A Blog for Graymad : Current Events

Fort Worth .NET User Group

G Andrew Duthie — Mon, 10 Nov 2003 16:15:00 GMT

I'll be speaking next week (Tuesday the 18th, to be precise) at the Fort Worth .NET User Group, run by fellow blogger (though he's been slacking since summer), Stephen Swienton. I'm following on the heels of Rob Howard's kick-off of the ASP.NET RoadShow, which is a tough act to follow, but I'll let the technology do the talking, with an overview of some of the new features coming in ASP.NET "Whidbey".

If you're in the Dallas / Ft. Worth area, please come by and take a look at what's coming to an IDE near you. I'm going to keep the slides to a minimum and try to pack in a lot of demos, so if you like to see demos, this'll be the talk for you! Meeting details should be up soon on the Fort Worth .NET UG web site.

PDC Buzz

G Andrew Duthie — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:22:00 GMT

Welcome to anyone who's visiting from the PDC Buzz page. I have to say that any day you can get listed on the same page with folks like Chris Sells and Brad Abrams is a very good day, indeed!

I hope that anyone who reads my blog and is going to the PDC will stop by the pre-con I'm giving on the Web Perspective, and say “hi”. I'm really looking forward to the PDC this year, and I fully expect it to be one of the best ever. If you're using ASP.NET, you definitely want to be there to see what's coming next. As Chris says, it's hard not to be able to talk about stuff that's so cool, but in one month, the flood gates will open.

OT: Power back...finally

G Andrew Duthie — Fri, 26 Sep 2003 00:18:00 GMT

I should've known better than to taunt Mother Nature. After we got our power back from Isabel (after 30 hours), I changed my MSN IM handle to include “(power's back...take THAT, Isabel!)”. Apparently, Mother Nature takes these things rather personally, because our power went out again Monday morning at around 5am. Unfortunately, this time around, it was us and about 5 or 6 other neighbors who were out, while the rest of the neighborhood had power.

For those who haven't lived through this, the reason this is bad is because the power companies, in general, work on outages based on the number of people affected. That is, the priority of a given problem is based on the number of households that will be restored by repairing the problem. So if your entire neigborhood or county is out, you get a higher priority than if a few homes (or a single home) is out. This makes a great deal of sense to me, but is small comfort when you have no power, and you know you're at the bottom of a list that's tens of thousands of housholds long. Dominion Virginia Power has a useful diagram that shows the order of repairs. Our repair was a #5, which is why it only got fixed this evening.

If you work for the utilities, or if you've got family away from home working on the outages from Isabel, you have my gratitude, and that of many of my neighbors. Being without power was a pain, but I'd rather be without power than without my family, so I greatly appreciate the sacrifices many utility workers have been making to get the power restored. The guys who fixed our problem were from North Carolina (I'm near Washington, DC), and they looked very tired. But they did a great job, and I hope they get to go home to their families soon!

Look before you leap

G Andrew Duthie — Sat, 20 Sep 2003 20:09:00 GMT

Ole Eichhorn sings the praises of Vonage, a service that allows you to use your internet connection for telephone service, using a standard telephone. According to Ole, it's cheap ($60, one-time fee), and will be big.

There's only one catch...the little gray box that Vonage sends you to hook up to your network (not to mention most network equipment) requires AC power. As I found out recently, when you don't have power, you don't have a network. No network, no phone, if you're using Vonage.

Given that my cell phone was also out (because the towers require power, and many wireless phone companies were having trouble keeping the towers powered thanks to Isabel), if I didn't have my land line, I'd've had a lot of trouble getting a hold of anyone by phone. As much grief as I am inclined to give Verizon, they kept the phone lines going throughout the storm and after.

So, sure, Vonage may be very cheap and cool, but unless you've got a generator, it's not as reliable as POTS.

Miscellany

G Andrew Duthie — Sat, 20 Sep 2003 16:16:00 GMT

Been a while since I posted, so I'll catch up on a number of items:

Just signed a new book project with O'Reilly...more details to follow, but it's ASP.NET-related.
I've got an article in the pipeline for the MSDN ASP.NET Developer Center. The article covers design-time support for custom ASP.NET server controls in Visual Studio .NET. I'll let you know when it'll be up...as soon as Kent tells me. :-)
Hurricane Isabel knocked out our power for around 30 hours. We lost most perishables in the fridge, but it certainly could've been worse. Our neighbor had a tree fall on his car, and several of us spent Friday morning sawing and dragging the limbs off (the big ones were up to 16“ in diameter).
I'm incredibly sore from sawing and attempting to start a balky chain saw (see #3).
Last, but not least, I'll be speaking at PDC this year. Along with Jeff Prosise, I'll be presenting The Web Perspective pre-conference session on October 26th. I'll be giving an overview of the current ASP.NET v1.1 platform, as well as a talk on performance best practices. If you can make it, be sure to stop by during a break and say “hi“.

