April 2003 - Posts

• Certifications

  Ok, more talk about Certifications going on from Kirk, Duncan and Joshua talking about certifications.  I have some certs, and I plan on getting some more.  Mostly because taking those tests is a personal goal with a definite results.  Right now I'm aiming for finishing my MCDBA, but I'm slacking because the tests I need to pass are admin related.  Well, I'm not much of an admin.  Yet.  I have tons of resources available to me because of my job (MCTs get all the MOC courseware to download), and lots of talented people around me to pick their brains.  Hopefully the end result will be a smarter, more admin-savy Phil. Now, I'll also try to get my MCSA after that.  Do I think anyone will hire me to be the sysadmin because I know have my MCSA?  No, of course not.  But it still something I'd like to get under my belt.  Perhaps being a developer with some good knowledge of Active Directory will open some doors for me. Now comes the problem of people complaining about not getting a job because some talentless hack had their MCSD and they didn't.  Well, I'm willing to bet that talentless hack was just as qualified as you, but that MCSD is something tangable that the HR person can look at and make a judgement call on.  And you will probably also find that 99.99% of everyone out there with one of these certifications (especially the MCSD) obtained it via working with the product and learning that, not memorizing questions.  I also have a CS degree, and I can tell you with certainty that there is a larger portion of people coming out of college right now with CS degrees that cheated and slacked their way through that than there are MCSDs cheating and slacking.  I'm not saying anyone out there is guilty of this, but with so many universities and colleges adding computer science departments and so many in coming freshmen thinking they'll be making $80k plus coming out of college, the quality of your average CS degree has definitely been degraded.  I think we are about 4 years away from people who go to grad school being the same as people going to college for our parents.  Actually, we are probably already there.  Maybe I just went to the wrong college.  I'm not taking a shot at anyone here.  Read Joshua's piece on certification.  He makes a much better case for going out and getting your certifications than I could.  My suggestion is if you are pissed of you are getting passed over because you don't have your MCSD, well, get it.  Obviously it has value if it can get your job.  It's easier to sit and complain about people with their MCSDs and hope that they somehow get devalued so you don't have to get one, but that probably won't happen anytime soon.  Josh is right, most people are afraid to take them because they can easily knock you off your pedistal.  I'll admit it, I failed the SQL Server Developer exam.  I can make all kinds of excuses (just worked a 75hr week, hardly any sleep.  Had the flu too), but really it mostly came down to me not being too comfortable with creating cursors and some admin stuff.  Shored up my knowledge and proceeded to kick the exam's ass (scored 930/1000 I think) the next week.  Cowboy up and take some exams. Posted Apr 11 2003, 03:23 PM by Phil Scott with 3 comment(s)

• Friday Shenanigans

  Don't click this if you are someplace where it would be considered inappropriate to see a puppy peeing on a laptop [via Hard|OCP].  Posted Apr 11 2003, 12:13 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• The Sports Guy and Iron Mike

  I'm a big fan of sports writing and I think Bill Simmon is one of the best out there.  He has a TREEEEmendous article about Mike Tyson and his pigeons.  My whole perspective on Mike Tyson just hooked.  I'm thinking of putting together an RSS feed for Bill Simmon's archive.  It would be pretty easy with the right regular expression.  Any regex experts wanna help a brotha out?  Posted Apr 09 2003, 01:21 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Mozilla for Testing Web Apps

  Normally, I try to avoid Slashdot articles because reading about MS stuff is like watching FoxNews cover the democratic national convention.  But here's an article that while poorly written does have a good point Using Mozilla in testing and debugging web sites.  The article is pretty much just showing how much better Mozilla is than IE for debugging websites, but it still points out some nice features of Mozilla.  One thing it does leave off is Checky.  Checky does all sort of validation on your pages.  Normally you just hit F10 and the agent runs (which I have it do HTML and CSS validation), but I'm having trouble with the beta 1.4 version of Mozilla.  Still a great tool.  If your website isn't displaying properly in Mozilla, you probably goofed on the CSS someplace that IE is letting you get away with. So, in summary:  Mozilla is an excellent tool for web development, but Linux dorks needing to point out "l00k w3 r b3tr than M$ I3 lol lol" to get that point across are simply morons.  That article needs to be rewritten to show how to use Mozilla as a test development platform, and that article alone would stand by itself without the childish IE bashing. Classic Slashdot comment (modded up to a 4 "interesting"): "Platforms for C#: 0 Windows .NET is still .NOT Platforms for Java: Windows, Solaris, Linux, AIX, Irix, Tru64, ........" I think I'm going to set myself on fire. Posted Apr 08 2003, 06:50 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Pocket TaskVision

  .NET Compact Framework Sample: Pocket TaskVision via the Download Center feed. I think this is new, but the MSDN article about the source is dated Feb 2003.  Oh well, it's news to me.  Now I need to see about making a web front end to it. Posted Apr 08 2003, 05:51 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• Wide Spread Piracy

  CNet is reporting that a volume license key is already floating around the net for Windows 2003 Server which "could lead to widespread piracy of the software."  They go on to mention the fact that Microsoft will make it impossible for people to update their servers that are using this key.  I cannot comprehend why one would install a server that can't be updated.  I guess the same type of people that would run their company on stolen server software are the same type of people that wouldn't update their server too.  In related news, does anyone else think that news.com.com is perhaps the worst uri ever?  What was wrong with news.com? Posted Apr 08 2003, 01:23 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• SimCity Updates

  Totally off topic, but SimCity holds a special place in my heart because the original SimCity was what got me hooked on computers.  Anyways, Simcity 4 had some bugs that prevented the biggest sky-scrapers from appearing.  If you want to see something scary, check out their message boards.  People were threatening lawsuits against Maxis, demanding that the patch be released immediately, and making all kinds of threats about Maxis telling them to tell a date they will release the patch, and Maxis could only tell them soon.  Be thankful that you only have to develop mission-critical software, and not games for 15 year olds.  SimCity.com has a poem for the patch: Good news for those who hate "soon" Cause it has been as close as the moon But today is the day We pass an update your way And your city enjoys a new boom Posted Apr 08 2003, 11:04 AM by Phil Scott with no comments

• VMWare 4.0

  VMWare 4.0 is out.  Upgrade (you do already own VMWare, don't you?) for $99. Posted Apr 07 2003, 03:37 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• More SharpReader

  One little cool feature I found while playing with SharpReader.  I was dragging links around from Brad's site, and it was adding them with no problem.  Until I got ot Ingo's site.  It couldn't add the site for some reason.  So I went to Ingo's site, found the RSS uri and did it myself.  Weird, I wonder why drag and drop doesn't work for that site.  Well, it seems it uses some sort of hueristics to make a good guess at the RSS file for a webpage.  I had actually been dragging links to the blogs, not the rss file from Brad's site.  Neat-o.  Not perfect (adding Tim's site picked up the uri for the MSDN feeds for his feed), but still a nice little feature. Speaking of drag and drop, it seems a little bizzaro.  The first link you drag onto a newly created category obviously needs to be dropped ONTO the category name.  After that, if you try to drop on the category name, it will add the link above the category, not contained by the category.  You need to drop onto a feed that is already in the category on the second and beyond feeds that you add. I've also thrown together an OPML file with a collection of links.  Get it here.  If you have links, PLEASE drop me a comment so I can add them.  I'm thinking about throwing together a little web application where you could upload your opml file (or just your RSS file), and it would parse that and create kinda a .NET style DayPop. Posted Apr 07 2003, 03:10 PM by Phil Scott with no comments

• OPML

  I'm playing around with the highly acclaimed SharpReader, slowly adding in a bunch of links.  Anyone willing to post their OPML file with their links of .NET (and development in general) file?  Adding in dotnetweblogs.com RSS helps cover a lot of the blogs I read, but there are still 100s more it seems. I'm working from home today, and I'm watching CNN in the background, so I almost have to comment on what's on TV.  Some reporter just about crapped his pants when a chemical specialist general told them that the WMD found were pesticides and that the troops were sick because "they were hot."  CNN is still refering to them as "suspicious chemicals" and keep talking to people about "the smoking gun."  Fox News is all over this, with of course the exception of the pesticide comments.  They've also shown a lot of shots of troops walking around Sadam's palace which reminds me about the Band of Brother episode where they went to Hitler's summer home.  I wonder what will happen to that house when the war is over.  Ok, that's about as political as I plan to get because this isn't the place for political commentary. Posted Apr 07 2003, 02:58 PM by Phil Scott with 1 comment(s)