December 2004 - Posts
I have been trying to be more productive during my usual working hours lately. Coincidently, I came across this article via SQLServerCentral.com. It is a clear article, focusing really on productivity - of which email/blogs/surfing is probably the biggest productivity waster for us tech-types. Another key point is that we really need a solid, focussed window of at least 3 hours in order to really get anything done.
Here is the summary:
If you are an ISV in Israel, you definitely want to check out this upcoming special
event for ISVs on January 10. After the keynote from 2 senior managers from MS Corp and EMEA, there will be two tracks - one for CEOs and one for CTOs. I'll be doing 2 presentations on Visual Studio .NET, one for each track. See you there!
MSDN subscribers can now download the December CTP of Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Architect.
Be sure to check out the deployment diagrams and updated installation instructions.
This version is compatible with SQL Server 2005 Beta2 (only). This must be downloaded seperately.
Oh, by the way, you'll need to be patient - the VS download is over 3 GB !
Here is a useful post on tracking down .NET memory leaks, by Rico Mariani from the .NET Performance team. His blog is a wealth of practical information on performance issues - subscribed. (I was particularly impressed by the fact that he and I have the exact same first rule about calling GC.Collect - Don't !)
Yes, that is how I spent my day yesterday - listening to and learning from Juval Lowy. First was a full-day seminar on Advanced .NET Programming Techniques. And then was a combined C# and VB User Group meeting where he spoke for a few hours more. I have known Juval for several years and I have had many conversations and heard many of his presentations at conferences where we are both speakers. I don't always agree with everything he says, but I always learn something (usually alot) new from him.
One of the nice little features in ASP.NET is that the HTTPRequest object has a Params property that I can access to get the values of the parameters of a request, without having to explicity know or specify whether those parameters are part of a QueryString, Form, Cookie, or Server Variable. However, like most convenienes, this comes with a price - or at least a caveat as pointed out in this post by Scott Hanselman.
In my article on
new DataSet features in ADO.NET 2.0, I highlight the performance gain obtained when using the new binary remoting format. However, as
Beth Massi points out, there is some code (written by her) up on GetDotNet that you can use to do this today with ADO.NET 1.1.
Mike Gunderloy has an interesting and thought provoking list of things that he carries around on his disk on key.
I also have emergency copies of Winzip, Acrobat Reader, and alot of my presentations. I have these and additional stuff on my website for emergency backup as well.
What do you have on yours ?
I just have to share this afternoon's experience. I will omit the company's name to protect the guilty (maybe I shouldn't ?)
I got an email this morning from someone who said that he got my name and address from some Microsoft web site and that if I was interested in some development projects I should give him a call. Being someone who doesn't easily ignore a marketing opportunity, I write down the numebr so I can call later while driving to some meetings. I checked out the company web site and see that it seems to be a real business with offices in several other countries.
When I called and asked for the person who emailed me, someone else answered and said that the sender was out of the offiice but if it is in reference to the development projects, I could talk to him. Fine. What is then the first question he asked me ? Not anything about my company or my experience - he asked me how old I was ! I actually recovered from the shock of that very quickly and asked what difference that made. His next line is what really blew me away: "I guess if we work together we aren't going to know anything about you !"
Wow - talk about running, not walking, away from a prospect !
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