Robert McLaws: FunWithCoding.NET

I was just about to shut down my computer and go to sleep (yes I am fully aware that it is now almost 6:30am and I am not asleep, I was working on the Version Commander and did not want to go to sleep yet), when I got a neat little e-mail in my inbox. My apologies to Julien Ellie, because I'm going to include his e-mail in this post:

Here's what I'm working on for this week, and the weeks ahead:

It's kind of a pain in the butt to have to compile stuff to two different versions of the Framework. I haven't dived into Whidbey too much, but I sure hope MSBuild lets you define which version of the Framework you want to target (I'm pretty sure it does, but I could be wrong). At any rate, I have to maintain two versions of my projects and solutions. It's kind of a pain to go through and edit my project and solution files after I'm finished with the 2003 version so I can compile in 2002, so I spent most of the night coming up with this solution: The VS.NET Version Commander.

Details matter. Especially in building solutions people pay for. You've heard of the term WYSIWYG? Well why isn't the term YGWYPF more prevalent? It stands for You Get What You Pay For, and it's more true in today's economy than most people realize. So where are the little details in server controls? What are the mundane, time-consuming details that set apart a proof-of-concept from a true solution? Over the next few posts, I'll address them.

Building a Better Server Control Experience, Part 1
Your Code Is Broken..... Or Is It? A Look At Coding For The Requirements

I just finished a long overdue update to PatchDayReview.com.  With PDC, GenX.NET, ScrollingGrid, LonghornBlogs, and ever other stupid little distraction getting in the way, keeping the patches updated kinda fell by the wayside. But, the first round of updates has been completed, and I'll work on Part 2 tomorrow. It's good to see Microsoft rolling several fixes into one patch now. Good call.

For those of you that don't have an MSDN subscription, you can download an 80MB update to the VS.NET 2003 documentation. I'm told that it contains 5000 code samples, bug fixes and content improvements. The link I gave you is a direct link to the file (in English), so have at it :).

I had an interesting problem today. I woke up this morning, after having stayed up till 4am answering several questions about my new server control, and I found that my Outlook was acting very strangely. I had a scare earlier this week, because I had to hook up my mom's virus-riddled hard drive to my server. Having already scanned for viruses several times and coming back with nothing, I decided that my Outlook files were getting corrupted.