Archives
-
Atlas Dec CTP Live
Well, darnit! It would be live 5 minutes before I leave for vacation! Oh well, I’ll get to play when I return. Check it out & get the latest Atlas bits – the Atlas site hasn’t been updated but it does look like the bits are the Dec ones.
-
Most Favorite VS2005 Item
So as I’ve been playing around with VS2005 and the 2.0 framework, my mostest favorite new addition in the C# IDE is being able to write a type and have it intelligently tell me “HEY! I don’t know where that type is!” and give me the option to either fully qualify it or adding in a “using” statement. Whenever you see the red line underneath a type when your cursor is in the word, simply press Shift+Alt+F10, then Enter. And voila! you know have a new using statement. The only downside, is that this only works when the assembly that type is contained in is referenced in your project. Ohh - and if you like using the mouse more than the keyboard, just hover your cursor over the red line and it’ll allow you to do the same thing.
-
New Atlas Dec CTP Coming
So Nikhil posted a juicy teaser of the new Atlas Dec CTP bits that they’re going to be releasing very soon. After playing with the previous bits and realizing that its cool but extremely hard to work with, I’m very excited to see that they’ve improved (tremendously) the server control experience. I can’t wait to get my hands on this drop! – Now, if only it wasn’t the Holidays and I was going on vacation Friday!
-
Vista Build 5270 - Sound Advice
So I nearly took the Vista build plunge last night, and it would have been my first one. Luckily enough, my DVD didn't finish burning until after 11:30 PM, so I didn't feel like staying up real late. Good thing I hit the sack. Reading my blog posts this morning reminds me of very sound advice - wait for Sam to do it first! What's his advice, don't. Seems this build isn't ready for prime time. I guess I'll go ahead and stash the DVD away and wait for Beta 2.
-
Wizard Control - Annoyance Factor 1.2.3
So I’m playing around with the new ASP.NET Wizard control. Quite an impressive control to say the least, however within 1 hour I realized there were 3 annoyances that I think were implemented incorrectly.
-
ASP.NET Membership - Configuration Error in Documentation
So I’m currently playing around with ASP.NET’s new Membership / Role providers with a dummy application, and I came across an error in the documentation concerning the MinRequiredNonAlphanumericCharacters property.
-
Disk Output Caching for ASP.NET 2.0
The feature that was cut from ASP.NET 2.0 now makes its debut as an HttpModule. Dmitry states that this isn’t the same code base that they were working from, but is another implementation. Very cool for those intense caching applications!
-
9/11 Consipiracy Theories
As Jeff points out, I too usually don’t buy into conspiracy theories, but reading this makes you really think. I may have to pop in my 9/11 DVD that I purchased a few years back and re-watch it now, looking & listening for those possible detonation explosions.
-
New Partner Membership Center Receives Praise
Ran across a couple posts late last night from a blogger code-named “happyfunboy”. Seems like he has the general consensus of how the new Partner Membership Center is working. His posts are a pretty good synopsis of the good, the not-so-bad, and the changed (no ugly, never ugly). If you’ve not figured out, we are listening, and your input counts. If you don’t want to publicly post your experiences / suggestions, don’t hesitate to contact me. If you do post, shoot your url on over to me so I can pass it on.
-
Breaking Changes from 1.1 to 2.0
So I may be a little late to the game on this, however, its the first time I’ve seen the list which makes me think there are many others that haven’t seen the list of breaking changes from .NET 1.1 to 2.0. A few notables include:
-
It's Finally Live! Check out the New Partner Membership Center Website
At approximately 5PM PST this evening, the new Partner Membership Center went Live! Check it out, and let us know what you think!
-
VS2005 Web Deployment Project Bits
I just found out that the VS2005 Web Deployment Project bits are now released for public consumption. You can find more information out about it here, download the bits, read the article to get started, and provide feedback at the forums. Enjoy!
-
Giving Props to VSTS - The Korean Way
Microsoft Korea has put together a pretty awesome flash video rapping to VSTS. They have the translation there too for those that don’t know Korean.
-
Return of Snippy
Okay, so its not as dramatic as if Clippy was returning, but if you've been doing any VS2005 work recently, who am I kidding...who isn't now that its released, and you've been trying to figure out how to create your own code snippets (and if you've not heard of them, have you been living under a rock?), enter "Snippy". A powertoy released that's actually a standalone app that allows you to create your own code snippets. Simply enter the title, shortcut, the code & the literals/objects - save it to “~\My Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Code Snippets\LANGUAGE\My Code Snippets” and you’re good to go. Just open up VS2005 after that and type in your shortcut to see your code snippet appear before your eyes. Cool.
