lots of birds and yes, we even did see a bald eagle. I have wanted to go there for a long time and know that we will definitely go back. The temperature of the water in Lake CHamplain is still under 50 degrees. We don't have wet or drysuits so we can't go out on the lake yet. That water temp will literally kill you in a very short time if you don't have the proper protection.

http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:54:54 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

as per Leon, I will now walk over to the corner of my office and bang my face against the wall (but it's not brick)... ouch! ouch! ouch!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 9:41:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Sometimes when I read blogs (and I'm talking about those from the .NET community) I think that the male bloggers (you know, that 99% of the .NET bloggers) are definitely writing for guys, when in the context of a technical post, they make some joke about their sexual prowress or the hottie quality of a particular woman. I don't really think a post like that was written for me. I dunno - maybe it's just me, but I don't think I'm ultra sensitive. Even if I am highly unlikely to ever be the subject of "who's the hottest..." :-)

But it is a bit of a turnoff for me to be lured into a post like that and then suddenly be in the middle of some male bonding ritual. Not a big problem, mind you, because I *am* in the company of men, and I know they are really just being silly more than anything...



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 31, 2005 8:06:09 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, May 30, 2005

Some of the syntax for writing debugger visualizers has changed again with the recent Beta 2 of VS2005. They are minor, but as always, notable.

1) The VisualizerUIType is gone because all Visualizers are Modal.

Before
[assembly: DebuggerVisualizer(typeof(DebuggerVisualizers.DataTableDebugger),VisualizerUIType.Modal, Target = typeof(System.Data.DataTable), Description = "JL DataTable")]

Beta2
[assembly: DebuggerVisualizer(typeof(DebuggerVisualizers.DataTableDebugger),Target = typeof(System.Data.DataTable), Description = "JL DataTable")]

2) Rather than implementing the System.Diagnostics.IDebugVisualizer interface, you now will implement the Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers.DialogDebuggerVisualizer class 

Before
public class DataTableDebugger : IDebugVisualizer

Beta2
public class DataTableDebugger : DialogDebuggerVisualizer

The signature of the show method has changed as well. It now uses interfaces from the Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers namespace and no longer requires a uiType, since that is a given.

Before
public void Show(IServiceProvider windowService, IVisualizerObjectProvider objectProvider, VisualizerUIType uiType)

Beta2
public void Show(IDialogVisualizerService windowService, IVisualizerObjectProvider objectProvider)

Note that in addition to using the System.Diagnostics namespace (which gives us the DebuggerVisualizer class referenced in the assembly attribute, I am also using the Microsoft.VisualStudio.DebuggerVisualizers namespace as well.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 30, 2005 9:38:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I don't know why I didn't realize this before. Steve is a system architect for Indigo. A knowledgable, interesting and entertaining presenter, I have seen Steve do team tag in an Indigo presentation at VSLive with Don Box and he definitely kept Don on his toes!!. Christian Weyer, who won't be able to make it to DevTeach this year, boohoo, refers to Steve as "Mr. Indigo... *the* man behind Indigo".  Ted is Ted .... and I can easily also say knowledgable, interesting and entertaining. Ted is all about WS Interop so Indigo is a natural for him.

I am *really* looking forward to this keynote!! DevTeach is from Sun June 19th - June 22nd in Montreal. Today is the last day to get the last of the early bird discounts. VTdotNet-ters can also get an additional $50 user group discount.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 30, 2005 9:16:12 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
This year - a whole page dedicated to this great luncheon!! There will be nine panelists this time! And still including our fave developers, Michele Leroux Bustamante, Kate Gregory and Kimberly Tripp. Angela Mills, who blew me away last year, will be back this year. And they have added some more women with fascinating jobs. Once again, I am really looking forward to this lucheon, which will be on Wednesday June 8th at The Convention Center- North Hall A1 from 11:30 - 1:30.

http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 30, 2005 8:07:16 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, May 29, 2005

