Jeff Key

Chicago geek dinner 11/22

jeffreykey — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 05:37:00 GMT

When: Wednesday, November 22nd, 2006
Where: Rock Bottom @ State & Grand
When: 6PM

Last day to get out before the entire Midwest descends on our fair city for the holiday shopping season.

Bear down!

Virtual PC free, too

jeffreykey — Wed, 12 Jul 2006 14:27:00 GMT

Virtual Server has been free for a while now; however, some folks prefer Virtual PC. Well, my friends, that too is free now. Come on down!

How did we ever live without virtualization software?

You don't fool me, thirteen23

jeffreykey — Thu, 06 Jul 2006 04:27:00 GMT

I can't imagine who might run this site. Can you?

Sometimes, it's the small things..

jeffreykey — Sun, 30 Apr 2006 16:41:00 GMT

I'm a Firefox guy. The only reason I use it instead of IE is that it feels faster. Seriously.

I find it incredibly annoying that the only websites I frequent that require IE are those run by Microsoft. I've nothing against IE (I've never had the malware problems), but these websites disrupt whatever I'm doing. Most times I'll just avoid the site. A good example is the MSN Video portion of MSN. Occasionally I'll click a link leading to a video, at which point I'm told that I can't watch it in anything but IE. This is odd since 1/2 of the emails I get link to funny videos on websites that do let me watch them in my browser of choice. Instead of launching IE and watching the (advertiser-supported) MSN Videos I simply move on. I've got too much stuff to do to be inconvenienced by this.

Which is why I was pleasantly surprised by the following error message. The site doesn't support Firefox -- but they're working on correcting it. It's a problem, and they're fixing it. Bravo!

How I almost watched Oprah

jeffreykey — Sat, 29 Apr 2006 03:51:00 GMT

Is it a show about Oprah's butt, or is Oprah judging others' butts? I'll never know.

Win friends and influence your team

jeffreykey — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 15:43:00 GMT

Do you know where your data is? If you've been involved with software at any point in the past two decades, chances are it's in a database. It would seem silly to put data, especially frequently changing data, into code.

How about those business rules? Business rule engines haven't been around as long as databases, but times are a-changin'. Imagine a world where the folks that come up with the rules can enter them, test them and even deploy them without having the development team so much as lift a finger. Costs are signifigantly lowered, deadlines are met, everyone gets bonuses and is promoted to figurehead VP positions.

Interested? Please stop by and check out our webcast next week:

Rules for Enterprise Agility: Webcast, March 15th, 11am CT
IT architects, application developers, business analysts and process owners will learn about best practices for rules-oriented architecture and application development, and how business rule engines can provide substantial benefits in consistent decision making, increased revenue and decreased operating costs.
Featured speakers include industry analyst and veteran application development expert Dr. Adrian Bowles, and Larry Buettner, CIO of Wheels, Inc. and a member of ComputerWorld’s 2006 list of Premier 100 IT Leaders.More information: http://www.inrule.com/Event_Info.aspx

The Dick Button drinking game

jeffreykey — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 03:03:00 GMT

I've had the Olympics on every day since Arrested Development went off the air, and I've found that the most consistently entertaining aspect has been the commentary of Mr. Dick Button.

I don't know much about the guy, other than he skated in the 40s and 50s (not his 40s and 50s). One thing I do know is that he is not easily pleased. He doesn't like the scoring system, the skaters are uninspiring, their choice of music is dull and so on.

A quick bit of research led me to the Dick Button Drinking Game. If you're going to catch any figure skating, do yourself a favor and grab some friends and a keg of beer. You'll need it.

Snippet Compiler update

jeffreykey — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 17:20:00 GMT

I've uploaded a minor update to Snippet Compiler. I also put up an Add-Ins page with the following samples:

Web References
Folder Browser
Settings ToolBar
Snippet Repository

Finally, the Killer App

jeffreykey — Thu, 19 Jan 2006 04:36:00 GMT

If you've yet to be sold on the Internet, grab a seat and your favorite pointing device. My good man Ryan sent me a link to what is undoubtedly the Internet's Killer App: The Beer Mapping Project

Chicago's map is a bit limited -- my neighborhood alone has over 450 bars -- so get on it. It takes a village, comrades.

God Bless America!

Nothing says "holidays" like beer and raffles

jeffreykey — Thu, 08 Dec 2005 20:31:00 GMT

Won't you join us for some holiday cheer?

Place: Rock Bottom @ State & Grand in Chicago
Time: 6PM

Please note that this is next Thursday, December 15.

I'll be giving away another JetBrains .NET Action Pack, consisting of ReSharper and dotTrace licenses (one each).

Happy Holidays!

Blown away by Vista UI

jeffreykey — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:25:00 GMT

We're still waiting to be blown away, aren't we? Is it beta 2? Seems I haven't heard much about this lately..

NHL seven days a week

jeffreykey — Sun, 20 Nov 2005 02:14:00 GMT

Trying to find hockey on TV is like, well, even worse than it used to be. Much worse. The national coverage is pretty awful, even among five networks. I'd resigned myself to the fact that I'll have to go to one of the neighborhood Red Wings bars if I want to catch the Wings. I don't have a cable box, and I'm not about to get one just to watch one game per week on the Outdoor Life Channel. (Yes, non-hockey fans, that is the channel that carries the NHL these days. Hey, at least they're playing this year.)

Still, just having hockey on in the background is comforting. I'd almost given up when I remembered that Comcast.net shows games live over the internet for Comcast subscribers. This is awesome. Even better is that they have at least one game on every day! (2/3 of the days have two games.)

A Windows Media Center computer drives my TV, so making this happen is incredibly easy. Launch IE, click the link on the Comcast.net front page, right-click the video feed, select "Full Screen" and I'm enjoying NHL hockey in all of its compressed glory.

The video quality is surprisingly good. If HD is a 10 and normal TV is a 5, I'd say this is a 4. I'm just happy I can stream live TV over wireless without a single blip.

Nice job, Comcast. Now how about a Media Center plug-in and HD-quality? That I'd pay for.

Required reading

jeffreykey — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 04:17:00 GMT

You'll probably have a few extra minutes on your hands while waiting for VS Express to download. Do yourself another favor and check out the breaking changes in .NET Framework 2.0 [BradA]. The list is pretty small, considering the breadth of the framework, but you'll probably find a favorite in there.

Grab an extra copy for your back pocket/purse

jeffreykey — Tue, 15 Nov 2005 03:43:00 GMT

It's old news that the Visual Studio Express Editions are out, and free for a year. You, with your fancy MSDN subscription, probably looked right over this good bit of news. I don't know how many times I've needed VS while away from my computer, but didn't have the time to download the 3+ gig image and install it.

Do yourself a favor and grab the CD images right now, burn them to disc and throw them in your bag. Each image includes:

C# or VB or J# or C++ or "Web"
SQL Server Express
.NET Framework 2.0
MSDN Express

Good stuff.

Yes, it does mean everything

jeffreykey — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:08:00 GMT

While doing my first ASP.NET 2.0 "publish" tonight I was presented with the following dialog box:

Assuming that apps delete as few items as possible, I assumed that "existing files" meant files that matched those that were being copied. I was wrong. It does indeed delete everything.

I've salvaged most of the site from local copies, but most of the images that I've posted to the blog (that aren't app-related) were lost. Nothing drastic, but it is kind of funny that the one thing I've never backed up was lost.

Moral of the story: Don't be a dope.