Archives
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Call me Uncle Matt
As I write this I think of Moby Dick, "Call me Ishmael"...
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MCSD Gods are against me
Err, well another phone call the Thursday before my week of training confirms that it too, was cancelled. Maybe its a sign saying you should be a developer and only a developer - I really don't know why I want the MCSD other than the fact that it would be good to have. I mean, its not like I'm going to get a pay raise, or have my role changed at work. Maybe I'll just stick it on the back burner for now and ride on my MCAD at work (which btw has gotten me no where, gotta love companies who do that).
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Registering for TechEd
I think Microsoft is trying to get me to go to TechEd. This is the second time I've seen this (BTW - the image is not doctored):
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Erik Porter Saves Time
Sounds like a nice headline for a newspaper, huh. I thought so too. Anyway, to the point of this post, I was struggling with formatting a Guid to the "registry" way of viewing it, you know - 32 digits separated by hyphens with curly brackets around it.
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dBase Column Names
So for the past 2 days I've banging my head against anything replacable - wall, keyboard, desk - you get the idea...but WHY? Well I was trying to use ODBC to insert rows into a dBase file, and it was giving me an error: "Invalid syntax in Insert Statement". Just for reference, here's an example of my insert:
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Another NNTP -> Outlook Reader
Just ran across NewsLook which is a NNTP reader for Outlook. Seems pretty promising, but I don't see why you would need it if you have NewsGator and my free NNTP Posting Plugin. NewsLook is currently in beta, and will cost roughly $40 USD when released.
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Job Shadowing is Fun
I just had a student from a local high school job shadow me for about an hour or so. Overall, I think I left him with a very good impression on what development work is really like - well, in the sense that I spend some of my mornings doing bug fixes. I was able to show him how to diagnose & fix 2 different applications, 1 of which was alerted to me while we were working on the first application. However, I feel like I might have lost him at parts, because he hasn't done much programming himself, and has only really used BASIC (eek!) and HTML (ahhhh). I did ask him if he was lost at any point, and he said that for the most part he understood what I was doing. I guess thats a good thing, since he wants to become a game developer himself.
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Free nTierGen
Well, I think I should join the crowd and say I just received my free nTierGen license from Gavin.
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Packing dBase Files in .NET
Finally, a way to pack dBase files in .NET. Something we've been looking how to do for a LONG time at work.
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What are Agg Views
So heres an interesting question - I've been using this weblog for quite some time now, and I just realized that I don't really know what "Agg Views" are. Now - before you go off your high horse, I know that they refer to RSS subscriptions in Aggregators (I'm not a moron), but my real question is, how is this stat collected? Is it based on RSS subscriptions to only my feed, or does that include the main feed subscribers as well? Anyone care to enlighten me?
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Taking Certifications Seriously
Ahh, so I haven't blogged since last Thursday...guess I've just been too busy lately. Anyway...
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Apprentice - The Final Chapter
So Bill won, hmph. I wanted Kwame to win, but oh well. I'm in the middle of commercials, so I'm not sure what job Bill's going to take, but I would take the Golf Course job. I've lived in IL all my life, and it would be awesome to be out on the west coast.
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Figured out Scroll Wheel Problem with Mouse
I've been fighting this problem for quite some time now...whenever I was using IE or other applications where screens would refresh - and I would use my scroll wheel - the page would refresh, and sometimes go backwards and forwards. It was a very erratic and annoying behavior, but I finally figured out the culprit.
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TDD Research Findings
As a followup to my previous post on gathering research information, I wanted to share the findings with everyone in case they're put in the same situation I (and another co-worker) was. Thanks to the strong efforts of my co-worker, we were able to produce good measurements of TDD effects.
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Whidbey Updates from Scott Louvau
Scott Louvau just recently posted a summary listing to the Whidbey newsgroups on what his team is working on. Some items were notable enough to get blogged, so here ya go in case you missed them:
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NUnitASP and Portals
As a followup to my blog post yesterday, my boss decided to throw a new one at me - give an example of how we can use NUnitASP for our projects as another form of TDD during the project life cycle. Well, I hadn't used NUnitASP before, so I jumped right in following their step-by-step tutorial for newbies. Sure, the tutorial wasn't a real-world example, it did give you an idea of how things work and what needs to be done.
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Lack of Good Articles? I don't think so.
I just ran across this very well stated newsgroup posting (to microsoft.public.dotnet.general):
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TDD Case Studies
I'm trying to shift my division at work into using TDD. Everyone seems to be in favor of it, however they're wanting some quantitative measurements via Case Studies or White Papers that will show over time or over a project that TDD decreases bugs and increases developer productivity. Does anyone know of any references that are available online that I can point them to?
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BlogJet 1.0.0.17 BETA Released
BlogJet has released v1.0.0.17 BETA. Get it now!
