February 2003 - Posts
I spent a significant amount of time tonight reading blogs and browsing sites of those claiming an advanced knowledge of the .NET platform. Man, I am humbled, as the saying goes, I'M NOT WORTHY! Some of you out there have an understanding that I only dream of having. It's a tad intimidating. The depth of the knowledge is incredible. The resources are vast. It is just amazing. I aspire to one day stand in your midsts.
I had some one call me on the phone this morning pushing certifications. I don't have one, and this person quoted that I would increase my value by 25% by just possesing one. Is this really true? Is there really that much of a difference? Can someone who has a certification actually be that much more valuable? Trust me, I am not knocking certs. I wish I had one, if only for the perceived value. I know people put a lot of work and energy into certs. But have they really gained anything by having them? Tell me.
If you own a PDA, check this site out, GrinderGear.com. Their cases just ROCK!
Many of you have already seen this set of articles, but for those who may stop by my blog could find them of useful. Thanks to Roy Osherove and Christian Weyer.
// Article: Web Services & .NET
ok, day 12... have been spending my time looking for work. work would be a full time job, contract work, contract to hire work... any thing. a lot of people say 'yeah, i think we have something, i'll get back to you.' ok, so, i'm waiting. looks like i am going to have to start making more aggressive moves.
saw a so-so movie today, 'How to lose a man in 10 days'. the only good thing in this movie was Kate Hudson.
trying to fill out these unemployment papers. man, there a lot of hoops. not even sure if it's worth it. i will get in a week what i used to make in a day. god, what an eye opener. it's not even worth it. i just realized, that no matter what i do, it's futile to collect unemployment. oh well...
anyway, i ahve been a licensed realtor for about 10 years. thinking maybe i will get back into that business. so, what is the percentage of people in the technology field losing their jobs that change fields? is it high? is this kind of like mother nature weeding out the unfit so those that have the skills can get work? there was a few years where, if you could say the word computers, people would throw a huge amount of cash at you, and you took it and ran. the odd days of our industry. sitting around watching stock options make people bazillionares. me... my gazillion options are worth more on the paper they are printed on. oh yeah, after they laid me off, they gave me the opportunity to purchase the options that had vested up to my 'release' date. what the hell is that? sure, let me pay you for options that are, well, worthless. i think not.
started unpacking my box from the office i used to have. funny all of the things you seem to accumulate. cdr's with no labels. folders full of papers you have no idea why you kept them. frequent eater cards to places you haven't been to in years. a coffee mug that fell behind your monitor. pencils, pens, post-it's, folders, binders, paper pads, tacks, glue, staples, sugar packets, odd computer parts...
well, i guess i'll end now. trying to stay motivated. trying to stay above the rim. see ya!
Well you guys, I never thought it would happen to me, but it did. Today, I was laid off! Man, this was a total shock, sort of. I knew the company was close to going under, but I thought I had a little more time. But I guess I was wrong.
Now what do I do? Reflect on what I have done? where I've been? I guess I need to get my resume in order. It's a weird feeling. I have not been in this position for a long time. Not really sure where to start. I have a lot of contacts out there but the way the technology market is and in my city, permanent jobs or even contract jobs are very hard to come by. I don't want to panic. I want to think about things logically and not make a rash decision. I have a family to think about so that will most definitely influence my decision.
Any thoughts out there? Any one willing to critique my resume? Tell me where I can improve? Any help at this point will be a bonus. Thanks!
--Thom
I am putting together a repository of information on Active Directory development with DotNet. If you know any quality links would you pass them on? Dot Net only please. Thanks.
--Thom
I am interested in response from the community on a GUI interface. I have an older application that I want to port to .Net, and I have a form that just doesn't look and feel right from a users point of view. The idea is to assign one or more users from an available pool to a specific group. I used the old arrow button method to move users back and forth between two list boxes. The users on the left are not assigned to the selected group, and the ones on the right are assigned to the selected group.
What are the opinions on good GUI design and best practice for solving this problem? Here is an example of my form.
Sorry for the color. It is the normal grey background. It was lost on editing.
--Thom
So I feel like a sheep today, but I thought it would be hilarious to see what OS I am... here it is:
Which OS are You?
To show you how NON-LINUX I am, I'm not even sure what the hell debian linux IS? Any one care to clue me in?
--Thom
I have a base table with customer data. I needed to create two columns of data that were derived from the base table. The only way I could do it was to create a view. I thought, what a great opportunity to use a new SQL Server 2000 view and indexes. So, I created the view, and started to create the indexs, but was immediatly given an error. The problem? I had a dateadd function in one of the new columns. That was a big NO NO! There are a lot of prohibitors when it comes to creating a view and trying to index it. In fact, I can't really see any way to index a view in SQL Server 2000 that isn't almost a mirror of the table.
I found an interesting article on indexing views. Take a look, it was an eye opener.
http://www.sqlteam.com/item.asp?ItemID=1015
--Thom
Ok, so it has been a few days since I posted. I really wanted to keep a daily record of what has been going on, but I have been so swamped the only thing I have wanted to look at was my pillow.
I have had my head buried deep in docs trying to get a better understanding of Active Directory and how I can manipulate it with .Net. There are hundreds of articles and MSDN articles, but nothing really comes close to what I want to do. I did find something at Planet Source Code from a guy named Craig Aroa, his file is here, called Active Directory Helper. Now it doesn't have everything that I need but it will give me a start.
On a different subject. As I have been thinking about developing in dot net, I keep forgetting that dot net is the perfect platform to create mobile applications. I threw together a 5 minute app on my Dell Axim this morning that basically allowed me to connect to a database, run a query and see the results in a grid. Yes I know that is way too simple. But that's the point. dot net and the VS IDE makes it so easy to quickly develop prototypes or even full blown applications with little coding. All I had to do was tell the database object where to connect and what query to execute. Easy. 5 minutes later I was looking at data from my SQL Server 2000. It was amazing. That's what I love so much about dot net. It's why I have struggled so long with deciding to learn something like Java.
I have also been encouraged to link to other dot net blogs. I would love to. When I find ones that interest me you can be assured I will include a link. That's all for now.
--Thom
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