I grew up under the influence of a local weekly alternative newspaper, The Syracuse New Times. When I lived in New York City it was, of course, The Village Voice. In Vermont, it's Seven Days. I always look for these papers when I travel as it gives me a good perspective of the city I'm visiting. In St. Johns Newfoundland this weekend, it was pretty easy to identify the Current as their alternative weekly. I was tickled to find an article on Alison Bechdel (who has become quite the blogger) and her recently published book. Though I don't know her, Alison lives nearby in Bolton, Vermont and has erupted from her underground celebrity in the gay community to being highlighted in People, Entertainment Weekly and other mainstream publications. So to be far away and see the celebration continue was really fun.

This is for fellow vermont bloggers. Seven Day's is once again adding Vermont blogs to it's survey this year. For a thorough list, check Cathy Resmer's blogroll. Frankly, Cathy's blog will probably get my vote!

I'm quite sure that technical blogs have a very narrow audience in Vermont.

 

Best Practices for Running a User Group
June 28th, 2006 - 3:30PM EST

Running a user group is not an easy task. However luckily by being part of INETA you are connected to network of peers that have experienced all aspects of user group leadership from start-up to success. This webcast will be a panel based discussion featuring experts such as Chris Williams, INETA Membership Manager NC, SC and D'Arcy Lussier, INETA Membership Manager, Central Canada.

Come and join the conversation on important user group topics such as:

• Building a Leadership Team
• Picking a Location
• Running a Successful Event
• Working with Sponsors

To register for this webcast, please visit http://live.ineta.org.

With Gates transitioning out of Microsoft and Warren Buffet doubling the size of the Gates Foundation's trust, it has me thinking about what I want to do when I grow up.... [read more]

[A DevLife post]

Posted from BLInk!

It rained all of May and most of June in Vermont. It has been raining and raining while we have been gone. I just saw an article in the Burlington Free Press that the USDA has declared the natural distasters in every county of Vermont. It has created a nightmare for the farmers who lost most of their early crops and now are having a hard time getting a chance to catch up with the growing season.

In a way that only Carl could do! He waited until people had had a few drinks then handed them his camera and said "make a funny face and take apicture of yourself". We all know better than to trust Carl when it comes to someting like this, but everyone went along anyway and the result is hilarious! Check it out!

Continuing our INETA Atlantic Provinces tour, Rich & I have been in Newfoundland since Friday. We are staying with Amanda Murphy and Shane Perran who have been fantastic hosts and tour guides. Amanda runs St. John's .NET User Group, the local user group where I am speaking tonight. She is also a board member of INETA. But most importantly, since we met in the blogosphere a few years ago, I think more of Amanda as a little sister. We have been having a blast here!

For those of you new to geography , Newfoundland is the eastern most province of Canada and out here in St. John's (one of the oldest cities in North America), we are on the eastern most point of North America. We even went to the tippy tip of it yesterday, to Cape Spear. We are surrounded by rugged, beyond gorgeous coastline and 500 years of military history.

St. John's itself is accessible by water through a narrow strip of water between big cliffs which has been protected during wars and attempts (some successful) to colonize Newfoundland over the centuries. Here is a picture of St. Johns looking out through the narrows, from inside The Rooms, a wonderful conglomeration of natural history museum, modern art museum and provincial archives up on the hillside of St. John's. The Rooms is not quite as loved by locals though. It's a massive structure that imposes greatly on the St. John's cityscape and cost a great deal of money to build. It has been open for a year and apparently the jury is still out as to it's impact. As an outsider though, I truly enjoyed the experience of being in the complex.

There are forts on both sides of the narrows. On the left side is National Historic site, Signal Hill. Here is a picture taken from Signal Hill looking at the other side of the narrows. You can see a lighthouse there as well and the ruins of another old fort.

We have been visiting many spots along the coast in this general area. In Middle Cove, I had to give up on trying to save all of the starfish that were meeting there doom out of the water.

 

We went to the amazing Cape Spear yesterday, the eastern most point of Newfoundland (and north america) and with NL's oldest light house. We saw lots of whales (distant) while there also.

   

We also went on a whale/bird watch with a wonderful tour operator, O'Brien's. We followed a whale for a while and it made a number of deep dives, which means the tail comes up and out of the water for a big splash. I did not get the timing right on clicking my digital camera (darned lag time) so I don't have a good pic to share, but O'Brien's has great pictures and videos on their site.

We went to an island with millions (literally) of birds - gulls, puffins, awks and more. The puffins were fun to watch. They have small wings and flap them furiously to fly. On the water they go across the top doing this flying/swimming/bouncing thing.