-
A few Atlas Gotchas
So the last couple weeks, I’ve gotten the chance to play around with the Atlas bits and during that time, I’ve come across a few“gotchas” that aren’t documented anywhere that I’m sure people would love to know about…
-
We're apart of the v.Next wave!
Over the last 7 months, I’ve been locked away for countless hours working on the v.Next wave of products for Microsoft’s partners. I’m
happyecstatic to announce that we’re finally shipping v.Next of Microsoft’s Partner Program portal, rather the Partner Membership Center. While I can’t talk specifics about the release just yet, I will let you in on some new teasers to wet your noggin’ with… -
Making the List
So I too ran the cool little tool that calculates your blogs worth, but didn’t feel like spamming my worth. Much to my amazement, I made Roy’s Top 31 list! Really, I think he was just being nice, and it should have been top 30, but – I made it. (Link to original worth listing by Jon)
-
Craving that VS2003 Web Deployment Experience in VS2005?
So, you’ve just installed VS2005 and have been trying to figure out how to deploy your ASP.NET project, and its nothing like VS2003. Yup, your experience is expected, and the ASP.NET team (or just a few of them) have been working on a VS2005
pluginproject that brings VS2005 web deployments back to the VS2003 roots. Check out Scott’s lengthy post on this newpluginproject which will be available later this week. -
Get Atlas for Beta 2 Now!
Just blogged over here, and just released moments ago, check out Atlas now!
-
XML For Signatures
Today I've seen something I've never seen before that raises the bar on geekness... XML for signatures. One was XAML and another was a VS.NET Styled XML signature. Heh, crazy - okay back to work.
-
... But Not an End to Excentrics World
Following up from my last post, the end is no longer in sight. I’ve gotten approval (quickly I might add) from the ASP.NET Product Group concerning my continued development and distribution of my controls. So, once again I’m in the holding pattern of getting my moonlighting request approved on both ends. Hopefully this time, things will go a lot quicker.
-
There is an End to Everything...
Wow, it’s been awhile since I last blogged…I guess my new job has seriously been keeping me that busy. It’s unfortunate that I have to announce such a depressing moment after such a long absence…
-
Where Have I Been?
Boy is that a good question, and I’m sure my fiance would like to know as well. Wow, its been over a month now at my new position within Microsoft, and I’m happy to announce that I’ve been apart of releasing my first build here! It’s been a stressful/exhausing past week and a half as we prepped our stuff for my team’s first build. I spent about 75 hours working 2 weeks ago, as well as about 70 hours this week. Yeah, I’m glad I have a weekend now…as I worked for about 15 days straight.
-
Quoted on Apress
I was lucky enough to get contacted from Apress concerning my blog post praising the FogBugz book that Mike Gunderloy put together for the release of FogBugz 4.0. I just checked out their site, and it looks like my quotes up. Sweet.
-
Thrown into the fire
So my first week at Microsoft has been one hell of a week. I went through 1.5 days of NEO (New Employee Orientation), be placed into an office that I’m sharing with Cleve (hopefully I’ll get my own office soon, but we’re crammed for space in the building), and be placed on my first development team. At this time, I found out that we’re right in the middle of the spec creation, so trying to pick up the project & learn all my NEO stuff in just 2.5 days has been real fun. The experience is truly different from that of anything I’ve done before…as there’s really nothing like sitting in the lounge all day whiteboarding ideas and writing tech specs.
-
The Joke's On You
Heh, I’ve been preparing (link 1, 2, 3, 4) my April Fools joke for the last two weeks now. Boy are a lot of people gullable. To think that so many people would actually believe that Microsoft would hire a good ‘ol boy from Illinois and move him and his fiance across country. I do have to say that my story was very elaborate, though the indications are there that it was all fake (no names used, no specific dates except for my “on-site” interview). What’s even funnier is that I completely made up the Microsoft division that “hired” me. I even got some Microsoftees to join in (thanks gretchen & Cleve!), secretly of course, to help out in making this seem reliable.
-
A picture is worth a thousand head scratches…
-
And Installed again...
After contacting support for BackupPlus, they were of no help, or rather said for me to contact Microsoft directly to get help on the issue. Hah, right. I purchased your software which implies you supporting it…YOU contact Microsoft, not me. There’s some issue when registering components that they “say” works on their installation…heh, I doubt it does they just don’t know what the hell their doing.
