Since Jason went ahead and posted about what what some of us at Telligent have been working on, I figured it'd be safe for me to talk about some of my impressions with .NET 2.0 and such.
When Jason first approached me about joining him at Telligent, he said that some of the projects they had coming down were the types of ones you would look at and say "dang, I wish I working on something like that." After being here for almost a month, I can't agree more. Who would have guessed I would be working on the www.asp.net website and helping get it going in .NET 2.0 b1? And I wouldn't have guessed that I would be corresponding with Microsoft employees on a daily basis (don't get me wrong, you guys are cool, but it is a little intimidating the first time you email someone there... "gosh, I don't want to sound like an idiot...").
After working with .NET 2.0 for a little while now, I have come to love it. It still has a little ways to go before it is ready for prime time, but it is a very nice improvement over 1.1. Some issues I've had include memory issues (Visual Studio seems to have some leaks), incorrect example documentation (C# example for one of the Roles API functions had Page Language="VB" and was missing the opening bracket for the Page_Load), and some items that just aren't fully implemented yet (I know, its beta1). Over all, the list of improvements far outweighs the bad. Generics? I'm in love. The Membership API is so easy to work with... wish we already had it to use on nGallery. And my absolute favorite... the improved IntelliSense. Lists variable names as you type them, so I can easily breeze through code. One of the problems is that now I don't want to go back to 1.1! I want 2.0 now! Somehow, I think I'll manage to wait.
With my new job, I now work from home and I'm responsible for tracking all of my time myself. Before, it was easy. I was at work from 9am - 5:30pm with a half hour lunch, I got paid for the time that I was there. Now, it is not so clear cut, so I have to track different start and stop times as I sometimes do non-work related stuff.
I've been trying to find some utilities to help me do this and keep a history of my time. Currently, I've just been jotting things onto my whiteboard, but my whiteboard isn't all that big and it has other stuff on it as well (notes, code ideas, object layouts, etc... it is cluttered).
I did some looking around yesterday and came up with a few that I have been trying. First, Time Sled is the closest to what I want. Its UI isn't exactly what I envisioned, but it seems to do most everything I want and seems to have a pretty nice reporting tool. Also, what I really wanted, was a little icon in the system tray to start and stop the timer as I come and go. The one thing I wish it had was some sort of expense tracking. It can have an hourly rate for your time and price out what your time was worth, but nothing to track expenses.
Second, I'd looked at Time Panic, but have kind of already crossed it out. It doesn't quite have the layout and reporting that I'd wanted. Also, no system tray icon.
Third, I got Visual TimeAnalyzer, which is a spiffy little program, but doesn't seem to have a timer functionality. It seems to tracking how long various programs are running on the computer and specify the time as being spent on various projects. The problem is, I could go to lunch and leave Visual Studio open, and it could keep counting time, but that isn't billable. Or right now, I have VPC running with work stuff open, but I'm not working right now. This is more of a monitoring tool.
Finally, there was Time Meter, which I though I was going to love. It integrates with Outlook, which I figured would be nice, since then I could have it like Newsgator and store everything within Exchange and I could access some of my data from on the go. However, it doesn't let you store it in Exchange, it creates its own PST file. Its way for storing items has more of a "work-around" feel to it rather than an actual solution. Its "Projects" are custom Tasks with user defined fields. Then its time entries and expenses are just customized Journal items. Also, it has no system tray icon. And one annoyance, every time I go into one of its sections, the folder listing changes and I have to hit Mail see all of folders and then go to another section.
Anybody else have any suggestions that I might like before committing to buying one (since they're all basically 30-day shareware)?
See everyone later. Off to Colorado in the morning for a week. Will be online here and there, but should be pretty busy (it's a vacation!).
Right now, I must say I am one busy "computer geek". I've got my desktop downloading Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1, since I need it for work. Also downloading all of the project files (probably 400mb, going slow). Have Virtual PC going installing Windows XP, since I'm not putting VS 2005 on my main install.
Also, I am leaving to Colorado on Thursday morning for my fiancee's cousin's wedding, but heading down to my fiancee's tomorrow night so we can leave bright and early. Have a bunch of work and going to be in airports all day Thursday and next Tuesday, so taking work with me. So, I have my laptop reinstalling Windows XP, since I somehow managed to screw it up. Also have my fiancee's laptop installing Windows XP because mine is somewhat tempermental and her's was also needing an upgrade from XP Home to XP Pro (or well, I told her it did... and thank you to MSDN Academic Alliance for another getting me another license).
So needless to say, keeping pretty busy. Total of 4 displays going (2 on desktop, then 2 laptops), scrambling to get work done and get ready to do work while sitting in the airport/airplane.