We also went to small fishing villages in many little coves. Here are some pics (those are crab pots) from Petty Harbor.

 

Today I will go for a hike up Signal Hill with my silly husband, who has been patiently waiting for me while I created this insanely long blog post. Rich is quite prepared for whatever foul weather we may encounter!

Okay - the post title is meant to be facetious, but this blog post on my DevLife blog is some early thoughts on the ADO.NET vnext whitepapers and some of the ORM community's reaction to them as well. [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Here are a few posts I wrote on my DevLife blog but neglected to link to...

Hangin' with Eric Sink

Back to the Future: Tuesday at TechEd

Yesterday Rich and I drove from New Brunswick, where I had spoken at the local .NET User Group, to Halifax Nova Scotia, about a 2 1/2 hour drive. Before heading into the city, we drove out the coast a bit to an absolutely-not-to-be-missed treasure of Nova Scotia called Peggy's Cove. Peggy's Cove is a very historic fishing village that provided respite from the wind but easy access to great fishing. It is a beautiful rocky place with a famous lighthouse that also houses the local post office.

   

You can see why this is the most photographed location in Nova Scotia. Even I can take a calendar worthy photo in this town!

The  (INETA sponsored!) user group talk was in Halifax that night at .NET Nova Scotia. Derek Hatchard, who runs both the Moncton group and this group, drives the 2.5 hours to Halifax (and back home) for the meetings. He picked me up at the hotel after Rich and I had a quick dinner (it was Rich's birthday, so I couldn't totally abandon him for pizza with the geeks). The meeting was at a local college and not only were there students attending, but a professor, with a long history that included working at Bell Labs (who the students are really lucky to have) from the college. I had a blast, as always, talking about ADO.NET and as always, most of the questions were around the query notification. It is such a cool feature and I have to be careful not to use up the entire session time talking about it.

Today Rich and I had a pure vacation day and have driven out to the Eastern Shore. I am now at a magnificent inn in a very remote location on the ocean. Too bad we can't stay here for a month or two.There is so much history here and no time to absorb a good portion of it. We stopped at a living history museum  (Fisherman's Life Museum) which is the homestead of a fishing family through the 18th and 19th century. That was really fascinating and I was amazed at the rugs and quilts in the house as well.. Oh and if anyone is in the market for kittens, it was all I could do not to take them with me, but they are looking for some homes!

The other big thing we did today was a glorious hike along the wild and windy Nova Scotia coast at Taylor's Head.

 

Posted from BLInk!

Last night I did an INETA event in Moncton New Brunswick (northeastern Canada). We came early and spent the weekend in the Bay of Fundy area. The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world thanks not only to the shape of the bay, but the fact that the amount of time that it takes for the tide to move into the bay happens to be the same amount of time between low & high tide (6 hrs 13 min) . The tides can be up to 46 feet high! We stayed in Fundy National Park the first night at the HIghlands Inn and Chalet which has a collection of totally adorable little chalets that were built in the 50's but are very well maintained. They are also dog friendly. I hope we can get back there someday.

The Park and the whole area is beautiful and very special. Not only is the Bay of Fundy amazing in it's beauty and natural phenomenon of emptying out so much that you can walk on the ocean floor and then quickly filling back up, but the park is an Acadian forest, lush wet filled with spruce and just ends as cliffs right up at the edge of the bay. Rich and I went for a great hike in the park and then paddling at the end of the day with the local outfitters. It was a windy day so we had a blast kayaking in the big waves.

      

When the boats come in, they throw cage-like platforms over the edge which go under the boat. As the tide recedes the boats  are held up on these cages, rather than sinking into the mud. It's hard t see the platforms, but you can easily see the boats are hovering above the mudflats.

That night we stayed at a wonderful B&B called Innisfree. In the morning we went over to see the famous "flower pots" aka The Hopewell Rocks, amazing formations in the bay that are mostly covered at high tide and that you can walk around in at low tide. I'm surprised they don't bill these as the 8th wonder of the world! Here's Rich doing the classic pose we saw in many tourist guides!

