# Monday, 20 September 2010
WHAT: October PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday 10/06/2010 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~8:30 p.m. After Words at On the Border Mexican Grill
WHERE:

Intel Ronler Acres RA1 Auditorium
2501 NW 229th Avenue
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Hanselman
Scott Hanselman works out of his home office for Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager, aiming to spread good information about developing software, usually on the Microsoft stack. Before this he was the Chief Architect at Corillian Corporation, now a part of Checkfree, for 6 years. He was also involved in a few Microsoft things for many years like the MVP and RD programs and will speak about computers (and other passions) whenever someone will listen.

TOPIC:

Information Overload and Managing the Flow: Effectiveness and Efficiency
As developers, we are asked to absorb even more information than ever before. More APIs, more documentation, more patterns, more layers of abstraction. Now Twitter and Facebook compete with Email and Texts for our attention, keeping us up-to-date on our friends dietary details and movie attendance second-by-second. Does all this information take a toll on your psyche or sharpen the saw? Is it a matter of finding the right tools to capture what you need, or do you need to unplug?

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 20 September 2010 09:54:45 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Monday, 29 March 2010
WHAT: April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 04/06/2010 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~8:30 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Jason Mauer
Jason Mauer is Owner and Chief Architect of Mighty Code, a development shop based in Portland, Oregon focusing on software consulting, training, and development. He has over fifteen years of experience in software development, including a stint with Microsoft from 2001 to 2009 as an application development consultant and developer evangelist. Jason is active in the developer community and frequently presents on technical topics at user groups, Code Camps, and conferences such as DevConnections and OSCON. Jason’s free time is spent making music with his band No Good Jones, cycling all over the place, and enjoying life with his son Zachary. He can be found online at http://jasonmauer.com/ or on Twitter as @jasonmauer.

TOPIC:

Post MIX10
MIX10 last month had a plethora of amazing announcements for the .NET world, including Windows Phone 7 development with Silverlight and XNA, Internet Explorer 9 with support for HTML5, the Open Data Protocol (OData), new developments with Windows Azure, and more. Come check out the latest and greatest with plenty of demos!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 29 March 2010 22:28:04 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 30 November 2009
WHAT: December PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 12/08/2009 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse Imbrie Hall
WHERE:

Fiserv Cafe
3400 NW John Olsen Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Stanfield
Scott Stanfield is the CEO of Vertigo Software, Inc., a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner for eCommerce Solutions. Scott is a proud member of the MSDN Regional Director community, covering Silicon Valley, and participates in the Microsoft .NET Partner Architect Council. His company built the Windows DNA "Rosetta Stone" sample application Fitch & Mather Stocks 2000, the ASP.NET Starter Kits and IBuySpy, the Nile and Petshop benchmarks and many others. He is a frequent speaker and has delivered keynotes at Microsoft events including TechEd, PDC, DevDays and VBITs.

TOPIC:

Portland Silverlight User Group Kickoff - Silverlight in Action
Interested in how Silverlight is used in some of today’s best applications (Think Olympics, Sunday Night Football, Hard Rock Cafe)? Scott’s group made them. It’s going to be a great chance to see Silverlight in action. It’s also a great night to invite designers and manager types. I think Scott’s talk is going to be a good way of introducing people Silverlight.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 30 November 2009 09:12:54 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 12 August 2009

It must be Summer! That means Rick is in town and ready to present some of his great content!

When Rick presented on jQuery to us last year, we were still about a month away from Microsoft's announcement that they would ship it with Visual Studio. Let's catch up and expand on that presentation!

Check out his post, too.

WHAT: September PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 09/01/2009 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Rick Strahl
Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET and .NET in general. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework, West Wind HTML Help Builder and West Wind Web Store and Business Framework for .NET and Visual FoxPro. He also collaborates with Kevin McNeish on the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET. Rick is a Microsoft C# MVP, a frequent contributor to magazines and books and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the world. He is co-publisher and co-editor of CoDe magazine.
In the summer months, Rick spends his time in beautiful Hood River, Oregon to play on the river, forests and mountains. Find more about Rick at http://west-wind.com/webblog/.

TOPIC:

Using jQuery with ASP.NET
jQuery is a compact and powerful JavaScript library that greatly simplifies JavaScript and HTML DOM manipulation. jQuery's appeal lies in its compact implementation and flexible and elegant use of selectors to select document elements and manipulate them using jQuery's flexible and intuitive functions in a browser independent way. From AJAX functionality, to easy DOM manipulation, to simplified event handling, to simple effects, this compact library provides many ways to make client scripting much easier and… actually fun.
Additionally a vast community of add-in authors have added hundreds of extremely useful, easy to use and free plug-ins that provide many common useful features to common client side tasks.
In this session I'll show a quick review of jQuery's core client side features, but the main focus of this session will be on integration of ASP.NET server side functionality for AJAX callbacks. We'll look at various ways to interface with ASP.NET with jQuery via manual implementations in WebForms and MVC applications as well as using ASMX/WCF to handle callbacks. We'll also look at several examples that demonstrate how to effectively manage client side and server side operations in a maintainable way to minimize code and layout duplication by using client side templates and wrapping jQuery functionality via server side components.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Wednesday, 12 August 2009 08:07:23 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 07 July 2009

Just in time for the weather to cool back down, we're having a PADNUG meeting!

We have the good fortune to have Nick Muhonen visit us again to discuss some of the new bits that are coming from Microsoft for C#.Next. There are some compelling changes, but some things to watch out for, too.

WHAT: July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 07/07/2009
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Nick Muhonen
Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

TOPIC:

C# 4.0 - Microsoft's Brand New Language Lovechild
Nick Muhonen discusses the new language features of C# 4.0 and of course, demos for the faithful!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/rdirects/NEW_padnug_hostby.asp
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 07 July 2009 13:12:17 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 17 June 2009

Sara Ford is in town for the Open Source Bridge conference. It'll be a great time to show her how much fun visiting Portland is!

If you don't know, among all of the cool geeky things Sara is involved in, she also helps young survivors of Hurricane Katrina with a scholarship program. You can contribute to this directly or by purchasing Sara's book. You can read more about the program here.

What: Portland Nerd Geek Dinner
Where: Old Town Pizza - 226 NW Davis Street
When: Wednesday, June 17, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Because Open Source Bridge is happening and Sara Ford is in town - Uncle Jimmy Stories*!

Be There and Be Square!

[* If you want to know what Uncle Jimmy stories are, then be there! It's worth it!]

Wednesday, 17 June 2009 10:36:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 03 June 2009

Taking Team System to the Next Level
A VSTS 2008 Training Event

EVENT ABSTRACT
Please join Northwest Cadence for this half-day training event on Visual Studio Team System 2008.

Successful Adoption of VSTS
Are your legacy tools no longer meeting your needs? Is VSS too small for your development team or not well suited to your geographically dispersed team? Have you already moved to TFS to scale up from VSS or another legacy version control tool, but feel like there are features that you're missing? Feel like it should do more? This session will show you have to use Team system to improve the quality of your code and better manage/monitor software development and ease communication between project stakeholders.

Regulatory Compliance: End-to-End Traceability
Some form of traceability or regulatory compliance is commonplace, as is the ever-increasing challenge of managing adherence to regulatory standards. While compliance stretches across many parts of an organization, one of the key points is the software development process. Whether it is SOX, HIPPA, or PCI compliance, regulatory standards require your software development process to provide a secure development environment with traceability from one end through the other.

Metrics for Real Process Improvement
Process improvement without good metrics is like shooting in the dark – it is impossible to aim and difficult to know if you hit your goal. This session will be framed around using a process improvement effort (either formal or informal) to ensure that your Team System implementation is helping you achieve real improvements.

Using Team System to Drive Agile Adoption
Are you struggling to adopt agile? Is there still a fundamental disconnect behind the desires of the dev team to be agile, and the business who wants "business as usual"? This session will focus on using Team System to act as a change agent for adopting agile. We'll cover the features of Team System that support agile, how to handle iterations effectively, and how to use the results of prior iterations to effectively scope future iterations. Finally, we'll specifically address the use of Scrum with Team System, and will share results from an actual implementation to show the gotchas and successes of adoption Agile.

Sneak Peek at VSTS 2010
We'll wrap up our morning with a sneak peek into VSTS 2010 to see what all of the excitement is about!

DATE
Portland, OR – July 16, 2009

TIME
8:30 AM: Registration and Welcome
9:00 AM – noon: Event

LOCATION
Microsoft Corporation
10260 SW Greenburg Rd
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

REGISTER
Register online – http://www.clicktoattend.com/?id=138856
Register via email – please email: Sue.Ferguson@nwcadence.com

Wednesday, 03 June 2009 10:30:24 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]

What is SQLSaturday?

It's a free one day learning event for SQL Server professionals, loosely patterned on the well known Code Camp model, organized by the Portland SQL Server Users Group (pdxSSug).

Date and Location:

SQL Saturday Portland will be held June 6, 2009 at Mt. Hood Community College, 26000 S.E. Stark St., Gresham, Oregon 97030. The event follows the standard conference model. There are 12 sessions across 2 tracks. Most of the sessions will run 60 minutes. Check in will open at 8:00 am and sessions begin at 9:00 am. Lunch will be provided on site, and the day will close out around 5:00 pm. The after event will be held at McMenamins Edgefield, 2126 S.W. Halsey St., Troutdale, OR 97060 beginning right after the last session. Registration is at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

When will the schedule of sessions be posted?

The call for speakers is closed, and the schedule is finalized.

Can I sponsor this event?

More sponsors are needed to help subsidize the incidental costs of running the event and this is a great event to meet SQL Server professionals or to just give back to the community. If you are interested or want more information, please visit the sponsor page. You can view all of the great sponsors there and it is hoped that most of them will be at the event.

What else can you tell me about the event?

This event is free to anyone that wishes to attend. Check in for the event opens at 8 am.

Be sure to register at http://www.sqlsaturday.com

Wednesday, 03 June 2009 09:03:59 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 02 June 2009

Yes, Virginia, there is a PADNUG meeting! I know last weekend's Code Camp still has many heads spinning, but we are now settling back in to the groove. Obviously, mine is!

Join us this evening for a great presentation on debugging ASP.NET applications. I know the majority of us work in ASP.NET, so this should be very useful.

WHAT: June PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 06/02/2009
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Prashant Sinha
Prashant Sinha has over more than 11 years of work experience including software development in finite element analysis, telecommunication, investment banking, Check Imaging, Remote Deposit Capture and enterprise services. He has led, consulted and trained developers in software development, performance analysis and production debugging on Microsoft technologies. He has also prepared coursewares on Advanced .NET debugging to conduct debugging workshop. His debugging blog is http://www.debuggingblog.com/

TOPIC:

ASP.NET Debugging
A production environment is likely different than the developer's machine. This means that the system's load pattern and timings will be different and it makes reproduction of bugs in test difficult or impossible.
Too often, bugs end up in the, "It works on my machine," unreproducable pile.
The goal of this presentation is to introduce the audience to tools and techniques to determine the root cause of common production debugging issues. The techniques and tools shown in the demos are based on real production issues. We will discuss the issues and debugging steps required for ASP.NET applications hosted on IIS 6/7. We'll also discuss debugging Silverlight applications on a customer machine when no development environment or source code is available.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
Rober Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 02 June 2009 13:05:52 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 01 May 2009

We’ve combined this month’s meeting with Rose City Software Process Improvement Network (SPIN)! Many of you may already be attending the Team System Big Event on Tuesday and we are just going to continue the party for our meeting.

Rose City SPIN is a monthly forum for networking, mutual support, and promotion of effective software practices. We exchange practical experiences, ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and war stories about the technical, business, and human facets of software process improvement.  The Rose City SPIN serves the software development community of the Portland/Vancouver metro area.  Whether you work for a large company or a small one, corporate or self-employed, industrial or academic setting, you are welcome at the Rose City SPIN.

WHAT: May PADNUG and Rose City SPIN Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 05/05/2009
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium and Pacific NW Software Quality Conf. PNSQC)
7:00 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Steven Borg
Steven Borg, co-founder of Northwest Cadence, is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence. In addition to being a Visual Studio Team System MVP, Steve holds several other credentials including MCP, MCSD, MCT and Certified Scrum Master (CSM). Steven has helped hundreds of organizations, both large and small, adopt Team System successfully, improving their software development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates.
Steven Borg is the Visual Studio Team System Practice Lead at Northwest Cadence, a Microsoft Visual Studio Team System Inner Circle partner focused on helping organizations improve their software development process. He has helped several organizations improve their development process, reducing costs, increasing quality and speeding delivery dates. In addition, he assists the Team System community as a Team System MVP, an author, and a speaker. Visit his blog at NWCadence.com to learn more about process improvement and Team System.

TOPIC:

Metrics for Real Process Improvement
Process improvement without adequate metrics is shooting in the dark - you might hit your target, but it's impossible to aim and difficult to determine how close you were to hitting your goal. In this talk we'll look at several candidate metrics that many real world organizations have used to achieve real improvements and get an excellent return on investment in process improvement initiatives. We'll also look at how to collect the right data, including the right steps to identify process changes to collect the right data.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea Corporation - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
ORCS Web - http://www.orcsweb.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Friday, 01 May 2009 08:10:54 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 03 November 2008

*** Notice: We are meeting on Thursday this week to avoid election conflicts! ***

No typo this time :-).

This is a presentation I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time. F# is a fascinating demonstration of what can be built on top of the .NET platform and has now left the Microsoft Research labs to join the mainstream world of .NET programming languages.

WHAT: November PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Thursday 11/06/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Nick Muhonan
Nick Muhonen, a Portland area resident, has been working in and teaching Microsoft .Net technologies for the past 8 years. He currently works for his company, Useable Concepts, as a freelance certified trainer and software architect, helping others reach technical goals and new levels of understanding.

TOPIC:

F# - Functional Fun for Everyone!
"A succinct, type-inferred, expressive, efficient functional and object-oriented language for the .NET platform."

Nick Muhonen discusses Microsoft’s CAML based language F# including its language and its interactive environment. And of course- demos for the faithful!

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/Pages/main.aspx
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 03 November 2008 08:41:01 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 01 August 2008

I was worried that we wouldn’t get to hear from Rick this year since he was not spending his regular, lengthy summer here in the Portland area. Fortunately, the Universe cares about us much more than that and timed his visit perfectly for the August meeting!

WHAT: August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 08/05/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Rick Strahl

TOPIC:

Using jQuery with ASP.NET
jQuery is a compact and powerful JavaScript library that is quickly becoming one of the most popular client-side libraries. jQuery’s appeal lies in its compact implementation and flexible and elegant use of selectors to pick up document elements that can then be manipulated using jQuery’s flexible set of useful functions in a browser-independent way. From AJAX functionality, to easy browser independent DOM manipulation, to simple effects, this compact library provides many ways to make client scripting much easier. Additionally, a vast community of add-in authors have added hundreds of extremely useful and easy to use plug-ins that provide many useful features to common client-side tasks. In this session, I’ll demonstrate a host of features of jQuery as well as demonstrate how you can integrate this powerful client-side library with ASP.NET on the server. We’ll look at how to provide JSON services through ASP.NET in a couple of ways as well as looking into ways that you can integrate existing components and plug-ins as ASP.NET server controls with a little bit of work to provide ASP.NET-style interaction with jQuery.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Friday, 01 August 2008 00:18:51 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 01 July 2008

I know you are all probably thinking about the upcoming weekend; I know I am. But with these crazy temperatures lately, what a great time to hide in the air conditioned spaces of the Tigard Microsoft office?