I have to write what I hope will be my last vs2003 app - just a quickie for a client. Now that I have done so much work with Whidbey, there was something that is painfully missing from .NET 1.1, the backgroundworker class component. This is for easily making asynchronous calls without having to write all the goo yourself. Thanks loads to Juval Lowy for creating a totally compatible v1.1 BackGroundWorker component (CoDe Magazine Mar/Apr 2004 issue and download the code from the www.IDesign.net website). He has written it with the same properties, methods etc so that when 2.0 RTMs, I can easily just update this little app and in the meantime, I get to use the syntax I am now quite familiar with from .NET 2.0,



http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 29, 2005 4:36:17 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
hmmm - maybe when I go to TechEd, I'll go stay at Mark's house, instead.... :-)

http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 29, 2005 1:19:41 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, May 27, 2005
Scott Nonnenberg keeps track of cool debugger visualizers people are writing. I have only gone so far as messageboxes or windows forms. Here is an entire MDI  application debugger visualizer that really let's you explore a dataset in amazing ways!! It is way more than a simple tool and not a freebie. This debugging feature in .NET 2.0 definitely opens up some 3rd party opportunities.

http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 27, 2005 9:13:51 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Oh yeah, and we left the "Test" title on the email - since we email it to each other in advance for last minute checks. So even though it says "Test" that is the real deal!!!

Lots of good stuff in there - our User Group Leader Summit schedule, an article on creating Certification Study Groups, some new NORAM Liaisons have come on board (yippee!!!) and more more more.

If you are not on the newsletter email list, you can sign up on the h ome page of INETA. The newsletters (NORAM's and other regions) are archived at www.ineta.org/newsletters.

As always, if you have ANYTHING to share that your user group is proud of, or an idea you think other user groups could benefit from, a community driven event coming up, let us know!! Email newsletter@ineta.org.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 27, 2005 10:47:47 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Dave Noderer has listed the BOF Schedule for Tuesday and Wednesday on his blog.

10 sessions at a time at 6:30, 7:45 and 9:00  each evening. That's a lot to choose from!!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 27, 2005 10:28:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, May 26, 2005

When I was at Microsoft's Reston office earlier this month, there was a 'Softie (oh, I just can't remember his name) who was telling me that the next big thing was going to be Software Factories. He showed me the dev center for them. Said to get to know them, keep my eyes out, etc. Well, I have definitely seen the beginnings of buzz over the last few weeks hither and thither - mostly on the MSDN blogs. Here looks like a good blog to follow for more info...

So, it's on my list, though I'm still not there quite yet...



http://www.AcehAid.org
Thursday, May 26, 2005 7:15:58 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Wednesday, May 25, 2005

Well that was fun. I just did a webcast with DCC Glen Gordon on MARS, a new feature of SQL Server2005 that is leveraged in ADO.NET 2.0. (I'll post a link to the on-demand version of it when it gets posted)

Although I have looked at, experimented with, presented on and written about MARS previously, this was the deepest I have gotten into it. Glen and I had a lot of interesting talks in advance of doing the webcast. One thing that I really have learned a lot more about is transactions, where we can benefit from MARS the most.

Doing a webcast is fun, but for me the downside is not having the interaction with a group of people that you get doing a live presentation. You can see on people's faces when something is confusing, or if you are going on a little too long about something you may think is really fascinating, but they don't. :-) and make adjustments as you go along.

MARS is very powerful, but it's so important to understand what it does and how it works before you start leveraging it. Otherwise you have the potential, as Christian Kleinerman says in his excellent MARS article, to really shoot yourself in the foot!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Wednesday, May 25, 2005 12:59:51 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, May 24, 2005

I just had a call from a client with some big problems on their server that has IIS and SQL Server on it.

Their most used application that interacts directly with SQL Server was having problems - from many computers and randomly throughout the application.

I watched the SQL Server profiler and saw rpc requests coming in and occasionaly that request was not being followed by a BatchCompleted.

Also on that server, things were really slow.

A quick peek in the task manager showed a very bloated ASP.Net worker process (w3wp.exe). On the first call to a particular webservice, it was flying up from about 108,000K to over 550,000K.

Restarting that application made the memory drop back down to 108,000 or so.

I checked everything I could think of and tested each time after I made a change. Still the worker process was bloating.

Finally, I targetted two little seemingly innocent lines in my web.config. The flags whcih enable wse2 to trace it's incoming and outgoing messages to xml files and also policy tracing. These are simple settings in the WSE2 config tool.

I commented them out and voila - all was well again.

Lesson learned - remember to turn of the darn analysis tools in a live app when you are not using them.

Crisis averted - phew!



http://www.AcehAid.org
WSE
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 3:36:24 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Speaking of Sam, he is coming to Vermont.NET on June 13th to talk to us about SOA and Indigo. This is an INETA event - so thanks once again to INETA.

