Jon Galloway
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An overview of the Enterprise Library
We've been looking for some standard components in my group at work. The main issues were logging, data access, and centralized configuration. We'd kicked the tires on the Enterprise Library a bit, but our reaction was the standard "Gee, it looks complicated. Probably more trouble than it's worth." Then within one week, we got a barrage of EntLib information: a presentation by Scott Mitchell at the local San Diego .NET user group, presentations by Tom Hollander and Blake Dong (Avenade) at the Microsoft San Diego Architect Council, and an onsite Q & A with Tom Hollander. It all made sense: this is exactly what we were looking for, and it might be worth a second look if you'd decided to pass on it, too.
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[VPC] Compressing VHD files
As mentioned some time ago, we're shuttling VHD files around the office to share preconfigured developer environments. Even precompacted, VHD files are still pretty huge - 5 to 10 GB. They can compress down quite a bit, though - as much as 70% or so.
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[VPC] Using Virtual PC for developer portability
I've been using VPC quite a bit lately. At work, we've got a few applications which can take days to get set up for development - one app is ASP.NET mixed with VB DCOM on DB2, another is even more confusing. Both take a few days to configure, and that's if you follow the directions and ask the guys who built it. That kills developer portability - a 30 minute bug fix becomes a 30 hour bug fix if the developer hasn't gone through the installation initiatiation on that system yet.
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Free Opera Browser v7.54 License
It's nice to test drive the top alternative browsers, especially if you're involved in web development and want to see how your sites are displayed. I've never used Opera before because I'm terminally cheap and very happy with Firefox.
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[OT] Teaching a child to read
I'm teaching my 4 year old, Rosemary how to read. I thought I'd share a few of my experiences in case it's helpful to others.
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Hiding that "Server Application Unavailable" error message - Answered
Time's up, pencils down.
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ASP.NET 1.1 database cache dependency (without triggers)
Here's a way to implement a database cache dependency in an ASP.NET 1.1 application. At a high level, it uses a timer on a background thread (in an HTTP Module) that checksums database tables. No database triggers are required.
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[OT] Let's crank this blog back up
Hmmm... no posts for more than a month. A reorg at work got me a small promotion and a ton more work. Bunch of other non-computer related stuff.
Enough of the bloguilt - let's crank this sucker back up. Got 275 notes on blog post topics and several code samples that are just about complete, so here goes...