-
Installed & Uninstalled 2003 SP1
So I promptly installed 2003 SP1 last night, only to find out that it breaks one of my most used applications…Backup Plus. This application is great, when its working. It allows you to define backup sets, then compress them & store them just about anywhere you wish. For me, that was storing on CD-RW media. Simply installing a packet writer application allowed me to do this.
-
Sadness with CNet Blogs
Okay, this blog post on CNet is just sad, they’re making fun of the fact that 2 kids in Kansas were going to swap an XBox for a .38–caliber revolver. It seems to me like their down playing the seriousness of the situation just a bit too much. I’m not sure if anyone else has noticed this, but the CNet news articles, which are now blog posts are degrading and degrading fast. This is just another prime example, and I will seriously think about not reading anything that comes from CNet from now on.
-
Updated Utility: Unleash It 2.4.1
So with my looming day of working for Microsoft draws nearer, I wanted to make one last effort to get an updated version of Unleash It to fix some issues that have come up since the last release. Mostly, I wanted to do this because I’m not sure of Unleash It’s destiny after I start at Microsoft, so this is the main reason for getting a new version out now. So, here are the updates:
-
Road to the Red Pill - Part 2
In Part 1 of “Road to the Red Pill” – I described how my resume was submitted and how my first few interviews went. This part will focus on my remaining interviews. Enjoy!
-
Want more than a 15 Second Interval in FogBugz?
With the FogBugz 4.0 release, they disbanded (currently) the idea of polling intervals for retrieving mail. While this means less things to manage, it does pose problems with filling up the error log with messages stating it cannot connect to the mail server. However, that messages is just erroneous because things still function, it just so happens its getting hit WAAY to often than what some servers would allow.
-
Road to the Red Pill - Part 1
It all started towards the middle of January 2005 when the SMS&P division purchased the source code for my custom controls. Needless to say, I was awe-struck when I noticed that the man, yes Microsoft, wanted the source to my controls. Of course, following my natural instinct of being nosy, I started a conversation with that person (name shall remain nameless unless he states otherwise) over the whole purchase to validate (to myself I guess) that Microsoft is really purchasing it.
-
Rounding Down
Ohh, I bet your thinking this is a technical post, well…its not.
-
Rory Engaged
Yup, thats right Aydika’s “Not his girlfriend anymore.” Congrats Rory!
-
When GhostDoc Fails...
Since pictures are worth a thousand words…
-
Becoming A Blue Badge
So today marks my two week notice to my current employer, Integrity Technology Solutions. Over the last two months, I’ve been interviewing with Microsoft and have accepted an offer for an Application Developer position in the SMS&P division (which, if you don’t know, is their Small & Medium Sized Businesses & Partner Program division).
-
IE7 and Standards
So the IE team, specifically Chris Wilson, decided to blog something worthwhile about future support of standards, specifically within IE7. While I applaud Microsoft’s stance on standards, I’m just wondering what *else* would be implemented into “standards”.
-
Netscape 8 BETA
Get Netscape 8 BETA, or wait FireFox 1.0, no it is Netscape 8 BETA…or is it FireFox 1.0 – hmm, boy, just what I want to do, get Netscape which roots from FireFox…glad they can rebrand their products successfully. Reading the release notes indicates that it is truly that, just a rebranded FireFox browser (sure, with some added features – what about putting those into FireFox!)…see for yourself.
-
Copying XML Nodes from a Doc to Another
This should be filed as, “that’s pretty cool – I didn’t know that.” So for all of you SDK reading zealots out there, stay away - far away…I don’t want any comments (yet I have a feeling this statement will generate the fury that enrages them to post) stating “its in the SDK, just read it.” As I’ve said time and time again, when you have to work with the stuff day in and day out and only look up the stuff you need when appropriate, this theory just doesn’t work… so I don’t want to hear it, ‘kay?
-
Review: Painless Project Management with FogBugz
Mike Gunderloy’s latest book, Painless Project Management with FogBugz, was a much suprise present that I received earlier last week. Needless to say I was going to purchase the book myself, but was greatly appreciative to whomever sent it to me (thank you, you unknown soldier of the free book society), making my ability to travel to the bookstore pointless…but I digress…
-
Apple & TiVo
Hmmm.... a smaller sleeker more powerful running on proprietary hardware alternative! Could it be true? That’s what gossip is about…
-
.NET Development Position Available
If you live in or around Central Illinois, my company, Integrity Technology Solutions, has posted a job for a full-time .NET developer position on contract for at minimum of 6 months. Here’s the summary:
-
FogBugz 4.0 Released
In a surprising upturn of events, FogBugz 4.0 was released a week earlier than project by Joel, though it does line up with his first statement saying today. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I can finally talk about it, phew!