We are definitely looking forward to it. Maybe I'll have to wear my Indigo shirt (oh what a geeky girl I am...)



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 9:21:27 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
Sam's in Redmond and Michele found him at Starbuck's and knew he was there before she even saw his smilin' face!

http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 9:12:25 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Very cool. Green Mountain Oracle Users Group. Lots of cross-pollination opportunities here with VTdotNET. Now we have a SQL group AND an Oracle group (as well as a Flash group) right in Burlington. Kewel...

Their kickoff meeting will be June 22 at the Wyndham with Tom Kyte, VP Core Technologies of Oracle.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 9:08:58 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I hope everyone got to catch the ADO.NET 2.0 (What's New Overview) webcast that Mark Dunn and Glen Gordon did yesterday. If not, look for it to show up in the on-demand webcasts soon.

Tomorrow at 12pm EST I will be doing another ADO.NET 2.0 webcast with Glen, specifically on the topic of MARS (Multiple Active Result Sets). This is a great feature of SQL Server 2005 that is leveraged by ADO.NET, but before you use it, you should understand what it does, where you will benefit from it, where you will be better off without it and some potential booby traps to avoid.

MARS will let you do some really interesting stuff with transactions as well as help you write some cleaner code in your ADO.NET.

Register here for the MARS webcast.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 24, 2005 8:11:24 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, May 23, 2005
This is for my young friend Michael, who's 4 day old daughter is in very critical condition... all good vibes Mei's way...

http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 23, 2005 8:54:09 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, May 20, 2005
Well, Chris is already on the boards of many non-profit organizations (including INETA lucky for us), but can you picture him in the Trump boardroom?

http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 20, 2005 12:32:46 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Thursday, May 19, 2005

okay - would you all please get OFF of the www.msteched.com site for a little while so I can look at the session schedules, too? :-)

The site has been timing out and I just can't get at the session schedules or the tool to let me schedule. Hopefully, they will have the promised RSS feed ready SOON so we have easier access to the info. I would definitely be interested in using Rob Rohr's OneNote tool to schedule my sessions, but he can't finish it up until the RSS is available.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Thursday, May 19, 2005 8:23:25 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Tuesday, May 17, 2005
That Kate Gregory is something else. It's one thing for her to go round the world training developers, but when she gets invited to Microsoft to train the 'softies, I'm even more impressed. Kate recently did a tour of Canada teaching about VS2005 Smart Client programming and is bringing her expertise to Redmond next week.

http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 2:25:50 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I ordered something from PC Connection yesterday. Their site is awesome -- quick and easy to get around. The ordering process was quick safe and I'm sure very secure. I have no problems with that.

However, since I was a dummy and typed in my credit card info off the top of my head, I did get a number wrong. So they sent me an email about it.

I originally deleted the email along with all of my other spam. It was from a girls' name (@pcconnection.com but I didn't notice that quickly enough) and the subject said Order ######## (with the real number in there) like so very many spam emails that come through the pipe.

This is what the email looks like (except I have masked the name of the sender as well as what might be the direct line etc...)

--------------------------------

We are ready to ship your order but the credit card has declined.  Please call us at the number below between 9am and 1am Eastern Time.  Thank you,

The name is in  "reply blue" text as is half of the fax #. The hyperlink is to file:\\pcconnection.com, which of course fails. Therefore you would resort to calling the phone #. The phone # is not the same as the phone # on the website. So I came to the conclusion that my email and order # were scraped from somewhere along the pipe and not secured as I'm sure the credit card info was and they were luring me to call a different phone # to give my credit card details to god knows who!

I did call the phone # on the website and got my cc cleared up but had a long chat with a customer service rep about the fact that most professionals I know would advise everyone and anyone to ignore such an email and they should really reconsider how they communicate with their clients about stuff like this.

Sheesh!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Tuesday, May 17, 2005 1:30:12 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Monday, May 16, 2005

I had a very strange problem with SQL Server 2005 April CTP today that I have "solved" but just want to put it out there in case anyone has this happen too!

I installed VS2005 Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 April CTP Developer on a completely repaved clean machine. There is nothing else on the box.