 

On our second day in Fundy National Park, we went to Alma for breakfast. We had a yummy classic diner breakfast of eggs, bacon & toast, then I headed over to the local baker, Kelly's Bakery, to get a sandwich for our hike. I ordered the sandwich while enjoying the smell of the sticky buns that had just come out of the oven. Everyone coming in was ordering sticky buns. Then asking me (an obvious out of towner) didn't you get any sticky buns? No, but they smell great. But you must have some sticky buns. Oh, no ... really we just ate breakfast, I couldn't eat any more. This went on with everyone who came into the bakery that was slowly filling up.What I finally learned was that these sticky buns are famous in the province  of New Brunswick and beyond. It's practially the town currency. So we got a sticky bun for our hike and yes, it was amazingly yummy, soft and sweet. Google "Alma 'sticky buns'" and you'll see what I mean!

I did go grab my camera to get a picture of the world famous sticky buns of Alma, New Brunswick. The sun was shining on the pastry case, so this was the best I could do. I also got a picture of four guys who had just come down from Moncton (a one hour 15 minute drive) on their motorcycles just for some sticky buns.

Tonight is the last game of the Stanley Cup. Edmonton and Raleigh have both won three games so this is it. I was really surprised that the attendees of the New Brunswick .NET user group stayed for the whole meeting. Even my husband is at the local pub cheering on the Edmonton Oilers!

Posted from BLInk!

Thanks to Fabrice for pointing out that the whitepapers for the next gen ADO.NET are online. I am really excited abut this stuff.  I'm printing them out for my airplane reading. (Which is wholly unlike me!) I better get back to packing!

• Next Generation Data Access
• ADO.NET Entity Framework Overview

Tomorrow I leave for a trip that I am really excited about. I am going to speak to INETA user groups in some of the most beautiful places in North America: New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland. These are places I have wanted to visit for most of my adult life. I'll be talking about Advanced Data Access in ADO.NET 2.0 on the first two nights and the ADO.NET 2.0/SQL Server 2005 Integration on the third.

In between talking about data,I will be kayaking in the Bay of Fundy, touring along Nova Scotia's marine coast line and hiking the wild and windy world ofthe most eastern points of land on the continent.

Thanks to u.g. leaders Derek Hatchard and Amanda Murphy for inviting me and for INETA for sending me.

This was the fourth year of having this great event at TechEd. The format was slightly different. The speaker was great and lesson from a past event comes full circle for one attendee. [Read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Mary Jo Foley has an interview with Robert Scoble about his departure from Microsoft. She talks to Robert about how he thinks Microsoft will do with Web 2.0, who was the most interesting person he interviewed on Channel9, if (and how) Microsoft could have kept him in the fold and more.

I satyed with Kate Gregory last night in the Airport Hilton where all of the TechEd speakers are staying. Luckily Kate and I are girls who know to where nice p.j.s when we travel! At about 4am what sounded like a really obnoxious alarm clock started very loudly buzzing in our room. It took a few seconds to realize what it was - the alarm. A woman's voice over the speaker said to evacuate the building. So the entire hotel dumped out to the grass outside of the hotel. Luckily nothing terrible happened - some flooding on the 3rd floor. I was really unhappy to experience how long it took to exit the building through the fire stairwell as people were slowly and casually and calmly going down the stairs. The general assumption is one of "oh, it's just an inconvenience, ha ha nothing important" but how can you really know? One positive sign was the calmness as people from each floor entered to the stairwell which indicated that nobody had seen anything upsetting on any of the floors. Luckily we got to sleep in a little late so it was just like a dream.

Surely there will be many blog posts and pictures about this around the teched blogosphere today!

Posted from BLInk!

Microsoft has flat panel screens throughout the conference center with coverage of the World Cup for all of the international folks here. Most of them have 50-100 people planted in front of them throughout the day. I keep thinking of the money these people's bosses have paid for them to come here and learn but instead they are watching the soccer matches. On the other hand, if it's a non-American company, their bosses would probably understand!

Posted from BLInk!

While at the Marriott in Montreal for DevTeach, Kate Gregory blogged about the plethora of pillows that the hotel had made her bed with. I stayed last night at the historic Omni Parker House in Boston and I think that there must be a trend for making a bed with seven pillows!

I'm all ready to leave in the morning. I think my bag contains 1/3 clothes and 2/3 chocolate and vermont maple syrup (no, not for myself!). This is my 7th big MS conference and I have learned that (unless there is some spaghetti sauce accident) I end up wearing the same pants day after day and have even taken to wearing t-shirts that I pick up at the expo. Sure makes packing easy!

