Archives
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I love ClearContext!!
After several months of using the Free version of the ClearContext addon for Microsoft Outlook, I just cant imagine what I would do without it. It has reduced my email time, kept me more organized, and uncluttered my Inbox better & faster than any ad-hoc system I have devised in the past.
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Manual CRUD operations with the Telerik RadGrid control
I have been working on a project lately that was already using the Telerik ASP.NET Rad Controls suite. One of the new features was a fully editable web-grid, so I chose to use the existing ajax-enabled RadGrid control to speed my development. I chose to use a 3rd party control, mostly due to time constraints since the project required a grid with inline-editing, full CRUD operations, plus custom column templates, all with heavy Ajax support to avoid postbacks and excessive page size.
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VPC 2007 Dual Monitor support
I have been trying to find a way to allow you to run Virtual PC 2007 with multiple monitors. Natively VPC 2007 doesnt support more than 1 monitor, however you can "trick" it by using various techniques that expand the desktop area into a larger virtual desktop.
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Link Love: 09/21/2007
I havent been blogging much over the past several months. The main reason is time, or the lack thereof. Since I dont have time to write a "proper" blog post, I'm just going to start sharing some link love...
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Note to self: Blog about using Service Broker
Just a note to myself to do a braindump on all this Service Broker shiznit I have been playing with lately.
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The influence of style upon methodology...
No matter how faithfully you try to follow your chosen project methodology (Scrum, Extreme Programming, Waterfall, CMMI, etc.) ultimately the strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures you experience are determined by the habits, attitude, and style of the project manager and team members on the project.
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My fair and biased opinion on the recent upgrade...
DISCLAIMER: The following post represents my personal opinions and thoughts, not that of my employer.
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A web site is not an RSS feed...nor the reverse.
There was a time not so long ago when we built "home pages". Glorviously extravagant, naievely simple web sites that said who we were, and what we were about. On those home pages, we put news & announcements, and often, links to static pages of content. If we wanted to interact with visitors, we included guest books, maybe a simple message board, or just displayed our email address prominantly so others could drop us a note. All of this was created by hand with the expectation that changes would be few and far between.
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Reporting Services administration changes in Katmai (v.Next)
Brian Welcker posts some information on changes they are consindering to how you will administer Sql Server Reporting Services in the next version, codenamed Katmai.
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Reserve judgement lest thou be judged too...
After submiting my last post (rant), I re-read it and had a thought occur. Maybe I too should show humility and take the optimistic view that the developers of these projects really did have good reasons for their reinventions and innovations.
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Embrace the framework!
Sometimes I get involved with a .NET project where I find code that is just so "different" from the norm that I wonder how it got to such an extreme state; Code that reinvents Configuration, Threading, File IO, DataAccess, or sometimes even primitive data types. It strikes me as a form of extreme arrogance that a developer could find even the most fundamental building blocks incapable of being used. In the end, I find myself babeling to myself incoherently as I try to trace, diagram, and divine the secrets of these "innovative" implementations.
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Find your Sql Server Version and Edition
When working with Sql Reporting Services or other features that are version-specific, I often need to know what version of Sql Server is running on the target server.
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RSS and ATOM libraries?
Today, I was out Googling for a good ATOM library to add to a project I am working on so I can support both RSS & ATOM. Thus far, I have been using the excellent ASP.NET RSS Toolkit, but I was disappointed to find very few .NET solutions for ATOM available in the open-source community.
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RSBuild deployment tool for Sql Server Reporting Services
I just discovered this promising project named RSBuild on CodePlex for scripting the deploy of Stored Procedures & Sql Reporting artifacts.
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Blogged-down, Blogcrastinating, & Blogstipated
...are a few words that could describe my past year (or so) of blogging activity. I have so many thoughts zipping around in my mind that I just cant find time or motivation to go code, post, and purge them - I feel completely mentally constipated. Somehow I always seem to be bogged-down on focusing on my projects at work or busy with the family that it leaves little time for serious contemplation or even the occasional playful troll. I really must purge these thoughts & ideas in the form of blog posts before I burst!!
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Requests for Sql Reporting Services v.Next team:
I recently completed a project in which I think I utilized every API and every extensibility point available within Sql Server 2005 Reporting Services and walked away from the experience feeling soiled, smelly, and dirty. This wasnt my first time exploring this territory, since my last job utilized Sql Server 2000 Reporting Services, and involved several custom data extensions and some custom "function assemblies" for creating barcodes an other custom functionality within from reports. However, this time I think i really gained a better sense of how close the whole system is to being really good and how disappointing it is that the Sql Server 2005 team seemed to focus more on new features than on improving the integration and extension story.
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Virtual Disk Conversions
I recently wanted to retry the idea of using virtual development environments instead of developing locally on my PC so that I can have several pre-built development and test environments that are tailored to each deployment target. Having dabbled at this a couple times before, I already had some images available to use.
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Troubleshooting Sql Reporting Services custom assemblies (extensions & what not)
I dont have time for a lengthy post, so here is some link-love for some great articles that have helped me lately with some data extensions and other custom code I am writing for Sql Server 2005 Reporting Services:
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Recruiting professionally in the small world of IT.
Face it, the IT world is a tiny tight-knit community where everyone knows everyone either directly or indirectly through our own private game of 6-degrees of separation. So, why do most employers treat potential recruits more like pesky cold-calling-vendors than like valued potential future clients?
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Try/Catch annoyances
Eating Exceptions: