Just a status update would be nice

Over on his blog, Lance Hunt poses the question to Scott W. (and Telligent) about the asp.net weblogs and the status quo. As I've seen the blog engine formerly known as ".Text" grow into Community Server Blogs I've wondered on several occasions when asp.net weblogs was going to see an upgrade. (We use Community Server Blogs over at FAZR and it's served us well, btw). I like the newer features and skins.

If I remember correctly, when Rob Howard was on .NET Rocks! he was asked about this and his response was basically, "We haven't had the time". While I certainly understand what it's like to be busy - especially running your own company - my reaction to someone saying "we haven't had the time" is I think to myself, "you haven't made the time." Everyone chooses what to spend their time on. What you spend your time on is usually a matter of priority so - it seems that the asp.net weblogs are low on the priority list. (Which I can understand)

Now, I don't mean to sound ungrateful - I have enjoyed having an asp.net weblog for free and I am thankful for the hard work (and $) that's gone into providing this service to us. I honestly appreciate it. Having said that - I think a little help would go a long way. What's holding up moving the asp.net weblogs from .Text 0.95 to Community Server Blogs? If it's really a time issue - I'm sure the group of bloggers here are plenty technical enough to be able to lend a hand - or even do it themselves entirely if given access to. At this point, any news would be better than no news.

And I couldn't stand math in school...

Chris posted this one over on his blog, so I thought I'd give it a try - I am pretty good with addition/subtraction in my head - looks like I did alright:

You Passed 8th Grade Math

Congratulations, you got 10/10 correct!

Number One with a bullet!

The other day (or night? don't remember) Scott and I were discussing the movie "High Fidelity" over IM since I had just seen it for the first time. Since seeing the movie I've been walking around like a dork with OCD, compulsively asking co-workers their "top 5" this or their "top 5" that and using the phrase "with a bullet" enough to annoy them a little.

Since Scott was nice enough to incorporate this theme in his recent post I'm going to follow it up with some top 5 lists of my own. Oh, and if you've never seen High Fidelity - absolutely awesome movie about music and relationships and life. Go rent it. NetFlix it, whatever. (Is "NetFlix" a term now like "Googling" is or whatever? It should be.) Anyway, here goes:

Jason's Top 5 Companies to work for:

1. Microsoft*
2. Google
3. Vertigo Software*
4. Amazon.com
5. 37Signals

* - I've interviewed w/ them before. Vertigo was actually more intimidating than Microsoft by a longshot, too.

Oh, and Scott - Electronic Arts? Dood, their rep is that they work you to the bone for poor pay and keep ridiculous product schedules that make most people leave after pushing out 1 or 2 games. No thanks.

Jason's Top 5 Project Types to work for:

1. Developer Community Website (like DevCampus, duh.)
2. Web-based product with an absolutely superb UI and DHTML - Something that uses slick web components from a place like ComponentArt or Telerik.
3. Cool GTD-type app, Windows or Web, I wouldn't care.
4. Something where performance is of uber-importance. (I like benchmark type challenges, I know, nerdy.)
5. Full-time Tech Author (articles, books, etc. I love to write)

Jason's Top 5 Top 5 lists:

1. Best places to work
2. Best types of projects to work on
3. Best Top 5 lists
4. Best 5 songs ever
5. Best 5 movies ever

<Hulk Hogan impression>What's YOUR top 5, Brother?!!</Hulk Hogan impression>

Wow...who needs real money?

Especially when my pitiful little blog is worth over $10,000!! I saw Scott and Erik both do this so - I have to follow the crowd:

I'm not sure how much faith I put in the algorythm that calculates the worth - according to it - Scoble's blog and Slashdot are worth $0.

Get a descriptive size string for your uploads

In an ASP.NET page, when you've used a System.Web.UI.HtmlControls.HtmlInputFile control in your page - sometimes you want to get the size of the file uploaded. The HttpPostedFile class has a ContentLength property - but the value attainable by using the .ToString() method leaves something to be desired. So, here is a simple little method I wrote to get you a more descriptive string from the ContentLength value - I thought I'd share it here for anyone that wants to do something similar.

C#:

public static string GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength(int ContentLength)
{
      if(ContentLength > 1048575)
      {
      return String.Format("{0:0.00 mb}", (Convert.ToDecimal((Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024) / 1024))) ;
      }
      else
      {
      return String.Format("{0:0.00 kb}", (Convert.ToDecimal(Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024))) ;
      }
}

VB.NET:

Public Function GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength(ByVal ContentLength As Integer) As String
   If (ContentLength > 1048575) Then
      GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength = String.Format("{0:0.00 mb}", (Convert.ToDecimal((Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024) / 1024)))
   Else
      GetFileSizeStringFromContentLength = String.Format("{0:0.00 kb}", (Convert.ToDecimal(Convert.ToDouble(ContentLength) / 1024)))
   End If
End Function

You can adjust the string format to attain more precise size measurements - all I cared to have was something like "230.45 kb" or "2.12 mb" - but you can do whatever you want, of course.

Congrats to the newest Channel 9'er

A friend of mine has been offered and accepted a position on the Channel 9 team. Unfortunately, I can't mention his name yet, lol. I'll update this post when I can - for now - congrats to [you know who you are]!

OK - since Erik has posted about it on his blog - I'll just link to it now.

SQL Server 2005, Visual Studio 2005 & BizTalk Server 2006 Launch Event - Join us!

I've only received 2 emails from people so far saying they're interested so, that makes 3 of us. Since I don't make it into the city all that often, I'm not sure what kind of place would be best to meet at around the Moscone center. If anyone wants to join us and recommend a good place to meet (and maybe grab a bite for breakfast) I'm definitely open to suggestions on that.

Perhaps I'll get white t-shirts printed up for everyone that shows up that say "I know Raymond Lewallen" in big bold black letters on the front. We could be the "I know Raymond" crew.

Anyone want to meet up?

Is there anyone else that's going to be at the November 7th Launch Event that would like to meet up beforehand so I don't look like a geek that doesn't know anybody? :-)

Just leave your comments here or contact me through this blog if you want to do something.

Microsoft mapping an Http Handler for .aspx to Java?

I found this to be pretty funny.

500 Servlet Exception

javax.servlet.ServletException: Class `error.aspx' was not found in classpath. 

Classes normally belong in /WEB-INF/classes. 
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.instantiateServlet(Application.java:3185) 
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.createServlet(Application.java:3093) 
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.loadServlet(Application.java:3054) 
at com.caucho.server.http.QServletConfig.loadServlet(QServletConfig.java:418) 
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.getFilterChainServlet(Application.java:2794) 
at com.caucho.server.http.Application.buildFilterChain(Application.java:2750) 
at com.caucho.server.http.Invocation.service(Invocation.java:310) 
at com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleRequest(RunnerRequest.java:342) 
at com.caucho.server.http.RunnerRequest.handleConnection(RunnerRequest.java:272) 
at com.caucho.server.TcpConnection.run(TcpConnection.java:137) 
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:536) 

Now, granted it's an error coming from Resin email servlet software but still, kinda ironic and funny and makes me wonder why the .aspx extension is on there. Maybe a custom 404/error page was defined with asp.net.

How-To-Select a Charting Component for .NET

My first How-To-Select Guide on Charting components for .NET has finally made it's way onto the web!

I'd be interested in hearing feedback if you are interested enough to read it. You can find it here.