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Retrieve AS/400 Data
Wally just pointed out a new data provider for .NET that will allow developers to talk directly with AS/400 servers. I don't know how many times we've had to access data on AS/400 systems in a round-about way. No more will we need to use DTS in SQL Server to transfer data over on a nightly basis!
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Creating Classes in VS.NET
I'm sitting here at work building an application using TDD (which by itself is another post, and may be coming later), and every time I start a new class for another piece of the puzzle, I'm hating on how I have put the keyword "sealed" class in my declaration. Now, this isn't a major issue, but it can be if you plan on releasing an API for customers to build against. What's my issue? Well, I'm wondering if the "sealed" and "notinheritable" keywords should be applied by default in Whidbey.
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Watching Channel9
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Server Uptime
I just realized today that my home server (which hosts Vault for me) has been up and running for quite some time. In fact, I believe it has been up and running as long as I've moved into my latest apartment (middle of February). Going under this assumption, I checked it out with a little tool called "uptime" from Microsoft, and I was right...its been up and running for 53 days and counting. Nice! I don't think I've ever had a server (even at work) be up this long without needing a reboot. And yes - it is updated with all the latest security updates.
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More ASP.NET 2.0 VS.NET 2005 CTP Experiences
I started playing around with ASP.NET 2.0 a lot more this afternoon, and I've definately found some stuff that are a great enhancement.
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True NNTP for Outlook
Looks like theres finally something out there that will be competing with NewsGator and my NNTP Posting Plugin that allows for true NNTP support in Outlook. However, there seems to be issues with combining this plugin with NewsGator. Obviously I'm sticking to NewsGator & my NNTP Posting Plugin, why ditch my own stuff.
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I hate the Media
Preface: This post is in no way trashing or slandering the men and women that serve our country. I have great respect for those men and women serving our country during these frivolous times. It is, however, slandering the media and their recent attempts of providing "the best news around."
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Strongbad Makes an Appearance at Walmart
Okay, okay...I know Strongbad isn't real, and could never make an appearance anywhere (well short of a costume)...but I met the real life version at Walmart this eve. This story is true, it happened in front of me and my girlfriend, and in no way do I have any relation to HomeStarRunner.
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Are you Bored?
If anyone would ask me that question right now, I would respond with "I'm insanely bored." But here I am, sitting at work, doing nothing. Not because I choose to do so, but because there's just nothing to do. Normally I have some bit of a programming project I can work on, like WebDeploy or Resizer, but recently I've come across no more items to add into these. Well, I'm sure Resizer could be beefed up a bit, I just don't feel like it right now.
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100th Post & Channel9
Here comes the obligatory 100th post -- 'This is #100! Its been a long journey to get to this point.'
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Central IL Dot Net - April 7th Meeting
The Central IL Dot Net User Group will be meeting this Wednesday, April 7th at the Microsoft Office in Bloomington, Illinois. We will be hosting Nick Lews, a .NET Developer Evangelist with Microsoft's National Architecture Team in Chicago. He will be discussing Web Application Security and the Microsoft Reference Application (WebHack).
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Training is Hard to Get
One of my goals this year, is to earn my MCSD for .NET, however training in the Central IL area is very spotty, and damn near impossible to get. I recently signed up for 2710: Analyzing Requirements and Defining Microsoft .NET Solution Architectures through Levi, Ray, & Shoup (LRS), and I was just informed today that my class had been cancelled due to the lack of interest. What am I? Am I not interested?
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NUnit TestRunner VS.NET Addin
My team at work is starting to look into using the Extreme Programming (XP) model, and as such I've started to do some reading up on it...and determined that its driven highly on TDD. This is something, unfortunately, I've had no experience with. So - I downloaded NUnit and started working with it, and (like always) I was trying to find the most streamlined way of running my tests.
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100% Managed Code
Through my normal routine of reading/responding to Microsoft newsgroups, a question came up about "100% Managed Code" phrases that companies use. Specifically, the user was asking about a PDF component advertising it as such, and was just wondering if it was possible that they were using the Adobe APIs still. Well, my response basically stated that since they're advertising it as "100% Managed Code", that it probably doesn't use Interop, and has built on the described api.
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Updated Utility: WebDeploy
WebDeploy has been updated. Please visit here for more information.
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How To Get Active Build from Project File
Well, I'm sitting here, struggling...struggling to find out how to get the active build configuration from a visual studio project file. I've been studying the XML file, and there is absolutely no where that denotes what the active build config is. I've also looked in the project.user file as well as the solution file, still...no luck. Would anyone like to share how you determine the active build configuration?
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Ego-Building Google Searches
In response to Adam Kinney's post on Ego-Building Google Searches:
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April 1st Time Wasters
Thanks for the links Graemef! Definately wasted about 30 min of my time...god I love April 1st.