UPDATE: As Scott notes in the comments, Kent's blog, which I'd linked to in my original post, seems to have disappeared. I'll see if I can find out what's up with that, but I've removed the link for now.

Blaster clarification...

G Andrew Duthie — Fri, 15 Aug 2003 15:16:00 GMT

In posting my opinions on the blaster worm, and on what might be done to prevent future occurrences, I seem to have opened myself up to some blasting of my own:

Ok, there's been a few people who don't know better talking about how everyone should have been patched for MSBlaster already, and that all admins who haven't patched are morons.

This is a pretty easy statement to make when you are responsible for 1-10 machines, and patching pretty much means hitting windows update.

However, life isn't that simple for everyone. In addition to my developer hat, I also have the (mis?)-fortune of being the IT manager for my company's site of ~200 nodes, with about a dozen production servers and a similar number of dev & qa servers. We are part of a bigger, global enterprise network consisting of about 60,000 nodes.

[Jerry Dennany]

Now, first, I'd like to point out that nowhere in my original post did I once assert that “all admins who haven't patched are morons”. Nor did I even suggest that keeping large networks up-to-date on patches is easy. But if it were easy, companies wouldn't need IT staffs, now would they? So I recognize it's not easy...but it is necessary.

Also, it would appear that those who took umbrage at my original post either missed or ignored the main point of the post, which was not about bashing sysadmins, but rather that we all (those of us who are computer savvy, know how to use a firewall, install patches, etc.) have a responsibility to help our friends, families, and co-workers understand and use good security practices. So my point wasn't to beat up on sysadmins, to lay blame, or to create some “us vs. them” thing between developers and sysadmins. It was to say that the problems we're having (collectively) with the blaster worm represent a failure on all our parts on some level. It's that which we should be thinking about before the next worm comes along.

Blasted Blaster

G Andrew Duthie — Thu, 14 Aug 2003 18:02:00 GMT

I'm puzzled...practically at a loss for words. The cause? The fact that yet again, Microsoft finds and patches a vulnerability before an exploit is widely available, and still, hundreds of thousands of computers are infected. This is inexcusable.

Home users get somewhat of a break, if only because many of them are simply ignorant of good security practices (rule #1, use NAT, or a firewall to close any unused ports). Yes, they should be patching their computers, but too often they don't. But the really amazing thing is the number of businesses or government agencies getting hit hard. The DMV in Maryland shut down yesterday because of this worm. I want to know who's responsible for network security at the DMV, and I want them fired...NOW! I'm glad I don't live in Maryland (though I suspect my state may not be much better), given that this worm could potentially have been designed to lift information from computers, rather than just stage a DDOS attack.

What's the point of this rant? Just this...we, the more computer savvy of society, have a responsibility to do what we can to prevent crap like this. The reality is that software is never going to be perfect, as long as humans are writing it. And Microsoft is in a bind because consumers would freak if Microsoft shipped their OS with firewall and automatic updates enabled. So, IMO, it is encumbent on us to educate our less computer-savvy friends, relative, and even those we work with (bosses, co-workers, and even clients) about the importance of firewalls, patching, and other important security practices. We can make a difference, if we make the effort.

OTOH, perhaps a better idea would be to institute a system of fines in which each time your computer is infected with a worm or other malware that can cause problems for others, you're fined $50. Perhaps a hit in the pocketbook would make people more aware of taking the necessary steps to secure their machines.

Keith Warren even suggested the idea of writing worms to “vaccinate” vulnerable machines:

It all makes me wonder why we have not evolved in this fight much in a way that the medical field does. I am talking about vaccination. Vaccines in large part work by giving a small dose of the problem and I do not understand why we do not take that little tidbit and run with it. After knowledge of the vulnerability was available someone could have created a worm vaccine that replicated and propagated itself in an identical fashion but had an actual purpose; to download and install the patch! Doing this coupled with a patch campaign would significantly reduce the attack surface.

It's a clever idea, but obviously one that won't fly legally. Any other ideas for preventing worm/virus propagation and getting users/managers/admins to take security seriously? I'd love to hear them.

Doug's got it right...your career is YOUR responsibility

G Andrew Duthie — Sat, 09 Aug 2003 22:10:00 GMT

There has been a lot of talk on a lot of the blogs over going to PDC, the cost of PDC, etc. There is an argument made that the cost of an event like PDC is prohibitive, preventing folks working at smaller employers, or even the self employed from attending. This sort of begs a question: Who is responsible for your career?

[Doug Reilly]

Another hearty "hear, hear!" (see the comments section for more) Too many people make their careers someone else's responsibility and then kvetch when they get passed up for a promotion, raise, etc., or when their employer doesn't do what they want (send them to training, to a conference, etc.).

