 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!
Thursday, 29 July 2010
| WHAT: | PADNUG Meeting - GeekRoadTrip | | WHEN: | Tuesday 07/29/2010 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Z-Tech Staffing)
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: | Steve Andrews' GeekRoadTrip
Steve Andrews is a Team System MVP and INETA speaker, and has been working as a developer for more than 9 years. During this time, he has designed and developed applications in such widely varying areas as trust accounting, medical information management, supply chain management, and retail systems. Steve is also a MCTS, ICSOO, and community fanatic. | | TOPIC: | Testing ASP.NET MVC Apps with VS 2010 Ultimate
Testing web applications has always been a manual and tedious process. With Performance Tests in Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate, automated web testing is now a reality. In this session, we'll look at created Web Tests and configuring parameters and database driven testing. We'll also look at performance testing your web applications to find and squash performance issues. | 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/
And, our appreciation goes out to Z-Tech Staffing for providing pizza for this additional meeeing: Z-Tech Staffing - http://z-techstaffing.com/
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Tuesday, 15 June 2010
| WHAT: | Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch | | WHEN: | Thursday 06/17/2010 (vCal Link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by PADNUG)
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~8:30 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse - Imbrie Hall | | WHERE: | Fiserv Cafe
3400 NW John Olsen Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124 | | TOPIC: | Portland Visual Studio 2010 Community Launch
Join us for a special Portland Area .NET User Group (PADNUG) program for the launch of Visual Studio 2010. Microsoft Regional Director Stuart Celarier and Microsoft Developer Evangelist Mithun Dhar will present highlights on what’s new in Visual Studio 2010, C# 4.0, .NET 4, as well as other products and technologies that make up the 2010 launch. This program will help you figure out what new features to dig into first, as well as make you a more effective developer. This event is free and open to the public, however registration is required as seating is limited: http://tinyurl.com/register-padnug-2010-launch. The first 200 registered people in the door will receive free, preauthorized access for Microsoft® WebsiteSpark™ which includes Visual Studio 2010 Professional and other valuable developer resources! Get excited, get the goods, and get started with Visual Studio 2010! | 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/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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, 22 March 2010
Scott Hanselman, a Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, will be speaking on .NET and other technology topics.
Many of you know Scott or have heard him speak. He is always both informative and entertaining. If you don't already subscribe to his blog, you should.
WebMD is hosting this event and will be providing lunch. It would really help our planning if you could send a quick e-mail to Rob Garrison if you plan to attend. This will help us plan for lunch.
The meeting will be in the large ballroom on the first floor. Parking is available on the west side of the building. Carpooling is encouraged.
This event is being held on Tuesday, April 13 at:
Montgomery Park
2701 NW Vaughn Street
Portland Oregon 97210
General Schedule:
9:00 - start
10:00 - break
10:15 - restart
11:15 - end talk, open for questions
11:45 - break for lunch
1:00 - done and out
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, 02 November 2009 Monday, 05 October 2009
Jeff Paries, author of Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation will be sharing some great insights with us this month. | WHAT: | October PADNUG Meeting | | WHEN: | Tuesday 10/06/2009 (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: | Jeff Paries
Jeff Paries is a Sr. Experience Developer for Waggener Edstrom Worldwide near Portland, Oregon. He's written a few books and a good number of magazine articles on 3D animation, and is the author of the book Foundation Silverlight 3 Animation. | | TOPIC: | Principles of Silverlight Animation
Come and learn the fundamentals of Silverlight animation. We’ll start at the beginning with a review of storyboards and keyframes, and then break free from storyboards and explore procedural animations. This is where the rubber meets the road and your objects come to life – vectors, frame-based animations, collisions, particle systems, and VR objects. | 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/
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
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!
Monday, 03 August 2009 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!
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
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!
Monday, 06 April 2009
It’s been about a year and a half since Wayne last joined us to teach more about developing with Scrum management. He’s continuing to refine the Agile processes his team is using and will share some of that experience with us.
| WHAT: |
April PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Tuesday 04/07/2009
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: |
Stuart Celarier
Stuart Celarier is Chief Software Architect of Aivea, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) in Connected Systems. His career spans more than two decades of development, architecture, writing, and training, with a focus on new and emerging technologies. His professional interests include the current and next generations of Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), Windows Workflow Foundation (WF), “Oslo” modeling platform, “Dublin” application server extensions, “Geneva” claims framework, .NET Framework 4.0, and Windows Azure. Stuart is co-founder of Portland Code Camp and frequently speaks at .NET user groups, conferences, and community events. He is a member of the Software Association of Oregon’s Development SIG committee. Stuart is an INETA Speaker and has volunteered with INETA since 2003, including co-chairing the community-led Birds-of-a-Feather track at Tech•Ed 2005–2009 and PDC 2005. |
| TOPIC: |
WCF Best Practices with Unit Testing
Stuart will present a simple, effective strategy for unit testing Windows Communication Foundation (WCF) services — as services rather than as objects — and then use unit tests as a means for exploring several best practices programming with WCF and service-orientation. Topics include understanding the relationship of services and objects, test-driven development (TDD) for services, contract-first service development, consuming services defensively, how exceptions and faults work (or don’t), and more. If you have been using WCF to work with services, this session will help you identify areas where you might improve your practices. And if you are just getting started with WCF, this session will help jumpstart your effort. |
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!
Sunday, 04 January 2009 Thursday, 04 December 2008 Friday, 14 November 2008
It's Nerd Movie time again!
For those who saw Casino Royale, you know that the Bond franchise has really updated their style. From IMDB:
Daniel Craig reprises his role as Ian Fleming's James Bond in Quantum of Solace, the 22nd feature in the 007 film franchise. Fueled by the betrayal of Vesper, the woman he loved, Bond's determination to track down the mastermind behind the sinister organization that blackmailed her takes him to Haiti, where he finds an unlikely ally in the beautiful and feisty Camille (Olga Kurylenko). The trail quickly leads to the ruthless Dominic Greene (Mathieu Amalric), but with the British Government and the CIA working against him, Bond must kill or be killed on his mission to uncover the truth.
As usual, we'll do this at Cinetopia. The movie starts at 3:15PM. If you are under 21, there are showings at 2:00PM and 4:45PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after.
Speaking of meeting up, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening.
Consider buying your tickets and arriving early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.
What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Sunday, November 16, 2008, 3:15PM Showing in Cinetopia's Living Room Theater
Why: Bond is Back!
Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...
...Be There and Be Square!
Thursday, 06 November 2008
Sponsored by
WHAT: November PDXUX.Net Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 11/11/2008
6:30 p.m. Pizza Dinner (by Microsoft)
7:00 p.m. Presentation
WHERE: North (Map)
1515 NW 19th Ave
Portland, OR 97209
 For this month's PDXUX meeting we are celebrating the recent release of Silverlight 2 with a launch party hosted by the folks at North.
Our featured presenter is Tim Heuer, who is a Senior Program Manager for Microsoft Silverlight. He helps build the worldwide Silverlight community and is very passionate about the platform and technology in general. Having over 13 years of experience with Microsoft web technologies, Tim is excited about the opportunities that Silverlight brings for developers and designers and wants to ensure that everyone has the best information and tools available to them for success. Tim can be found online at http://timheuer.com/blog.
Along with Tim's presentation, we'll have several demo stations featuring Silverlight locals Erik Mork, Kelly White, and Jason Mauer. Learn more about Silverlight 2 features and how you can utilize them in your own web applications.
We'll also be talking about BizSpark, Microsoft's brand new program for supporting startups, and how you can get involved.
Food, drinks, prizes and more -- don't miss out!
Register now for this event.
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, 06 October 2008
 We finally got Andrew to come speak to us! Of course, it helps when you ask nicely  . | WHAT: | October PADNUG Meeting | | WHEN: | Tuesday 10/07/2008 (vCal)
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: | Andrew Hay
Andrew Hay is a developer, speaker and author with 15 years of industry experience. Andrew started his career programming in Assembly language on a IBM OS/360 Mainframe computer in Chicago and leapt into the online experience in the late 90’s. Over the past five years at Pop Art, Inc, Andrew has been a champion of adding visibility into complex business processes. As Director of Software Development, he specializes in ASP.Net and its adjacent technologies including AJAX and Silverlight. Andrew earned a B.S. in Computer Science from North Central College in Naperville, Illinois. | | TOPIC: | Dynamic Data
ASP.Net Dynamic Data is a new feature in the Microsoft .Net 3.5 SP1 release. Dynamic Data extends the data models expressed through LINQ to SQL and the Entity Framework into a template-based website in seconds.