WHAT: July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 07/01/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Gustav's
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

Stuart Celarier
Stuart is a Microsoft MVP on Connected Systems (WCF, WF, and CardSpace) and a software architect at Fiserv. He is active in the professional software community including volunteering with the Software Association of Oregon and INETA. Stuart blogs at http://visualstuart.net.

TOPIC:

WF - Why, What, and How?
You’ve probably read about Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) somewhere and thought, “Why would I want one of those?” WF represents very powerful concepts in the way we put software together and run it. You probably already deal with workflow concepts all the time, and haven’t separated that part out. WF allows you to organize software that has complex interactions, like compensations, and may execute for a long time, perhaps days or months. Microsoft continues to invest in WF -- this is a key technology to understand and track as the .NET platform evolves. Come wrap your head around what WF really does, and how it does it.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 01 July 2008 10:39:47 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 23 June 2008

Via Ben Hickman at Microsoft:

The monthly Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group meeting will be held on Wednesday June 25th in the Microsoft Office. We have a great speaker, topic, and give-away this month. Details are below.

We are doing away with registration, but will still be providing lunch. Also, be sure to bring your business card to register for our great give-away this month.

We now have a user group web site: www.portlandsharepoint.com kindly created and hosted by Netropole (www.netropole.com).

For June we have a great presentation from James Curry, an instructor with Mindsharp (www.mindsharp.com). We also have a fantastic give-away this month. Mindsharp has generously donated a $3,000 voucher for admission to their upcoming training event in Portland! The training event is from July 28 – August 1 and includes the following sessions:

  • 5-day WSS 3.0 Developer (syllabus)
  • 5-day 2007 SharePoint Designer (syllabus)
  • 3-day 2007 SharePoint Power User (syllabus)

Mindsharp is also offering a 15% discount to this upcoming training event.

WHAT: June Portland SharePoint User Group (PSUG) Meeting
WHEN: Wednesday 06/25/2008
11:30 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.
WHERE:

Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

WHO:

James Curry
James is a respected computer scientist and consultant with over 15 years of programming experience. In his role as a Mindsharp instructor, James uses his knowledge of Microsoft products to provide students with a dynamic, hands-on classroom experience.

James is a contributing author of a SharePoint products and technologies book. He has been invited to speak at user groups on subjects such as Customizing SharePoint 2007.

As a computer scientist with InfoPro Corporation in Huntsville, Alabama, James developed information management solutions for organizations of all sizes. Prior to joining Mindsharp, James focused on developing Web applications for a large governmental organization. James currently resides in Huntsville, Alabama.

TOPIC:

Field Types and Field Controls
James Curry from Mindsharp will discuss Field Types and Field Controls. Fields are the underlying data types for SharePoint list columns and site columns. SharePoint provides a number of fields, such as Number, Counter, Multi-Choice, Boolean, and URL. Custom fields can be created to allow custom validation of data and presentation beyond what is possible with the native SharePoint fields. Field controls are Server Controls or User Controls that can be used to provide custom presentation of data stored in a given field type. Server controls allow information stored in SharePoint lists to be presented in a very rich manner. As an example, a single line of text that contains an address could be presented using a field control as push pin on a map. Field Controls provide a far superior method of custom presentation than using the options natively available in a Field Type.

Monday, 23 June 2008 09:56:30 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Friday, 20 June 2008

From George Clingerman:

We've had our third meeting of PAXNAUG and it went really well. We had an interesting discussion on sprite movement and the presentation and demonstration went swimmingly. We had quite a lot of snacks and refreshments as well. We had the room reserved, the signs posted and even put up reminders on the PAXNAUG site.

We did have one slight issue though. Small turnout.

It's ok. We know you were busy. But we did miss you just a little.

We want to start bringing in speakers from great faraway lands. Other XNA MVPS, book writers and community evangelists. Maybe even some of the legendary XNA team themselves! But we want to have just a few more people consistently coming to give them a decently sized audience.

It's our fault I know. We're pretty new at running a user group. We're getting better though. We swear! And we're making an even greater effort this time to spread the word about the next meeting. We're planning on contacting some of the local college campuses, getting in touch with the .NET user group and there's also a local game development group that we can get in touch with.

If you're reading this, help us out a little and spread the word yourself.

Here's the details.

WHAT: XNA MVP George Clingerman (that's me!) will be speaking on "An introductory look at creating games for the Zune"
WHEN: Wednesday June 25, 2008
6:30 p.m. - 8:00 p.m.
WHERE:

River East Center (next to OMSI) in Portland Oregon

WHO:

Portland XNA User Group (PAXNAUG)

Hope to see you there!

Friday, 20 June 2008 11:05:22 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 15 May 2008

PADNUGers are invited... [via Ben Hickman]

The monthly Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group meeting will be held on Wednesday May 28th from 11:45am - 1:00pm in the Microsoft office:

10260 SW Greenburg Rd.
Lincoln Tower, Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223

I am very happy to announce that we will have Jason Noble from Neudesic presenting on Master Page development. I saw Jason’s presentation earlier this year at the Office Developer’s Conference and it was excellent. Don’t miss this one.

Developing Master Pages with SharePoint Designer
The Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies stack provides amazing out-of-the-box capabilities for enterprise and web content management, search, and business intelligence solutions. These capabilities can be further extended using custom .NET solutions developed in Visual Studio or using the no-code approach offered by Microsoft SharePoint Designer 2007. In this discussion we will put forth a predictable process for creating master pages using SharePoint Designer. This will include the creation of wire frames, and provide clear direction on the various content regions available in SharePoint.

About Jason Noble
With over fourteen years of experience in building complex, mission critical applications, Jason Noble brings extensive knowledge in advanced enterprise applications, specializing in web, database and portal application development using SharePoint. Moreover, Jason has spent a number of years working with C# and ASP.NET, creating a variety of business applications, and has been actively involved with Microsoft’s .NET environment since it was introduced at the Professional Developer’s Conference in 2000. Lunch will be provided and begin promptly at 11:45AM. The presentation will be from 12:00PM to 1:00PM. A meeting invite is attached.

We will have a drawing for some give aways immediately following the meeting, so bring your Business cards to participate in the drawings!

Please register so we get an accurate head count for lunch. Click here to register. Please specify in the mail if you have any special dietary needs.

For questions or comments please contact Ben Hickman, SharePoint Technology Specialist, Microsoft NorthWest District.

Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group
Microsoft Portland SharePoint User Group is dedicated to helping customers design, develop, deploy, and administrate applications on Microsoft SharePoint platform technologies.

Thursday, 15 May 2008 14:28:39 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 09 April 2008

The Code Trip is near its end at the MVP summit. Join us Thursday at the Corillian Cafe to cheer the team on through the final leg of their journey.

WHAT: April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Thursday 04/10/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~9:00 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse
WHERE: Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree
3400 NW John Olsen Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:

The Code Trip Team

TOPIC:

Mix-a-Lot
Join us at the Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG) where we run through the newest technologies to emerge from MIX08, including Silverlight 2 Beta 1, Internet Explorer 8, SQL Server Data Services, Windows Live, and more.

Also, don't forget to register for the PDX Webfoot event on Saturday! It should be a great event and it looks like it will be a fabulous day to bring the family out to an event. We're using Yahoo!'s Upcoming for registration at: http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/468242/. There'll be food and lot's of give-aways.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
SubMain and CodeIt.Right - http://submain.com/codeit.right
JetBrains - http://www.jetbrains.com/resharper/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

.NET | Developer | PADNUG | SQL | Technology | Tips
Wednesday, 09 April 2008 04:58:45 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 31 March 2008

You know it's been coming...

It's almost here...

PDX Webfoot is coming April 12 at the OGI School of Science and Engineering. For the latest information, go to the PDX Webfoot Website.

Some of the topics and people already on the agenda (subject to change at this point):

Topics:

  • Safe Internet Browsing
  • Silverlight 2
  • Internet Explorer 8
  • XNA
  • Adobe Flex/Air
People:
  • Scott Hanselman
  • Adam Kinney
  • Tim Heuer
  • Jason Mauer
  • Ryan Miller
  • Kelly White
  • Erik Mork

There will be good food (not just pizza) and there will be games and activities for spouses and kids (think Rockband and Mindstorms, though we can't guarantee either of those yet).

Monday, 31 March 2008 22:03:56 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 17 March 2008

Next week Adam Kinney will be coming down from Microsoft to present an "Overview of Silverlight 2" and answer questions about other content presented at this year's MIX conference. This is a meeting you'll want to be sure to attend. Details are included below and can also be found at http://pdxux.net/.

WHAT: March PDXUX Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 03/18/2008
6:30 p.m. Pizza (by White Horse)
7:00 p.m. Presentation
~8:30 p.m. Drinks and continued discussion
WHERE: Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree
3400 NW John Olsen Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124
WHO:

Adam Kinney
Adam works for Microsoft as "a guy who loves UI platforms like
Silverlight, WPF and Microsoft Surface." He often talks about these
technologies from a developer and designer prespective.

TOPIC:

Overview of Silverlight 2
Adam will be presenting an overview of Silverlight 2 and answering
questions about other stuff from MIX. I'm not one to speak for Adam,
but I'm betting you'll be seeing Deep Zoom related content, and maybe
even something about what the Olympics are doing with Silverlight.

Be sure to join us afterwards at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse for drinks and continued discussion.

Monday, 17 March 2008 12:39:20 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 29 January 2008

When I heard Matt on Hanselminutes, I knew we had to get him to come speak at PADNUG. It had been long enough since I'd seen him, I didn't realize that he was still right here in the Portland Metro area - Perfect!

Matt and Earth Class Mail are definitely ahead of the curve on using the .NET 3.5 Framework. Not only that, but they came to the platform from LAMP.

WHAT: February PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 02/05/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE: Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223
WHO:

Matt Davis

TOPIC:

WCF and LINQ in the Wild
Come out and here first hand war stories and tips & tricks on .NET 3.5 from Matt Davis, Architect at Earth Class Mail. ECM recently converted their bread and butter application to .NET from PHP on Linux, and went live on .NET 3.5 Beta2. Matt will share real world stories and demos about what works and what doesn't, using WCF 3.5's new Web Programming model, LINQ, Compact Framework 3.5, and others recent Microsoft technologies.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 29 January 2008 22:47:55 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 28 January 2008

Gosh. Again, a lengthy pause between trips to the mall. Cinetopia has been pretty good to us over the last year, but I'm starting to forget what crappy mall food actually tastes like.

We can use this trip to the mall to recalibrate our nerdiness.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor "Food Court"; typically, straight out from where Picture People was)
When: Thursday, January 31, starting around 6:00 PM (vCal link)
Why: TOO LONG HENCE!

Be There and Be Square!

Monday, 28 January 2008 23:25:59 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 07 January 2008

The answer, according to Scott, is:

No, it's pretty harmless. If you look in the Object Browser in Visual Studio you'll see that one assembly you already have has had some additions and its version rev'ed....

I wouldn't go slapping it on a production machine unless you're living on the razor's edge, but it should be fine on a development machine if you know how to pay attention to what versions your projects reference.

So, for those who got their appetite whetted with Scott's introductory presentation at the InstallFest or for those of you that haven't seen what the new extensions are all about, this will be a great chance to find out more.

WHAT:

January PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 01/08/2008
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
WHERE: Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223
WHO:

Scott Hanselman

TOPIC:

Should I Fear MVC for ASP.NET?
ASP.NET MVC provides model-view-controller (MVC) support to the existing ASP.NET 3.5 runtime, which enables developers to more easily take advantage of this design pattern. Benefits include the ability to achieve and maintain a clear separation of concerns, as well as facilitate test driven development (TDD). The ASP.NET MVC Toolkit provides HTML rendering helpers and dynamic data support for MVC.

If you would like to get a jump on things, download the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions from <here>.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 07 January 2008 08:27:30 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 26 November 2007

We're having a PARTY!!!

Microsoft is running an InstallFest for Visual Studio 2008 and you are invited! Everyone that attends will have a chance to get a licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Pro for their very own.

We're meeting at Corillian for this one since they have more space. Also, note that we are starting the fun a bit early; this will give you a chance to install the trial copy of VS2008 and ask some questions before we begin.

Note that you must sign up for this event. The sign-up page is at
http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032361177&Culture=en-US

WHAT: December PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 12/04/2007
5:00 p.m. Food (by Microsoft)
6:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Jason Mauer, et al

TOPIC:

Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest
ATTENTION DEVELOPERS! Are you ready to be one of the first to get their hands on Visual Studio 2008? Join Microsoft and the Portland Area .NET Users Group (PADNUG) for a Visual Studio 2008 InstallFest and Holiday Party on December 4th, 2007 at Corillian in Hillsboro.

Visual Studio 2008 is HERE and this event is your opportunity to get your hands on the released version before anyone else. Every person that installs Visual Studio 2008 on their computer at the event will receive a FREE fully licensed copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional in the mail shortly after public release. Don’t miss out on a great evening of food, fun, and your very own copy of Visual Studio 2008 Professional!

Space is limited so register today.

While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Monday, 26 November 2007 13:28:24 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 12 November 2007

Storms of Fall are upon us!

This means it's time for another Nerd Event. This will be the third Nerd Event at the Cinetopia Theaters this year.

One of the extra special things about this event is that Cinetopia has installed the new 3D Digital Cinema system from Dolby Labs. They were one of just five theaters worldwide to launch this new system.

Jesann and I went to see The Nightmare Before Christmas there a couple of weeks ago on this system and it was incredible. It's going to be difficult to watch movies in two dimensions after seeing a few on this.

Note that we are shooting for the late afternoon showing, too. 1:45PM seems just a little too early and the 7:00PM will have too much contention with non-nerds. Also note that we will not be going to the Living Room Theater this time as the 3D system is only installed in the Grand Theater.

To that end, consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
WhereCinetopia Theaters11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Saturday, November 17, 2007, 4:30PM Showing
Why: It's Freakin' Beowulf! In Freakin' 3D!

Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...

...Be There and Be Square!

Monday, 12 November 2007 09:44:12 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 29 October 2007

It hasn't been that long since the last PDXUX.Net meeting, but I wanted to get the word out early on this one. A couple things to note up front:

  1. This meeting will be held at Corillian in Hillsboro
  2. The meeting will be on the 2nd Tuesday instead of the 3rd to avoid Turkey-Day conflicts.
WHAT: November PDXUX.Net Meeting
WHEN:

Tuesday 11/13/2007
6:30 p.m. Socializing & Pizza (by White Horse)
7:00 p.m. Presentation

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Vandehey
Scott is a web developer and CSS Ninja working at Pop Art who has been making websites for over ten years. He lives in NE Portland with his wife and baby daughter, and is probably not a Cylon.

TOPIC:

Introducing sIFR
Scott will be introducing sIFR 2.0, a method of inserting rich typography into web pages without sacrificing accessibility, search engine friendliness, or markup semantics. sIFR is meant to replace short passages of plain browser text with text rendered in your typeface of choice, regardless of whether or not your users have that font installed on their systems. It accomplishes this by using a combination of javascript, CSS, and Flash. It is this technology which provides the nice looking custom type headlines you see on sites like Nike, ABCNews, Aston Martin, and others.

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Monday, 29 October 2007 08:38:24 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 07 October 2007

Just in case you've missed it, we're going to have a bit of an event this week.

Halo 3 on the REALLY big screen.

Thursday, October 11 from 7PM to Midnight (vCal reminder), we are gathering at the finest of movie theaters - Cinetopia Theaters - in Vancouver for an evening of fun and function. All proceeds from the $25 admittance to this event will be given to the American Diabetes Association.

