As long as I''m in the middle of a gaggle of learning curves (eg advanced ClickOnce deployment, uncommon UI threading issues, and a host of other things I'm dealing with as I port a particular app to VS2005), I added another one today - contract first web services. In addition to porting the application, I am adding in some enhancements that my client has requested. One of them required a new web service. So I thought it was a perfect time to drop everything and learn to do contract first, of course using thinktecture's WSCF tool (testing out their not yet released VS2005 version). But I'm not just learning how to use their tool. I am such a weenie when it comes to schemas, WSDL, etc. - like many non-plumbers. This process is requiring me to get a little further under the sheets with this stuff, too. One wonders why it takes me so long to finish something. Of course this is not including the hours I had to take out dealing with compatibilty issues between our scanner (Canon LiDE 35) and our new printer (HP Laserjet 1320) and continued research on DVI KVM's (I think I found what I'm looking for here) and while I was at it ordering a DVD burner (finally) so I can freakin' install the new Vista bits.

Anyway, back to it!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

:Larry O'Brien, an independent programmer/writer, talks about the limitations on living off of your time. Since you can't make more time and there is a limit to how much you can charge for your time, you definitely have a limit to how much income you can earn. Larry, I hear ya. I want to work less, not more. But I sure would like to get rid of this mortgage!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

This seems to happen occasionally when I type into the code while debugging. So I say Cancel, i.e. no, and the question keeps coming up over and over. So if I say "ok" I know I'm in trouble when I get the screen about "large sections of the file may be include". This always ends in a hang. (No there are no 3rd party add-ins installed). And then I just have to give in and open up task manager and trash it. Or wait for it to finally time out, but then I get the error "The Vbc taks failed unexpectedly". Well, 10 of those errors, in fact. What a pain. Oh well. I'm sure the fact that I've got this wierd application that I am moving from VS2003 to Vs2005 has something to do with it.

I can't tell exactly what the pattern is, but it is certainly not a random act of nastiness.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

The application that I am porting to VS2005 has off-line capabilities. In VS2003, after looking at a lot of options, I chose to store the data in the App folder of the All Users area in c:\directory and settings. One reason for this is that it is possible that a laptop will be passed off from one user to another and they need a common area that they can access. The other reason is that occasionally we might need to get at that data manually if there is a problem. This is the main reason why isolated storage was not an option.

I was able to get to this folder with

System.IO.Directory.GetParent(System.Windows.Forms.Application.CommonAppDataPath)

Not so in ClickOnce.

ClickOnce installs apps into a user's local storage - (Directory and settings/user/local settings/apps). This means that on shared computers, there may be multiple copies of the application. I don't like that and will see if there is a way around it since I am manually generating manifest files anyway, but I can live with it.

It also means that the above method returns the data directory defined by ClickOnce, which is inside of this install (rather, in the same parent folder). Not just that, but there will be a different one for each update of the application. This is bad bad bad (for my application).

You can read more about this here in the docs, online.

Even though the LocalSettings  folder is a safe folder as far as CAS is concerned, I don't like the idea of hardcoding that file path (or making it a resource). But at this point, I think it's going to be the solution. Bah!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

My blog site is really under attack! I thought I had it at bay after implementing AngryPets' ReverseDos and not seeing any more of these since yesterday.  ReverseDOS is doing an amazing job, but I do have to keep up with adding the domains into the config file. Only about 4 would have done the trick here. It's amazing. Clearly there is a list of a number of my blog posts somewhere and they just run that list against their own list of urls that they want linkbacks to and keep republishing some page with that list on there or something. It's becoming a full time job and I'm getting more than annoyed. Sadly I have "trackback services" turned off in my dasblog settings, but all of this stuff still shows up on the post's pages.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I got a ton of referral spam yesterday, then left the house at about 2pm. When I came home our power was out and I didn't boot up my computer until this morning.

Outlook has been downloading email for over an hour! It's all referral spam on my blog. Thousands upon thousands. I have never seen anything like it.