In this presentation, I'll start at File, New Project and cruise into how the System.Web.Routing namespace works. The Routing stack has crossed the boundary of the .Net MVC Framework and is finding niches in other technologies like Dynamic Data. From there, I'll tour the data driven site using standard display and edit controls for a variety of data types. Finally, I'll show how to implement specific behaviors, business logic and 3rd party controls that adhere to DRY principle. | 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/
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!
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
It's back-to-school time! Or, as kids nowadays say "bk2skl" (is that right? I'm such a fuddy-duddy). This works as a perfect time to have Nick come teach us more about PLINQ and how it can help us build applications better served by our multi-core processors.
| WHAT: |
September PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Tuesday 09/02/2008
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: |
Asynchronous fun with PLINQ
This presentation will discuss the growing importance of the asynchronous programming, particularly focusing on Microsoft’s PLINQ Technology - and of course, demos for the faithful. |
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/
* SoftSource Consulting - http://www.sftsrc.com/ * New Sponsor
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
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!
Monday, 14 July 2008
Posted by Kelly White: WHAT: July PDXUX.Net Meeting WHEN: Tuesday 07/15/2008
6:30 p.m. Pizza
7:00 p.m. Presentation WHERE: Robert Half Technology
KOIN Center (Map)
222 SW Columbia Street
Portland, OR 97201 
WHO: Erik Mork
Erik Mork is a speaker, consultant and Silverlight enthusiast in the Portland area. He specializes in Smart Client/RIA application development with Silverlight, ASP.NET AJAX, and other technologies. He's focused on making the web V.Next, and his consulting company can be found at http://www.silverbaylabs.org/. TOPIC: What's new in Silverlight 2 - Beta 2
What's the big deal with Silverlight 2? What's the story with the latest beta release? Is it ready for primetime? Erik tackles these questions by reviewing what Silverlight 2 is and where it's going. If you're new to Silverlight, this is an opportunity to understand it, and if you've already played with Silverlight, it's a chance to further learn about the platform. Applications will be presented for 1) fighting corporate greed and 2) mindhacking with Silverlight. Erik will have the mindhacking source code available for all attendees.
Friday, 13 June 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: |
June PADNUG SQL SIG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Tuesday 06/17/2008
6:30 p.m. Presentation
~8:30 p.m. After Words at Cornelius Pass Roadhouse? |
| WHERE: |
Corillian Cafe, now part of CheckFree, now a part of FiServ
3400 NW John Olsen Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124 |
| WHO: |
William R. Vaughn
Bill retired from Microsoft (in 2000) after 14 years to focus on mentoring, speaking, and writing. His specialty is data access application design especially when connecting to SQL Server. Bill has worked in the computer industry since 1972. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Mary Hardin-Baylor and a Master's degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from the University of Texas. He's also been awarded an Honorary PhD. from the University of Advancing Computer Technology in Tempe Arizona. Bill spent his early years working in the mainframe data processing industry and transitioned to the personal computer side in the late 70s. Along the way, he worked for the Texas DPS Narcotics Service, EDS (where he was recruited by and worked for Ross Perot), at Mostek/United Technologies, Challenge Systems, Digital Research, and CPT Corporation. After having surfed the PC industry for many years, he began his Microsoft years in 1986 working for the Windows developer liaison team at Microsoft in 1986. For the next 14 years, he worked in various divisions at Microsoft including Microsoft University, the Visual Basic documentation and Visual Studio marketing and Internal Technical Education teams before retiring in 2000 to form his own company, Beta V Corporation.
Bill has written seven editions of the popular Hitchhiker's Guide (the 4th, 5th and 6th published by Microsoft Press) and books for APress, including the bestseller ADO and ADO.NET Examples and Best Practices. Peter Blackburn and Bill also coauthored the Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server 2000 Reporting Services (Addison- Wesley). His latest work is Hitchhiker's Guide to SQL Server Everywhere-his first e-Book. He writes lead articles for SQL Server Magazine where he is a contributing editor, MSDN, and others. Bill also writes a bi-weekly editorial for Processor.COM magazine. Bill is a top-rated speaker at conferences worldwide, including keynotes and sessions at TechEd, DevWeek, Dev Connections, SQL Connections, VBUG, and many others - where his wit and no-holds-barred technical insights win him rave reviews. Bill is a Microsoft MVP. |
| TOPIC: |
Visual Studio Reporting
The inside scoop on how to get the most out of the new ReportViewer control and how it's evolved in Visual Studio 2008. This discusses how to leverage your Reporting Services skills and RDL reports to create application-based reports and how to manage the myriad of issues that come up when trying to emulate Reporting Services functionality like parameters, connections, pick-list population and much more. This session previews the SQL Server Reporting Services technology coming with SQL Server 2008. |
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, 03 June 2008 Thursday, 22 May 2008
It's Nerd Movie time again already!
Of course, it's driven by the movie that is playing. After almost twenty years, Indiana Jones is back in the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. How can any self respecting nerd pass this one up?
As usual, we'll do this at Cinetopia. The movie starts at 3:30PM. If you are under 21, there is a showing at 4:15PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after.
Speaking of that, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening.
Consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie.
What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Monday, May 26, 2008, 3:30PM Showing in Living Room Theaters
Why: Indiana Jones is Back!
Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...
...Be There and Be Square!
Sunday, 18 May 2008
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.
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in November of 2006, yet very few developers that I talk to are using it. Learning WPF can be a daunting task, and really who wants to subject themselves to learning this when it is unclear what the reasons and benefits are for moving to this platform.
This presentation will briefly explain the Whys and then show how you can start learning and developing for what has become the new standard for Windows Client Development.
| WHAT: |
May PDXUX.NET Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Tuesday 05/20/2008
6:30 p.m. Pizza (by White Horse)
7:00 p.m. Presentation |
| WHERE: |
Robert Half Technology
KOIN Center
222 SW Columbia Street
Portland, OR 97201 |
| WHO: |
Nick Muhonen
Nick, 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: |
Using WPF Now - the Why and the How
Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) was released in November of 2006, yet very few developers that I talk to are using it. Learning WPF can be a daunting task, and really who wants to subject themselves to learning this when it is unclear what the reasons and benefits are for moving to this platform.
This presentation will briefly explain the Whys and then show how you can start learning and developing for what has become the new standard for Windows Client Development. |
While you are at it, consider visiting our Premium Sponsors that make these meetings possible:
White Horse - http://www.whitehorse.com/
Robert Half Technology - http://www.roberthalftechnology.com/
O'Reilly - http://www.oreilly.com/store/
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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.
Monday, 12 May 2008
Call this a Public Service Announcement. On the heels of publishing his new book, Code Leader, Patrick Cauldwell will be presenting at the monthly SPIN seminar at OGI. You must sign up - so visit http://www.cpd.ogi.edu/course.asp?n=08-SPIN-0612 and register. It may seem like it is asking you to pay, but in the end, there is no cost for the event. Details are as follows and posted on the site . There is a lot more to delivering a software project on time and within budget than just writing code. In fact, in many modern software development efforts, the code is the least challenging part. The hard part is setting up a build, test and deployment infrastructure that allows developers to work together effectively and efficiently. Working efficiently with your source control system, and establishing a Continuous Integration process can go a long way toward achieving those goals. We'll look at how to organize your team and use the right tools to make the development process as efficient and effective as possible.
Friday, 02 May 2008
What a wonderful Spring that is upon us! Let's have a Nerd Event. Last time we did a movie (Portland Nerd MOVIE- Beowulf in 3D!), we had to go to the "Grand Theater" to enjoy the 3D view. This time, we return to the Living Room theaters! The movie starts at 4:00PM. If you are under 21, there is a showing at 4:30PM in the Grand Theater, too, though. If this is right for you and you would like to see your fellow nerds, let us know and we can meet up before or after. Speaking of that, Vinotopia - the restaurant at the theater - is great to bring your special someone to. Consider making that a part of your afternoon/evening. Consider buying your tickets early. I'd imagine that there will be a pretty good turnout for this movie. What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Sunday, May 04, 2007, 4:00PM Showing in Living Room Theaters
Why: Because Iron Man will Rock! Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course... ...Be There and Be Square!
Wednesday, 09 April 2008 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).
InnoTech: Oregon’s Largest Technology Event InnoTech – The Business & Technology Innovation Conference & Expo
Presented by Easystreet Online Services & Software Association of Oregon
April 16 & 17, Oregon Convention Center The InnoTech folks have come through again to help our members attend the show. This year, you have two options: a discount for the full package or free access to the general admission portion. Check out the Developers Track and the new Open Source Summit at InnoTech on April 17.