Cinetopia has come through with two theaters for us. This means we will be able to pit two networked teams against one another and enjoy the show on their huge, Digital Super Hi-Def projectors.

Popcorn and a soda will be available, but don't limit yourself; the theater hosts a fabulous concession stand and Best of Citysearch Audience Winner Vinotopia Restaurant and Wine Bar, too.

Thanks to the efforts and contributions of Aivea, Robert Half Technology, Microsoft, PADNUGSAO and others, we will be able to contribute thousands to the ADA in the Fight Against Diabetes, too. This is a big deal, folks.

Space is limited. Sign up now at http://iammasterchief.com with the RSVP code of "FIGHTDIABETES". Feel free to ignore the text mentioning the 'prelaunch' party; we're using the same site as was used for that event.

Scott is making it possible to prepay, too. You are welcome to visit his ADA site at http://www.hanselman.com/fightdiabetes/donate (takes you to the diabetes.org site) and make your contribution there. Print the receipt page and bring it with you to the event as your admission. All contributions made after October 2 will qualify. Otherwise, bring your contribution (feel free to bring more than $25 :-)) to the event.

Join us. You will have a great time!

Sunday, 07 October 2007 22:26:24 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 21 August 2007

No folks, I didn't make a typo this time. In order to accommodate various schedule conflicts, our August meeting has moved to the first week of September. I suppose with the extra meetings and all this year, it won't be that big of a change.

Now, as to the subject, Tom gave a similar presentation to PADNUG about four years ago and it was one of the most well regarded presentations we ever had. This is a presentation you definitely want to see.

We will be meeting at the usual time and place... just a week late :).

WHAT: August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

Wednesday 09/05/2007
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE: Microsoft Portland Office located in Lincoln Tower
10260 SW Greenburg Road
Suite 600
Portland, OR 97223
WHO:

Tom Howe

TOPIC:

The Business Side of Software Development
Technical knowledge and skills are essential, but your business and financial success may equally depend on your business savvy. In this information-packed session, you'll find out how you and your software development business efforts can be more successful. Learn about sales and marketing of software products and services, setting your fee, negotiation strategies, handling customer objections, getting paid and other business issues. 100 business and legal documents will be provided with the session materials.

Tom Howe is a principal in two companies, Control Center Computing, Inc. and the Legal Technology Group. Both companies offer products and services to law firms, corporate legal departments and state attorney offices throughout the United States. He specializes in application development using ASP.NET and SQL Server. He is a regular speaker at Developer Conferences around the world.

Tom also co-authored "Access 2000 and 2002 Development Unleashed" by SAMS Publishing and “Electronic Discovery Technologies and is the technical editor of the Advisor Media .NET journal. He is also been a practicing attorney for 20 years.

And while you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:

Aivea - http://www.aivea.com/
Microsoft - http://www.microsoft.com/
Ascentium - http://www.ascentium.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/
Online Business Systems - http://www.obsglobal.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 21 August 2007 09:10:24 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Thursday, 02 August 2007
ZDTallAd

It started with the TechNet newsletters and is now making its way to the other properties' publications. The tall, skinny advertisement that pushes the content below the fold.

The shot to the right is from my Outlook Viewing Pane. This screen is running at 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. Thanks to the height of the advert, I only see one out of eight articles in all those pixels without scrolling.

Who thought this would be a good idea?

I no longer subscribe to any of the TechNet letters and now, the "Mike Vizard" letter is gone, too.

So far, the c|net and ZDNet newsletters have kept these type of ads along the side of their content. That works. We'll see if it lasts, though.

Thursday, 02 August 2007 23:48:17 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
image

For those of us that were there, John's PADNUG presentation last week was really good and, I'm sure for many, inspirational. Have you downloaded the bits yet?

For those of you who were not able to make it or if you would just enjoy reviewing the presentation, Scott has been kind enough to take the video he shot that evening and provide it via Silverlight.

For some details on how Scott made the video, visit his post.

Thursday, 02 August 2007 23:00:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 23 July 2007

We've got O'Reilly's Open Source Convention visiting here in town this week and it gave us the opportunity to invite John Lam to come speak to us regarding his work on RubyCLR and IronRuby.

A couple of notes this month: First, appologies for the late notice. We had some logistics issues to work through and, obviously, wanted to work around the OSCON schedule.

Second, note that we are meeting at Corillian this month and I anticipate that we will start a tad later than usual as we will be rushing John from the Oregon Convention Center after his engagement there.

WHAT: July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

Thursday 07/26/2007
6:00 p.m. Socializing (Pizza)
6:45 p.m. Presentation

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

John Lam
John is the Program Manager on the Common Language Runtime team at Microsoft. John spends his days thinking about how dynamic languages can help improve the lives of developers everywhere. In his previous role, John was a partner at ObjectSharp helping customers write better software using the .NET platform.

TOPIC:

Open Source and Dynamic Languages on .NET
John, the creator of RubyCLR, will discuss IronRuby, an implementation of Ruby on the .NET platform that will be released under the MS-PL licence (BSD-style license). We will look at the implementation of IronRuby on top of the recently announced Dynamic Language Runtime to better understand how the DLR deferred compilation model can be used to obtain excellent performance and cross-language interoperability. We will also look at different scenarios where IronRuby can be used, including the recently announced Silverlight platform.

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Monday, 23 July 2007 12:44:34 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 08 May 2007

Want to remind everyone of a few events that are coming up shortly:

WHAT: BONUS May PADNUG Meeting and ADA Fund Raiser
WHEN:

Thursday 05/10/2007
6:00 p.m. Socializing (Food?)
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Hanselman

TOPIC:

Silverlight - It's Here
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

WHAT: Silverlight for Designers
WHEN:

Tuesday 05/15/2007
6:30 p.m. Mixer and Food
7:00 p.m. Housekeeping/Announcements
7:15 p.m. Presentation

WHERE:

Portland State University
Smith Memorial Center - Room 236
Portland, Oregon

WHO:

Kelly White

TOPIC:

Silverlight
Kelly will be opening up both Expression Blend and Expression Media, giving a couple demos, sharing what he learned from MIX and discussing the insights he got from talking to to the creators of Silverlight (e.g. Mike Harsh) about what advantages and disadvantages it has over other technologies like Flash.

WHAT: Portland Code Camp
WHEN:

Saturday & Sunday 05/19/2007 - 05/20/2007

WHERE:

Washington State University - Vancouver
14204 NE Salmon Creek Ave
Vancouver, WA 98686

Tuesday, 08 May 2007 09:37:56 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 04 May 2007

All the way from the building next door, Microsoft MVP and Regional Director Scott Hanselman will be joining us for a very special BONUS PADNUG presentation.

(Didn't you love the familiar tone of that paragraph?)

Scott has stepped this one up a bit, too. In his effort to raise funds for the American Diabetes Association, this meeting will also be a chance for you to step up and contribute to the cause. Not only will you be helping, but there are several folks that have pledged to match donations during this time period!

Let me give you one more reason to attend tomorrow night's presentation and donate to the ADA with Scott: PADNUG will also be matching donations from the meeting! Thanks to the generous contributions of our sponsors and the participation of all of you, PADNUG will match up to $500 in donations from this meeting to the American Diabetes Association.

Help Scott Fight Diabetes

Further, don't miss the opening meeting for PDXUX on the 15th. It will be a great follow-on to Scott's presentation.

WHAT: BONUS May PADNUG Meeting and ADA Fund Raiser
WHEN:

Thursday 05/10/2007
6:00 p.m. Socializing (Food?)
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Hanselman
Scott is Chief Architect at the Corillian Corporation, an eFinance enabler. He has over a decade of experience developing software in C, C++, VB, COM, and currently VB.NET and C#. Scott is proud to have been appointed the MSDN Regional Director for Portland, OR for the last three years. He's spoken internationally on Microsoft technologies, and has co-authored two books from Wrox Press. In 2001, Scott spoke on a 15-city national tour with Microsoft, Compaq and Intel featuring Microsoft Technologies and evangelizing good design practices.

TOPIC:

Silverlight - It's Here
Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of Microsoft .NET–based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web.

Scott will be presenting a high-level overview of the technologies with a well-timed follow up presentation next week at the PDXUX group at PSU (http://www.pdxux.net).

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Friday, 04 May 2007 09:41:49 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]

This morning, I take a look at my blog syndications and I find that the InfoWorld feeds have gone to an abbreviated format with a “READ MORE” link at the end. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am with that.

Please tell me that this is a short-term experiment. Otherwise, I now have at least two more feeds to remove from my list of subscribed blogs.

With rare exception, when blogs move to this style, I drop them. For one thing, I like to be able to download the feeds to my PDA for reading offline. Also, I typically read blog postings in bulk from Outlook (using NewsGator) and have zero interest in the context switch required to move to the browser to finish what I've started.

I figure I'll give InfoWorld a week to change their mind. If nothing comes of it, ZAP!!

Friday, 04 May 2007 06:58:05 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 16 April 2007

Windows' Live Search Maps (last mentioned here)  has made another improvement to the ability to view the world in three dimensions. High resolution 3D has come to downtown Portland! I'm not sure, but I think my car is parked on the top of the garage near the bottom of the picture!

untitled picture

Monday, 16 April 2007 23:33:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 25 March 2007

The excitement builds as Jason got the Portland Code Camp v3.0 site up this week! I'll blatantly plagiarize his blog post here to save some typing:

Head on over to the Portland Code Camp v3.0 site and register to attend, submit a session or two, or just check out what's going on with the event. Be sure to subscribe to the RSS feed to keep up to date with latest news about the event. It's happening May 19-20 at WSU-Vancouver and you won't want to miss it.

One word of note... changes have been made to ease the password requirements on the site. You no longer need non-alphanumeric characters in your password, so you actually have a chance of remembering your password now. As a result of the change we've blown away all the previous user accounts, so you will need to create a new account even if you have registered for a Code Camp in the past.

I'm sure this will the best Camp we've had yet. The campus and facilities are first-rate and it will be a great time of year for the event.

Sunday, 25 March 2007 19:34:59 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 17 March 2007
The Living Room Theater

Why have I forgotten to mention this place before now?

It is a spectacular theater in Vancouver, Washington that provides a near perfect viewing experience for your favorite movies.

We went to see "300" up there (GREAT movie, btw!). This was our third time going to the theater and our first time in a Living Room Theater (pictured at the right). Just in case we weren't already convinced that this is the best theater ever built, the LR Theater pushed us over the top.

I never really understood how good a movie's picture could be. The sound is phenomenal; the seats are luxurious; and the food, beer, wine, and concessions are fabulous - and yes, you can dine and drink in the Living Room Theaters. I don't use the word 'dine' lightly, either.

From the Cinetopia FAQ site:

10 Reasons to make Cinetopia your first theater choice:

  1. Extra Wide Leather Seating
  2. Extra Wide Rows
  3. 50% Steeper Stadium Seating
  4. Digital Super High Definition Projection
  5. Finest Dolby / Klipsch Sound System
  6. Giant Curved Screens up to 50 feet wide
  7. Special Living Room Theaters with Private Box Seating
  8. Premium Concessions / Gourmet Popcorn Bar
  9. Gourmet Restaurant – 4 Star Chef
  10. Lunch and Dinner available in Theaters
Saturday, 17 March 2007 18:56:07 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 12 January 2007

I feel so bad for Steve and the gang over the iPhone flap and the big Cisco Lawsuit. But, rather than whine about it, I thought I'd be a bit more proactive and help them out.

It's been a few years since 'e' was attached to everything hip. Maybe if we move the 'e' from the front to the back of the words, we would see a resurgence in it's use. With that in mind, I present my proposal for the new logo:

Friday, 12 January 2007 00:05:51 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 03 January 2007

Happy 2007 Everyone!

It's shaken (not stirred) Martinis all year long folks and even though we can't have one at the mall, let's head out and have a Nerd Dinner! It'll give us a chance to exchange recipes in any event.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor; typically, straight out from Picture People)
When: Thursday, January 11, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Celebrate another New Year!

Be There and Be Square!

Wednesday, 03 January 2007 10:27:59 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 27 November 2006

Hey, I like Amazon as much as the next person. I've bought a lot of stuff from them. I've complained about the "Recommendations" feature before, but haven't seen the "Better Together" get so mixed up. I wanted to look at the new Microsoft Mouse today:

Better Together?

How do these relate? Use the mouse as I watch the movie on my computer?

Monday, 27 November 2006 22:45:28 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 04 November 2006

Reading Paul Thurrott's WinInfo newsletter and saw this:

Microsoft Provides New Theme for Windows XP
Since the dawn of the Luna UI style in Windows XP, Microsoft had promised a variety of colorful themes to replace the stock three it shipped in the first version of the OS. It even toyed with graphics-based themes for holidays like Halloween before abandoning the project due to its complexity. Since then, only one new theme--Royale, part of Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005--has emerged. But this week, Microsoft shipped what we might assume to be the last official XP theme: Zune. As its name implies, the Zune theme is based around the Zune MP3 player, which is unfortunate. But it's pretty attractive looking, with black window, Start Menu, and taskbar treatments, and an orange Start Menu. And you can replace the lame Zune desktop wallpaper easily enough. You can download the new Zune XP theme from the
Microsoft Web site.

What perfect timing! Just this week I downloaded the new Windows Media Player 11 and found that it just didn't fit my choices for color scheme. I'd been using the 'standard' XP Blue Theme and switched to Silver, but WMP was just a little too "Vista-ish" for XP.

Well, the Zune Theme solves this. Compare:

XP Silver Theme <-- Before                 After-->XP Zune Theme

I'm just so darn happy! Hey, it's the little things that count.

Saturday, 04 November 2006 09:16:52 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 17 September 2006

"Phil Factor" asks the question what, "If IT had been responsible for the Creation." I've seen this linked from a couple places and finally followed the link to the complete article. It is very funny and all too relevant. Here's just a quote starting with an executive angel:

"Our mission is to achieve total excellence in meeting the timescales for delivery of the project to the defined and agreed scope".

"Quality… excellence...", harmonised the assembled IT angels, upon hearing this confirmation of their mission statement, and rustled their feathered-wings to signal their commitment and solidarity.

"..and we're all clear on the project deliverables?" asked God. "Being more of the instinctive sort of executive, I realise I may have been heavy on the overall project vision…you know 'let there be light', and that sort of stuff…and light on the practicalities. I'm not really a detail person. That's why I delegate that sort of thing to you. I can appreciate that this is really a logistics and facilities-management issue but, we're 5 days in to a 6-day project and exploding two-headed donkeys at this stage make me rather nervous."

Check it out.

Sunday, 17 September 2006 11:26:57 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 08 September 2006

Although posted first by Paul Thurrott, I happen to see this wonderful tool on Omar's blog sooner. I've gotten so use to using the <ctrl>-i shortcut for finding items in Visual Studio, I find myself trying to do the same thing in other applications. Now, Internet Explorer provides for me!

Give it a whirl... I don't think you'll be sorry!

Friday, 08 September 2006 18:49:50 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 23 August 2006

We always want to take advantage of Rick Strahl's time in the northwest. He's a fabulous presenter and really knows his stuff when it comes to programming ASP. He'll be heading home to Hawaii next month, so don't miss this opportunity to see him one more time!