I am still in Vermont and missed Pablo's ADO.NET 3.0 talk. Kent Tegels was there though... [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Geeze -I had my aggregator filtered on TechEd so I could see what was going on and missed the stream of blog posts about Robert making a big move. It does not surprise me, considering all that he wrote surrounding his mother's recent death wrt "not waiting for life to happen". If you want the scoop, I recommend reading Robert's perspective, not everyone else's interpretations. I was hoping that they would be moving east so I could see Maryam more often. You know, like to Vermont! Now I don't even get to see her on my next trip to Seattle. :-( 

Okay, that's just kind of a joke (and a bit of an attention grab!), although I do expect to be surrounded by about 10,000 men at TechEd. But truly the issue is "so much to do, so little time". Here are some of the gazillion things I am hoping to do during my three short days at TechEd this week:  [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

www.virtualteched.com

Live video, including the keynote, all week!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It seems everyone I talked to today was heading to the airport for TechEd!

I'll be heading down Tuesday morning. My husband is laughing heartily at my idea of getting on the road by 6am. We'll see how it goes!

Jonathan Bruce from DataDirect has organized a data access geek meetup with ADO.NET Technical Lead Pablo Castro (who's name I must mention 10 times every time I do an ADO.NET talk!) and Bob Beauchemin on Tuesday afternoon from 4pm to 6pm. There is limited space at this event, so head over to his blog for details!

I've seen a few posts like Jeff, suggesting that you bring an extra bag in your suitcase to bring swag home. Heck TechEd is in my backyard this year and I'm driving. So if I were a swaghound - I would have the ability to bring home a lot of cubic yards of stuff! I'll definitely go trolling a little for my user group,but that will be about it.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I am looking forward to being able to get my hands on the RTM version of the ASP.NET 2.0 book that Alex Homer & Dave Sussman have coming out TechEd. The previous versions (alpha and beta) were also co-authored by Rob Howard. I have great expectations for this final version, that is written against the final release of ASP.NET 2.0. Developers are fortunate to have so many great ASP.NET 2.0 books at our disposal.

update: here's the inside scoop on the book from Dave who says it's not just a polished up version of the beta book...

Yes you read that right and no I will not be participating.

I just did my first solo MSDN webcast today. Being the worrywart that I am, I was a little nervous. Here's the lowdown ...hopefully useful for other first timers! [read more....]

[A DevLife post]

So I'm flipping through the local weekly, Seven Days, and I did a double take when I thought I saw Bruce Schneier's name in big letters at the top of the page. Here's the article.

Yep it's him and yep he's coming to Vermont. There's an ACLU meeting on Tuesday and he's speaking at it.

When? You ask? On Tuesday, the day I will be in Boston at TechEd. I will be driving past Montpelier at about 7am.

It's not like I pay attention to his speaking schedule, which has this event on it!

Aaaaargh.

 

I have posted my version of the powerpoint (not the pretty MSDN version since I don't have that) and the sample code from today's Intro to WSE 3.0 webcast.

You can find them on my TALKS page. Scroll down to Introduction to.... and you'll see the zip and ppt files.

Thanks to all who attended!

I hear there was a snafu with the survey and MP3 Raffle and that emails will be sent out to attendees on how to get back in the game (within 24 hours, they told me)

Rather than paste miles (271 lines) of angle brackets in here, I am posting the section of my trace files here from today's webcast and have renamed it so you can view it in your browser if you want. Note that in general, these trace files will contain your UNSECURED raw data as well (I have stripped those sections out in mine) so you don't normally want to do this!

I have put comments in the file to point out what is of interest.

Here is the basic story.

Because our policy indicates SecureConversation, WSE will know that before it can make that HelloWorld call, it needs to request a security context token. So you will see not one, but TWO outgoing messages, one right afte the other. THe first is the request for an SCT that WSE deemed necessary (based on the policy). That request sends the usernameToken with the login and password we provided in code. The user is authenticated against the db and the SCT is created and sent back to the cient. Then the client creates the HelloWorld request, but instead of using the username/password for authentcation, it uses the SCT!

I have put comments in the key spots of the file so you can see the differences between the first and second request. I.E. renders them as gray. Don't be afraid to look at this goo because it's a good arrow to have in your problem-solving quiver! I promise you won't have angle-bracket filled nightmares. If you do, I recommend Dr. Ewald's CureAll Tonic for Angle Brackets.

I'm packing up the code and will write another post when it is on the presentations page of website.

[update: see this post for information on the sample code, etc.]

I did an MSDN Webcast today on Introducing WSE 3.0. Since I had an unusually short amount of time to get through all of my demos,I practiced them over and over (even though they were old hat to me ) just to make sure nothing unexpected happen.