Information and registration at www.innotechoregon.com. Option 1: Discounted InnoTech Oregon Conference & Exhibits Pass includes Breakfast Presentation with Don Tapscott, Author, WIKINOMICS, at the reduced rate of $45.00 per person ($60.00 per person standard price.) Click to select INNOTECH GENERAL REGISTRATION and enter Discount Code ES345 to confirm your place at the breakfast. Option 2: Complimentary InnoTech Oregon Conference & Exhibits Pass does not include breakfast presentation with Don Tapscott. Click to select INNOTECH GENERAL REGISTRATION and enter Discount Code ES303. This year includes an impressive line up of national and local sponsors and supporters (all posted on the www.innotechoregon.com web site...check it out!) Here are a few of the InnoTech conference tracks & special events (ALL great reasons to take part in InnoTech): - Green IT/Clean Technology – April 16
- Open Source Summit – (five distinct presentations about open source and the business of software)
- Virtualization, data storage, cloud computing, security and much more
- InnoTech Happy 45-Minutes (the perfect place to mingle over complimentary beverages, appetizers, live music and exhibits)
- Developers Track – (Ruby, Agile, LINQ and more)
- And more!
I almost hate to admit that I found this humorous, but Scott Adams of Dilbert fame made me genuinely Laugh Out Loud today when I read his thoughts on the Large Hadron Collider. The first paragraph: My favorite story recently is about the lawsuit to stop the $8 billion Large Hadron Collider out of fear that it might shrink the universe to the size of a gnat turd. And I don’t mean the plump and juicy kind. .... Too much fun. I'm sure my mom would not like to know I laughed at that, though.
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.
Tuesday, 19 February 2008 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!
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!
Wednesday, 26 December 2007
I published this post originally on my blogger account on June 19, 2003. I was reminded again today how much I appreciated the company behind my home office chair. They have pretty much replaced the chair through parts they were willing to supply to make me a happy customer. They never asked for any money. I'm finally considering buying a new chair and you can imagine, they will be at the top of my list.
Ok, I am not going to expect a lot of visitation here since I am considering this 'just practice' for blogging. BUT, in case this is read, I need to let anyone know that there is a GREAT company out there making office chairs. Global Upholstery out of New Jersey (and built in Ontario) has taken exceptional care of this customer without asking anything in return.
They get something in return, though - I want to tell everyone to buy their products.
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, 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
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 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!
Sunday, 04 November 2007 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:
- This meeting will be held at Corillian in Hillsboro
- 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!
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, PADNUG, SAO 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!
Monday, 01 October 2007
To Everything, There is a Season It's now the season for which the Strahl migrates back to the islands. But, before he leaves the northwest, he will come to visit us at our 'September' PADNUG meeting. Note once again: we are meeting a week 'late' compared to what we would traditionally. As I mentioned last month, with the release of Halo 3 last week, it seemed appropriate to postpone our meeting to allow the most avid fans time to perfect their game. Availability will do the same for us next month, too. We are also looking to move our meetings to Tuesday or Thursday. Obviously, for the remaining meetings, we are planning on doing Tuesday. I'd be happy to hear some feedback for when we want to schedule our meetings next year. Since Wednesday's will not be available, it's our chance to shake things up again. | WHAT: | September PADNUG Meeting | | WHEN: | Tuesday 10/02/2007
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: | Rick Strahl | | TOPIC: | LINQ to SQL in a Business Layer
LINQ to SQL is one of Microsoft’s new OR mapping tools that aims to bring a more object oriented mechanism to accessing data. This talk introduces LINQ to SQL and some of its features and shows how it works and what you can do with it . The focus of this discussion is on using LINQ to SQL in the middle tier for proper data abstraction which requires some additional considerations to be made beyond the ‘quick demo’ usually shown for LINQ to SQL. I’ll share my impressions and thoughts as well as the beginnings of a small light weight business framework built around LINQ to SQL that simplifies data access, provides a few additional required DAL operations and facilitates the process of creating an abstracted data layer. | And 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, 11 September 2007
I think Chris has been the source of these type of tests before. But, hey, I couldn't resist. I just knew I could get a better Nerd score than him, too ! 
Thursday, 23 August 2007 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!
Thursday, 02 August 2007
 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.
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, 02 July 2007
Great Summer Greetings!
It has been way too long since we've had an officially sanctioned Nerd event here in Portland. That said, with the release of Transformers this week, we can resist no longer.
In order to kick things off really well, we're going to haul up to Vancouver to the finest theater in the Portland metropolitan area: Cinetopia. I described this theater a couple of months ago. Since our first visit last year to see Pirates #2, we've not gone to another theater; it's that good.
Since we want to make this event available to nerds of all ages, we will be looking to go to the Grand theaters (the Living Rooms are 21 and over only).
What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Cinetopia Theaters - 11700 SE 7th St, Vancouver, Washington
When: Saturday, July 7, 2007, 4PM Showing
Why: 'Cuz lotsa stuff will get blowed up!!!
Let any and everyone that might be interested know. And of course...
...Be There and Be Square!
Thursday, 21 June 2007
It's summer time here in the Portland Metropolitan area and of course that means that Rick is back with us! | WHAT: | June PADNUG Meeting | | WHEN: | Wednesday 06/27/2007
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: | Rick Strahl | | TOPIC: | A Data-Driven Approach to Localization
This session provides an introduction to localization with ASP.NET as well as demonstrating extending ASP.NET with a custom data driven ResourceProvider. The focus in this session is on localization from a developer perspective and getting an application set up and ready to be localized. The session covers the basics of cultures, utilizing resource providers and setting up ResX resources and dealing with the complexities of locale mapping in your applications. In the second half of the session we'll dig deeper and explore how to extend ASP.NET with a custom ResourceProvider that can use a database to provide more dynamic access to resources for editing and more control of resource generation. The session demonstrates and provides a fully data-driven resource provider along with an online Web Resource Editor that can be used to edit resources in real time in your running applications. | Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Saturday, 09 June 2007
Found via Chris Sells: [My] programmer personality type is: DHSC You're a Doer.
You are very quick at getting tasks done. You believe the outcome is the most important part of a task and the faster you can reach that outcome the better. After all, time is money. You like coding at a High level.
The world is made up of objects and components, you should create your programs in the same way. You work best in a Solo situation.
The best way to program is by yourself. There's no communication problems, you know every part of the code allowing you to write the best programs possible. You are a Conservative programmer.
The less code you write, the less chance there is of it containing a bug. You write short and to the point code that gets the job done efficiently.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
Wow... it's time to cap off some of our busiest times for conferences and presentations by visiting with Stuart Celarier about Microsoft's CardSpace.
| WHAT: |
May PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 05/30/2007 (Click for vCal link)
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: |
Stuart Celarier
Stuart is a staff software engineer at the Corillian Corporation, a leader in online banking software located in Hillsboro, Oregon. Stuart has 25 years of professional software development experience. He received the Microsoft Most Valued Professional (MVP) award for Connected System Developer in 2006. He is a director of the Portland Code Camp v3.0, and has served on the SAO Development SIG committee since 2005. He has been a speaker at user groups and Code Camps throughout the Pacific Northwest. Stuart is co-chair of the Birds-of-a-Feather track at TechEd 2007, and has co-chaired this community-led track at three previous national conferences. |
| TOPIC: |
Protecting Users and Websites using CardSpace
The dramatic increase in online fraud threatens to drive business and other high-value information exchange off the Internet. Microsoft, working with the software security industry, has created CardSpace, an identity system that encompasses current and future security systems, using open standards so that all vendors and platforms can participate. CardSpace allows a website to authenticate users in a highly secure manner, and prevents users’ information from being compromised by phishing sites or other malicious online attacks.
Come learn how CardSpace works by examining how Corillian, a leader in online banking software, is using CardSpace in our software to protect banks and their customers who bank online. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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. |
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.
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!
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!!
Wednesday, 18 April 2007
Okay folks, here we go. Unfortunately, the Microsoft office is not available this month, but since many of us will likely be downtown attending the InnoTech Conference, we've worked with the organizers (Thank You, Sean) to make room for us there.
As I sent out last week, the InnoTech Conference will be a great place to be even if we were still meeting on the west side. Feel free to run out to the site and register. Discount Code of "DEV999" will continue to be valid for a period of time... this will allow those that would like to attend the conference in conjunction with our meeting to do so at no cost.