Let's face it, the days when employers would pay to send you to a class, then pay you a bonus for each Microsoft certification test you passed are largely over. I worked in the consulting field during those days, and when I passed the tests, you bet I took advantage of the bonuses that were offered. But I can't imagine complaining had they not been available. Likewise, if I could get an employer to cover conference costs, that was always a nice bennie, but if I really wanted to get to a conference, I knew it was ultimately my responsibility to find a way to make that happen.

If you want to go to PDC (and I think that most Microsoft-oriented developers should), then find a way. Beat the bushes for discounts or passes. Find others who are going who can share hotel costs. Find a way to sweeten the deal for your employer by offering them something useful in exchange for helping you get to PDC. Do something that will get you closer to the goal of getting to PDC (or getting whatever other training, etc. will advance your career). But don't complain that PDC is "too expensive" or too time-consuming, or that your employer won't pay for it.

Bottom line: if you're sitting at home instead of in L.A. in late October, it won't be your employer's fault for being stingy, and it won't be Microsoft's fault for making PDC too expensive. It'll be your fault for not finding a way to get there, and ultimately you will be the one who has to play catch-up on the information provided at the PDC. Not that playing catch-up is impossible, or even that you have to go in order to keep up. There are probably many good reasons for not going, financial ones included. This is not about beating up on people who really can't afford to go to PDC, or who have more important things to do with their time and/or money. It's just to say that if you really want to go to PDC this year, you can find a way, and complaining isn't it.

If all else fails, you could try blegging. ;-)

Capital Area .NET User Group

G Andrew Duthie — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 17:53:00 GMT

Next week, on June 24th, I will be speaking at the Capital Area .NET User Group meeting in Vienna, VA. The topic will be "Building a Custom ASP.NET Login Control".

In this talk, I'll walk attendees through the process of creating a custom server control that provides login and registration for simple access control using forms authentication and an XML credentials file. Topics discussed will include postbacks, event handling, Forms Authentication, Authorization, and hashing credentials.

This event was arranged through INETA, the International .NET Association. If you'd like to have a top-notch .NET speaker at your .NET user group, you should join INETA! It's free, and in addition to arranging for speakers you'll get many more benefits as a member, including books and other goodies for meeting giveaways and much more!

Thanks, TriNUG!

G Andrew Duthie — Thu, 12 Jun 2003 12:09:00 GMT

I just wanted to say a big THANK YOU to all the folks from the Triangle .NET User Group who showed up for my presentation on creating a custom Login server control last night. I had a great time, and the questions from the group were very good as well. I bumped into fellow MVP Cindy Weingarten, who I'd known of through MVP forums and such, but had not yet met, and met several other members of the group as well. Thank you all for making me feel so welcome! Also, thanks to INETA for arranging for me to speak at the UG meeting. If you run, or are a member of a .NET user group, and you aren't an INETA member, you should join now! They have tons of resources for user groups, including arranging for speakers such as myself to speak at your meetings. Best of all, INETA membership is free! And we all like free. ;-)

While we were in the Research Triangle area, one of the things I got to do with my wife and son was to visit the North Carolina Museum of Life and Science. In addition to regular exhibits, and an incredible butterfly house (we got to see the daily release of the butterflies that had emerged from their cocoons), they currently have a travelling show running called Springs, Sprockets, and Pulleys, by an artist named Steve Gerberich. Gerberich creates wonderful kinetic sculptures out of motors, pulleys, string, and...well...junk. It's great fun, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has a chance to see the show. You can see some examples from the show on Gerberich's Web site (QuickTime required).

A trip down memory lane, courtesy of Larry Ellison

G Andrew Duthie — Sun, 08 Jun 2003 16:33:00 GMT

The news that Larry Ellison is planning a hostile takeover of PeopleSoft caused Mike Sax to reminisce:

The recent news of Oracle's $5 Billion hostile take-over bid for PeopleSoft reminded me of a very negative encounter I had with Ellison a two years ago...

It all started many years ago, when Ralph Nader teamed up with Scott McNealy, Jim Barksdale and other captains of industry to lobby against Microsoft. This was the first time people in our industry were using politics as a means to gain competitive advantage, and I personally found it really repulsive. It's really nice of Nader to make sure we have good air bags, but teaming up with the software billionaires was a clear sign that Ralph had lost touch with his roots.

Several of my fellow developers shared my feelings, and we decided to rent a room at a hotel in Washington DC, right across from the Nader conference, and hold our own press conference. It was great... we had "Ralph Nader Doesn't Speak for Me" buttons (he claimed to speak for all computer users), and there were cameras from NBC, CNN, and others. Unfortunately, Sadam invaded Iraq around that time and stole our 15 minutes of fame.