I did this before I went to D.C. so that's about 2 weeks ago. I ran through all o fmy demos and everything worked great. I went away for a week and still didn't turn that machine on for another week, until today. I was unable to log into the sql server from code or from the Mgmnt Studio interface, not even into the default database. On both the lowly user or even the admin account, I was getting "invalid user". I couldn't run any of my demos from Visual Studio. I tried all kinds of stuff and finally gave in and uninstalled and reinstalled and everything is now fine.

I would be very interested to know if anyone else has had this behavior. I know it's just a beta and expect wierdness, but am still curious.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 8:20:46 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

This is not something I normally do, but is why I do have a "Purely Personal" category on this blog!

>
> TOP 10 (8 actually. The other 2 must have gotten deleted in  forwarding)
DOG PEEVES ABOUT HUMANS
>
> 1.  Blaming your farts on me...  not funny...  not funny at all!
>
> 2.  Yelling at me for barking ...  I'M A FRIGGIN'  DOG!
>
> 3.  Taking me for walks, then not letting me check stuff out.  Exactly
> whose walk is this anyway?
>
> 4.  Any trick that involves balancing food on my nose ... stop it!
>
> 5.  Any haircut that involves bows or ribbons.  Now you know why we
> chew your stuff up when you're not home.
>
>
> 6.  The slight of hand, fake fetch throw.  You fooled a dog!  Whoooo
> Hoooooooo -- what a proud moment for the 'top' of the food chain.
>
> 7.  Taking me to the vet for the "big snip", then acting surprised
> when I freak out every time we go back!
>
> 8.  Getting upset when I sniff the crotches of your guests.  Sorry,
> but I haven't quite mastered that handshake thing yet.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 7:07:07 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Well, wouldyalookatdat?!

MS is going to include 5 seats for Foundation Server with any of the team system skus.

This will make lots of people happy.

However I am scratching my head a little because, if I understand Thom's explanation correctly the other night at VTdotNET, Foundation Server is aimed at huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge shops with lots and lots and lots of developers.

Anyway, I know a few small companies in Vermont that will be happy to hear this!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 5:37:17 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Microsoft New England is sponsoring a free showing of the new Star Wars flick that Rod Paddock says he would see again and again! Here are the details on Thom Robbins' blog.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 5:23:35 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Egad - Microsoft is now talking about Hawaii which is THREE product cycles out from what we are working on today.

VS2003

VS2005 (Whidbey)

VSxxx  (Orcas)

VSIhopetoberetiredby then (Hawaii)



http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 10:23:29 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
Since I have an interest in WS-Federation and Liberty, I found this post from Tim Bray (by way of Robert Scoble) also notable. It's very difficult to always know what the big picture is of things like these - especially since I am pretty uninvolved in Interop still.

http://www.AcehAid.org
WSE
Monday, May 16, 2005 10:13:56 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
I found this interesting article on raising your hourly rates when you are a consultant. It is not directed at IT consultants, but just at consultants in general. I find it to be good objective advice. I had been billing the same rate for many many many years and have finally been adjusting to a new set of rates (still with a special rate for long-term clients) over the past few months. I know a lot of developers within our blogging .NET community that have made the leap to consulting in the past year or so. I have been working as a contractor since 1989, yet I sometimes need the same advice as a consulting newbie!

http://www.AcehAid.org
Monday, May 16, 2005 9:41:47 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Sunday, May 15, 2005

I have been thinking about the Birds of a Feather session that I am leading at TechEd called "Life on the Bleeding Edge" and hoping that there will be people there that are already heavily into technologies like Longhorn, Avalon, Indigo, or have used .NET for so long that they are almost bored silly with it. Tablet PC users, etc

I did not create the session because I have the answer, but becasue I think it's a really interesting question and am very hopeful that there will be a mix of early adopters and VB6 devotees for an interesting dicussion. Here's the info

BOF031  Life on the Bleeding Edge
Speaker(s): Julie Lerman
Session Type(s): Birds of a Feather
Day/Time: Wednesday, June 8 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM Room: Track Cabana 01A
Whidbey, Yukon, Indigo, Avalon, Longhorn, EEEK! How the heck do we learn all this stuff when we can't even keep on top of all of the current technology? Come to this BOF and we can talk about how we decide how far ahead we should be looking, how we pick and choose what we want to learn and how we find the time and energy to do it.


http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 15, 2005 7:30:15 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I am going to be doing a webcast with DCC Glen Gordon on the topic of MARS - Multiple Active Resultsets - on May 25th. This is one of a pair of ADO.NET 2 talks that Glen and Mark Dunn are doing together, but I'll be filling in for Mark on this one. MARS is a topic that I have been digging into for almost the past year as part of my explorations of ADO.NET 2.0, so I'm looking forward to the webcast which will be full of how-to's and watch-out's!