WHAT: August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

Wednesday 08/30/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Microsoft)
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE: PCC Auditorium at Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Road
Beaverton, Oregon
The auditorium is in room 1508 through entrance B. There is a $2 parking fee. The kiosk for paying for parking is located between entrances B and C.
WHO:

Rick Strahl
Rick Strahl is president of West Wind Technologies on Maui, Hawaii. The company specializes in Web and distributed application development, training and tools with focus on ASP.NET and .NET in general. Rick is author of West Wind Web Connection, a powerful and widely used Web application framework, West Wind HTML Help Builder and West Wind Web Store and Business Framework for .NET and Visual FoxPro. He also collaborates with Kevin McNeish on the Mere Mortals Framework for .NET. Rick is a Microsoft C# MVP, a frequent contributor to magazines and books and speaks frequently at professional developer conferences all over the world. He is co-publisher and co-editor of CoDe magazine. In the summer months, Rick spends his time in beautiful Hood River, Oregon to play on the river, forests and mountains.

TOPIC:

Taking ATLAS for a ride
This session presents ATLAS, Microsoft's new client side/AJAX extension for ASP.NET slanted for release as an Add-on for ASP.NET 2.0 later this year. ATLAS introduces a rich framework for remote scripting with a wide variety of tools and approaches available to build rich client applications. In this session he'll overview the features available in the framework and show business oriented examples of how to utilize the various features. We'll look at the server centric approach with ATLAS Server controls like UpdatePanel, and a client centric approach relying on core ATLAS network features and the client side ATLAS framework and contrast the two approaches.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Wednesday, 23 August 2006 07:58:07 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 18 July 2006

No surprise... I was using some of the Russinovich, et al, tools today to check things on my computer. Heck, on the home machine, I have Process Explorer set up in place of Task Manager.

That Microsoft has acquired the company is exciting news. As Scott mentions in his Ultimate List, "...anything these guys do is pure gold." From the tools to the Big Sony Flap, Mark and his cohorts have given a lot to the computing world.

Tuesday, 18 July 2006 19:02:29 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 23 June 2006

Come out to our June meeting to learn source control best practices.

WHAT: June PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

Wednesday 06/28/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by InfoGroup NorthWest)
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE: PCC Auditorium at Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Road
Beaverton, Oregon
The auditorium is in room 1508 through entrance B. There is a $2 parking fee. The kiosk for paying for parking is located between entrances B and C.
WHO:

Patrick Cauldwell
After completing a Bachelor's degree in the unlikely field of East Asian Studies, Patrick Cauldwell fell into the software industry. Since then he has written tools that helped Intel localize software into 17 languages; architected large E-Commerce web sites like 800.com and gear.com while at STEP Technology, and spoken nationwide about how to build large scalable applications. Patrick is currently an architect/developer at Corillian Corporation, where he designs and develops software for online banking.

TOPIC:

Making Good Use of Source Control
We’ll discuss source control best practices, and how those practices apply to some common SCC packages. The emphasis will be on practices and procedures, not the mechanics of a particular SCC solution. Specific attention will go to how source control fits into an agile development process and continuous integration.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Friday, 23 June 2006 00:06:35 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 10 May 2006

I finally got the Microsoft Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 (sheesh! what a mouthful) and I do love it. So much so that I bought a second one for the office.

One thing I keep wishing with the MS keyboards, though, is to trade in the 'zoom' button for a scroll like the what you get with the mice. The customization software just doesn't offer such a feature. Well, of course, someone has found a way to 'hack' it.

Andy Atkinson has an article showing how to make such changes. The only addendum I would provide is that with my drivers, the file to run is "itype.exe" instead of "type32.exe"

Very handy... heck, what else can I change in here....

Wednesday, 10 May 2006 08:26:11 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Tuesday, 25 April 2006

Come out to this months meeting to hear all about Developing on Windows Mobile.

WHAT: April PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

Wednesday 04/26/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza, Sponsored by 3Leaf
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE: PCC Auditorium at Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Road
Beaverton, Oregon
The auditorium is in room 1508 through entrance B. There is a $2 parking fee. The kiosk for paying for parking is located between entrances B and C.
WHO:

Rory Blyth
Rory is an author, former co-host of the .NET Rocks Internet talk show. He has experience with many different platforms and languages, but his passion lies in using and helping people with .NET technologies.

TOPIC:

Developing on Windows Mobile
A Presentation on Developing on Windows Mobile.

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

Tuesday, 25 April 2006 22:59:07 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 11 March 2006

Awesome time to have a Nerd Dinner again!   

It's that time again! Nerd Dinner!

I suppose we could wait a day and have a wonderfully nerdy Saint Patrick's Day, but hey, even some nerds do that social kinda thing on Friday nights. So, we'll just have to start a bit early and call it St. Patrick's Eve.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor; typically, straight out from Picture People)
When: Thursday, March 16, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: 'Cuz we can't wait for St. Pat's

Be There and Be Square!

[http://nerddinner.com/blogs/portland/archive/2006/03/10/20781.aspx]

Saturday, 11 March 2006 00:06:17 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 28 February 2006

Okay, got that? Now, imagine 'driving' forward and on down the street. Without leaving your keyboard. That's the thought behind a new service on Windows Local Live. You can visit downtown Seattle or San Francisco with this and it is very cool.

I can just imagine when we have the best of Windows Local Live, Google Local, and Google Earth combined in a single product. Then, add in some live sat coverage... wait, no... that's not a good idea ;-).

[Thanks to Omar]

Tuesday, 28 February 2006 22:34:02 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 26 February 2006

This is just the coolest gadget! Heavens, we've got at least a dozen of these little tins around the house ourselves.

Throw a 9v battery into the Altoids tin and you've got a quick charge for any device that can charge through a USB port.

The best part is Aaron is selling the parts for building this from his site for a very reasonable price.

Even though I don't think I have any devices that would use this, I'm tempted to pick one up to support the effort and, what the heck, just in case.

Isn't it nice to know that there are people out there thinking of these kind of things?

Sunday, 26 February 2006 15:37:00 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Sunday, 27 November 2005
 [UPDATE: Jim's got this game posted now at http://sudoku-koubou.com/. He's doing fairly regular updates, too.]

First, I hear about this thing a month ago from Scott's blog entry. Then, a few weeks ago, Jesann mentions the game. Finally, I notice over my coworker Jim's (Meyer) shoulder (after hours, of course) a Sudoku board on his screen. I had to ask... and of course, he was writing it.

I asked when he was going to post it up for the world to enjoy, but it was not his intention. After a bit of chiding, though, he was willing to let me post it for him. The .zip file includes source code and the binary result along with a short description of what led to this. It begins as such:

Well, as a Goof one sunday afternoon my sweetheart and I flipped through a puzzle book and (finally) caught the SuDoku bug. After trying a few games - the first being quite a time waster - I began to itch for a hueristic to solve them. We compared thoughts on how each of us were solving them, and formulated an idea. We applied it to all the puzzles we could find and although it was slow to do by hand, it worked. 

Then - perhaps backwards - we read the flood of web pages on the subject. We learned the buzzwords, algorithms, postings on what makes a computer generated board and human-generated boards appear different, etc. It was great fun. Oh yeah, and we played lots and lots of online versions of the game. Some were very pretty, and others were simply focused on the game and minimally anything else.

Finally, we thought a fun project might be to employ both our skills (designer/programmer) on a project of our own. Our idea was to make a windows Sudoku game to give to our family as a holiday gift. We will be putting in visuals and sounds for a full game, but for now we started with a meager board, no alpha support in the drawing, no sound, and other gaps.

...

This should allow you to waste several hours. Oh, and just in case you don't already know it, the rules from Web Sudoku:

The rules of Sudoku are simple. Enter digits from 1 to 9 into the blank spaces. Every row must contain one of each digit. So must every column, as must every 3x3 square.

Have Fun!

[UPDATE: Jim's got this game posted now at http://sudoku-koubou.com/. He's doing fairly regular updates, too.]

Sunday, 27 November 2005 22:40:34 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 07 November 2005

And it sure feels good! Mind you, I got numbers over 13Mb/second, too.

2005-11-07 20:51:55 EST: 12447 / 1746
Your download speed : 12447 kbps or 1555.9 KB/sec.
Your upload speed : 1746 kbps or 218.3 KB/sec.
Your Result
kbps
2048

4096

6144

8192

10240

12288

14336

16384

18432
Yours
«12447 down
«1746 up
  =Your data speed   = estimated TCP overhead popup more info
Tip of the hat to Broadband Reports
Monday, 07 November 2005 18:09:02 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Sunday, 06 November 2005

To celebrate Jason's return, we're going to have a great big Nerd Dinner this week! Looks like Mr. Sells will be joining us, too, to hear some thoughts on Model-Driven Development. To top it off, we'll do everything we can to get Scott out one more time before he enters the world of Parenthood

My gosh it's been too long. I'm not even sure if I know where the malls are any longer.

In celebration of Mahku's return from the Skywall Realm, We need to have some serious make-up mall food, sooo...

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Squaremall Realm (a.k.a.
Washington Square Mall food court)
When: Thursday, November 10, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: To Celebrate Mahku's Sabbatical!

Be There and Be Square!

This should be fabulous!

Sunday, 06 November 2005 22:15:47 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 02 November 2005

I know many of you know Scott from his very popular blog. What you may not realize is that he is a, "self-declared "Energy Star" person." Hey... I know Scott and he's a likable guy and provides a wealth of knowledge for the local .NET community. I never knew what a risk he was taking until reading The Raw Feed this evening:

Hybrid cars like the Toyota Prius are great for saving money on gas. But when you drive one into a tree and need to be extracted with emergency "Jaws of Life," your car can fry a fireman with its 500-volt electrical system. So Hale Products has come up with a special "Jaws of Life" that protect rescuers from being BARBECUED.

I'm sure glad Scott hasn't parked his Prius into a tree yet or he may have already had his funeral pyre.

Wednesday, 02 November 2005 23:42:39 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 14 October 2005

The Nigerian government and Microsoft Corp. signed an agreement Friday calling for the software company to help law enforcement break up crime rings that use the Internet for fraud and theft. [1]

Not well publicized is how this came to be. Unknown to most, Microsoft's Chief Software Architect, Bill Gates, received the following (condensed) email from the government of Nigeria soliciting his and his company's assistance.

FIRST, I MUST SOLICIT YOUR STRICTEST CONFIDENCE IN THIS TRANSACTION. THIS IS BY VIRTUE OF ITS NATURE AS BEING UTTERLY CONFIDENTIAL AND 'TOP SECRET'. I AM SURE AND HAVE CONFIDENCE OF YOUR ABILITY AND RELIABILITY TO PROSECUTE A TRANSACTION OF THIS GREAT MAGNITUDE INVOLVING A PENDING TRANSACTION REQUIRING MAXIIMUM CONFIDENCE.

WE ARE TOP OFFICIAL OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CONTRACT REVIEW PANEL WHO ARE INTERESTED IN CRACK DOWN OF SCAMS INTO YOUR COUNTRY WITH FUNDS WHICH ARE PRESENTLY TRAPPED IN NIGERIA. IN ORDER TO COMMENCE THIS BUSINESS WE SOLICIT YOUR ASSISTANCE TO ENABLE US TRANSFER INTO YOUR ACCOUNT THE SAID TRAPPED FUNDS IN EXCHANGE FOR YOUR CRACK DOWN.

...

WE ARE LOOKING FORWARD TO DOING THIS BUSINESS WITH YOU AND SOLICIT YOUR CONFIDENTIALITY IN THIS TRANSATION. PLEASE ACKNOWLEDGE THE RECEIPT OF THIS LETTER USING THE ABOVE TEL/FAX NUMBERS. I WILL SEND YOU DETAILED INFORMATION OF THIS PENDING PROJECT WHEN I HAVE HEARD FROM YOU.

YOURS FAITHFULLY,

DR CLEMENT OKON

The rest will be history!

[1] Computerworld, October 14, 2005 (link)

Friday, 14 October 2005 15:08:09 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 07 September 2005

I've been using the 'natural' keyboards for several years now and find them absolutely wonderful. One thing that has disappointed me, though, is the lack of 'reverse slope' on the most recent versions of these keyboards. That problem has been solved!

Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000

Me wanna!

I'm hoping that Costco will have this soon. Heck, maybe they already do. I knew I needed to go over there for something this week.

Wednesday, 07 September 2005 22:42:07 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 06 September 2005

I had an incredible nerd week last week.

Tuesday, we had the monthly Portland Nerd Dinner. Turn out was great and the conversation just kept going until the Mall was closing. Chris wasn't able to join us as one of the Sells Brothers was celebrating his birthday, but those that were there couldn't get enough.

Oh, and Portland finally has a LEGO store :-)! I got my souvenier block!

Wednesday brought the PADNUG meeting. I was looking forward to seeing Ted present again after Code Camp, but it ended up being particularly fun. Scott made an appearance and the banter between he, Ted, ChrisT[avares], and Rick was fabulous.

What really impressed me is that Ryan Williams blogged his notes on the meeting. The next best thing to being there!

If you missed out, don't forget to watch for future meeting of both Nerd Dinners and .NET User Group here or on their respective sites. This next month, the Indigo Roadshow will be visiting Portland at the Intel Jones Farm Auditorium. Registration is required for this one, so sign up now.

Tuesday, 06 September 2005 23:10:56 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
Help Victims of Katrina - Red Cross

It seems like just yesterday that we were called upon to help our fellow persons in South Asia. Well folks, it's time to help out here at home.

Our southern states are in dire need. Especially the good folks in New Orleans and the surrounding area. All hell broke on them and it's well worth the time to do something to help them out.

If you have a preferred target for donations of time, goods, or money, please go to them. Otherwise, you might just want to click this link and give a little bit (or a lot) to the Red Cross. You know they are there helping out.

If you are looking for updates on the situtation down that way, you may want to check out this blog or Sara's for more information. As Greg mentions, TextAmerica and NBC have teamed up to bring a site dedicated to reconnecting people in the aftermath called MissingKatrina.com.

Heck, even Rory has jumped in and done his part... in his way, of course.

Tuesday, 06 September 2005 22:15:09 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 19 August 2005

I recently had a problem with my copy of Microsoft Money 2005. Somehow, it was completely uninstalled from my PC - probably because of a strange incident on the MSN Money pages, but that's not what this story is about.

It worried me a bit at first. I was connected to a call center that appeared to be offshore. I don't get so worked up about the 'where' support happens, but please, make sure the people speak clear and understandable english if they are supposed to be helping english speakers. It was a painful 45 minutes - and that was just to get directed to the actual support person.

But, once I got there, Nicole in Nova Scotia did a fabulous job of getting me up and running again. It turned out that I simply needed to do an upgrade, but the process took two hours! She stuck it out and was a pleasure to deal with. It turned out that she even had to stay an hour over her shift to complete this call. Big Kudos!

Of course, I worry about her not knowing about Second City TV, but that's another story - she's probably just a bit too young :-).

One thing I've noted over the years on the rare occasion that I've called MS Support: they must not beat their reps up over call time. I've always found that they are very willing to stick it out to make sure that the issue is resolved. Thanks for that and thanks to Nicole!

Friday, 19 August 2005 11:30:13 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 17 August 2005

I know that I've seen this somewhere before, but I was reminded again this evening. I like being able to have a visual cue when I'm approaching the (likely arbitrary) right edge of my coding page. Sure, you can keep one of your eyes on the column number along the bottom status bar, but then, who watches the code?

Well, thanks to Roy Osherove, I now have the tip and the time at the same moment and have added the vertical rules to my Visual Studio sessions at 80 and 120 columns.

It looks something like this:

If you want to save some time, just click here to get the .reg file (download and check it first to be safe and backup the registry! :-)).

Wednesday, 17 August 2005 23:01:37 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]

This isn't a high traffic site by any stretch of the imagination so you can guess how crazy it was to see 15 times the traffic that I might normally expect today on this blog. It was all based on the MSN Search bot: "+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm".

Sure enough, I chatted Greg up and his seeing the same kind of crazy activity!