-
MySQL 5.0 Getting Triggers and Stored Procs
I have just a single phrase for this, it’s about time. While I’ve only used MySQL in limited fashion several years back, but one of the limiting factors that I wish it had were triggers and stored procedures. Because of that I dropped using MySQL for my home stuff and switched to Microsoft SQL Server, and never looked back. Now, its only in Beta and probably not available to the public, but its about time.
-
Easiest Way of Adding Search - EasySearchASP.NET
This was just posted, so I quickly went over to their site to check it out. I was a bit skeptical, only because we all know that indexing and searching your (or your company’s) website is a daunting task usually left to using Google, but with several lines of code, EasySearchASP.NET provides an out-of-the-box experience, so to speak. Right out of the box, searching works. Its that simple. It uses in-memory storage, which doesn’t require you to store it to a database, flat file, or any other method…making it fast, fast, Google fast. Sure, it probably isn’t as powerful as Google, but for a $99 fee, I don’t think you can go wrong. I’m going to plop this control on over to my boss to see what he thinks…I know my company has always wanted to do searching.
-
Prepping for ASP.NET 2.0
TheServerSide.net has just posted a blip on free training from MSDN on ASP.NET 2.0. The first in the series of 6 CDs is now available. So, if you’ve had little time to play with the next versions, I think this CD will become invaluable to you, as it probably will for me.
-
FireFox CSS Redraw Bug
So I’m working on a .NET Web app at work where I’m utilizing CSS and my Collapsable Panel control. The CSS that I’m applying is a border surrounding the entire page content via a DIV tag. The problem that I’m experiencing is a redraw problem with FireFox…great!
-
Wedding Website
So the craze in the last few years has been to setup a website for your wedding so you can post information. Well, following my geek tradition, and a fiance (heh, thats the first time I’ve used that in writing) that was like “HELL YEAH” to a website, I’ve set one up. If you’re inclined to visit and check our information out (or lack there of right now), visit us at http://wedding.eworldui.net
-
Engaged
Just a bit of some good news from my personal life, I got engaged this evening! Wahoo!
-
FogBugz 4.0 Release Date Announced
Check out Joel’s latest post, it mentions that FogBugz 4.0 will be available on March 1st
February 23rd. Thats the first mention of the release date aside from the beta forums mentioning “a few weeks more.” I have to say, I’ve been beta testing 4.0 for quite some time now, and it is a major overhaul, and definately worth the 4.0 status. -
Sunbird, 0.2 - Sharing Calendars
A few weeks back my girlfriend and I were looking to start sharing our calendars. Mostly because I didn’t know when she had to work (department stores, yuk!) and I constantly had to ask her what we were doing on the alternating weekends she didn’t have to work. So, being a developer, my first thoughts were – hey, I could build a calendar sharing app. Ohh, but the daunting task was ahead of me, and I really didn’t feel like taking my personal time to do this. Next thought? Well, that was to setup a VPC with Exchange Server – and after 3 hours I realized that this was overkill for just sharing calendars. So, I tabled the idea for the time being.
-
And the 1000th Comment Goes to...
Wow, 1000 comments for 338 posts…pretty good. Thanks for taking me to the bleeding edge Chris!
-
McLaws on Interviews
Last night, Robert McLaws posted the 3 interviews he has coming up with some superb names over at Microsoft. Normally, I like to see his things crash & burn (VisualBlogger 2004(5) anyone?), but this time around I’m supporting him. I just popped over to see if he’s received any comments concerning the interviews, and heartbreakingly enough, he’s received none. Personally, I don’t have any questions, otherwise I’d post them…but I know there are a few of you out there that have that undying canny for creating obscure questions that makes guys like these squirm because of NDA.
-
Definition of 'Recursion'
recursion
-
An Index Scared Me
Seriously, a SQL Index I created scared me. Here’s the story – I’m working on a project at work, and this table that is used to collect information has about 100K records in it – basically 1 record per day with 450 unique combinations. And, not to mention our testing data is from Sept. of ‘04 – so the live database has about 130K of records.
-
JavaHMO moving to Tahiti
The news is true, and I just have to say – good. JavaHMO will be moving to Tahiti, or HME after the 2.3 release. Why is this good? Well, so much of JavaHMO has hooks into the HMO specs to make things work, that as Leon states, is a terrible mess. Moving their applications to use HME, will advance the functionality of JavaHMO making things much easier. The code name is currently slated as Galleon for the JavaHMO re-write.