Quite insane.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have an ancient FoxPro DOS app that churns out reports in a way that can't be done too easily (not worth a rewrite) in Windows. It used to print these on an HP LaserJet II (back in the days when we listened to music on those big flat round discs with a needle) and has been printed on a LaserJet 4Si for about 12 years or so. I just got a sweet little LaserJet 1320t and expected all of this printing (which is done in PCL) to continue to work. But it didn't - at least not without some sweat and tears - and I had a few lessons to learn.

1) The new printers are very special and create their own ports on Windows for printing. I finally realized that to print from DOS at all, whether a print command from the DOS prompt or from within FoxPro, I needed to change that to LPT1. (And have to remember to switch back for all of my other printing.)

2) Somehow my application was communicating enough to the printer by saying "legal paper, please" that the printer would find the right bin, even if I moved the legal tray to the upper bin or the lower bin. With the new printer, I needed to explicitly send the PCL code for legal paper and lower bin (esc&l3A  and esc&l4H)

3) My reports were printing out based on 117 lines per page (legal) . I could no longer get that to work (two hours was enough time spent on that problem, wouldn't you say?). So I had to accept sticking with 102 lines and 8 lines per inch. I literally print this report using line and column #s for positioning, so this is a big deal for me. Of the 400 reports that get printed (one per entity), not too many of them needed that full length, so I will just have to keep an eye out for those and make sure the two page functionality I have built into this program works properly.

Hopefully this will help some other dinosaur who is moving partially to the modern ages (funny that I have one foot in the dark ages and the other dipping into the bleeding edge with the rest of my work). As long as Raymond Chen and team continue to allow me to use this reporting tool on Windows XP and beyond, I have no incentive to try to duplicate the process in windows.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

How I plan to solve my specialized ClickOnce needs that are not available in the nice little ClickOnce settings wizard....(read more...)

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Earlier this month, Matt Cassell interviewed me (with great questions) for his podcast show, www.AcademicdotNET.com that is aimed at highschool programmers.

Matt is himself in high school, but at 15, has still been programming a lot longer than many of us!

My interview was #4. The first was Ted Neward, and he is about to push up #5, with Regional Director Barry Gervin.

It was a lot of fun to do the interview (and he even taught me how to use skype). What impressed me was that he had very specific questions so that he could be sure that the discussion was at the proper level for his target audience. I think that anyone at any age who is new to programming and new to .NET will find these podcasts very helpful.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Red Pill

Blue Badge

Green Card (?)

Ja! Ja!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Just noticed this on Jason Olson's blog. Not being tightly associated with INETA, any more it's been difficult to keep up with the frequent board and committee changes that have occurred since the [nearly] total board changeover in June. I'm not quite sure what a "Website Marketing" committee does (I know there was a Marketing committee and an Infrastructure (aka website) committee ... perhaps they have merged), but I know that whatever Chris and Jason are working on, they bring great energy to the table!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I know I know. I have told many people that you can run vs2003 and vs2005 side by side. But I have this honker application to port and I don't want to do it on the same machine where I need to be able to get at it (in vs2003) in emergencies. Plus I wanted everything super clean. The solution has many many assemblies and references a lot of 3rd party tools. Plus I had to move everything from WSE 2.0 to WSE 3.0. Too much for side by side if you ask me. Some of those 3rd party tools will be getting upgraded, like Janusys (finally moving to 2.0) and others.

So for the time being, I have taken my beautiful dual monitor setup and dedicated one screen to my other computer (until I find a solution as sweet as my VGA KVM cables that will work on DVI and isn't a $200 switchbox). I'm still feeling the dual monitor vibe though. I'm coding on one screen and emailing, etc. on the other.

I could do this as VPC, but I had a whole computer just sitting there...begging for new bits!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It's their 47th b-day.

http://www.sugarbush.com/summarystats.aspx

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

In WSE2.0, the recommended way to do authorization, was to attach a principal with role information to a SecurityToken in a custom UsernameToken manager (which you would be using to authenticate against anything but A.D.). Then in your web method, you can just get at that principal by returning the Context.Security.Tokens from the RequestContext. But that is now obsolete. In fact if you use it, you will get a warning that SoapContext.Security is obsolete and to write a custom filter instead.

However the samples and the documentation in WSE 3.0 still show the old method. So, I'm not a Michele or Benjamin or William or Clemens or Christian. And most people using this stuff aren't (cause those guys have all moved on to INdigo, but I have a live app that needs ws security...). Now what?