Is it a rogue Bot? Or is MSN getting ready for some new bit of technology?

Wednesday, 17 August 2005 22:32:25 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Thursday, 11 August 2005

I can now combine my favorite Third Place with my love of technology and a good, stiff drink :-).

Nonna Emilia Ristoranté now has WiFi! Congratulations to my friends at Nonna's for the great new toy! As if I needed another reason to go there.

Thursday, 11 August 2005 18:57:23 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 08 August 2005

As mentioned several days ago, we had our Dish Network DVR Dish 508 break down again. I suspected that I would give it one more try and contact the so-called 'Executive Office' to see if there was some flexibility possible.

As I had been told by 'Joan', I didn't have a chance.

Not only am I unimpressed and disappointed with their service on this issue, I think I've realized an other point: They don't seem to have a clue about their market!

Harsh, I know, but I got that impression when the representative said that I should, "...be sure of the deal I was getting." There was an implication that I was getting some 'special' deal from DIRECTV that I was trying to get Dish to compete with. I pointed out to him that this is the deal ($99 for the DVR and a $50 rebate) that is posted on the DIRECTV website; he seemed surprised.

Mind you, it didn't get me anywhere. Plus, DIRECTV is now offering a $100 rebate - the DVR is now free!

I happened on a good article that relates on CPR tonight. I'm sure that there were employees at Dish that wanted to make things right with me. But, instead, the company policies have given the competition a new customer.

Monday, 08 August 2005 23:14:35 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [4]
# Saturday, 30 July 2005

About a week ago, we had our fifth Dish Network DVR fail in a little over a year and a half. I know how technology can be, but I'm sorely disappointed with the results - in short, I'm looking into DIRECTV.

We have the Dish 508 and have been satisfied with it's capability. Oh sure, I've heard how much better the Guides are on other systems, but this has accomodated most of our needs. The trouble comes in that we've only averaged about six months lifespan with them.

I checked on the deal with DIRECTV and it would cost a bit more per month, but for less than <$100 (after rebate), we could have two dual-tuner DVR systems in place. In addition, they use TiVo for programming and I've heard nothing but good reviews on them.

The best that Dish could offer was either:

  1. A barely upgraded DVR (Dish510) that has no extra features except larger hard drive (we've never used ours up) for more money per month.
  2. A dual-tuner (Dish522) for $200.

I can't see it. As I said to 'Joan' at Dish, changing brands is just a lot more compelling. It makes me sad to have to do that. I want to think that they would try harder to keep a customer - heck, I offered to sign up for a year, too - but it just wasn't an option.

I may give them one last chance on Monday, but from what Joan said, the offer isn't going to change. How very disappointing.

Saturday, 30 July 2005 19:22:49 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 13 July 2005

Greg was seems pleased with his new Tablet PC. So much so that he did some ink blogging this evening.

I was so impressed with his handwriting, I had to suggest he create a font out of it. He did :-)! Using the winning tool from the first Think in Ink contest, MyFontTool, he has allowed all of us to be a bit more like him.

If you are looking for alternative fonts, there are several sites out there that can accomodate. Some of the ones I've found are:

  1. divide by zero
  2. 1001 Fonts.com
  3. dafont.com
  4. Fonts & Things
  5. acidfonts.com
  6. Chank!
  7. MyFonts
  8. Abstract Fonts

Oh, and don't forget for your developer needs to check out Scott's blog.

Have a good time with these!

Wednesday, 13 July 2005 22:54:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 08 July 2005

What: Portland Code Camp v1.0
When: July 23 & 24, 2005
Where: Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd, Portland, Oregon
Web: http://pacwest.ms/codecamp/pdx/1/

There’s a new kind of software event coming to town. It’s called Portland Code Camp v1.0, a weekend of software developers talking to software developers about software development. No marketing, no fluff – just code. It’s the weekend of July 23rd and 24th at Reed College in Portland, Oregon. It is a mini-conference and it is totally FREE.

Code Camp is a community-run activity, and we have a number of local area user groups participating in organizing and running the event. So far we have over 50 sessions in the works, in 10 broad tracks, including security, game development, database, XML, web and client development, and much more.

We receive support from Microsoft and other companies, but this is certainly not a Microsoft technology-only event. We welcome topics and attendees from all backgrounds, disciplines, and skill levels. Sessions range from informal “chalk talks” to presentations. If you are a software developer or interested in the field, then Code Camp is for you.

All of the presenters are volunteers, and we welcome you to present as well. If you’ve never presented before, then Code Camp is perfect place to give it a try. Not only will you be among friends, but there’s also a special pre-camp event Friday evening with a Tips Talk for New Presenters lead by renowned speaker Scott Hanselman.

Portland Code Camp v1.0 is attracting presenters and attendees from throughout the region and from several states. And the small, intimate size means a lot of opportunity to meet and interact with a lot of exciting people. Code Camps have been very successful on the east coast, and we are thrilled to be hosting the first Code Camp west of the Mississippi River.

For more information, visit our website at http://pacwest.ms/codecamp/pdx/1/.

To reserve your space, register for Portland Code Camp v1.0 by join our Yahoo Group at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/codecamp_pdx.

If you are interested in presenting a session, email stuart.celarier@ineta.org.

See you at Camp!

Friday, 08 July 2005 21:59:55 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 28 June 2005

Oh my goodness... Google has done another one of their amazing things. They took that Keyhole technology they bought and packaged it even better. Oh, and it's FREE!

You can use your mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the whole freakin' planet! And of course, just click and drag to move around a particular geography.

A view of our house from the south:

Just Too Cool!!

Tuesday, 28 June 2005 23:28:23 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 27 June 2005

I was always a bit fascinated by how the viewscreen on the Enterprise could show images from locations where there were no cameras. Come on, that will never happen, right?

Don't be so sure. Not only do we have several ways to acquire imagery other than simple optical means, Nissan is developing a means to put an optical 'camera' fifty feet above your car to show you what obstacles may be nearby.

Via Mike Elgin's Raw Feed:

Cameras mounted at the front and rear and on both sides take pictures of the surrounding road surface, which are synthesized by an image processing technique into one view that is shown on a central display. The system is especially helpful when parking, enabling the driver to steer easily and precisely into a parking space. It also eliminates any fear of running over the neighbour’s prized belongings or posts or animals or anything else for that matter.

Monday, 27 June 2005 12:41:13 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Tuesday, 21 June 2005

I got this out much too late this month, but darn it, I'm going for it anyway. We sort of had a June PND while visiting in Orlando for TechEd earlier in the month, but I realize that one shouldn't count that against the local tally.

With that in mind, here we go:

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Mall food court
When: Thursday, June 23, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: 'Cuz it's Summer!

Be There and Be Square!

Tuesday, 21 June 2005 07:12:28 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 18 June 2005

That was unexpected... at least to me. If you go grab the most recent version of the MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search (ugh!), you will get the new Tabbed Browsing interface months before IE7 is released.

The bit I like best is the ability to save a group of tabs as one set. The shortcoming here is that there is only one set of "My Tabs" and you overwrite it by saving a new set. I want shortcuts to multiple groups of tabs.

Anyway, if you are still using Internet Explorer, check it out!

 

Saturday, 18 June 2005 07:15:14 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 01 June 2005

Okay, not only does the concept sound worthy, but the banner ad is just too funny! Here's my plug for the RDs' GrokTalk.net event at TechEd:

Take a few moments out of your busy TechEd schedule to stop by!

Wednesday, 01 June 2005 22:35:40 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 30 May 2005

I subscribe to several e-newsletters. One of these is PCWorld's Tips & Tweaks by Steve Bass. The ironic thing is that I read it less for the tips or the tweaks and more for the "Dig This" asides he puts in.

Last week, (May 18th), one of the links was the following:

Dig This: I love imaginative and creative sites, and Billy Harvey's is super cool. (And no, I don't find his music or demeanor particularly interesting. But the site's design? Zowie!) Click around and you'll see what I mean. [Thanks, Brad.]

 It's wonderful to see such an innovative site for self-promotion. I wish this fella well!

Monday, 30 May 2005 15:09:41 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Saturday, 14 May 2005

I just finished a chat with Gateway trying to find out what resolution their laptops were available in. The representative told me 1,024 x 768 and I asked if there was any other options available.

First, he or she tells me that it would require a larger display. Uh, no, just more pixels... "HP and Dell have them," I pointed out. Then, I'm told that they just 'support' that resolution, not that the display is that large - even though we have these very computers and screens at work.

I left a 'negative' review of the experience with them with the following comment:

I'm shopping for a new laptop computer. One thing I consider important for the development work I do is a lot of pixels. First, it appears that you have no more than 1,024 x 768 resolution - my three year old HP has 1,400 x 1,050. Obviously, I'm not willing to downgrade. Second, your rep didn't seem to believe higher resolution screens existed. Please view the chat log for details.

I have had a soft spot for Gateway for years... it has now hardened.

Saturday, 14 May 2005 10:16:25 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]

A few months ago, I started thinking about the next laptop I would purchase. I have had my current one for about three years now and have been pretty darn satisfied. It's a HP Pavillion that I got custom configured through Best Buy. It was a really good deal and has worked well.

Well, one of the compelling features when I got on this machine was a higher resolution screen - 1,400 x 1,050. As I'm shopping, a 'must have' feature for me is resolution at least equal to or greater than what I've grown to love on this machine.

I was thrilled to see that Costco was doing the HP Configure to Order on their website. I had my 'perfect' machine scoped out and was just waiting for a little bit more technology to come around (and memory prices to drop a bit) before I popped for it.

What do you know? I'm ready and they no longer offer the high resolutions! :'(

Looks like Michael Dell is going to become just a bit more wealthy.

Saturday, 14 May 2005 10:09:32 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 11 May 2005

Buddy and fellow nerd Jason Olson and I were chatting today. We were discussing Chris Sells' trips to the Redmond MS campus being that he works remotely from his home here in the Portland area.

Since MS uses the term OOF or "out|off of facility" to designate that an employee isn't at their office, what would they call it when the employee is on campus for a change like Chris? "On facility" just didn't have the ring to it, so we had to move to "in facility"

So, Chris is IFfy when he's OOF in Redmond. As long as they don't designate him as "On the F'n Facility," we'll be fine.

Wednesday, 11 May 2005 14:12:59 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 10 May 2005

One of my buddies, and fellow Nonna's patrons, here in town is getting some press on his current venture.

Jon Joye started AudioGlobe to tap into the MP3 boom, but that didn't pan out. Instead, he has developed a concept known as Dynamic Digital Rights Management that allows the content an artist (or writer, or programmer, etc.) produces to dictate the rights given to a consumer.

If the producer simply wants recognition as the source, he or she may choose that. Alternatively, if money is to be made, that can be be embedded in the content. As I understand, the idea is that the content itself contains the rights, not the 'player'.

It sure sounds like a cool idea. I'm looking forward to seeing where Jon takes this. It holds a lot of promise!

Tuesday, 10 May 2005 23:33:39 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 28 April 2005

Last evening we had our monthly installment of the Portland Area .NET User Group. We had Scott Hanselman and Patrick Cauldwell speak on creating an environment of continuous integration. To borrow from the description:

Continuous Integration is more than just a fad; it's darn near required to survive anymore.

Join Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman as they talk about one of Corillian's product's build processes. They will explore NUnit, NAnt, custom NAnt Tasks, automatic reporting of errors, and unit test failures as well as Cruise Control.NET which can enable you to create an Enterprise Wide Build Dashboard for all the pointy-haired bosses to oogle at. It'll be fun, informative, and fast pace.

Specifically, they discussed several tools that they use at Corillian to build their products. The major tools were:

  • Ambient Orb - The Ambient Orb slowly transitions between thousands of colors to show changes in the weather, the health of your stock portfolio, or if your boss or kid is on instant messenger.
  • Cassini - The ASP.NET Cassini Web Server Sample is a sample web server written using the Microsoft® .NET® Framework, and demonstrates hosting ASP.NET using the ASP.NET hosting APIs (System.Web.Hosting).
  • CodeSmith - CodeSmith is a FREEWARE template-based code generator that can generate code for any ASCII-based language. CodeSmith templates use a syntax nearly identical to ASP.NET syntax so that creating templates should feel immediately familiar to ASP.NET developers.
  • CruiseControl.NET - CruiseControl.NET is an Automated Continuous Integration server, implemented using the Microsoft .NET Framework.
  • MbUnit - MbUnit is an evolutive Unit Test Framework for .Net. It provides new fixtures as well as the framework to create new ones. MbUnit is based QuickGraph, a directed graph library for C#.
  • NAnt - NAnt is a free .NET build tool. In theory it is kind of like make without make's wrinkles. In practice it's a lot like Ant.
  • NUnit - NUnit is a unit-testing framework for all .Net languages. Initially ported from JUnit, the current release, version 2.2, is the fourth major release of this xUnit based unit testing tool for Microsoft .NET. It is written entirely in C# and has been completely redesigned to take advantage of many .NET language features, for example custom attributes and other reflection related capabilities. NUnit brings xUnit to all .NET languages.
  • TestDriven.NET - TestDriven.NET makes it easy to run unit tests with a single click, anywhere in your Visual Studio solutions. It supports all versions of Microsoft Visual Studio .NET meaning you don't have to worry about compatibility issues and fully integrates with all major unit testing frameworks including NUnit, MbUnit, & MS Team System.
  • Tree Surgeon - Tree Surgeon is a .NET development tree generator. Just give it the name of your project, and it will set up a development tree for you in seconds. More than that, your new tree has years worth of accumulated build engineering experience built right in.
  • Zanebug - Zanebug is an advanced tool for comprehensive unit and integration testing.

If these tools are not enough for you to satisfy your cravings, visit Scott's Ultimate Developer and Power Users Tool List for more.

Thursday, 28 April 2005 09:54:43 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 23 April 2005

Last night, we had a rather impromptu (to me, anyway) Geek Dinner organized by Alex Williams of Corante to welcome Chris Pirillo and his fiance Ponzi to town.

There were several local nerds/geeks that I knew there: Greg, Scott, and John, for example. But I didn't expect to see a Marketing wonk that I worked with down at InFocus many years ago. Apparently, Scott Niesen is now with a company here in Portland making software that makes one's email and blogging software just a little bit better. The company is called You Software and the products look very helpful.

It was really great to meet up with Chris, Ponzi, and other techies that are a bit outside of the 'usual' crowd. I do hope to see more of these folks in future Nerd and Geek Dinners.

Who knows? Maybe we'll stretch the rules a bit and have a PND at a location other than a shopping mall one day.

Saturday, 23 April 2005 22:09:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 13 April 2005

This has been a hilarious set of videos that Scott and Rory have put together. They've finally made it to TechEd and it looks like they will sleep right through the keynote. The expression on Scott's face near the end is well worth the viewing.

I have to agree with others:

  1. This series should continue to be a part of our Dev food indefinately. Make More!
  2. A DVD would be an ideal gift for the nerd one loves
  3. That DVD should include a lengthy section of outtakes

Scott mentions the release of this here and you can view it here. Let's hope they take this beyond just the TechEd video series and make this a more regular feature of our blog experience!

Wednesday, 13 April 2005 08:33:57 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 10 April 2005

Hello Everyone! Spring is in the air!

It's once again, time to let everyone know what we have planned for the PADNUG meeting. I have to say how excited I am for this months presentation. Not only will the subject be interesting, but I've seen a lot of presentations from both of these gentlemen and know they are great to see and hear.

