# 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 :-)!

NerdTests.com says I'm a Cool Nerd God.  What are you?  Click here!

Tuesday, 11 September 2007 09:43:48 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Thursday, 23 August 2007

I've heard this song before, but haven't seen this video. Very fun!

Thursday, 23 August 2007 09:48:01 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 21 August 2007

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

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

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

WHAT: August PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

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

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

Tom Howe

TOPIC:

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

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

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

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

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

Who thought this would be a good idea?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can you believe how long it has ben since we've been to a mall? Transformers was great last month, but the food was just a little too good up there at Cinetopia.

So, in an effort to get everyone's stomach back into the bad shape it should be, join us again at the Washington Square Food Court. We'll have a chance to give some feedback to the new Hanselborg as he prepares to join the collective.

For those of you that are members of facebook, we've got this event posted up there, too. Click here to visit the page and RSVP.

What: Portland Nerd Dinner
Where: Washington Square Food Court (Second Floor; typically, straight out from Picture People)
When: Tuesday, August 7, starting around 6:30 PM (vCal link)
Why: Welcome Scott to the Collective

Be There and Be Square!

Thursday, 02 August 2007 22:38:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 23 July 2007

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

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

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

WHAT: July PADNUG Meeting
WHEN:

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

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

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

TOPIC:

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

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

Monday, 23 July 2007 12:44:34 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 22 July 2007
Hanselborg

It happened. Scott was assimilated. I guess I was always kind of surprised that this hadn't already happened, but once I got used to the idea, I accepted that it would always be that he would be an advocate, but not a member.

But now, it has happened. Scott Hanselman is now Borg.

Sunday, 22 July 2007 11:32:41 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# 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
WhereCinetopia Theaters11700 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!

Monday, 02 July 2007 10:22:36 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [2]
# 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!

Thursday, 21 June 2007 07:00:59 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# 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.

Saturday, 09 June 2007 13:30:12 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [1]
# 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, 29 May 2007 21:46:23 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Tuesday, 08 May 2007

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

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

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

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Scott Hanselman

TOPIC:

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

WHAT: Silverlight for Designers
WHEN:

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

WHERE:

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

WHO:

Kelly White

TOPIC:

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

WHAT: Portland Code Camp
WHEN:

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

WHERE:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Help Scott Fight Diabetes

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

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

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

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

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

TOPIC:

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

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

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wednesday, 18 April 2007 23:31:38 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 16 April 2007

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

untitled picture

Monday, 16 April 2007 23:33:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 15 April 2007

It is the season again for all to step up and help Scott in the fight against Diabetes.

Help Scott Fight 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 .

Sunday, 15 April 2007 11:55:02 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]