I guess I am going to learn how to use filters today. (so much for my fantasy of cutting out for 2 hours after lunch to go skiing because we got about 4 inches of new snow last night. whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I'm in the middle of porting over a vs2003 app to vs2005. Every little step further is exciting. Not that I don't expect it to work, but with a number of built in challenges, it is especially rewarding  to see things working!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Is there something wrong with my code? With the component? Or with the docs? Or were the docs just written for normal scenarios? Had I done something so very unusual that it wasn't covered in the documentation? (I don't think I did anything unsual, by the way.) [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Boy I sure wish I could have been to your party!

I also wish I was going to Namibia for the holidays, but heck, I didn't even feel likek driving 5 hours to my mother-in-laws, much less another 40+ hour trip to So. Africa this week!

i got this message from a friend at CEDO and thought I would share:

There is an addtional 1,200 parking spots downtown for the holidays during nights and weekends.

If you want a map of the other 14 parking lots and garages and a list of the 300+ retailers downtown go to our web site www.cedoburlington.org

Here are the locations and times free parking downtown is available:

LAKEVIEW/FILENE'S NEWLY EXPANDED PARKING GARAGE: Located West of Filene's 2 new decks with 278 more parking spaces. NEWLY CONSTRUCTED SPACES NOW OPEN, 2 HOURS FREE IN ALL CITY OWNED GARAGES!

STATE OF VERMONT PARKING LOTS at:

-50 Cherry Street (across from Filenes)50 parking spaces

-59 Pearl Street (Dept. of Labor) 39 parking spaces

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10p.m.; Weekends 9:00 am till 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

CHITTENDEN BANK PARKING LOTS at:

-150 Bank Street (across from Henry's Diner)26 parking spaces

-2 Burlington Square (Bank Headquarters) 24 parking spaces

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends 9:00 am till 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

PEASE WEST PARKING LOT at foot of College Street on the West side of Lake Street; at the end of the Free College Street shuttle (80 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at these lots ONLY on weeknights, 6 pm to 10 p.m.; Weekends 9:00 a.m. till 10 p.m. from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

MAIN STREET LANDING PARKING LOT (160 Parking Spaces) at the foot of College Street next to Union Station at the end of the Free College Street Shuttle.

Parking is FREE at this lot only on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10p.m. and weekends 9:00am to 10pm from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

PERKINS PIER PARKING LOT (180 parking spaces).

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends, 9:00 am - 10pm. November 23 through January 8, 2006

ELMWOOD AVE PARKING LOT, just north of the U.S. Post office in downtown Burlington (88 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; Weekends, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m. from November 23 through January 8, 2006.

HOWARD CENTER FOR HUMAN SERVICES, 102 S. Winooski Avenue, (50 parking spaces)

Public parking begins Friday, November 25, 2005 from 6 p.m.-10 p.m. through Monday, January 2, 2006.

FRIDAY NIGHTS ONLY 5:00 pm to 11 p.m. AND Weekends 9:00 a.m. to 11 pm

*TD BANKNORTH (100 parking spaces) on the corner of Main Street and St. Paul Street

The lot will be open for public parking through DECEMBER 31, 2005 at the following times:

Week nights: 6:00 pm to 10:00 pm

Weekends 9:00am to 10:00pm

NO PARKING ON THE FOLLOWING NIGHTS, - to accommodate Flynn Theatre patrons - on November 26, 27 and 30; December 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 16 and 17th.

 

SURFACE PARKING LOT ON MAIN STREET across from TD Banknorth, DO NOT PARK ON EAST SIDE OF PARKING LOT ALONG BUILDING. Located mid-block between St. Paul and Pine Street. (30 parking spaces)

Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.;

Weekends, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m. from November 23- December 31, 2005.