WHAT: April PADNUG meeting.
WHEN:

Wednesday 04/27/2005
6:00 p.m. Pizza, Sponsored by 3Leaf
6:30 p.m. Presentation

WHERE: PCC Auditorium at Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Road
Beaverton, Oregon
The auditorium is in room 1508 through entrance B. There is a $2 parking fee. The kiosk for paying for parking is located between entrances B and C.
WHO:

Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman

TOPIC:

Continuous Integration is more than just a fad; it's darn near required to survive anymore.
Join Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman as they talk about one of Corillian's product's build processes. They will explore NUnit, NAnt, custom NAnt Tasks, automatic reporting of errors, and unit test failures as well as Cruise Control.NET which can enable you to create an Enterprise Wide Build Dashboard for all the pointy-haired bosses to oogle at. It'll be fun, informative, and fast pace.

Clear your calendar now! You really want to be here for this one.

Sunday, 10 April 2005 23:22:50 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 30 March 2005

Poor young Scott. He's been able to avoid it to this point, but after an ambush in the halls, he's no longer allowed to resist. He gets the KoolAid.

Rory wants to help, but is held back by the thugs.

You can be a witness to it all by visiting the third in the TechEd video series from these guys. Another funny clip!

Wednesday, 30 March 2005 06:31:09 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 26 March 2005

Another funny item via Steve Bass' Tips & Tweaks column on PC World:

[Rod Shelley]

These images are the result of 8 years in the retail computer industry - 8 years that are thankfully behind me. I used to work in the service department in a retail store of a very famous computer company (think cows...). During this time, I was able to observe (and preserve for posterity) the aftereffects of the - shall we say - "technology challenged" folks. My friends and relatives couldn't believe the stories I told - thus this collection of photos.

Check it out!

Saturday, 26 March 2005 10:59:25 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 17 March 2005

So the remaining question is: When will the DVD be released?

Scott and Rory thrill us again with their grand understanding of all things .NET and development orienting. Of course, they get a really important lesson in K.I.S.S. If only they could go to TechEd and learn more about this stuff! Oh wait, they are going!

Go check out the fabulous video/ad.

 

Thursday, 17 March 2005 09:31:19 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 11 March 2005

Spring has come early to us here in the Northwest. In fact, we have nearly the same weather that Jim is having way down there in Tampa, Florida. Darn it all! Let's celebrate!

It's time to have another Nerd Dinner!

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Mall food court
When: Thursday, March 24, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Because we miss Jim L

Be there and be square.

Spread the word!

Friday, 11 March 2005 23:17:55 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]

Rory and Scott have been busy fellas lately. I've seen them in the planning stages - all animated and excited. It has now come to fruition. They are pimping for TechEd.

This is funny stuff. Heck, even my wife got a kick out of it and she doesn't even know who Don Box is; and her perspective of Chris Sells is "Naked Chris".

Yes, that's Rory in a men's room. Need I sell it any more?

Friday, 11 March 2005 22:58:48 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]

I happened across a keyboard shortcut that I've wanted to know for a long time but didn't take the time to search for. By hitting <ctrl>*, you can turn the paragraph marks on and off quickly and easily.

Having spent a good deal of time in Word (tech writing classes, physics labs, etc.), this is one of those things that I should have taken a few moments to seek out. Today, purely by accident, I found this shortcut. I don't want to forget this one.

Friday, 11 March 2005 09:27:32 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 12 February 2005

I spent the last four years back in school getting a BS degree in Software Engineering. It's been a most excellent journey and I have been really happy with all I've learned. I wanted to do this stuff twenty years ago, but mistakenly took a business path in school. I'm better now.

Well, if you follow the link above, you will see me effuse over the Computer Software Engineering Technology (CSET) program I attended at PCC and the Director of it, Taylor Hanna. That experience was top notch and I am so happy that I stumbled upon it while looking to start taking some programming classes. Lucky, I was, that day.

Not only was the program good, but we had a great class. I made some good friends there and learned so much with their help. Absolutely amazing!

This week, I found out that PCC was cancelling the CSET program.

As I've mentioned before, CSET was probably not the easiest program to get through at PCC. It probably didn't fit the mold for community college programs. But it's a shame to see it hit the floor like that. I wonder what might have happened with just a bit of decent marketing behind it. I know there are plenty of us out here that would have given glowing testimonials to them.

It sounds like Taylor will still be there at PCC teaching in the CS/CIS area. If you find yourself there, take his class. And, say 'hi' for me.

Thanks to Taylor and everyone else that made it possible for me to learn all I did there. You've improved my stature and enjoyement in life immensely and I appreciate it.

Saturday, 12 February 2005 10:11:22 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 10 February 2005

A fellow that I'm working with asked how to insert a row or column into excel from the keyboard. I hate having to reach for my mouse unnecessarily while working in a keyboard intensive application and was sure there was a way. It's sort of a two parter:

One of the keyboard shortcuts I've seen previously in Excel but never committed to memory is the ability to select a row or column: <ctrl><space> for columns and <shift><space> for rows. You may use <shift><arrow key> to select, for example, cells from several rows and then hit <shift><space> to select those entire rows.

Now, choose <ctrl>+ to insert or <ctrl>- to delete. Viola! This also works with cut and paste operations: select a row or column, <ctrl>x to cut; move and select another row or column and hit <ctrl>+ to insert the cut data.

Good number crunching to you!

Thursday, 10 February 2005 08:59:48 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 08 February 2005

Talk about your basic, fabulous application. Not surprisingly, it's fast, too. Just point your browser to http://maps.google.com and give it a spin.

As Omar points out, there are some great opportunities with using your favorite shortcut system, too. For example, if you are using the MSN Desktop Search, you can enter:

@map,http://maps.google.com/maps?q=$w

into the Deskbar to quickly access maps. If you prefer to use SlickRun (and I tend to), create a MagicWord:

magicword=map
filename=iexplore.exe
parameters=http://maps.google.com/maps?q=$W$

It's hard to keep up with all of the cool Google tools, eh?

Tuesday, 08 February 2005 00:58:17 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 01 February 2005

Okay, I enjoy the Creating Passionate Users blog. I know I've mentioned it several times lately. But, just this evening I noticed that the CPU leader, Kathy Sierra, had one the prestigious Smartest Blogging Babe award from Michael Pollock's Small Business Branding site.

And no folks, it's not as naughty as it sounds ;-).

I'm thrilled to see how much their blog has caught on. My buddy, Jeff Sherwin, is making the Head First Design Pattern book his core reference in the Architecture class he's teaching at OIT and has truly gotten in to the blogging idea because of their work.

All of the contributors on CPU deserve kudos: Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Freeman, Bert Bates, and Kathy Sierra. They are doing a fabulous job!

Tuesday, 01 February 2005 23:38:29 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 24 January 2005

Scott is wondering about changing over to IMAP from his existing POP3 scheme for email. In the comments, it has been suggested that he should consider running the combination of Outlook and Exchange to manage email and not worry about moving to IMAP. I suspect that I will be looking at that solution, too.

One of the values I would like to see come of such a solution is that my wife and I could easily share calendars and contacts. Now, Jesann is just starting to get into this whole computer using thing, so I have a desire to make it easy for her. If we can consolidate all of the resources here at home, it should make her experience a bit more palatable.

When I put my "new" (as in older parts reassembled) server, I expect to install SBS2003. Exchange will be sitting there just waiting to provide for our needs. I'm just going to have to learn a bit more about email management.

I tend to agree with Scott on having a 'permanent', personal email address. For friends and family, I have one primary address: rich@. For business dealings, I tend to go with the more formal richard@. Where we differ is on emails used for subscriptions and the like. As mentioned here, I like being able to identify the source of spam through the addresses used.

Monday, 24 January 2005 10:17:32 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 22 January 2005

Well, sort of.

Technically, I jumped on this bandwagon a few weeks ago. When I started getting hit by dozens of referral spams a day, I decided it was time to give it a try. With a little bit of help from our hero, Scott, I got it up and running on the early versions.

This evening, I finally got a few moments to install the released version of dasBlogCE. All seems to have gone quite well, thank you. Chris, Clemens, Omar, and Scott - Thank you for your work!

Now, if we can just stay one step ahead of the spammers!

Saturday, 22 January 2005 11:40:28 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [3]
# Monday, 17 January 2005

We all know the classic line: "Be kind, Rewind." Many video stores still encourage this behavior. Until now, it's been easy to find a rewinder for all those old VCR tapes, but hard to find one for your DVDs. Well, no more!

The best part is that it works on your CDs and Game discs, too! There's even a changeable rewind sound available.

Thanks to the Langa List (item #10) for directing me to this site.

Monday, 17 January 2005 00:39:44 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 11 January 2005

Some time ago, I saw mention of a new book series from O'Reilly called Head First. They published a chapter of the Head First Design Patterns book on the O'Reilly network and I found it particularly intriguing.

Since then, I've had a chance to start reading the weblog that is tied in with the book series, Creating Passionate Users. I'm loving it. Titles such as "You 2.0" are inspiring and a great reminder that it's never too late. And the general theories on how people learn are well worth consideration.

I finally got around to ordering the Design Patterns book, too. I'm just looking forward to O'Reilly doing the .NET technologies in the Head First series.

Update: I was reminded (in a rather long, twisted way (way to go, Michael ;-))) of another similar blog: Church of the Customer. Some really good bits on successful business practices and word-of-mouth marketing.

Tuesday, 11 January 2005 23:16:23 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 06 January 2005

And speaking of nerds...

Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith will be released on May 19. Inevitably, there will be lines to get tickets and see the movie. If you are planning to participate in this little adventure, you better start making your plans now - the line has already begun in downtown Seattle.

Jeff Tweiten aka "Superfan 1138" got in line on January 1; a full 138 days before the movie is to be released. The nerdiest part of this? He's blogging the experience!

I think he gets an automatic '100' on the nerd quiz.

Thursday, 06 January 2005 10:55:34 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 21 December 2004

I know they have been a bit disparaged elsewhere, but I have tell you, I continue to be a very happy customer of Webhost4life.

I've had three positive experiences in the last 24 hours. First, I've noticed that they now advertise 300MB of space for my “Advanced Plan.” When I signed up, it was only 150MB. One quick post on their help system and it is resolved!

Second, I noted that the site was down last night for a while. Why is that positive? Because, in the year and a half that I have been here, I have never seen my site down for more than a refresh or two. I realize that I may have missed some instances, but I have no complaint there.

Third, there was a configuration error that Aaron was kind enough to tell me about today. I made a quick phone call to Webhost4life and the problem was resolved in minutes! “Reggin” even made me try it and make sure everything worked before he would get off the phone. Great Job!

For personal hosting, I think you'd be hard pressed to find a much better deal than what Webhost4life provides. Plenty of bells and whistles for a very reasonable price.

Tuesday, 21 December 2004 11:18:41 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [6]
# Thursday, 16 December 2004

I'm really excited! Jesann is going to take a couple of classes after the first of the year to become more familiar with this wonderful world of geekness we call computing.

It's hard to imagine how she tolerates the nerdiness that is me, but she has. I don't blame her for not being 'into it' like me, but I just know that she'll find compelling content out there when she starts getting online on a regular basis.

Her taking the class is part of the motivation for this year's cleaning project. I figure that I need to make more room in the office for her to be comfortable and I will likely want to update 'her' computer to WinXP - yes, it's still got WinME on it.

Congratulations Jesann! You're going to Love it!

Thursday, 16 December 2004 00:24:39 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 04 December 2004

From Peter Provost's Geek Noise 2004-12-03:

Saturday, 04 December 2004 12:30:19 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 29 November 2004

I'm in a bit of a daze this evening because it is the end of the term (whole story there, I suppose), so I can't remember the details of why or where this came up, but I was recently discussing with someone how to make a website look good.

I am very slow at creating such things. Note how I've mostly stuck to the 'canned' theme for this blog. That said, I sure do know what I like and can quickly - and probably quite loudly - voice my opinions on what does and doesn't work.

That thought reminded me how long it had been since I had visited my buddy Brian's web store, Northwest Active Gear. He specializes in GPS and Marine electronics out of this site and this is his banner month leading up to Christmas.

As I dropped on to the site, I was reminded of how good Brian is at doing design work. Now, this is a store and it is trying to sell to you, but he really did a lot of good work in laying it out for easy navigation and viewability. Everything is accessible from the main page, but it doesn't seem all that cluttered.

It's good to see the site looking so nice. I wish Brian and his wife Heidi a banner holiday season. And, if you are thinking of purchasing a GPS unit for yourself or loved one, go check his site out!

Monday, 29 November 2004 23:13:48 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 01 November 2004

He's mentioned it in his blog several times, but now he's helping you buy it too... Scott Hanselman has an e-coupon for MaxiVista! It's a really good deal for a great product.

I guess I might as well have a fourth monitor running part time, eh? :-)

Monday, 01 November 2004 16:07:01 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 23 October 2004

Jesann and I spent the last couple of days at the beautiful Dolce Skamania Lodge in Stevenson, Washington. She went to relax and enjoy the amenities; I went to attend the conference often referred to as SellsCon.

I really can't do justice to all of the content that was provided for the two days... at least no more than has already been done. Chris Sells has compiled an amazingly complete list of blogs about his conference. There are around forty separate persons listed as SellsCon bloggers. Wow! There are three bloggers that stand out to me:

Particularly remarkable, though, was the article by Esther Schindler on Ziff-Davis' DevSource site. It really captured the feeling of the conference well.

As you read through these blogs, you might see the point made about the first day being somewhat 'dark' or 'gloomy'. I suppose that I could understand that view, but I don't really share it. The one thing that I took away from this conference is that we've reached a new level of abstraction and with the new possibilities come a whole new set of problems.

As Rebecca Dias pointed out during the panel discussion, there are problems that need to be resolved, but there are people out in the world solving real problems with XML related technologies today; problems that seemed rather intractable just a few short years ago.

To that end, there were several demonstrations of that fact in the conference:

  • Patrick Cauldwell and Scott Hanselman: Bringing Strongly Typed Business Objects to Legacy Financial Systems with XML Schema. This presentation focused on how Corillian has improved their banking systems through the use of XML. I've seen Scott and Patrick present several times and had both as instructors at OIT so I always know that I will enjoy what they have to say. Commentary here, here, here, and here.
  • Whitney Kemmey: Using XML for Navy Missile Systems. Wow! This was a great presentation! This was the surprise of the conference. Here's the only person in attendance wearing a suit; He even has a rather “Department of Defense” somber look about him. Boy, was I wrong. His presentation was very funny (Internationalization is not really a problem for the Navy) and very relevant. Read more here, here, here, and here.
  • Jeff Barr: Amazon Web Services - A Year in Review. I'll rank this as the most inspiring presentation of the lot. By the end of it, you find yourself saying, “Yeah, I could hook into the Amazon Web Services and start making money tomorrow!” It was like going to one of those MLM deals where they convince you that with just this small investment, you could be making thousands of dollars monthly without any work. Except, this really can work! (Oh, and I finally realized that this is the same guy that runs Syndic8! Duh!) Find more detail here, here, here, and here.
  • Blair Schneider McKay: Using XML to Take the Headaches Out of EDI Processing. I think Blair's presentation showed the greatest possibility of pain relief. I'd never really seen what goes on inside EDI and I pray I never do again. The value of moving to a more verbose platform was very evident. Also read here, here, here, and here.

If you want to see the lighter side of XML, you need to visit Doug Purdy's blog and specifically view his picture of Don Box. Also, Jay Kimble's Nuclear Missile Sub is worth a gander. Of course, no blogged event is complete without the wonderful and entertaining commentary by our hero, Rory Blyth. Especially enjoyable (because I'm in one of the pix :-)) is his summary blog entry, XML Hangover.