Don't forget: the Max line goes right to the Convention Center, too. Don't get yourself caught in the Highway 26 traffic if you can help it!
| WHAT: |
April PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 04/25/2007 (Click for vCal link)
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Ascentium)
6:30 p.m. Presentation |
| WHERE: |
Oregon Convention Center
Room D137
777 NE Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
Portland, Oregon 97232 |
| WHO: |
Phil Weber
With nearly 20 years of software development experience, Phil Weber's client list includes Intel, Kaiser Permanente and Wells Fargo Bank. He has worked with VB since 1993 and .NET since 2001. In addition to serving on the INETA Speaker Bureau, Phil is a Visual Basic MVP and has spoken at numerous conferences in the U.S. and abroad. He currently works as a technical instructor for Corillian Corporation, an e-finance enabler. |
| TOPIC: |
The Last Data Access Layer You’ll Ever Write
Stop writing data access code! One reason for Ruby on Rails' popularity is that it frees developers from the drudgery of hand-coding data access. Sure, Visual Studio's TableAdapter Wizard is nice, but it takes a lot of clicks to generate a complete data access layer, and you get to do it again each time the database schema changes. This session will introduce you to some open-source ActiveRecord implementations that give you the benefits of Ruby on Rails without requiring you to abandon the comfort of ASP.NET. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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! 
Sunday, 15 April 2007
It is the season again for all to step up and help Scott in the fight against Diabetes.
Last year, Scott raised $12,000 this way. The goal is now $50,000! Seems quite doable to me! I'll be adding to your coffers, Scott... heck, maybe I can even help in the walking part  .
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
 InnoTech, the region's most comprehensive business and technology event, offers two full days of conference sessions and one, focused day of exhibits (Thursday, April 26th only). This year's jam-packed agenda includes the return of the eMarketing Summit (now with two tracks!), the Oregon CIO Summit and IT Executives of the Year Awards, InnoTech's Happy Hour (a great networking opportunity!) on Thursday, April 26th, and, of course, the latest on Open Source, Agile, Security, and the latest, exciting innovations in business and technology. This year, InnoTech is offering a new, Developers Track. Because of the involvement that PADNUG has had with organizing this event, the conference has offered a limited number of complimentary passes to the general InnoTech Conference. The first 20 people to register using the Discount Code DEV999 will receive complimentary admission to InnoTech this year. Lead sponsors include Microsoft, Comcast, Akamai, OTBC and others. For a complete listing of presentations, speakers and to register visit www.innotechoregon.com.
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.
Saturday, 17 March 2007
 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: - Extra Wide Leather Seating
- Extra Wide Rows
- 50% Steeper Stadium Seating
- Digital Super High Definition Projection
- Finest Dolby / Klipsch Sound System
- Giant Curved Screens up to 50 feet wide
- Special Living Room Theaters with Private Box Seating
- Premium Concessions / Gourmet Popcorn Bar
- Gourmet Restaurant – 4 Star Chef
- Lunch and Dinner available in Theaters
Friday, 02 March 2007
All the way from Australia, Microsoft MVP and Regional Director Adam Cogan will be joining us for a very special BONUS PADNUG presentation.
| WHAT: |
March BONUS PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 03/07/2007
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Corillian Corporation)
6:30 p.m. Presentation |
| WHERE: |
Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124 |
| WHO: |
Adam Cogan
Adam Cogan, all the way from Australia, is the Chief Architect at SSW, a Microsoft Certified Partner specializing in Office and .NET Solutions. At SSW, Adam has been developing custom solutions for businesses across a range of industries such as Government, banking, insurance and manufacturing since 1990 for clients such as Microsoft, Quicken, and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. |
| TOPIC: |
Rules to Better Code and Successful Projects
Managing a team of coders can be a tricky experience, especially as most coders like to do things their own way. During this session we go through a list of rules that help make the development process as smooth as possible. These rules govern the creation of specifications and schedules, best methods for testing and fixing bugs and even the employees working conditions.
He'll also likely cover some of his tools like SSW Code Auditor that can help you write better code. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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:
Monday, 04 December 2006
INETA has been kind enough to get Bill Vaughn to make the trip down to Portland to present to us this month. This is going to be a fabulous presentation and I expect to gain a lot of knowledge on this one.
Come out to this months meeting to learn about ADO.Net connecting.
| WHAT: |
December PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 12/06/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by INETA)
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 $3 parking fee. The kiosk for paying for parking is located between entrances B and C. |
| WHO: |
William (Bill) Vaughn
An industry-recognized author, B will illustrate how to connect to SQL Server and other backend servers. He's been in the industry for over thirty years- working with mainframe,minicomputer and personal computer systems. Bill has written six editions of "Hitchhikers Guide to Visual Basic and SQL Server". Bill is a top-rated speaker and we are honored to have him. |
| TOPIC: |
ADO.Net Connecting
Learn how you can use connection options that can help your application connect quickly and stay connected as well as encrypt your connection string. The session includes examples of the new SqlConnectionStringBuilder, the new User instance feature of SQL Express and even funtionality like FullTextSearch and Reporting Services. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Thursday, 09 November 2006
It sounds like Cory Smith has one of those MVP MSDN Subscription cards available and he's giving it away!
The theme is "What would you do to get one?" and it's a great opportunity. Think about it... a subscription just in time for the release of Windows Vista and Office 2007. What more can you ask for?
The idea is to be creative... it doesn't sound like you would actually have to perform your act to win. But don't let me be the final say on that!
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:  <-- Before After-->
I'm just so darn happy! Hey, it's the little things that count.
Thursday, 02 November 2006
Oops! What happened to October? I think we got a little too busy. Bad Nerd Herder... Bad! Well, we can make up for this faux pas next week. Oh, and you should come out to say "so-long" to Phil as he has become Borg! Another one lost. I just hope there will be some nerds left in the Portland Metro Area in the future. What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Lloyd Center Food Court (Third Floor; typically, straight out from Billy Heartbeats - 2039)
When: Tuesday, November 7, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: To give others a chance to teach Rich about Time and Space! Be There and Be Square!
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, 25 August 2006
I've read enough that I guess I just have to try this out. Nothing too interesting, though. I may just play with this for a few weeks and see if it motivates me to post more often. I am impressed with how easy it was to set up. UPDATE: Okay, that was really easy. Admittedly, I haven't played with any of the posting tools, so I really don't have a clue, but goodness... that's too easy. UPDATE V2.0: Well, in fact, Live Writer has got me blogging more often and the plug-ins are making me happier all the time.
Thursday, 24 August 2006
This is just one of those little reminders to self. Self, you never seem to remember how to assign the return value from a stored procedure to a variable in SQL. I try various forms and always seem to miss the right one. So, in an effort to mark it for my future use, I place it here in the blog.
One does NOT accomplish it through any of these methods:
DECLARE @ReturnedValue INT
SET @ReturnedValue = StoredProcedure @Param1, @Param2
IF( @ReturnedValue = @Something )
BEGIN
--Do This Stuff
END
DECLARE @ReturnedValue INT
SET @ReturnedValue = StoredProcedure ( @Param1, @Param2 )
IF( @ReturnedValue = @Something )
BEGIN
--Do This Stuff
END
DECLARE @ReturnedValue INT
SET @ReturnedValue = EXEC StoredProcedure @Param1, @Param2
IF( @ReturnedValue = @Something )
BEGIN
--Do This Stuff
END
DECLARE @ReturnedValue INT
SET @ReturnedValue = EXEC StoredProcedure ( @Param1, @Param2 )
IF( @ReturnedValue = @Something )
BEGIN
--Do This Stuff
END
One does by this method:
DECLARE @ReturnedValue INT
EXEC @ReturnedValue = StoredProcedure @Param1, @Param2
IF( @ReturnedValue = @Something )
BEGIN
--Do This Stuff
END
I just have to remember the order. I suppose it makes sense when I see it, but I forget when it's time to type it. It's just too easy to get mixed up with Function format.
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, 02 August 2006
Not surprisingly, with the fabulous, big Code Camp event last month, there wasn't a place for having a Nerd Dinner. Heavens, we had enough food, fun, and geeking out that day to last until the next month!
Well, guess what? The next month has arrived!
We're going to kick it off early this month and finally get back to the West side of town for one. Heck, it's been four months since we visited Washington Square - we can only hope that they have found other business to keep them running while we've been away.
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor; typically, straight out from Picture People)
When: Wednesday, August 9, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: To keep the food court at Washington Square afloat!
Be There and Be Square!
Monday, 24 July 2006
Come out to our July meeting to learn about Amazon Web Services.
| WHAT: |
July PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 07/26/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza (by Centerstance)
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: |
Mike Culver
Amazon Web Services Evangelist, will provide an overview of Amazon Web Services and show you the possibilities created by these innovative offerings |
| TOPIC: |
Amazon Web Services
Learn how you can create innovation applications and launch online businesses leveraging world-class technology and content platform that powers the Amazon web site for millions of customers everyday. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Friday, 23 June 2006
A group from work went to have lunch at the Merchant of Venice Cafe today and had an absolutely horrible time of it. I guess the quickest way to go is to bullet the problems...