SURFACE PARKING LOT ON CORNER OF MAIN AND PINE STREET Across from the Ski Rack. (15 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.; SUNDAYS ONLY, 9:00 a.m. - 10 p.m.. November 23 through January 8, 2006

SURFACE PARKING LOT MID-BLOCK ON PINE STREET BETWEEN MAIN ST. AND COLLEGE ST. across from North Star Sports (32 parking spaces)

Parking is FREE at this lot ONLY on Weeknights, 6

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I don't have the patience that Sam Gentile does (or the knowledge to get around wierd problems) so if you are downloading the newest hottest tastiest bits (such as the latest build of Vista, which I did download last night), check his blog for problems and solutions!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Here is the picture (from CNN.com this morning) of people in NYC walking to work due to the subway strike. It is about 25 degrees (at 8:30 am) so colder when the photo was taken.

Of course they are cold - don't these people know about hats?

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It would be really handy if the compiler could tell when you have written code to access UI components in one of the external thread processes of the BackgroundWorker component, such as DoWork. (Yes, the debugger tells you when you messed up... just not the compiler.)

Luckily at least some of these are caught in runtime.

I will have to write myself a little reminder comment in these methods NO UI ACCESS HERE, DUMM-DUMM! I think that I will get over this very quickly though., as I get more and more used to working with asynch processes.

You, too, can write asynch processes (almost) easily in VS2005 now with the BackgroundWorker component. But you still have to know what you are doing and pay attention. You don't need to know threading inside and out - but have an awareness of it.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Things I have done in my own office to reduce some time waste and also a huge time savings payoff for a client thanks to a little $40 utility....[read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have an old HP Laserjet 4si that I bought a looooooong time ago. I think the retail price was $5000 and I paid about $3500. I can only remember that it was when I was living with a certain guy and we broke up when I was 33. So it is at least 11 years old! It has really been a die-hard and has MORE than earned it's keep, even with having to lug this 125 lb beast through three household moves.

It actually still performs like a trooper but it's no longer 100% dependable. I get paper jams that drive me batty when I have to print out lengthy reports - whether it's the 100 and 200 page reports I have to print for a client  about 10 times a month or even just a 10 page document. I had the printer serviced last winter and started using better quality paper in it. The jams are back again though and yesterday, under duress, I had to send out a 100 page report with pale streaks through it (which the client was able fade out when they made their photocopies). Apparently this is either the (not very old) fuser or something suddenly wrong with the print cartridge causing the streakes. Solvable, but dumping more money into it.

So I gave in and bought its' replacement today. A 38 pound, $400 (after rebate) faster (22ppm vs 16 ppm max) LaserJet 1320t. It also does duplex printing (which I occasionally would love to have). I never needed the network capabilities so I don't have to pay for that now. And the paper trays hold 250 pages instead of 500. No problem there for me.

It's a hard thing to do. I always have better things to spend my money on, but I realized that at this point, it will cost me a good $100+/year to keep it going in addition to the aggravation of those occasional paper jams which are very costly in their own way.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Rich rented a great movie that we watched last night: Girl from Paris. 30 yr old parisian "how to use the internet" trainer picks up from Paris, learns to farm and buys an old farm out in the boonies - complete with old farmer. Very sweet. A little farm-life gore. Made me tear up/cry I think 4 times. LOL.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Sam says "software is nothing like construction."

My husband, the carpenter, has this poster from Milwaukee tool that definitely agrees. (And boy does he love to tease me about that!)

Okay, it's not really related to Sam's point about the old software/architecture analogy, but it was the first thing that happened to pop into my mind.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Using blocks are new to us VB developers. I get the basic concept - it's cleaner than try/catch/finally blocks when all you are doing is disposing an object and it's super great when dealing with unmanaged resources and good ol' SqlConnections.

But the intricacies of using it are a little less obvious. Luckily, this code construct has been around in C# (and I will guess C++??) so we can learn from those folks.

I was trying to find a better way to deal with a file stream and memory stream today. Porting some code over from vs2003 to vs2005, the compiler was moaning about the following code block (I am only writing it loosely here...) where I am passing in a file name, opening up the file into a streamReader and then doing something to the streamreader and then closing both objects at the end. Maybe it wasn't written perfectly to begin with, but the compiler issue was a new one.

dim fs as new FileStream(myfilename,FileMode.Open)
dim sr as new StreamReader

Try
   myStreamReader=new StreamReader(fs)

  ... do some stuff

Catch exS as IOException
 ... do something
Catch ex as Exception
 .. do something
Finally
   If  Not fs is nothing then
      fs .Close
  EndIf
  If Not sr is Nothing then
     sr.Close
  End If
End Try

So when I ported this to VS2005, the compiler was not happy about accessing the streamReader in the Finally block because it was possible that no value would be assigned and I'd get a null ref exception (on the bold red line.)