To Chris, Rebecca, et al: Thanks for putting on a wonderful conference right here in our backyard.

To the numerous presenters: Kudos and thanks for crafting such interesting bits for us to consume.

To my fellow attendees and bloggers: It was wonderful to meet all of you and I look forward to seeing you all at future tech events wherever they may occur!

Saturday, 23 October 2004 09:09:28 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 20 October 2004

A wonderful Portland Nerd Dinner last evening. Several new faces - some on their way to the XML DevCon, others just visiting from afar, and yet more attending for the first time.

Jesann went with me to this one... it was a great chance for her to get some shopping done at the mall. I've been trying to get her to come see all of these nerds for several months now :-).

We even got a picture of IBM (Ed Brill), Microsoft (Robert Scoble), and Sun (Tim Bray) together. Détente!

It's such a pleasure to meet up with such a wide variety of people. I suppose it emphasizes the value of the Nerd Dinners. They are a place where people with a technical bent can get together and chat for a while.

Make sure to watch for your local Nerd Dinner at NerdDinner.com.

Wednesday, 20 October 2004 09:07:29 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Saturday, 09 October 2004

Okay, you've finally got that GMail account from your best friend. Problem is, you now have all of this storage space and hardly anything to fill it with.

Well, your problems (?) are over! GMail Drive is now available as a shell extension that allows you to copy files directly to your GMail acount from within Windows Explorer. It simply adds a new 'drive' under My Computer that you can drag and drop to.

Pretty cool idea!

via Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus

Saturday, 09 October 2004 14:46:44 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 01 October 2004

I've been wanting to repave my computers for a while. My laptop has been building up cruft for over a year, the desktop could use a good cleaning, and it's time to build a new server for the household, too.

For the desktop and laptop, I wanted to install SP2 immediately. I have seen a few articles on slipstreaming the update into the original XP install, so I had to give it a try.

First, I tried out Paul Thurrott's article, but was unsuccessful. Now, it probably wasn't the article's fault; I am using my MSDN DVD to install and didn't have a handle on what to label the resulting CD. That's why I turned to Fred Langa's InformationWeek article.

The additional details found in that article were all I needed to get it done. I have now reformatted and installed Windows XP SP2 cleanly on the drive. After I've finished reinstalling applications on the laptop, it will be time to build up a new server with Win2003! Or, maybe SBS?

Friday, 01 October 2004 23:33:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 14 September 2004

UPDATE: What a surprise... The Penton newsletters are back to their old format. I hope they come up with some sort of new concept, though. I don't mind receiving HTML versions of newsletters - I find it easier to differentiate content from ads and all - I just want the content to be in the newsletter.

I have a few favorite sites in my 'Links' toolbar of Internet Explorer. One of them is Paul Thurrott's WinInfo site. I enjoy the content provided through that site and by Paul himself.

Well, my interest in their content dropped a couple of notches this week. The email newsletters no longer provide content; just a brief paragraph introducing each story. I realize that the theory here is to drive readership to the website, but it honestly is having the opposite effect on me. I will likely be dropping several of the e-letters I receive from them, too.

Just to top it off, I went to the site to see if I could change a preference that would provide the complete content. I was unable to log in! I chose the 'I forgot my name/password' option and was told that my email address, “...was not recognized.” Excuse me? I've got at least a half dozen emails from you in my inbox addressed to that very address! The newsletter even tells me that that is the address.

Further, when I try to 'Update' my subscriber information, I receive a server error that asks me to email them information; I would think with modern technology what it is, somehow the webserver might be able to do that work and not burden the customer with it!

I hope this is just a momentary lapse of reason on their part and all will be made right in the next week or two. Please?!?

Tuesday, 14 September 2004 09:38:22 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Monday, 30 August 2004

Ok, if you can't/don't want to go to Devscovery, maybe you would enjoy a nice, shiny-new GMail account? I got my six GMail invites to give out today. Let me know in the comments if you would like one.

Monday, 30 August 2004 23:12:25 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [4]

I hoped beyond hope that I would be heading for Redmond tomorrow... it was not to be. But this could be your opportunity.

I have one ticket to Devscovery Redmond available for half of the regular $900 price. This event begins tomorrow morning and goes through Thursday.

This conference/training goes for three days and has more than thirty sessions put on by such luminaries as John Robbins, Jeffrey Richter, Jeff Prosise, Peter DeBetta, and Jason Clark.

If you are interested, leave me a comment or email at ticket@theclaussens.com.

This is well worth your time... take advantage of it!

Monday, 30 August 2004 09:36:13 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 18 August 2004

These Portland Nerd Dinners (PND) are becoming almost as regular as much more formal gatherings... and that is good. Jim has really built a following with this.

This month we will be meeting on the 31st. As has become the norm, it will be at 6:30pm at the Washington Square Food Court.

As there was in June, the PND will be followed by a Portland Nerd Drinks (PND-b? (b = booze?)) Some luck folks may find themselves with a jump start on that portion of the evenings festivities by leaving their WikiSignature at the PND-b link.

As always, Be there and be square.

Wednesday, 18 August 2004 22:51:35 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 27 July 2004

This one (via Peter Provost) surprised me: At several McDonalds restaurants in Colorado (and some elsewhere), the drive through order taker is working from a remote call center.

This is amazing. Part of me worries about the dehumanization of the concept, but another part of me has to recall the mistakes made all too often at my local fast-food locations. How much better might the experience it be if the person taking the order was more skilled at the process?

Amazing what technology enables.

Tuesday, 27 July 2004 12:03:32 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [4]
# Friday, 16 July 2004

Especially for those who think they have all of the gadgets.

Make the experience of “driving” your PC all the more realistic with this beautiful cigarette lighter and beverage holder for your computer's last remaining empty drive bay.

Can you just imagine the tech-support calls? “No, really, it's not my CD drive. My cupholder is broken!”

Friday, 16 July 2004 13:39:50 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 13 July 2004

I have to believe that most of the rather 'geeky' people have thought this should exist before now. James Avery today led me to a site that demonstrates “Metric Time.”

I'll be looking for support on this when I purchase my MSN Direct Watch one day.

Tuesday, 13 July 2004 19:29:26 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 15 June 2004

Sara Ford has started a bit of a humorous thread on her blog. Some really cute techno-jokes going on. For example:

Two strings walk into a bar.  The first one says, “Bartender! Bartender! I want a drink!”
The second one says, “Bartender! Bartender! I want a drink too! blaaaaaaaaah Eeeeeeeek yaaaaaaak oooooooh.”
The first one says, “Please excuse my friend.  He isn't null terminated.”

Head on over! And, find other funny quips through my humor category (especially the Joel on Software link from November!).

Tuesday, 15 June 2004 08:49:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 11 June 2004

Jim Blizzard, the father of the Nerd Dinner, has written an open invitation to Linus Torvalds to begin attending the Portland Nerd Dinner. I second that invite!

Linus and his family are moving to Portland next week and I can't imagine a better place for him to get to know the region's nerd population.

Friday, 11 June 2004 10:45:09 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 09 June 2004

Last night was the OIT Senior Project Software Exposition. It was Great!

I was really impressed by what we put together for this year's show. I went to last year's and heard from others that had been in previous years'... This was a much bigger and better presentation.

First, we rearranged the room to better accomodate all of the presenters and attendees. A classroom layout doesn't really fit for doing several software presentations.

Second, every student made up a poster for his or her project. All of these posters looked good and added an extra bit of professional feel to the whole show. We also used the poster images for a rolling slide show on the room's projection system.

Third, every project was very demonstrable. The two game developers even had multiple computers involved to really show off what they were doing.

Fourth, we had refreshments available. Much more pleasurable for those attending.

Finally, the invites went out to people beyond the school. The event was very well attended and I'm sure will set a standard for future senior software fairs at OIT.

And well it should!

Wednesday, 09 June 2004 21:39:44 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Monday, 07 June 2004

Ironically (or is it?), I was thinking just last night that I should ping Jim to see when he wanted to do another Nerd Dinner. It's been too long for those of us who weren't in San Diego.

Apparently, Jim could sense the disturbance in The Force because I woke up this morning to find the next PND announcement:

Tuesday, June 29 @ 6:30
Washington Square Food Court
and of course, Be there and be square!

What surprises might be in store this time?

Monday, 07 June 2004 07:25:40 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 29 May 2004

Well, did I have a rude realization this evening. I went to do some work on a web service project and Visual Studio wouldn't load the web service project.

Okay, maybe IIS isn't running correctly or I've screwed something up. I try some other /localhost/.../.aspx sites and they don't run either. Restart IIS to no avail.

Then I realize that I just upgraded ZoneAlarm yesterday (or was it two days ago?), so I shut it off temporarily. Ah, now everything is working. Time to fiddle with the settings in ZoneAlarm and figure out what isn't correct.

I tried just about every setting there was and found nothing to work. Finally I got frustrated enough to go looking for support. When I use their help system, it mentions that ZA isn't compatible with Win2K Server... I'm running WinXP. Then I try the forums and search for IIS... Oh boy, there you go.

I didn't find one person running IIS on a local system that been able to keep ZA 5.0 going. A couple even claimed that this was a prominent beta issue that has gone unaddressed.

I've now downgraded to version 4.5 until this problem is resolved. What a shame, too... I like ZoneAlarm. Hopefully, they will get it resolved soon.

Saturday, 29 May 2004 02:19:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 28 May 2004

In each edition of the LangaList, Fred Langa includes a “Just for Grins” entry. The latest was a link to an American Express advertisement site. It's a series of “ad-ventures” starring Jerry Seineld and Superman.

Need I say much more?

I found the Flash version somewhat lacking and clicked the “Trouble with Flash? Go to HTML.” link that gave the option for either Quicktime or Windows Media versions of the clips.

Very funny. As good or better than Super Bowl ads.

Friday, 28 May 2004 10:25:07 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 26 May 2004

The days are counting down quickly... in just thirteen days we will be conducting the Software Exposition for the 2004 Senior Projects at OIT. There are nine projects coming to a close and all will be displayed for others to see.

If you have a chance, it would be worth stopping by to see the applications that have been built. Who knows? You might just find your Next Great Developer while you are there!

There will be free food, fun, and great bunch of people. Below are the details of where and when:

5:00pm - 6:30pm
Tuesday, June 8th

Capital Center
18640 NW Walker Rd.
(185th and Walker Road)
Beaverton, OR 97006
(503) 725-2129

Wednesday, 26 May 2004 15:29:56 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 20 May 2004

Mr. Hanselman is helping to improve television for all: He will be making The Apprentice.NET real at TechEd this year! Come on folks - wouldn't you rather see Bill picking an apprentice than old Donald?

The Apprentice.NET

Boy, does that make me want to be there.

Thursday, 20 May 2004 00:00:11 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 19 May 2004

[Update: Betsy, Chris, Jim, Patrick, and Scott have added their voices to the post-dinner Nerd din.]

I'm tempted to use the phrase 'best Nerd Dinner Yet,' but I've said that before. Last night was the best, though. At the peak, we had 34 people in attendence. That's nearly three times the usual size. Jim Blizzard will go down in history as the father of the great Nerd Dinners.

Chris Sells led an entourage of the MSDN team down from Redmond to join us. This group included Shawn Morrissey, Betsy Aoki, Matt Powell, Duncan Mackenzie, Kent Sharkey, and of course, Chris himself. Not only did they contribute financially to the Nerd Dinner, but they offered themselves up for a panel discussion and allowed all there to provide feedback on how to improve MSDN and the developer experience in general.

The award for the 'farthest travelled' went to the surprise attendee Rory Blyth. Yes, all the way from New London, Connecticut and the .NET Rocks! show. I guess he means it when he says he misses us back here.

The 'youngest' award goes to Patrick Miller... let's just say the junior high school will be lucky to have him.

Another big surprise was seeing Scott Hanselman decked out in a suit and tie:

Who would have thought?

Obviously, there are too many people to mention them all specifically... we gathered a virtual (or is that a physical one?) blogroll of attendees and will probably make that available on Northwest Evening Blend.

Folks - you don't want to miss these events. This was some really good stuff!

Wednesday, 19 May 2004 08:20:09 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 14 May 2004

A few days ago, Scott chatted me up and asked if I'd tried Skype yet. I was familiar with the software since .NET Rocks! uses it as a way for listeners to call in. If you don't know already, it is a telephony product that works over the internet.

Well, either Scott or the general cosmos have schemed to make Skype the buzz for the week. Several people are beginning to realize the value and quality of the product (examples here, here, and here). In addition, I'm beginning to see talk in the trade rags.

The only BIG thing that I would like to see added is an alliance with Trillian (the consolidated IM client). I would love to have both of these tools wrapped up into one simple package... all of my instant messaging and the Skype telephony service in a single piece of software.

How about it?

Friday, 14 May 2004 10:15:03 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 08 May 2004

I've been reading about pinvoke.net, by Adam Nathan quite a lot in blogs lately. As I am not doing any thing with interop at this time, I didn't feel compelled to go to the site. Well, I did now. My gosh, I'm impressed.

It's not just the content, either. The design and implementation of the site is wonderful, too. You can get to signature pages by searching, by browsing the directory, or by typing the name of the signature into a box at the top of the page.

To top it all off, Adam has created an add-in for Visual Studio that allows one to insert the correct signatures into code directly from the pinvoke.net site.

This is really good stuff!

Saturday, 08 May 2004 11:55:58 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]

Jonathan Hardwick blogs about using offline files to synchonize his laptop to his 'real' set of files.

I've been doing this since I got my laptop for school a couple of years ago. All of my school files stay on my server and I access them from the laptop and my desktop. Very little need to copy back and forth between the computers.

He mentions that one is not able to synchronize Outlook '.pst' files or Access files. I came across the solution for this some time ago, but I always forget where. Time to put it in the blog so I can find it again.

KB article #252509 shows how to use the group policy editor to fix this.

Saturday, 08 May 2004 10:06:59 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 27 April 2004

At nearly every Nerd Dinner, Chris Sells points out again how wonderful X1 Search is. In fact, he blogged about it last month.

Well, today I got a note from NewsGator that is offering NewsGator at no cost with the purchase of X1! And for those of us who already have NewsGator, we get 30% off of the purchase of X1 (which, not surprisingly, is about the cost of NewsGator)!

It's definitely time to check it out!

Tuesday, 27 April 2004 22:09:24 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 23 April 2004

As I mentioned here, the next Nerd Dinner will be on May 18th. Jim Blizzard just mentioned that we will have some very special, out-of-town guests at this dinner: A group from MSDN is driving all the way down from Redmond to see what we're all about!

Could this be the beginning of the Modern International Nerd Dinner Society (MINDS)?

Friday, 23 April 2004 12:56:41 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 16 April 2004

[Update: Date changed due to conflict with XPDX!]

Bliz is getting a good jump on it this time with some real, advanced warning. The next Portland Nerd Dinner will be on May 18th at Washington Square Food Court again.

These things just keep getting better. If the last one (here, here, here, and here) is any indication, we may have to pay off the staff at the food court to leave the place open for another hour or so. We had such great turn out for just a couple days warning, what might happen with nearly four weeks notice?

Friday, 16 April 2004 08:08:55 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Wednesday, 14 April 2004

I finally dug out my Win2K Server CD and installed Terminal Services so I can now run the server from my primary desktop. Very handy indeed.

In fact, I'm writing this blog in a browser window on my server, via a Remote Desktop connection from my desktop. But that's not all! I'm using Remote Desktop from my laptop to login to my desktop, also. Let's get this straight: I'm using my laptop to access the desktop with Remote Desktop and then using that machine to log into the server; also via Remote Desktop. This is just so cool!