-
Tahiti for TiVo
It’s nice to see TiVo supplying something for the large developer grouping of us. Tahiti, the code name for TiVo’s SDK, will be released on SourceForge sometime soon with a few example applications that “allow DVRs download information and content from the Internet that wasn’t possible to download before.”
-
TiVo ToGo Has Cometh
So I decided tonight that I was going to force a TiVo update, and this time around it was finally successful. TiVo ToGo, or rather the latest TiVo software was downloaded to my TiVo. After a restart, and another half hour of waiting while it processed the information…I finally had TiVo ToGo. Now, I’m transferring some shows over (small ones of course) to see if I can play it even though I don’t have a supported media codec. Oh yeah, the night has cometh – TiVo ToGo is mine
-
Amazon Shipping - How Lame
So on December 28th, I ordered 3 iTunes gift cards from Amazon with my $40 gift card bonus from work, and it has finally shipped. What really sucks is that the first round of ship dates came and gone, and so they bumped it out a week. Yesterday, I shot an email to them saying how unfortunate it is that they cannot fulfill thier orders in a timely fashion. They, however, gave me a sob story that the iTunes gift cards were backordered and they didn’t know when they were getting some in…okay, they’re gift cards – geezus, its not like I’m buying 3 42” plasma tvs or something! So, they finally responded and told me they were upgrading my shipping to 2 day priority from my free shipping that would take 3–5 days. Well, my items finally got shipped…late today (Friday). Which means, it won’t actually go out until Monday – why? Well, 2 day shipping doesn’t get picked up on weekends, so my 2 day shipping is going to take 4–5 days, and so we’re back at the beginning of this vicious cycle except for the fact that I know my gift cards are on their way.
-
Searching Your Blog
Following David’s example and great code, I also added searching to my blog. Do the same for your blog!
-
Book Review: Developer to Designer
I just finished reading Mike Gunderloy’s latest, Developer to Designer – GUI Design for the Busy Developer, and to sum it up, this book takes up where his other book (Coder to Developer) leaves off. Developer to Designer has a lot of useful information contained in it about proper design considerations for developing windows, web, and Avalon (yes, Avalon) applications.
-
BlogJet 1.5 Final Released
BlogJet 1.5 Final was released today. Go get your update now. Note, that the pricing structure was changed from previous, it now costs $39.95 instead of $19.95…man am I glad I purchased it a LOONG time ago.
Anyway, does look they’re having some troubles with Firefox support on the website (its a mixture of new and old) so be forwarned.Nevermind, just refreshed my page and the new CSS file came down - thats twice Firefox has cached something that should have been updated. -
64bit Processors and Step By Step
So the television show that most of us enjoyed between the years of 1991 and 1998 was way ahead of their time. In the episode that’s currently on, the parents were talking with their brainiac child, Mark, and trying to find a good hobby for him. Most of you may remember, that he likes science, math, and probably D&D (he quite possibly would have scored high on the nerd test we’ve all taken recently).
-
Linking Proclomation
I’ve just decided that from now on, the only links that will be found within my blog posts will be links of interest or personal intent. In other words, if I mention Microsoft – you won’t find that it’s linked to their website. However, don’t get pissed off if you see statements like “my custom controls” or “via Scoble” as those will contain links pertaining to my interest or personal intent.
-
Microsoft AntiSpyware Beta 1
So what’s the big news going around the blogosphere other than the fact that at CES the demo gods hated Bill & Conan? Or the fact that TiVo and Microsoft is partnering up yet still be competitors? (All info can be found at Engadget) Well, how about the Beta 1 release of the Microsoft AntiSpyware (downloaded here) that is probably just a quick naming change from its previous hostile takover of GIANT software.
-
How Nerdy Are You?
I guess thats good? Does that mean I have a somewhat social life? I mean I answered that I only had less than 4 good friends – why is that social. Probably because I didn’t spend my childhood enjoying D&D or watching Star Trek – or the fact that I hated science and could care less about the periodic table. At least I’m not as nerdy as Kent (no hard feelings man, but it does show). -
iPod Angst
So really, this isn’t a post on my angst against iPod or Apple, but dLo – the company that produces iPod accessories. So for Christmas, my parents got me the iPod along with the dLo TransPd FM All-In-One Car Solution – this thing is big & bulky, but works great for having it right there next to you in the car. So, besides the FM transmitter, what is the most desired accessory next – why the silicon protective cover of course (I mean, who in their right mind would have a iPod without a protective cover! – shame on you if you don’t).
-
Undocumented .NET 1.1 Fixes
[Via ScottCate]