I knew that I could get rid of those Close methods with a using block but was not sure if nesting them was a) possible b) good code or c) something that would bite me in the rear down the road.

Once I figured out what I was dealing with: "nested using blocks" I quickly found this blog post by Scott Hanselman, who specifically says in the comments of this post that he is thumbs up with "nested using blocks (but ONLY if theare are pure nestings without any other code following the inner block."

So, considering the source, I'm confident that I'm doing good by doing well (or however that goes) with nested using blocks (with out extra code after the inner block).

Using fs as New FilesStream(myfilepath,FileMode.Open)
  Using sr as new streamReader(fs)
     Try

       ... still need exception handling around the other code

     catch ....
    Finally
    End Try
  End Using
End Using

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

When I moved to .NET from VB6, I loved the ability to name variables beginning with an underscore. Now that I am porting some .NET 1.1 code to .NET 2.0, I am seeing that this in non-CLS compliant.

However, because the handful of variables that use the underscore are in a class that has many subclasses and some of these variables are used in the subclasses (shared, protected) AND because this class is not something that anyone else will ever use outside of my application, I have made an executive decision NOT to fix the variables but to set the CLSCompliant attribute from the Assembly information to False.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

This newest version is built and compiled in .NET 2.0.

I suppose this means it's time to get serious about porting a particular app that uses Infragistics controls to VS2005...

Congrats Jason, Devin et alia...

 

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Charles Petzold and Chris Anderson are both writing WPF books. Then Chris got an XBox, but then realized this might not bode well for finishing his book and "lent it" to a friend. The result is a very funny post by Charles.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Very cool!! (by way of Bill Ryan)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Leon Bambrick suggests that Windows may just end up being a means to another end for Microsoft... [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I didn't realize it was done yet as I hadn't gotten the print copy. (Update: it arrived within a few  hours of posting this!!)

But the jam packed special issue of CoDe Mag, filled solely with Tablet and Mobile PC Articles, is online here!

There are articles by Markus Egger, Billy Hollis, Larry O'Brien, Dr. Neil, Ellen Whitney and myself. Also, there's a forward by Frank Gozinski, from the Mobile Platforms Division of Microsoft. Additionally, there are quotes throughout from some of the key players at Microsoft in research and design of TabletPCs as well as the developer platform.

Here is the description from Frank's blog:

Code Magazine has put together a complete end to end developer reference for building applications tuned for the Tablet PC and Mobile PC applications. Are you mobilizing your applications? With the continued move by customers who want anywhere access to their data and applications mobilizing software applications is taking on a new sense of urgency.  This Focus Issue of Code Magazine is a reference you’ll want to have and it’s free, check out the work Markus and company have done http://www.code-magazine.com/focus/TabletPC/ 

Happy reading (I really like the welcome letter)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Working with some sub-standard Tablet PC code (umm, that would be my own code) in VS2005 made me realize that this version is much more sensitive to bad practices when it comes to threading [read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

In June 2004, I returned from DevTeach in Montreal and couldn't find my Pocket PC anywhere. I asked Marcie who I had shared my room with if she had found it. I called the hotel to see if it was still in the room. Nope. It did have a return address sticker on the back with my address and cell phone, so maybe just maybe...   Oh well.

Today I received a mysterious package from St. Louis, MO with no return address on it. In it? My pocket PC! One and a half years later.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

On Monday night, I did a somewhat lengthy overview of developing software for Tablet PCs at GUVSM, one of the .NET groups in Montreal.. As I started the session, I learned that only one person in the room had ever seen a tablet pc, so I decided to spend a little time showing them a bit about the technology, otherwise developing inkable software wouldn't make too much sense! I did the whole presentation in VS2005, which says a lot about the updated API working pretty well with VS2005. It was also a great exercise for me because I haven't played with a great variety of functionality in a while and preparing the demos gave me an excuse to refresh my memory.