- Smallish circular table for seven big guys... and no, they can't push two other tables together for us despite having done so for an other group despite the specific request to do so.
- "Sorry... not enough menus so you'll have to share." Three menus for seven people and one 'Specials' sheet. First, there was hardly anyone in the place yet. Second, why don't you have enough for everyone?
- Small glass of lemonade of which they ran out... and still charged the full two dollar price!
- Three of us ordered small pizzas. Mine was different. They brought out three of the same.
- The waiter actually came back w/ the wrong pizza and asked, "wouldn't you like the same pizza as your friends?" You've got to be kidding!
- The remake of the pizza took so long, I finally told him that we needed to go and to forget it. It was still on the bill.
- It took so long for the bill to arrive that the pizza finished. He offered to pack it and not charge; even though it had already been charged.
- Got the togo... it was burnt, not as-ordered, and packed in a box half the size needed.
I've been to this store once before and it was fine. This time convinced me to never go again. The fact that everything went wrong is forgivable if they take the time and effort to make it up to you. They just didn't seem to care.
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!
Wednesday, 14 June 2006
Let's have a Nerd Dinner!
What perfect timing: Next week there's this little MSDN Event. It's on Tuesday. It's across the street from the Lloyd Center. Doesn't this sound like a great reason to get a bunch of nerds together?
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Lloyd Center Food Court (Third Floor; typically, straight out from Billy Heartbeats - 2039)
When: Tuesday, June 20, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: We're Going to Be There Anyway!
Be There and Be Square!
Friday, 02 June 2006
Via Travis at Parasthesia:
Your results:
You are Will Riker
| Will Riker |
|
65% |
| James T. Kirk (Captain) |
|
60% |
| Worf |
|
60% |
| Geordi LaForge |
|
55% |
| Chekov |
|
50% |
| Jean-Luc Picard |
|
50% |
| Spock |
|
47% |
| Mr. Scott |
|
45% |
| Uhura |
|
40% |
| Data |
|
40% |
| Leonard McCoy (Bones) |
|
35% |
| Deanna Troi |
|
35% |
| An Expendable Character (Redshirt) |
|
35% |
| Beverly Crusher |
|
30% |
| Mr. Sulu |
|
15% | |
At times you are self-centered
but you have many friends.
You love many women, but the right
woman could get you to settle down.
 | Click here to take the Star Trek Personality Quiz
Saturday, 27 May 2006
Come out to this month's meeting to learn tricks to building a reusable ASP.NET toolbox. Mark your calendar and come join the fun.
| WHAT: |
May PADNUG Meeting |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 05/31/2006
6:00 p.m. Pizza
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: |
Building a reusable ASP.NET Toolbox
This session demonstrates some re-usable tools, classes and components that every Web Application should integrate. Every application needs a core set of features, like managing configuration settings, handling and reporting errors consistently, logging requests, providing application status information, displaying consistent error and information message pages, managing application cookies consistently and more. In this session I'll demonstrate a handful of useful utility classes and processes that accomplish these tasks in a reusable fashion and show how they work under the covers. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Tuesday, 23 May 2006
This is a question asked of Google that led to my blog today. Of course, I haven't blogged on such a thing, but I figure what the heck? Let's do it!
For the next person that searches for such an item, the opposite of SELECT TOP is also SELECT TOP. Huh? You simply change the ORDER BY clause to be descending. For example, if you have a query such as:
SELECT TOP 10 FirstName, LastName, BirthDate
FROM Persons
ORDER BY LastName, FirstName
then the opposite would be:
SELECT TOP 10 FirstName, LastName, BirthDate
FROM Persons
ORDER BY LastName DESC, FirstName DESC
Simple, huh?
You may be asking, "What if I don't care about the order?" Then I have to say that you don't really care about TOP versus BOTTOM, either as you are going to get a random (as far as we know) set of rows in either case.
Monday, 22 May 2006
It's coming this weekend! X-Men: The Last Stand is released as of Friday and we're going to celebrate immediately.
If you would like to Fandango, click <<here>>.
What: Portland Nerd Dinner Movie
Where: Century 16 Cedar Hills Crossing (Cedar Hills Crossing used to be Beaverton Mall)
When: Friday, May 26, 5:20 PM (Get there early if you can! It's opening night!)
Why: 'Cuz it's the coolest movie this year!
Be There and Be Square!
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....
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!
Wednesday, 19 April 2006
It's that time again! Nerd Dinner!
Can you believe the great weather we're having this April?!? Let's celebrate the coming of this wonderful spring by getting together for some crappy mall food out Lloyd Center way...
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Lloyd Center Food Court (Third Floor; typically, straight out from Billy Heartbeats - 2039)
When: Tuesday, April 25, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Look Folks! It's Spring!
Be There and Be Square!
Wednesday, 22 March 2006
Come out to this months meeting to learn some more about Atlas (Microsoft's upcoming implementation of AJAX).
The reason is that although the hype around AJAX is sure to fade, the technology itself will be around for a long time. That is, AJAX/Atlas helps solve a long-standing problem (avoiding server round-trips), and this allows web applications that are (potentially) more responsive.
| WHAT: |
March PADNUG Meeting. |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 03/29/2006
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: |
Erik Mork
Erik was trained as a biochemist. Currently, he works for Tranxition Corporation where he is heading up development of a secret application that will change how users manage their personal data. |
| TOPIC: |
Atlas Shrugged
A Presentation on Atlas. While Microsoft only released a preview of Atlas, it is becoming increasing clear when the next-generation of web applications are made, they will be made (at least in part) with Atlas. |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
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]
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?
Wednesday, 15 February 2006
Come out to this months meeting to learn some more about how you may be using LINQ to improve productivity in your projects.
"The LINQ Project is a codename for a set of extensions to the .NET Framework that encompass language-integrated query, set, and transform operations. It extends C# and Visual Basic with native language syntax for queries and provides class libraries to take advantage of these capabilities."
(http://msdn.microsoft.com/netframework/future/linq/)
Personally, I find this technology very compelling.
| WHAT: |
February PADNUG meeting. |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 02/22/2006
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: |
Nick Muhonen
Nick is a Portland area consultant with over 5 years experience in the .Net Framework. He is currently certified as both an MCT and an MCSD. |
| TOPIC: |
How LINQ Will Improve Your Everyday Life
A Presentation on the LINQ tool-set and the upcoming .Net C# 3.0 language extensions. The topic will compare current methods of Data retrieval in ADO.Net 2.0 with the new LINQ Tools. And of course- DEMOS for the faithful! |
Looking forward to seeing you all there!
Friday, 03 February 2006
Many of you are probably in the know: Chris Tavares is going to be leaving the Portland area soon. He's taken up with this little software company in the Redmond, Washington area and we want to send him off right.
Fortuantely, Chris was able to get out of a trip north for some silly house-closing deal. Folks haven't told him how nice the sidewalks are up there yet.
And if you don't get the whole Last Supper deal, please feel free to contact Ted.
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor; typically, straight out from Picture People)
When: Thursday, February 9, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: Because it's ChrisT's Last Supper!
Be There and Be Square!
Sunday, 25 December 2005
I found out recently that my nephew, Jeff, is selling his beautiful home in Carnation, Washington. It's a 2,870 square foot custom built home with one of the most fabulous kitchens around. Darn reasonable drive for any of you Microsoftees out there .
The description from the Coldwell Banker site:
Custom Northwest Design with unique features not found in other area homes. The gourmet kitchen will delight you from the copper countertops to the travertine sink. The island features a riverrock front,log footrails, and accent lighting. Top of the line appliances/cabinetry. Open floor plan with the great room featuring a floor to ceiling riverrock fireplace. The upper level bonus room overlooks the great room below. First floor master suite w/double headed shower(s) & 6' antique clawfoot tub.
He's just one block from Lake Joy (link, but an annoying cursor) and a wonderful community.
I think it's a shame that he's selling it, but his job has moved farther north and he figures he can build a new one much closer.
I found this idea from Michael Swanson's blog inspiring. Carry a stack of cards with you to let people know when a bit of kindness has found its way to them.
Now, I'm all for providing such deeds anonymously, but there are two important reasons to hand out this card:
- Allow someone to know that good things can happen to them and that one just did.
- Motivate one more person to provide a good deed to another.
Hey, enough people started doing this daily, we might just have a problem wiping the smiles off of everyone's faces. Give it a try!
