Wallace B. McClure

"Threading in .NET" talk in Knoxville, TN

Thanks to Alex Lowe

I would like to take a minute to thank Alex Lowe for helping me with some people contacts regarding the next version of Sql Server (aka Yukon).  Whether or not anything comes from them, I wanted to say thanks!

Wally

The Paul Wilson Gravy Train.........

Had to share this story about Paul Wilson based on all of Marcie's chatter. 

I met him in April in Atlanta.  I was talking about a problem I had noticed the day before at a client and how I had solved it and I was speculating about what I thought was causing the problem.  BTW, I did say during the conversation that it was speculation and not a known fact.  By the time I had driven back to Knoxville, he had emailed me and said that my speculation was wrong and that it had to be something else.  I wrote some sample code and sure enough, he was right.  I remember thinking at the time, "Paul Wilson is the kind of guy I want to hang around."

Wally

PS. Paul, I will email you my bill later this week.  ;-)

On to more important things.....Tuesday is my Birthday

Tuesday (June 24) is my birthday.  How am I going to celebrate?  I have a meeting with a customer at 1:00 pm and and a meeting with another customer at 3:00 pm.  I am Mr. Excitement!!!!!!

Wally

PS.  I will be 36 years old.

A Bad Afternoon

Unfortunately, I had to take my cat to the vet and have it put to sleep.  He had kidney failure and there was nothing that could be done.  He had lost a lot of weight and could hardly move around anymore.  His name was "Z."  He was a cool cat.  I got him in October of 1991 (along with a black cat that I named "Midnight" ) when I was at Georgia Tech finishing my Master's Degree in Electrical Engineering. 

Today has been a somewhat sad day.

Wally

Threading code in c#

I just got done writing the C# example threading code for a talk that I will be doing this week in Knoxville. 

In reading back through the documentation, I found that the documentation on threading has significantly changed since .NET Version 1.0 Beta 2.  The original documentation on threading and passing parameters back in vb talked about raising events and didn't feel really programmatic.  It felt more hadcoded.  Yes, I am an old timer in .NET having working with it since the PDC 2000 bits and many betas and release candidates after beta 1 upto .NET 1.0 and several Everett betas.  With the current documentation, I like the way that the docummentation talks about delegates with threads.

Wally

Huntsville, Here I come (in October)

Got an email from Dan "The Man" Wygant for the Huntsville .NET User Group.  He has asked me to come back to Huntsville and do another talk on .NET for them.  I went in the Fall of 2002 and did a talk on "ASP.NET Server Control Basics."  We haven't settled on a topic yet, but I need to come up with a basic talk for them.  I have done talks on Windows Services & Threading recently.  If you have a good idea for another talk, please give me a suggestion.

Wally

My buddy is back in the fold

A friend of mine has just recently lost his job at an online training company.  He is the best developer, programmer, and architect I have ever seen (he also runs a little at the mouth, but I do to).  His name is Michael D. Long.  He is a Microsoft MVP.  He wrote some articles about Windows DNA a couple of years ago.  He is going to be doing some work for my company.  I am excited to be working with Mike again after several years.  If you can get by the rough edges, he is a great programmer!!!!!!!!!!!

Wally

Watching other processes

Over a year ago, I wrote a Windows Service in .NET to watch the web server process of IIS (InetInfo.exe) and to stop that service and restart it under certain conditions.  I had set the app up to run under a timer and wake up every couple of minutes to check the state of IIS.  While it worked, I always wondered about how do I check for processes that are currently running and a few other things.

Now, thanks to Roy Osherove, I have almost all of what I want.  He gave me the little kick in the "code" pants to head me into a better direction.  I took his code and modified it to what is at the end of this post.  My next step is going to be how to find out when a new process starts...............

static void Main(string[] args)
{

Process [] localByName = Process.GetProcessesByName("notepad");
for(int i=0;i<localByName.Length;i++)
{

localByName[i].Exited += new EventHandler(OnExit);
localByName[i].EnableRaisingEvents = true;

}
Console.WriteLine("Waiting...");
Console.ReadLine();

}

private static void OnExit(object sender,EventArgs e)
{

Console.WriteLine("The process was finished!");

}

Helping the local community

I recently have gotten involved with a local small business organization.  I have written an application that allows them to post information to a database about their business.  That part of the application is protected by a userid and password.  Another part of the application allows anyone to search the information in the database for a company with certain parameters.  I have written this at no cost to the local chamber of commerce (Knoxville Chamber Partnership) or to those in the small business organization.  I have written this with the hope of helping my community.  Obviously, it is a .NET application.  It is not pretty, because I am not a pretty pictures, flaming logos, twirling and spinning kind of guy.  The artsy fartsy stuff is for the graphic designers. 

Here is a link to the public section of my application.

Wally