On the very last demo, where I created a new Policy that had "SecureConversation" turned on, it threw an error when I ran the client side app. There was not time to deal with the error and since I knew I had done everything correctly, I moved on, highlighting the key take-away of the demo (which was not seeing "Hello World" on a black screen, but what SC is and how easy it is to implement.)

Now I have just gone back to see what wasn't lined up. I ran the demo again so that I could see what the error was and make sure the code was a-ok before I posted it.... and wouldn't you know, it just friggin worked. And I hadn't touched anything yet.

As my grandmother and all of her grandmothers before her would say: Oy Vey!

[update: see this post for information on the sample code, etc. and this post for more info on the SecureConversation demo]

Sergei Serdyuk writes about last night's first Vermont Ruby User Group meeting in Burlington.

As part of the Web Services Webcast Series, I'll be doing an Intro to WSE 3.0 tomorrow morning at 11am.

It will be a 1 hour session on the key features of WSE 3.0 with as many demos as I can cram in!

There's an MP3 raffle for attendees of this series. Check it out!

Here is the whole series. Please don't ask me why the series of web casts on Web Services (WSE, ASMX, and lot of WCF, of course) is called "Windows Vista: Improve your Deployment and Security Strategy", but at least it's under the WCF section, since it's like a WCF starter kit for those who can't wait until WCF is live!

See you tomorrow!

I seem to be having a time stamp problem when I post to my blog from my blogging tool (here) that I use 98% of the time to write my posts. Hopefully I'll get it figured out. In the meantime, I am blogging right online in dasblog.

Twice, I spent some time googling around for some way of having "copy file name" in my context menu in Windows. I saw a few utilities, but couldn't find anything (along the lines of Scott Haneslman's Ultimate Tools list) recommending any of them. So I happened to blog "wouldn't it be nice" and out of the woodwork come a lot comments and emails with tool (and key-combo - which I have been using but somehow I prefer the ol' right-click) recommendations. There is even a still-functioning in XP Windows 95 PowerToy.

Mike Gunderloy, googled and emailed me a suggestion. My reponse was "hey, *you* try it first, Mikey and let me know if it blows up your computer or not."

Here's the list of recommendations that have come through my blog and Mike's post. Some of these people are using, others have said "found this on Google for you"

Win95 PowerToy

Ninotech PathCopy

keyboard F2 (rename) ; Ctrl+C

Clipname

ClipPath

keyboard F2; Ctrl+A; Ctrl+C

Clickie

CopyFileNames

Go forth and conquer. Let me know what your faves are.

I have definitely had this screen and fuddled my way through making it go away. I wish I had seen this article!

http://weblogs.asp.net/wallym/archive/2006/06/04/Sql-Server-2000-Support-to-be-Dropped-on-June-1_2C00_-2006.aspx

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Eric Sink does it again. This post is bound to be another blogging classic!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

I have a great vet and a dog who is suprisingly beyond the age of a typical newfoundland.

Tasha is 12 1/2 and still chases the neighbor's cat (kinda of slowly though) but it's a little tough for her to get up off the floor and climb the stairs, but boy does she want to so she does.

Today my vet finally suggested that Tasha is a great candidate for Acupuncture. He is a well known practioner  and though so far we have gone all allopathic/Western medicine with Tasha, I'm glad that we will get to delve into this area of his expertise! It's the reason that I chose him as our vet - knowing that we'd have these options if they were necessary.

Poor Tasha. He said he can feel how swollen her back knees are with arthritis and that it's not just difficult but painful for her to do those things (lifting herself up off the floor, climbing the stairs.) She's been on awesome glucosomine related products for years (Cetyl-M) This will be the last resort of keeping her happy and healthy for as long as we can and I'm really looking forward to it. Becaues of my travel, we can't get started until the end of June with the weekly sessios, but we have some other allopathic med for her in the meantime - which is like super duper aspirin.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

Okay, bad analogy... I admit it. But it's early and I've only had one cupajoe.

I was helping someone out with some VBA code in their Access 2003 database. (It was not a situation where moving to VSTO was an option, in case you were about to suggest that.) I was just helping them get something working. It's really painful coding in VBA after years of .NET, not only the IDE experience, but going backwards with things like instantiating a variable (which you have to do separately from code to give it a variable). There are things I know how to solve, but the way I would go about it (the .NET way) isn't an option and I have to find alternate routes. But, heck, it was a rainy weekend, and I hammered through it and put a big smile on the faces of these guys.

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

It's not Scott Hanselman's famous Ultimate Tools list, but a short list of the utlities I use that make me happy. [Read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

One of the best comic strip artists