Monday, 28 November 2005
Inspired by Marc Hedlund's Wishlist Wishlist, I started thinking about my disappointment with Amazon's Recommendations feature. I was going to leave a comment, but I realized that it was going to be too long and just enough off-topic that I should write my own entry.
I really want to like the Recommendations on Amazon. I continue to add ratings and data to the system in hopes that one day it will provide me valuable recommendations that I can use. But so far, it seems to be getting worse.
How do they recommend "Titanic (Special Collector's Edition)" because I rated "Airplane - The 'Don't Call Me Shirley' Edition"? Why on Earth would this be considered legitimate? And "Vanishing Point" because I rated "Boiling Point"? Is this based on both having the word 'point' in the title? It would seem.
And Amazon, because I like some TV shows doesn't mean I like all TV shows. You don't have to 'recommend' every television series that makes it to DVD to me now. Oh, and here is a great one: my wife is interested in picking up "Seven Faces of Dr. Lao" (a wonderfully weird movie with Tony Randall and Barbara Eden... check it out) so we added it to the Wishlist. Now what do they recommend? "The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T," a Dr. Seuss adventure.
I suppose I'll keep updating information on occasion in hopes that when they do eventually fix it, it will have been worth it. But my patience wears thin.
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.]
Wednesday, 09 November 2005
Why would I post that?
As a Public Service Announcement, of course. I was looking at my logs today and noticed that someone(s) had visited my blog site after searching for "Hillsboro Store Opening Costco.com" on MSN Search. Not the strangest thing I've seen, but I must say, I am looking forward to this new store.
Finally, we'll have a Costco within a reasonable drive from home that sells gasoline. In addition, it's slated to be one of the largest Costco in the world* larger (largest?) of their stores in Oregon. This means even more goodies to tempt oneself with.
Now, for anyone else that wanders this way looking for the store, it will be opening on November 17 and will have treats being served early (~8:30, as I recall). It's at the corner of Northeast 48th and Cornell (1255 NE 48th Ave, Hillsboro, Oregon 97124) in Hillsboro, just a tad east of the airport. If you follow the link to the Google map, you'll note that the property was already clear when the picture was taken - that's a McDonald's right at the corner.
Hope you enjoy!
[*Oops! I didn't realize how big this store really is! It's HUGE!]
Monday, 07 November 2005 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.
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)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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!
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! ).
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.
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:
- 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.
- 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.
Sunday, 17 July 2005
I would be remiss in not noting the passing of another year in the life of the Blizzard. Happy Freakin' Birthday to the father of the Portland Nerd Dinner! We sure miss you up here!
Hope you all had a great Code Camp and we'll be posting the results from ours really soon.
We're still waiting for the pictures from Dennis. I fully expected you to be out there in the middle of it all bringing us live coverage of the storm as it passed the Tampa area.
Have a great 20th (?) birthday, Jim and come see us someday.
Wednesday, 13 July 2005 Sunday, 10 July 2005
Oh thank heaven! I'm very pleased with the result, but I'm sure that there are plenty of people that would debate it - especially the 'not annoying' part .
I am 15% Idiot. I am not annoying at all. In fact most people come to me for advice. Of course they annoy the hell out of me. But what can I do? I am smarter than most people.
Thanks, Greg, for pointing me to this.
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!
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!!
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.
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!
Monday, 30 May 2005
Another one of these "solution needed for the workplace" type of blog entries. First, I know - putting nearly 100,000 items in a control might suggest an alternative method, but accept that it's the right solution for the moment. There... don't we feel better?
Now, the situation is that I need to populate a listing type of control with between 80,000 and 100,000 items. Honestly, I would have gladly used a combobox or a listbox, just as long as it provided some means to come up quickly.
It surprised me that creating the collection of items could be so quick yet populating the control was so slow. But, I've come to accept that fact and went searching for a control that was a bit 'smarter' about its contents.
What I found was a Virtual ListBox implemented on vbAccelerator.com. It fits the bill well for my needs. The only thing to add to it is the ability to accept keyboard input to quickly move to items in the list. That is on the docket for next week .
Some time ago, I was asked to devlop some reports for a little tracking application I'd written for my employer. In my past life, I did a lot of this work (heck, it was my job!) and feel pretty comfortable using Excel to twist my numbers around in all sorts of Pivot-y ways.
What I hadn't done is to create pivots that were conditional and customized. I suppose, with further exploration, I'd find reasonable ways to accomodate my needs from within Excel, but I had a moment's epiphany - why not just build the proper pivot query in SQL to begin with?
I know I had seen it done, but never took the time to find out details. So, with this new thought, I did a bit of exploring - Duh! That's easy! Simply count conditionally for each column.
So, for posterity's sake - and my own future needs - here follows the basic structure for doing a pivot table with a SQL query (Counts number of items for a given number of weeks prior to current):
SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT
'Opened On Week' AS LineType,
'All Modules' AS AppModule,
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 4 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "4 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 3 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "3 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 2 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "2 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 1 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "Last Week",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 0 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "This Week"
FROM PivotTableView
UNION
SELECT TOP 100 PERCENT
'Opened On Week' AS LineType,
Application + ': ' + ModuleName AS AppModule,
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 4 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "4 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 3 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "3 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 2 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "2 Weeks Ago",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 1 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "Last Week",
COUNT( CASE WeeksBackOpened WHEN 0 THEN IssueId ELSE NULL END )
AS "This Week"
FROM PivotTableView
GROUP BY Application, ModuleName
ORDER BY AppModule, LineType
Saw an interesting article up on The Code Project suggesting eleven Tufte inspired 'concepts' that could be incorporated into future versions of Visual Studio.
I'm not completely sold on all of the ideas presented, but what a great exercise to see published. Having an article like this and seeing the resulting discussion can really help open one's mind to what might be possible.
Tuesday, 24 May 2005
Just to keep you really busy, we have our PADNUG meeting on the 25th, the Visual Studio Team System Technical Training on the 26th, and TechEd starting in less than two weeks. Shortly after that, we will be looking forward to the first Northwest Code Camp
In the mean time, I want to remind you of what we have planned for the May PADNUG meeting. Many of you have now met Jason Mauer at various functions from PADNUG meetings to Nerd Dinners. His knowledge ranges from databases to DirectX.
| WHAT: |
May PADNUG meeting. |
| WHEN: |
Wednesday 05/25/2005
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: |
Jason Mauer
Developer Evangelist with Microsoft covering the Pacific Northwest. He recently switched to his current role from his previous one as a development consultant with Microsoft Consulting Services, where he specialized in .NET application development and SharePoint development for the past four years. Jason has extensive experience with customizing SharePoint and has worked on some of the largest SharePoint deployments in the world. |
| TOPIC: |
The Ins and Outs of SharePoint Development
In this presentation we will cover different opportunities for developers to build on top of the SharePoint platform. We will walk through the SharePoint stack, demonstrating different means of customization and why you may (or may not) want to adopt a certain approach. Come and learn about how you can make SharePoint a part of your development arsenal. |
Jason promises some extra special swag, too .
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.
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.
Jason Olsen has done it... he has left the safety of GeeksWithBlogs to venture out on his own blogging trek.
Congratulations Jason! I'm sure we will see all the more content from you and I think you will enjoy using the dasBlog software. I'll be looking forward to reading your crazy content and humorous anecdotes.
Now, Jason, go into your configuration and choose "Use Post Title for Permalink" so that you get the cool, clean linkies :).
Okay, let me be lazy and simply copy the information I put up at nerddinner.com:
Alright, I've abused this privilege twice by having the Nerd Dinner on my side of town. It's time to reciprocate. Let's all head on over to the east side of town this month. Just one week before his presentation at PADNUG, you can come experience Jason Mauer in all his candor.
Plus, folks, he's got VS2005 Beta 2 DVD kits! As he mentioned to me, “the DVD kits include VS2005 Team Suite Beta 2, Team Foundation Server Beta 2, and the April CTP of SQL Server 2005... a hefty load, even for a cable modem.“
Noted, Jason. And well worth a trip to the mall!
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Lloyd Center Mall food court
When: Wednesday, May 18, starting around 6:30 PM
Why: We want them disks!
Be There and Be Square!
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!
 Last fall, I was shocked to read an opinion piece form local editorialist Steve Duin (locked away in the 'paid' area of The Oregonian). As outlined in the Beaverton Valley Times, the Beaverton School District realized that they had more money than expected. With that new awareness, they voted to not collect the second year of an option levy that the voters had approved.
I actually had to reread the article - when the budget situation improved, they actually 'gave back' the tax money they had requested to make ends meet? Was this for real?
It turns out that it was for real. Further, I knew one of the people involved with this decision. Craig Irwin spends many of his days helping out at my favorite local spot, Nonna Emilia Ristoranté. He and his associates on the school board decided to not take money they didn't need.