The meeting was sponsored by MSDN Canada, who covered my travel expenses and enabled me to stay overnight rather than do the 3 hour drive back home so late at night. Thanks to Sasha and Wendy from MSDN Canada and for Guy and Jean-Rene for bringing me up. Naturally, the meeting was followed by a late night dinner of smoked meat. Though we normally go to the all-time classic Ben's, this time we went to Reuben's. I always have a blast with these guys: Mario Cardinal, Jean-Rene Roy, Eric Cote and Etienne Tremblay. The biggest lesson of the night was to stay away from Bell as your ISV if you can and to befriend a geek who likes to keep up with the latest toys, so when they shed their antiques (like 2 month old cell phones) you might be first in line!

To top it off, before I drove back home Tuesday morning, I got to go see an exhibit that I have been wanting to get to: Right Under the Sun. Landscape in Provence, from Classicism to Modernism (1750–1920) at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Though attempting to view about 200 works of art in a mere 2 hours was a little quick, it was wonderful to see. Provence has a beautiful combination of landscapes - mountains, canyons, harbors, the sea - and it was a magnet for painters including those that are more commonly known, such as VanGogh, Cezanne, Monet, Georges Braque, Renoir. Some of the landscapes became familiar as many painters had captured them - most memorable were Mt. Saint-Victoire and a canyon whose name I can no longer remember. It was also fascinating to watch the styles evolve. Perhaps I'll get up there one more time before the show ends in early January to linger a bit longer.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I will be doing 4 [new] talks at Connections this spring. I was happy to learn that both Alex Homer and Dave Sussman will be also there this time. These guys are in the U.K. so they can't always make it. Now to find a great sushi restaurant and see what other squiggly things I can talk Dave into trying!

Posted from BLInk!

In the past, the December "meeting" for Vermont.NET has been a pot-luck gathering at either someone's office or house. This year, with other (less stingy? ) folks than myself in charge, we are having a real party! It's going to be at Parima Thai in Burlington which has a really cool private party room designed in the feel of Frank Llloyd Wright. And member, Paul Swider, has somehow gotten his friends from Pine Street Jazz to play at the party! It's like a real office party. Appetizers will be provided and there will be a cash bar. Parima is even offering a discount to any of our members who want to have dinner at their Thai Buffet before or after the party. We will still do our pot-luck in the form of desserts as well as collect food for Vermont Foodbank.

Thanks to Parima and Pine Street Jazz for making this affordable and to local c-tech, Knowledgewave, for their sponsorship!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

In addition to having a great time presenting at WeProgram.NET last week, there were two other things I wanted to share.

When it's possible, I try to bring back a local beer for Rich. Unfortunately, there was no bringing a 6pack of Castle back from South Africa, but in Virginia Beach, the local brewery is St. George. I had to find them via google, but was able to grab a 6-pack at the local market. Since my laptop is not too heavy, it wasn't so bad carrying it back home in my backpack.

While there, my brother brought me to one of his favorite lunch spots, the Warriors Grill, which does a buffet in the style of the Mongolian warriors of centuries past. I love the history of this, described in ther menu and got a good laugh out of "at the Warrior's Grill, we do the gathering and preparing for you. No need to place the meat under your saddle to tenderize it as the Mongol Warriors would sometimes do."

At the restaurant, you pile prepared vegetables and meats along with a great variety of oils into a bowl and then they are cooked on a hot surface.

Unfortunately, the whole history is not on their website, so here's a quick scan for you.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

GridviewGUY.com

GridviewGIRL.com (that's Marcie)

Notice the color schemes of the sites, too. Blue for boys and pink for girls.

(Not battle really going on here. It's just more info for us!!)

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Etienne Tremblay is a real VSTS wonk. (Etienne is French Canadian, so I should be sure to remind him that "wonk" is a good word..). He works at EDS, which is one b-i-g company, and is excited about the fact that Microsoft has just changed it's Team Foundation Server recommendations from "Teams of up to 500 users" to "Teams of up to 2000" users. That's a lot of programmers mucking with your code. But one has to understand that I am an independent so it's basically unfathomable to me....