The first webcast is an ADO.NET 2.0 overview that Mark & Glen will be doing on May 23rd.

Glen has a deep level of experience with SQL Server, so I am really looking forward to his perspective on MARS and am happy that Mark thought of me when he realized he had a difficult scheduling conflict.

You can register here for the MARS webcast.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 15, 2005 5:07:55 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Sahil Malik is in the final phases of his upcoming ADO.NET 2.0 book!!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 15, 2005 4:46:32 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Atlanta's Code Camp and the "Developer Developer Developer" event in the u.k

Here is a blog post from Plip on the u.k. event which is modeled after Code Camps.

Here is one from Atlanta Code Camp by Chris Williams.

Surely there will be more.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 15, 2005 1:31:08 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

One of the things that I have been invited to do this year that I am really looking forward to is participate on the Advisory Board for the Software Engineering Department at Burlington based Champlain College. The funny thing about that links is that there is a picture of myself and architecture guru Keith Pleas on the page! That was taken at the Vermont.NET's June 2003 meeting where we had Keith come in as our INETA Speaker, Thom Robbins spoke also, MSDN was filming us as part of their video on how great INETA is and we helped celebrate INETA's 100th Speaker Bureau event! There were 50 people at the meeting. Champlain is proud to host our summer meetings.

Champlain is a very advanced with their technology and even just built a new building dedicated to it. They have a degree program in Software Engineering and even a offer a masters degree in I.T.

So as a software professional, someone who has lots of involvement with Microsoft and also someone who spends a lot of time looking at [some] of the future products coming down the pipes, I do have something to offer the college as they plan for the next academic year of preparing students for the real world!



http://www.AcehAid.org
Sunday, May 15, 2005 8:49:39 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Saturday, May 14, 2005
A component walks into a bar and ...

http://www.AcehAid.org
Saturday, May 14, 2005 1:11:45 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I am not a gamer. I don't know how to play Xbox, but I can spell it at least. Either way, I am really impressed by something on their new site that REALLY goes out of the box (no pun intended) with thinking about websites. It is something I have been heralding the geniuses at Hi-Res for years.

What is great is that you get to think and explore the site. It is not filled with hand holding explicit links. There's not much there, but what I love so much is the page you get to by clicking on the question mark. It forces you to think and play with it rather than being hammer on the head obvious. Brilliant stuff. And when I finally followed my instincts and found success, it was really gratifying.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Saturday, May 14, 2005 10:40:23 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

This time it is about 30 miles from Padang. 6.9. Here's some minimal info.

Padang is in southern Sumatra whereas the earlier disasters were in the northwest, in Aceh Province.

Here is a map on the AcehAid website (IDEP Foundation) so you can see where all of these places are relative to each other. IDEP continues to work night and day in response to the nightmare tsunamis that happened in December and continue to rely on financial support.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Saturday, May 14, 2005 10:24:11 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

The links on their site are currently a wreck, but you can go here http://www.ejhs.k12.vt.us/ to get more info. I have copied and pasted from their site, but again, thee links in the descriptions won't work very well. I have emailed them so hopefully they will be fixed soon.

Position:

Network Administrator

Deadline:

May 23, 2005

Description:

Full-time, 12 month position available to direct, coordinate and maintain local area computer network activities of the Chittenden Central Supervisory Union, Union #46 School District and Essex Junction School District.  BA in Computer Science or related field, plus 3 to 5 years as a network administrator preferred.  Certifications in or ability to obtain certifications in Microsoft, Novell and/or Cisco required.  For additional details please refer to the job description.  Excellent benefits package including family medical and dental insurance; life insurance; a retirement plan with up to a 200% employer match; tuition reimbursement; 11 paid holidays, paid vacation and other paid leaves.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application and three letters of reference and salary requirements to the address above.

and these two which you won't retire early on but...

Position:

Microcomputer Specialist – Westford School District

Deadline:

May 25, 2005

Description:

Part-time position available, starting July 1, 2005 to serve our Westford School by performing a variety of specialized computer installation and support functions. Position pays $13.78/hour for 20 hours (2½ days) per week. For additional information please refer to the job description.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application, and at least three references to the address above.