Chris Tavares happened to mention using this same concept as an alternative to virtual PCs tonight at the PND. As soon as I get a bit of time this summer, I'm going to (re-)assemble some more machines around here to allow more of this kind of work.

I love technology!

Wednesday, 14 April 2004 23:55:30 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 02 April 2004

From the Microsoft PressPass site:

Microsoft and Sun Microsystems Enter Broad Cooperation Agreement; Settle Outstanding Litigation

Ten Year Agreement Sets New Framework for Industry Cooperation; Reduces Cost and Complexity for Customers

What next? Israel and Palestine go to church together? Ireland and England sit down for a pint? Everyone refuses to kick anyone else off of the next Survivor island?

Friday, 02 April 2004 15:56:01 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 30 March 2004

It took me long enough, but I've finally upgraded this blog to dasBlog version 1.5. What a pleasure to find no significant issues :-).

The only thing that I missed was backing up my theme. I'm not sure that I successfully recreated it or not, but it's good enough.

Tuesday, 30 March 2004 13:36:12 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 20 March 2004

In my networking class this term, we built a simple chat program. It’s nothing fancy – type in your name, a server, and see what others are posting.

I decided to learn a little bit about .NET Remoting in this exercise. I found numerous examples (including some chat programs) demonstrating how easy it was to create such a program and felt confident with choice I had made. The only thing I had to add to the consolidation of information I had found was a way to select the server one was using.

Yeah… just that.

Now, it’s entirely possible that I missed some nugget of information out there and even that there is a different (better?) way of doing this, but I think I learned something of value through this exercise.

First, the app.config file I was using that worked fine was as follows:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
<configuration>
  <system.runtime.remoting>
    <application>
      <client>
        <wellknown
          url=http://ServerName:7777/LeChat
          type="LeChat.Broker.LeChatBroker, LeChatBroker"
        />
      </client>
      <channels>
        <channel
          ref="http"
          name="client"
          port="8888"
        >
          <clientProviders>
            <formatter ref="soap" />
          </clientProviders>
          <serverProviders>
            <formatter ref="soap" typeFilterLevel="Full" />
          </serverProviders>
        </channel>
      </channels>
    </application>
  </system.runtime.remoting>
</configuration>

With this file, one only has to load the settings with:

RemotingConfiguration.Configure( "AppName.exe.config" );

Easy! Of course, if I want to change the name of my server, what do I do?

Some of the learning I had:

The app.config file is meant to be a quasi-read-only file. Although one can write to it through various means, it is loaded at the launch of the application and cached for use throughout the activation – once the program is running, changing the app.config would make no difference.

All of the examples I found for loading the configuration in code were nearly identical:

HttpChannel channel = new HttpChannel( 8888 );
ChannelServices.RegisterChannel( channel );
RemotingConfiguration.RegisterWellKnownServiceType(
      typeof( LeChat.Broker.LeChatBroker ),
      "http://" + serverName + ":7777/LeChat",
      WellKnownObjectMode.Singleton );

This did not provide all of the parameters needed to make the two-way communication possible between the client and the server. In fact, kept going back and forth between having the chat text show up only on the server, or only on the client – depending on whether I registered a … ServiceType, or a … ClientType. Aarrrggghhh!

Finally, I started looking at the overridden constructor on the HttpChannel. I saw something about a IDictionary of ‘properties’ and realized I might be on to something. I started reading about SinkProvider’s and felt even closer. Finally, I had constructed the complete block of code that allowed my little chat program to work and I could insert any server name I needed to:

IDictionary configurationProperties = new Hashtable();
IDictionary serverSinkProviderProperties = new Hashtable();
configurationProperties.Add( "ref", "http" );
configurationProperties.Add( "name", "client" );
configurationProperties.Add( "port", "0" );
serverSinkProviderProperties.Add( "ref", "soap" );
serverSinkProviderProperties.Add( "typeFilterLevel", "Full" );
SoapClientFormatterSinkProvider clientSinkProvider =
      new SoapClientFormatterSinkProvider();
SoapServerFormatterSinkProvider serverSinkProvider =
      new SoapServerFormatterSinkProvider(
        serverSinkProviderProperties, null );
HttpChannel channel = new HttpChannel(
      configurationProperties,
      clientSinkProvider,
      serverSinkProvider );
ChannelServices.RegisterChannel( channel );
RemotingConfiguration.RegisterWellKnownClientType(
      typeof( LeChat.Broker.LeChatBroker ),
      "http://" + serverName + ":7777/LeChat" );

This turned out to be a more substantial investment than I had expected. I did get a chance to learn more about how this stuff works and I’m looking forward to reading Ingo Rammer’s book " Advanced .NET Remoting" to learn more. However, I felt compelled to document what I did so that I can re-learn it all if needed.

Saturday, 20 March 2004 13:22:47 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 20 February 2004

This month's PADNUG meeting is looking like it will be pretty darn good. Not only will it be Rory's last hurrah in the Portland area for a spell, but he will be assisted by the lovely and talented Chris Sells!

This should prove to be a great evening to introduce oneself to the wonders that are PADNUG. Not to mention that in Chris' absence, I will be bringing the boxes of swag to the party! You, too, could be a lucky winner of one of these beautiful gifts!

Friday, 20 February 2004 01:12:58 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 13 February 2004

Another Portland Nerd Dinner has come and gone. Fortunately, this time I got pictures to savor the day a little longer.

Being the last PND that we will likely see Rory at for a while, it had a special meaning for all in attendance. Chris Sells brought a fabulous piece of artwork and allowed all to sign the back as a memento to Rory.

This PND seemed to go longer than usual. It may have been the fine cuisine, the excellent company, or the brawl that nearly started nearby, but something just kept the attendees enthralled with the meeting.

Rory, we’re going to miss you while you are gone. We just may need to get a cardboard cutout of you to stand in!

Friday, 13 February 2004 00:29:40 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 09 January 2004

This is now my third post on these things (first, second). In the first, I mention my interest in getting one of these; in the second, I take my Christmas present back to Fry's and wait for another try.

What do you know? Microsoft announces a likely related product at CES this week! I knew there was a reason it must not have worked out. Now, if I can build a Windows XP MCE machine and not have to buy one of those less customized versions out there.

Friday, 09 January 2004 23:25:52 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 05 January 2004

As mentioned previously, I have put together a new computer. I dropped an AMD 'Barton' 2500+ on to a motherboard called LAN Party NFII Ultra. The compelling features of the MoBo were built in RAID and high speed FSB. It also has two LAN ports, surround sound, and all of the other 'cool' features that it should.

With 1.5GB of memory and more than 300GB of HD space, I've got some room to grow. I've partitioned the drives into seven segments to keep things better organized and to make backing up easier. Also, in that I've dedicated about 100GB for creating virtual PCs to use in development or general experimentation.

One thing that I found fascinating after building up the machine was the weight. over 50 pounds of PC in one tower box. Not exactly a portable machine :-).

Finally, maybe the most enjoyable new aspect is the addition of a third monitor. As previously discussed, I've been using two monitors for several years. Now, I can keep the 'monitoring' apps (IM, ActiveSync, Process Explorer, etc.) running on a third screen and use the full resolution of the other two for email, internet, debugging, and all other primary tasks.

Monday, 05 January 2004 13:08:54 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Sunday, 07 December 2003

Well, sure enough, more was wrong with my PC than just the video card. Maybe the card caused problems with the MoBo, too. In any event, I'm finally getting around to putting all the parts together that I've had and building a new PC.

In and of itself, that's some cool news... I've been looking forward to doing this. On the other hand, I wasn't thinking that FINALS week would be the best time to do it. Oh well; Always good to challenge oneself, isn't it?

When I'm done, I'll have a lot of space to breathe. I'm dropping a total of 640GB of hard drives and 1.5GB of memory into this thing. I plan to mirror 560GB of the hard drives so end up with a 'mere' 360GB of usable drive. In any event, I'll have a million times the drive space as my original Apple II had (I had two floppies) and something like thirty-four thousand times the memory.

Now it's time to get to work.

Sunday, 07 December 2003 20:59:27 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Friday, 05 December 2003

Over a month ago, I was going on about the wonder of having multiple monitors. Today before I took off to class, my computer suddenly shut down. I finally got it back up for a few moments before it stopped again and this time I could smell something emanating from the box.

Turns out that the fan had stopped spinning on my main video card. For tonight at least, I'm on a single monitor. It is very frustrating when one is used to having a lot more screen real estate. I just hope that I"ll be able to get one tomorrow and have it up and running by tomorrow night.

Friday, 05 December 2003 23:53:49 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]

There is a good chance that if you read this, you've come across Scott's blog before. Last night he and Jim Blizzard (aka "Microsoft") put on a great presentation of Longhorn at the PADNUG (Portland Area Dot Net User Group).

I've had a chance to read a great deal about Avalon and WinFS, but last night's demonstration really brought it home for me. And seeing <transform> being used to easily rotate and scale a portion (or all) of a form was dazzling. What is currently a challenging task becomes one line of code.

I've also become enamored with the search folders in Outlook2003. To see similar functionality provided in WinFS for the entire hard drive's contents was impressive.

Tonight, I had my regularly scheduled Scottification in our C# class at OIT. It was a chance for some code review and it truly held my interest.

Unfortunately, I scurried out quickly to come home and tend to my sick baby. Computer that is. Turns out that I had a bad fan on my main video card. I am know using just ONE monitor and I am going slightly MAD. But that's an other blog.

Friday, 05 December 2003 23:46:03 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Wednesday, 03 December 2003

There is recent discussion from Sean "Early" Campbell regarding the Gateway version of this product category.

This is a gadget that I'm trying to get sooner than later. When I described it to my wife, she even had an interest and gave a tentative 'go ahead' to the purchase.

In short, these things are a component for the entertainment system that will hook to your wired or wireless network. They are then able to access media collections (MP3, WMA, JPG, MPEG, etc.) from one or more PCs on the network. What formats are played depends on the particular device.

I've looked at more than half a dozen versions from Gateway, SMC, Creative Labs, HP, Prismiq, Linksys, and others. So far, I eliminated the Linksys and HP options for various reasons. The Gateway is still in the running, but the Prismiq seems to have the most going for it. I am hoping to see it in person to check out its features. Gateway is the only one that I've been able to see demoed (at the Gateway store, of course).

As easy as it is to get content onto the computer now and the likelihood that more will be there due to online music ordering, a device like this just makes sense. I'm not too concerned with the ability to play video, though; I figure that by the time I have a substantial amount of interesting video on my PC, there will be newer and better versions of these products on the market.

We'll have to see what Santa has in store this year!

Wednesday, 03 December 2003 16:33:10 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [2]
# Monday, 17 November 2003

Richard Tallent mentions the pleasure of using a 'PVR' for your viewing pleasure. I have to agree 100% with him.

We finally moved to satellite (Dish) this year and I popped for the PVR option. It has changed the way we watch TV. My wife, who is not the gadget-head that I am, even loves it.

I here some people say that they don't watch all that much television. I think those people will appreciate the device even more. Imagine that the occasions that you do choose to sit down and watch the telly, you get to watch your favorite programming. No more surfing all 200+ channels to find that there is nothing on.

and don't get me started on commercial skipping!

If you don't have a PVR, you won't understand the difference it makes to your viewing habits.

Monday, 17 November 2003 15:23:26 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Saturday, 15 November 2003

I read this blog from Chris Sells some time ago, but I can't get it out of my head: With digital distribution of movies to theaters, we could also make them available to home viewers, too. Probably not going to be as cheap as current PPVs, but for those of us that prefer the home theater to the public theater, it could be well worth it.

Love Movies; Hate Theaters; Windows, Take Me Away!

Saturday, 15 November 2003 00:21:01 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]

I first saw these slick little CSS menus back in August. Since I have started using dasBlog, I want to recapture the links here.

Easiest to reach: Mini-Tabs Shapes
Vertical version: Sun Report
Original version (?): Simplebits

Saturday, 15 November 2003 00:14:16 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 13 November 2003

Boy did Mark get me reminiscing. As I blogged on Chis Anderson's entry:

Oh yes. I remember the Apple ][. I remember going to "The Computer Store" in Eugene, Oregon - I was probably 14 or 15 years old - to select the system.

I got the computer itself, two floppy drives (big bucks), the SilentWrite (I think) thermal printer, and a word processing program. All for around $3,200. Have we come a long way or what?

This thing had a whole 48K of memory! And you must note that there was no hard drive. Back then, those things cost more than the comptuer for just five or ten megabytes of storage. There was no way for me to get one of those.

Also, I opted to use an old color TV for my monitor. Not the greatest picture, but at least it wasn't that green letter stuff. It's probably because of that experience that I can stand to look at 1600 x 1200 on my 19" monitor.

I did learn how to program in AppleBasic, but I really started having fun in the assembly language (was that a 6502 processor?). I made a little program that allowed me to program a course for a spaceship to follow. It worked much like the old Big Trak (here, also) truck: go forward '5', turn 'left', go forward '3', etc. This provided an early exposure to algorithms (not that I knew that at the time) in the way the image was painted on screen. The 'second' row in the video memory was like the seventh row on screen. Then, once you reached the bottom, the second screen row was painted. I don't remember the details, but it took a while to figure out how to move one pixel up or down from any spot on screen.

This 'addiction' that I was fulfilling started at my junior high school, though. We had the OTIS terminals (Oregon Technology something or other) that provided a select group of nerds access to an amazing new world. These were paper feed terminals - not those cool green CRTs. There were games and the ability to program. We tore apart the code to the games and learned how to rewrite them for added features.

Of course, the school got the cool new Commodore Pets and had a computer class the year I went to high school. I doubt that I would have learned as much in a class, though.

After ninth grade, I decided to take a class at the community college titled: Structured Programming in Basic. That is where I became enamored with the TRaSh-80s and their wonderful cassette tape storage system. I knew that I wanted to be a programmer at that point.

Unfortunately, when I reached college age, I went astray and tried my hand at 'business' studies. Here I am twenty years later, back in the fold and trying to recapture my youthful knowledge.

Most of that knowledge that I gained in youth left me in the intervening years. The last three years of school (Software Engineering) have only had scattered moments of recollection to those days. It sure is fun, though!

Thursday, 13 November 2003 13:09:03 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 28 October 2003

What a pleasant surprise! I had heard that we MSDN subscribers would get a copy of the Longhorn and Whidbey distros from PDC, but the info suggested that it would be December before they were available.

I called in to place my order (per instructions at the PDC site) and they tell me it will probably arrive within two weeks! As if I need the distraction, but I am very excited.

I'm especially enthused to try out the Whidbey preview. That is where my heart truly lies.

Tuesday, 28 October 2003 15:49:26 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 21 October 2003

All of a sudden, the blogsphere is bursting with the study showing how much more productive having multiple monitors is. I started using this over five years ago and can't imagine going back.

I have to agree with ScottH that nVidia's drivers seem to be especially good for this task.

I've had a 1600x1280 and an 1152x864 running for a long time. I just added a new LCD monitor for 1280x1024 and expect to add the smaller 1152 back into the mix after building up a new system.

In my setup, I will have the hi-res right in front of me, the LCD to the left and the lo-res above, center for 'monitoring' apps - IM, ActiveSync, Process Explorer, etc. Outlook 2003 is in front of me with browsers to the left. While developing, VS goes in front and extras on the left (Snippet Compiler, nUnit, debugging apps, etc.)

With the price of video cards as low as they are and monitors getting cheaper all the time (even the LCDs), it's time for you to give it a try.

Tuesday, 21 October 2003 02:16:42 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]