Julia Lerman Blog

Stephen Forte heading to Everest

I've been watching Stephen Forte's blog and have emailed with him a few times in anticipation of what he is about to embark on tomorrow - trekking from Kathmandu to Everest. Many of you may know Stephen, he is a Regional Director for NY/NJ (along with pal Andrew Brust) and speaks at many conferences. Stephen has more energy than anyone I've ever met and is always in need of good outlets - whether it be a night of drinking with Clemens, pounding out code all night long, training for a triathalon or on his many mountaineering endeavors. I've snowshoed up Mt. Mansfield in the winter with Stephen. He was kind enough to stop and wait for Rich and I occasionally (though it was Karen whom we were all chasing up the mountain).

Stephen did just write in his blog that he won't be summitting, which I'm actually kind of thankful for, being the big time worrying type. (Sorry Stephen)

So good luck be safe safe safe and we're thinkin' about ya!!

printing code from vs.net

I finally had an excuse to work outdoors in the sun - a quick code review. I had to print out a bunch of code and noticed this cool little feature:

I love those arrows pointing out line wrapping. Visual clues are goodness. Thanks MS.

GetDateTimeFormats and CultureInfo

Old news to some, but new to me and a few others.

Yesterday I posted the results of the GetDateTimeFormats method of the date class - an array of 130 items.

I had an email from Alex Pope (a poster on the asp alliance listservs) saying that he only got 86 items. I looked at the results of his method and noticed all of the dates were in Euro format.

So the method is culture-info dependent, and in fact, looking back at the class details, there is an overload for culture info. So you will get different results based on your settings or on the explicit request that you make. I will modify my article to indicate that.

Werner Vogels

Growing up in Syracuse, NY, there was a near-famous local ad on t.v. for a roofing company owned by a family named Vanderhoof. Their ad (how will I do this without sound - I'll try it with spelling) said “Is it Vanderhooooof Rooooof? Or Vanderhouef Roeuf?” Oh forget it. I just thought of that with Werner's name -- Werner Vogels?or Verner Wogels? Regardless - my real point was: subscribed. What ever took me so long? He writes about architecture...though not about roofing.

GetDateTimeFormats again

I have taken the results of the string array returned by Date.GetDateTimeFormats into this article.

This is one of my favorite methods in .Net (so far). Mostly because it demonstrates the level of thought that MS has put in towards the process of us poor slogs trying to crank out applications.

I have written about it before. Prompted by a question today on ASPAlliance listservs, I thought I would grab the output of this wonderful method of the date time class for future reference.

here comes the next generation of developers...

ed: geeze guys -okay...you're right,  I mean computer chip designers, algorithm inventors, etc...! Good thing Alan Cooper didn't see this!

Math SAT scores reach 36-year high
Tuesday, August 26, 2003 Posted: 10:46 AM EDT (1446 GMT)

(AP) -- The nation's high school class of 2003 achieved the best score on the math section of the SAT exam in at least 36 years, while students' verbal scores hit a 16-year high.

DataGrid Girl Rocks on .NET Rocks

Just got home to find this in my inbox from Franklins.NET:

Why INETA has such potential internationally

Scott Hanselman feeds some interesting numbers about TechEd Malaysia in his blog

They've really done an amazing job here.  Last year there were 1080 attendees, this year over 1500.  Last year there were ~40 speakers, this year over 60.

1500 attendees! I know that here in the states we can get a little u.s.-centric when it comes to our perception of the i.t. world. Data like this, as well as what is going on in Latin America and many other parts of the world is always eye-opening and exciting to me. Granted TechEd in the u.s. had about 9000 attendees. But still, this is pretty awesome.

So why the reference to INETA? It just is a great example of why .NET User groups are forming all over the world - even in places that we think of as remote and are astonished that there would be advanced i.t. stuff taking place. Take a look sometime at the list of user groups on the INETA website and you'll see what I mean.

I know that being wide eyed and Pollyanna-ish about this grates against the nerves of people in the states who are feeling the negative effect of these developments combined with the economic downturn that has left many of us out of work. But I really really really don't want to go there. I have the potential to debate myself for the next year on the issue and a greater potential of competing with the sobig virus in comments! <g> I think we are one great big community and I will just leave it at that.

Mike Gunderloy's advice for Writer's

..more time...less sleep?

this makes me sad every time I look at it...