As stated by board chairman Mike Osborne, “We want to be consistent and true to our word. When we needed the money, we used it. If we don’t need it, we’re not going to take it.” The idea was, if they were honest with the voters - giving back the money they realized they didn't need as expected - they would be in a better position to come back to the voters if needed in the future.
Sounds like a good idea to me. Of course, there are those that didn't agree. Dawn Bonder is one of these people and is challenging Osborne in the coming election. She's very involved with schools, but seems to be willing to do it all on credit... yeah, that's what it seems like... credit.
I really hold out hope that the government bodies will one day run a bit more like other entities - spend what is available or repayable.
Mike and Craig, you have my vote. I trust that you'll do the right thing.
Wednesday, 04 May 2005 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.
Wednesday, 27 April 2005
To make way for a hyperspace bypass, of course. As mentioned here, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is coming this Friday. Chris Sells has posted a note inviting any and all to the viewing at 7:35pm at the Regal Evergreen Theater in Hillsboro, Oregon.
I've seen various reviews all over the place. As pointed to here and here, there doesn't appear to be a consensus over the quality of the movie, but as Chris says, "I am really excited about this movie. I love the book and want badly for the movie to be an excellent alternate way for me to enjoy the Hitchhiker's universe." Bravo!
Come on out and join the gang.
Saturday, 23 April 2005
One of our fairly regular attendees to the Portland Nerd Dinners has started his blog!
At this last week's Nerd Dinner, I was amazed that John Hann hadn't already started sharing his knowledge with the world by self-publishing on a weblog. Then, last night at the Pirillo-inspired Geek Dinner, we had a chance to talk about it and I see that he took the leap today.
Welcome, John! After what I've heard from you, I'm expecting some great material on your blog... but, no pressure .
Tuesday, 19 April 2005
As I mentioned here, I'm "hearding the nerds" tonight at Washington Square. With some luck, Jason will have acquired some Visual Studio 2005 disks to pass around !
As it happens, it looks to be a nice evening, too. If folks are up to it, we might have a bit of Nerd Drinks after dinner, too. It'd be nice to spend a little time at McMenamins' Riverwood Pub - just a thought .
In any event, it's time again to Be There and Be Square!
Monday, 11 April 2005
Back in November, I got around to using Scott's cool routine for resizing DataGrid columns automatically. Now that I'm using it more often, I decided I wanted to make it a little more generic so that I didn't have to rewrite it for each DataGrid that I used it on.
With a simple change to using the 'sender', I no longer need to do any editing. Drop it in and wire it up! it's ready to go.
/// <summary>
/// Automatically resize the columns of a DataGrid to fit the
/// data within
/// </summary>
/// <param name="sender">The DataGrid that needs resizing</param>
/// <param name="e"></param>
private void DataSourceChanged( object sender, System.EventArgs e )
{
try
{
Type t = sender.GetType();
MethodInfo m = t.GetMethod( "ColAutoResize", BindingFlags.NonPublic
| BindingFlags.Instance );
for( int i = ( (DataGrid) sender ).FirstVisibleColumn;
( i < ( (DataGrid) sender ).VisibleColumnCount ); i++ )
{
m.Invoke( sender, new object[] {i} );
}
}
catch( Exception ex )
{
System.Diagnostics.Trace.Write( "Failed Resizing Columns: "
+ ex.ToString() );
}
}
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!
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.
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!
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.
Wednesday, 16 February 2005
...and catch a ride to see The Hitchhiker's Guide on April 29! Definitely a movie on my short list. Chris is rounding up the Portland Nerds for a trip to see the flick on opening day. I know that I'll be looking to take the afternoon off for this . (clip (for now)|clip)
I lost track of the number of times I've read these books. I enjoy all of the Douglas Adams stories. Several years ago (could it really be 17 years?), I managed to get down to Powell's Books to get a signed copy of The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. Trust me, I'm generally not one to go out of my way for something like that. I just had to meet Adams and shake his hand.
Keep an eye out for a bunch of nerds wandering around, looking up in to the heavens near the end of April. And remember, if you can't see what they are seeing, it just might be Somebody Else's Problem.
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!
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, 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!
Sunday, 30 January 2005
Our good friend Kathy over at Creating Passionate Users is discussing how much teachers and advertisers could learn from one and the other. A generally good read, to be sure, but it reminded me of a phenomenon that I've been experiencing of late.
Now that the majority of television we watch is at least 'delayed' with our DishNetwork PVR, it's easy and worthwhile to skip over the commercials. Program coming on at three o'clock that you want to see? Go to that channel and let it start recording. In fifteen minutes come in and start watching. After skipping commercials, you will probably be just about caught up by the end of the program.
Now, the problem is, of course, that the advertisers are not capturing the eyes that they once did. There are efforts to remove the skip feature from devices and to have different advertising pop up on screen while a person is skipping.
Some advertisers are curing the problem a better way; At least in my mind. They are making advertisements that are... well, now what's that word?... ah, "Interesting"! I find that I'm skipping through the commercials and something catches my eye. I'll actually skip backward to take a look!
Nationwide insurance has done this with an ad that plays off of Lowe's/Home Depot. This couple gets home from the big-box hardware store with their new ceiling fan. They install it, turn it on, and WHOOOSHH! the whole ceiling is alit. Kind of sad, but it's very entertaining and eye catching.
Advertisers - Make your commercials interesting and I won't skip them. If they are lame, don't expect me to endure it longer than it takes to press a button. It's worth it.
Wednesday, 26 January 2005
I've been finishing up my Software Engineering degree over the last couple of years with a fabulous gentleman named Jeff Sherwin. He's smart, patient, innovative, and a connoisseur of fine pizza.
Well, with just a bit of encouragement over adult beverages the other night, he finally took the plunge into the blogsphere. I'm looking forward to watching this little corner of the net grow.
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.
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!
Friday, 21 January 2005
[EMERGENCY NOTICE: Jim is leaving early - The Nerd Dinner will be on February 10th!]
I suppose that these things are bound to happen, but it doesn't mean that you've got to like it. As mentioned here, Jim Blizzard - Father of the Portland Nerd Dinner - is going to be heading south for the winter... and the summer... and the rest of the year after that, too.
We will be gathering Tuesday, February 15 to honor him one last time as a Northwesterner. It's time to Be There, Be Square, and Have a Share of this momentus occasion. Details are:
What: Portland Nerd Dinner
When: TuesdayThursday, February 1510, 2005, starting around 6:30 PM.
Where: The Lloyd Center food court
Why: Because (sniff) this is it for Jim...
Really, don't miss this one. :(
Friday, 14 January 2005
As I previously mentioned, the Head First series from O'Reilly just seems to work for me. Well, it appears I'm not alone in that view. HF Servlets and JSP and HF Design Patterns are finalists for the 15th Annual Software Development Jolt Product Excellence Awards. From Eric Freeman via the Creating Passionate Users blog:
Software Development's Jolt Product Excellence and Productivity Awards have been presented annually to products that have "jolted" the industry with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier and more efficient. Jolt cola, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software programmers for sustenance during development project marathons, sponsors the awards presentation.
Big congratulations to Eric and Elisabeth!
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.
Wednesday, 05 January 2005
Yesterday, I got a couple of emails that I didn't recognize. I didn't know the sender, the 'to' address was not me (presumably bcc'd), and it was for a product that I didn't recognize.
Must be spam, right?
Well, that's what I figured, so I deleted the emails and moved on through my day. Honestly, I didn't really pay much attention to what they were even for. Therefore, when I saw Roy Osherove mention the same email today, I was surprised.
I commented on Roy's blog about my reaction and within two hours, Sean (the original emailer) had sent me an apology and responded on Roy's blog. Well, Sean, I'm the one that should apologize:
I'm sorry, Sean, for disparaging your name!
Now that I pay attention, I'm intrigued and will look a bit closer at Zanebug, Sean. I have in fact looked at Codus in the past (also from Sean and Adapdev) and “deserved” that announcement.
Spam has ruined it for all of us.
Wednesday, 29 December 2004
Here's an additional idea: Many employers and organizations have programs to match charitable contributions. Check with yours. I'll be able to double donations that I make because of my employer's matching program.
Note that Amazon has Amazon.com is now providing the ability to donate through 1-Click.
As we watch the number of casualties rise, we can see that there will be no end to the need any time soon. Anything that can add to the relief is worth doing.
Stuart Celarier's list of agencies that one may consider donating through:
Monday, 27 December 2004
My buddy Scott Hanselman and his coworker (and often destination of referrals on my blog) Greg Hughes have a great idea: donate all of one's Google AdSense revenue to the relief efforts in South Asia.