The experience was exhilarating, and I started the organization called the "Association for Software Competitors". I later renamed it to the "Association for Competition and Technology", because non-software companies wanted to join, too. It started with a small website, but it soon snowballed.

[Mike Sax]

I remember that meeting well, and I'm still steamed at the government's unjustified attack on Microsoft at the behest of it's competitors. At the very least, our nation's antitrust laws are far too easily abused by industry competitors. At worst, they are a steaming pile of offal that should have been done away with long ago (and would have, if not for those who benefit handsomely from it...namely politicians and losing competitors). I'll leave it at that, but anyone who's interested in finding out more about antitrust (and why I'm so skeptical of it) would do well to read Dominick Armentano's Antitrust: The Case for Repeal.

BTW - I think I still have my "Ralph Nader Doesn't Speak for Me" button. (UPDATE: I found the button! It was in a box of stuff from my desk at my the last consulting firm I worked for before starting my own company. It now sits proudly tacked to the wall behind my desk.)

UPDATE: I realized after the fact that I had omitted the context for the quote above...I've added the context. Sax goes on to describe Ellison's dumpster diving in search of dirt against Microsoft at ACT's Washington, DC offices...a truly low point in the competition between Oracle and Microsoft...unless you count the $3 million that Scott MacNeally spent to get the DoJ after Microsoft in the first place.

Happy Mother's Day!

G Andrew Duthie — Sun, 11 May 2003 21:00:00 GMT

Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there!

I spent the afternoon celebrating my wife's first Mother's Day at Dumbarton Oaks gardens in northwest Washington, DC. I'm not usually much for gardens, but Dumbarton Oaks is simply stunning. There are amazing gardens, both huge and unusual trees, pools and fountains, and amazing views. I got some great photos while we were there, and I'll update this post with a link to some once I upload them from the camera.

Hope everyone else has as nice a Mother's Day as we've had.

UPDATE: Here's the link to the photos, for anyone who's interested.

Been out for a while...

G Andrew Duthie — Sat, 03 May 2003 23:21:00 GMT

As I'm guessing some of you might have noticed, I've been absent from the blog world for a while. As Julia pointed out, this is because a couple of weeks ago, my son was born. His name is Joseph Andrew, and as one would expect, he's been taking up quite a lot of his daddy's time and attention of late. So if my blog entries are a little few and far between for a while, now you know why. :-)

Dedication? How about supply and demand?

G Andrew Duthie — Sun, 06 Apr 2003 00:19:00 GMT

Keith Pleas blogged about the plight of UAL pilots, given the trouble that the industry is in:

Anyway, everyone's blaming it on the overpaid pilots, right? Well...the guy I was sitting next to had worked his way up to captain on a 737 and was making $182K about 3 years ago. Then they stared cutting flights and laying off pilots, which pushed everybody back down the chain. So this same guy is now a first officer on that same small plane and is making around $75K. He's got a couple of thousand people below him before he's pushed off the bottom of the stack. But he (actually, his union) has agreed to a 29% pay cut (now he's at $53K) plus he has to fly 94 (I think) hours a month, up from 84 but under the FAA maximum of 100.

Now I know people are bitching about the state of our industry, but a 71% pay cut while working 10% more? That, my friends, is dedication.

[Keith Pleas]

No, I'd be more willing to bet that it's lack of other marketable skills (or at least any that would immediately earn more than $53K a year). One has to wonder how many years this pilot was making nearly $200K, and what his average salary was over the last several years, even with the salary cuts. I think it would still end up being high enough to make the average American (much less those in other countries) envious. For reference, the median income for 2001 in the US according to the US Census Bureau was $42,228.

The reality is that there are less people flying, so there's less demand for pilots. That puts the airlines in a much better position to negotiate (i.e. - take a pay cut, or we go under and you don't have a job) than in the past. The unions took full advantage when they had the power to demand high salaries. Now the tables are turned, and it's the airlines taking advantage. Whether that will be enough for them to survive is another question entirely.

Wrox

G Andrew Duthie — Fri, 14 Mar 2003 22:14:00 GMT

I know I'm not the first to comment on the rumors that Wrox may be going under, but one of the first things I thought of is all of the folks that I've met who work for Wrox, and who depend on them for their livelihood. Authors like Alex Homer, Dave Sussman, and Rocky Lhotka, to name just a few, were the main reason that Wrox became such a prominent name in the tech book market.

I hope that everyone will take just a little time to say a little prayer (or send good wishes, or whatever you're comfortable with) for all the folks, authors, reviewers, editors, staff, etc. who are likely to be impacted by this, assuming it's true. While this is a big deal for readers and fans of Wrox books, it's an even bigger one for those who may lose jobs, or whose projects are up in the air.

To the folks at Wrox, here's hoping that you all land on your feet.