Position:

Microcomputer Specialist – Essex High School

Deadline:

Open Until Filled

Description:

Full-time position available immediately at our Essex High School to perform a variety of specialized computer installation and support functions. Position pays $13.43/hour, with an excellent benefits package including family medical and dental insurance; life insurance; a retirement plan with up to a 200% employer match; tuition reimbursement; 11 paid holidays, paid vacation and other paid leaves. For additional information please refer to the job description.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application, and at least three references to the address above.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Saturday, May 14, 2005 10:14:26 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
SENIOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR
(full-time - Vergennes)
DRĀ® Power Equipment, an information-intensive direct marketer, is looking for a Senior System Administrator to join our Information Systems Team. The ideal candidate will have 5 or more years of experience in the following areas: day-to-day systems deployment and administration, designing and managing infrastructure architecture, project management, systems security planning, procurement and supplier management, and budgeting and cost management. Our technical environment includes a multi-point wide area network, multiple Windows/ UNIX/MPE servers, an internally hosted eCommerce presence, stateful firewalling, 200+ desktops and Call Center ACD equipment. Key technologies include: Windows 2000/3, Exchange 2000, Oracle and SQL server, Cisco routers, and a host of supporting technologies.
We have several exciting initiatives in our plans and are looking for a self-starting team player to join us.

http://www.AcehAid.org
Saturday, May 14, 2005 9:55:40 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

Rebecca Dias: WS-* and Liberty

Matt Powell Excellent News around Web Service Federation

Hervey Wilson Moving On...Federation Calls...  Active Directory Federation Server/Indigo/WS* - cool!!!



http://www.AcehAid.org
WSE
Saturday, May 14, 2005 8:31:21 AM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 
 Friday, May 13, 2005

Late last night my poor doggie went out to pee before we went to bed. Normally I stand outside and keep and eye on her becuase we are surrounded by woods and a black dog can disappear in the black night pretty easily if they see something interesting to chase. But instead, I had a similar urge (to pee, not to chase deer) and went back inside for a few minutes. When I went back out she was not back up on the porch as I would have expected, waiting to come in. I called her (not too loudly, since it was past midnight) and still didn't hear her panting and trotting back towards me. I went and turned on some more flood lights. Still no Tasha. Finally I put on my coat and shoes and went out. Then I heard her tromping through some dry leaves and a funny snorty noise. Tasha appeared in the light and was bobbing her head up and down in a strange way. When I got up closer to her I saw that her nose had a great display of porcupine quills sticking out of it. Nose, lips and the roof of her mouth. Not a ton - maybe 20 or so total. She wasn't even whining.

After calling our vet who was on call that night twice and my mother (a breeder who has been through this with her dogs), the vet assured me that if Tasha had no complaints at all about this she would be okay through the night. Since she is old and the ones in her mouth might require sedation to remove, he did not want to do that in the middle of the night.

Tasha slept without complaint thanks to some Rescue Remedy - which I probably should have taken myself. I didn't sleep much because I'm a big worry wart and I was concerned because she is an old dog and who knows what could happen? Were there any in her chest, in her throat? I kept waking up and checking on her - sleeping soundly and breathing!

This morning we brought her to the vet first thing and he was again amazed that she still had no complaints at all - except that we hadn't fed her breakfast yet. He was able to remove all of the quills without sedation. The larger quills from the older porcupines are easier to remove for some reason so we were lucky. There is not even a bump or anything on her nose as proof that she went through this.

The stoicism of Newfoundland dogs never ceases to amaze me.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 13, 2005 3:41:29 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)  #     |  Comments [0]  | 

I just discovered another MVP in Vermont. Anne Stanton, a CRM MVP. Anne also runs a user group, NH/VT Upper Valley IT Consultants, which seems to focus on Small Business Server. In fact, the user group is how I found her. Someone emailed me looking for an IT Pro group in Vermont and I went to Culminis and searched on Vermont.

That makes three including me, that I know of. In addition to Anne, the 3rd is Zoe Hart (Zoe rhymes with GO :-) ) who works at C2, a Burlington Gold Partner. Zoe is a Commerce Server MVP.



http://www.AcehAid.org
Friday, May 13, 2005 2:00:53 PM (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-05:00)