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

At DevConnections, I had a fun lunch with 3 great (and smart, man oh man!) young guys who's names all start with R and work for a company in Chicago. They love their job and their company was named as the 3rd best place in Chicago to work by Chicago Magazine. And they are looking for some help... read more on Ryan Rinaldi's blog and Ray Jezek.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

A number of noteworthy items related to women in the .NET development community crossed my radar this week and I thought I would set them down in one place. (Read more...)

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Susan Lennon picks me up in her BMW Z4 to speak at WeProgram.NET in Virginia Beach! Zoooom! (read more...)

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

When someone told me that the AGP interface for plug in cards for my PC was "like pci but better" I made the assumption that it would plug into my PCI port. Dumb me. After 20+ years with computers, I should know better.

AGP is different from the ground up and requires it's own interface on the motherboard.

PCIe (PCI Express) is also different and is even newer than AGP.

These two are mostly for the high intensity graphics that are used in gaming.

PCI-X is not another way of saying "PCI Express". It's totally different and was an enhancement to PCI.

My Dell 170LN does not take AGP or PCIe. I was lucky to find a dual DVI card that can plug into my PCI slot. It took me a long time to find it because when I saw pictures of this one, I passed it by. It only has one port to plug a cable into. However, it is designed to sort out sending signals to multi-monitors. You only need a special Y cable to plug the two in.

So if you are stuck with "Conventional PCI" but want to use dual digital monitors the thing to get is an NVIDIA Quadro4 VNS 280 PCI card. This is made by PNY and also HP. You also need a separate Y cable. Be careful because you can get Y cables that have one VGA and one DVI or one that has two VGAs or one that has 2 DVIs.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I did an experiment a few months ago by putting some google ads on my blog. I was just curious what would happen. I replaced one of them after Katrina with a more worthy cause than my own, but left the others there. I have basically forgotten about them until I had a nice email from DonXML with some suggestions about how I could make the ads more effective.

This reminded me to go check my earnings. Here's where they stand:

You can't collect on this until you reach a certain amount  (is it $50? I forget). Maybe sometime next year, I'll collect the $50 and donate it to a local Vermont charity. I get free hosting from Alentus (thanks Alentus) so I have no real need for the adsense anyway.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Congrats to Scott Hansleman and his wife Mo on the birth of their new baby boy, Zenzo.

And to Keith Pleas for gettin' hitched! This was one guy who had "bachelor" stamped on his forehead. Yay Jenny!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

MSN Virtual Earth will be renamed Windows Live Local. I guess that it won't be confused with Google Earth's name that way . There have also been some enhancements as reported by the Kelsey Group by way of Dare - better driving directions, Birds Eye imagery and user pushpins are among these.

Hmmm no word about ink though...nobody from Microsoft has ever asked me how I did it. 

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont Technical College is looking for a full-time tenured track position in the Information Services and Technology department. We also have several part-time teaching positions at the Blair Park campus in Williston and at the Randolph campus. Please contact Brent Sargent, Dean of Williston Campus & Northwest Region, VTC, 201 Lawrence Place, Williston, VT 05495. Phone 879-2321, email bsargent@vtc.edu.

Note from Julie: Vermont Tech is an incredibly fast growing school and is where Vermont.NET currently has it's meetings. It's also right across from a Starbuck's !

Posted from BLInk!

Matt Cassell will be interviewing me for his new Academic .NET Radio podcasts and we'll be doing it over Skype. Ok, I guess it's time for me to take the VOIP plunge! [Read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Posted from BLInk!

I'm very excited to be speaking at WeProgram.NET tomorrow night in Virginia Beach. It will be my first presentation as an INETA speaker! Thanks to u.g. leader Darrell Norton and Hampton Rds SQL Server group leader Susan Lennon for bringing me down.

I'll be trimming down my now very long "what's new in ado.net 2.0" presentation and focusing on ADO.NET 2.0 Integration with SQL Server 2005. Inspired by Pablo Castro's teched session (which I used in Africa), I have added some new touches to it. I learned how to work with XML Data types and some of the CLR integration in SQL Server. So I'll get to show some of that as well.

I'm already in Virginia Beach as this allowed me to visit my brother and his family for the first time since they moved here. It was nice to have a beautiful walk on the beach yesterday. That has been one of the things that has bummed me out each time I have been in L.A. and San Diego over the last few years. No chance to get to the ocean.

Posted from BLInk!