Keith Pleas Blog

Keith's palimpsest

January 2006 - Posts

All slides, no code?

Ran across this comment (from memory) on an evaluation form for an Advanced Smart Client workshop that Billy Hollis and I have done a couple of times at VSLive:

   "Slides are nice - I can choose not to pay attention. It's not like following code - with Billy (the evangelist) you can't miss a beat".

No comment.

Why developers shouldn't test their own software...

My new wife (6 weeks today!) got her new business cards through her company's web-based application, and they say she now works for the "IT Department". Which was a bit of a surprise, considering that she's a clinical research technician for a large pharamceutical company.

It turns out that if you change one of the fields while filling out the web form (we're not sure which one since it was a couple of weeks ago, but "last name" would be a good guess), it resets your organization as well. To the "IT Department". Which probably seemed like a good idea to whoever developed the application. And, gee, it probably worked as they expected when they "tested" it. <grin>

Posted: Jan 04 2006, 12:31 PM by keithpleas | with 2 comment(s)
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A belated "thanks!"

I've been involved in a number of developer conferences over the years and one of the biggest joys of doing these shows can be the people you meet (also one of the biggest...er...challenges as I recall a fellow who followed me off the stage, into the men's room, and then out the door into a cab before I asked "are you going to the airport too?").

Anyway...I want to take this opportunity to highlight a couple of folks from Volvo. At a VSLive conference in Stockholm several years ago, I was talking to them about something (I forget what, but it was probably about .NET localization since I worked on that for the .NET SDK and did a couple of talks there on that subject), noticed that their badges said "Volvo", and asked them if they had any idea who I could contact to get some documentation on the old (circa 1975) Volvo Penta TMD100A diesel engine in my boat.

Well...last year I received an original engine manual for my engine along with this note:

Hi Keith!

We met at the VSLive in Stockholm 2002, and promised you a manual for a Penta engine. Finally we found it.

Regards,
Anders Bogren (not sure of the spelling on that last name!)
Goran Hellstrom

Hey, is that great or what? <smile>

Posted: Jan 04 2006, 11:59 AM by keithpleas | with 82 comment(s)
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EntLib 2.0 Hands-On-Labs "under development"

A couple of people have asked about Hands-On-Labs for EntLib (aka "Enterprise Library of Application Blocks"), so I asked Tom Hollander who replied with:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=B9BFF619-236C-4BBB-9AA1-2E7BC562C7F5&displaylang=en

These are for EntLib 1.x; new ones are under development for 2.0.

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