# Saturday, 12 January 2008

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Invite you to
Products of Tomorrow!

As a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, Robert Half Technology would like to invite our valued clients and consultants to a free and interactive event to preview Microsoft Business Solution products such as SharePoint, SQL Server and more! We have scheduled various demonstrations and presentations that will run throughout the course of the event. Please join us when the Microsoft Across America Mobile rolls in to town!

Date:

January 23, 2008

Location:

Microsoft’s PacWest Briefing Center Facilities in Portland
10260 SW Greenburg Road, Lincoln Tower, Suite 600
*Parking is available at no cost, in the the 3-story garage next to the building

Time:

2:00 PM to 5:00 PM

RSVP to:

Stacy Davenport

Email:

Stacy.Davenport@rhi.com or call 503-222-0946

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Saturday, 12 January 2008 23:43:10 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 07 January 2008

The answer, according to Scott, is:

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

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

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

WHAT:

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

Scott Hanselman

TOPIC:

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

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

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

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

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

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

Wednesday, 26 December 2007 13:44:37 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [1]
# Tuesday, 25 December 2007

Blink… there it went.

Another year passed so quickly.

Rich continues to work on his software career; loving every minute of it even through the frustrating times. In addition to work, he’s Nerd Herding and running a local developers user group – PADNUG – and continues to connect with new people in the industry. Jesann is proud of all his hard work and his passion towards all he puts his mind to.

As has become our tradition, we spent our Thanksgiving evening helping with the family dinner for several of Jesann’s clients’ families. In addition, we helped one of Jesann’s clients’ Christmas party, too. Jesann has worked for these folks for almost 25 years!

Jesann is truly blessed to have the clients she does. They are all so wonderful to her.

Baby and Ninja

This spring, we lost our girl, Baby (she and little sister Ninja to the right), to cancer. She spent sixteen years taking care of Jesann and had truly adopted Rich as her papa. We really miss her little shadow around the house. Even our other girl, Ninja, felt the loss and appeared saddened for some time.

In September, we decided it was time to get Ninja a playmate. We visited Cat Adoption Team in Sherwood, Oregon to see if there was someone waiting for us. Boy, was there. As we entered the kitten room, one little, black-furred girl raised her hand to us. Despite looking through the whole facility (they have over 300 cats!), we had to go back to visit this little girl.

Trashed Rastus After spending a few minutes in an office alone with her, we were bringing Rastus home with us (that's her getting trashed on the left).

It turned out that that day was her four month birthday, too. She will be seven months soon and has about doubled in size. She is a sweet girl and she and Ninja are getting along great. And, if there is any way that kitty spirits can move along, we’ve seen it here. She has so many traits that Baby did, it’s uncanny. Right down to her love of the bathwater when momma is trying to get clean.

Our FamilyWe have had a great 2007. We wish you all the very best for 2008 and thank you for being in our life.

 

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year from the Santa Claussens!

Jesann, Rich, Ninja, & Rastus

Tuesday, 25 December 2007 08:46:48 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 26 November 2007

We're having a PARTY!!!

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

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

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

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

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

Jason Mauer, et al

TOPIC:

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

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

Space is limited so register today.

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

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

Looking forward to seeing you all there!

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

Storms of Fall are upon us!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

...Be There and Be Square!

Monday, 12 November 2007 09:44:12 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Sunday, 04 November 2007

Notice I'm calling it as it is now: November. One might look down the list of meeting announcements and think, "Gosh, there really wasn't an October meeting?!?" That's one way to look at it. On the other hand, we've had twelve meetings this year. So maybe we added a month, eh?

I've been looking for a chance to bring Wayne in to do an Agile presentation for a long time. Many of you may know Wayne from his time at Corillian. He's now working with Integrated Services, Inc.

WHAT: November PADNUG Meeting
WHEN: Tuesday 11/06/2007
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:

Wayne Allen

TOPIC:

Introduction to Scrum
Agile software development processes such as Extreme Programming (XP), Scrum, Feature Driven Development (FDD) and Crystal have become mainstream in many organizations. Come find out more about Scrum and some of the .NET tools that makes agile software development fun!

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!

Sunday, 04 November 2007 08:26:32 (Pacific Standard Time, UTC-08:00)  #    Comments [0]
# Monday, 29 October 2007

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

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

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

WHERE:

Corillian Cafe
3400 NW John Olson Place
Hillsboro, OR 97124

WHO:

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

TOPIC:

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

Look forward to seeing everyone there!

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

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

Halo 3 on the REALLY big screen.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Join us. You will have a great time!

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

Monday, 01 October 2007 08:21:00 (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC-07:00)  #    Comments [0]
# 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]