I would say that one doesn't need to restrict one's self to just AdSense, but that is a great starting point. Further, Greg and Scott are beginning a campaign to encourage Google to help automate the process for users of AdSense.
Do the world a favor: Participate, Donate, and Contact Google along with all of us. It's worth it!
Update: Stuart Celarier has a great list of other agencies that one may consider, too:
Sunday, 26 December 2004
Today's news from south Asia is a monumental reminder of how precious life can be. Seldom will you see me make such a strong suggestion for getting involved, but this deserves it.
Take a few moments and visit the Red Cross site's donation page and give a little to the International Response Fund. Heck, give a lot. You can afford it.
Powerful earthquake, tsunamis strike South Asia, leaving thousands dead, injured and missing
Sunday, December 26, 2004 — The largest earthquake to strike the globe since 1964 has caused devastating tsunami waves that have killed thousands in south Asia. The 8.9-magnitude quake hit December 26 off the coast of Indonesia, triggering these extremely large waves that have brought massive flooding, damage and loss of life in the region.
Waves as high as 20 feet have crashed into the coastal areas near the Bay of Benegal. Among the worst affected countries are Sri Lanka and India, as well as Indonesia, Maldives and Thailand. Reports are that thousands of people are missing, and it is possible that the number of dead may tragically rise in the coming days.
International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies in south Asia have begun to mobilize staff and volunteers to affected areas to assist with the immediate needs. Emergency assessment and first-aid teams have already reached some of the affected areas.
“The situation is fluid, with so many people affected in so many areas of southeast Asia, and it is likely that relief teams there may need many different types of assist in the coming days,” said Matthew Parry of the International Disaster Response Unit.
The American Red Cross continues to maintain contact with its partners on the ground and is prepared to support operations with relief supplies, financial assistance or personnel as requested by our sister International Red Cross and Red Crescent societies there.
You can help those affected by this crisis and countless others around the world each year by making a financial gift to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, which will provide immediate relief and long-term support through supplies, technical assistance, and other support to those in need. Call 1-800-HELP NOW or 1-800-257-7575 (Spanish). Contributions to the International Response Fund may be sent to your local American Red Cross chapter or to the American Red Cross International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, DC 20013. Internet users can make a secure online contribution by visiting www.redcross.org.
Update: Stuart Celarier has a great list of other agencies that one may consider, too:
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.
I imagine that I'm the last one to know this, but Costco has a wonderful photo center. This year, I realized that it was time to try out the complete, electronic version of the Costco photo center for getting our Christmas cards.
I found an ideal picture from last winter; went on to costco.com and chose the photo center option; then, followed the simple instructions! If you get the order in early enough, you can pick up the cards the next day. They even include envelopes.
With a little label printing, we were just about ready to go. This is the way to do Christmas cards! I might just have to see what else they can do.
Thursday, 16 December 2004
I can't believe what I found: it was over a year ago that I rearranged my office to the configuration that it is presently in. I just find it hard to believe that it has been that long since I did this. Further, It's hard to believe some of the things I haven't gotten around to :$.
Back then, I had gotten to the job of rearranging - and let me tell you, it has been much better. But, as I look at that old blog entry, I see that I was to have made my old desktop into the new server; that never happened. Don't get me wrong - it still will - it just wasn't as compelling as it might have been.
The old server worked well for a long time. Over the summer, though, it started to have problems with overheating. I had to take it down permenantly and haven't had time to build up the new one. Over this Christmas break, it will happen though (he says smuggly).
I started this cycle with the closet. There are several boxes that have been in there for too long without serious consideration of the items in them. This year, that changed. So far, there are six empty boxes and likely to be more. This is a very big win.
In addition, I've pulled out two old computer shells - case/mobo/processor. One was my old P166 from, what, ten years ago? Thanks to Greg (again), I see where these are headed. I'm going to try to find a few more things to take to them before I make the trip, though.
By the beginning of 2005, I should be running much more lightly in this office of mine. That will indeed be worth it.
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, 08 November 2004
I've had this installed for some time, but haven't used it enough. I tend to be very particular about the formatting of code on my site and CopySourceAsHtml written by Colin Coller makes it easy!
Just highlight the code in Visual Studio, choose “Copy as HTML...” from the right-click menu, and paste into the blog entry.
You'll get options for line numbering, word wrap, etc. You can also add additional CSS rules that will be applied to the whole copy, a line, or a block. Just look at these results:
1 using System;
2 using System.Xml.Serialization;
3
4 namespace CardCatalog {
5 [XmlRootAttribute( "catalog", Namespace="", IsNullable=false )]
6 public class Catalog {
7 private Book[] items;
8
9 [XmlElementAttribute( "book" )]
10 public Book[] Items {
11 get { return this.items; }
12 set { this.items = value; }
13 }
14 }
15
16 public class Book ...
67 }
Once again, Scott Hanselman has come through for me. For our latest project in Patrick's Web Service class, we are building an application with a DataGrid. It always makes me crazy when using this control that there isn't an automatic “Size Columns Correctly” check box.
Fortunately, I recalled that Scott had found that same frustration and had found the solution. Using a little bit of the Reflection namespace, he grabs the private method that is used when double-clicking on the column borders and fires it off “by hand” for each column.
It's cool and is placed here for posterity.
1: private void MyDataGridControl_DataSourceChanged( object sender, 2: System.EventArgs e ) 3: { 4: try 5: { 6: Type t = this.myDataGridControl.GetType(); 7: MethodInfo m = t.GetMethod( "ColAutoResize", 8: BindingFlags.NonPublic 9: | BindingFlags.Instance ); 10: 11: for( int i = this.myDataGridControl.FirstVisibleColumn; 12: ( i < this.myDataGridControl.VisibleColumnCount ); 13: i++ ) 14: { 15: m.Invoke( this.myDataGridControl, new object[] {i} ); 16: } 17: } 18: catch( Exception ex ) 19: { 20: System.Diagnostics.Trace.Write( "Failed Resizing Columns: " 21: + ex.ToString() ); 22: } 23: }
Monday, 01 November 2004 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
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?
Wednesday, 15 September 2004
UPDATE: If it still feels like too much typing to find the information on the MSDN site, check out this little IE toolbar gadget by Nick Parker. Nothing fancy, but it will take you right to your namespace.
Just to make it easy to find the documetation you need, the brainiacs at MSDN are using a thing called URL Aliases. The gist of what it accomplishes is shown here with this tip:
Tip: Our system supports URLs of the format http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/.aspx.
For example: http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/system.xml.serialization.aspx, so navigating to API reference pages will be quicker and easier.
This will make finding documentation much quicker to find. Kudos!
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.
Friday, 21 May 2004
The latest revision of the NUnit Addin now plugs NUnit into Visual Studio. I can't vouch for the stability of this version... I seem to be having some problems myself, but it's looking very exciting.
A good screen shot is available here.
Download is available here.
Check it out!
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?
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!
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.
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!
Friday, 02 April 2004
I have thought of doing this several times, but I always think about it when I'm not really ready to do it. That changed tonight.
Jeff Key reminded me to change my VS templates. It truly is very easy.
-
Go to %programfiles%\Microsoft Visual Studio .NET 2003\VC#\VC#Wizards\.
-
Select the wizard that you would like to change the template for (e.g. “CSharpAddClassWiz” for the general 'Add Class' case).
-
Enter the Templates\1033 directory of that wizard.
-
Edit the .cs file therein.
Very straight-forward. No longer will I feel need to delete those pesky “TODO:...” comments and such. And if I happen to be one of those 'open-curly-on-the-same-line' people, well - so be it! I can now get that as default behavior!
Thanks for the reminder, Jeff!
Saturday, 20 March 2004
I have some vague recollection of this feature existing, but it wasn't until this last week that I needed it again:
When working on a project with multiple executables within the same Solution, Visual Studio can Start all of them when you debug if setup for it.
Simply right-click the Solution and choose Properties. Choose Startup Projects from the left pane, then select the Multiple Startup Projects radio button.
For each project listed, you may choose to start it normally or without debugging. By using the Move Up and Move Down buttons, you may change the order in which the projects start!
If only I would pay attention to the tool tips for a program, I would have been using this tip a long time ago:
To show or hide the formatting marks in Word (spaces, tabs, paragraphs, etc.), type ctrl+*. Quicker than using the mouse and a lot less likely to cause a repetitive stress injury.
This is kind of an old trick, but one I sometimes forget:
When editing in Visual Studio, simply hold down the Alt and Shift keys while typing Enter. This will put Visual Studio into full screen mode and provide a much larger working space.
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