October 2008 Entries
Technorati Tags: Server 2008 Remember to do one of two things if using Server 2008 for the first time: 1) Turn UAC off in Control Panel | User Accounts | Turn User Account Control on or off or 2) Make sure you right-click every application’s icon every time! and choose “Run as Administrator”, every time unless you want to really give yourself a headache Same goes for Vista of course but in Server 2008, you do not want to ignore UAC and view it just as a pest. You want to use properly or get rid of it...
Technorati Tags: Gadgets I’ve seen a lot of threads out there on 2Wire and Slingbox internet connection pains and I agree it’s a royal pain in the ass. Connecting my Slingbox to my old Linksys router that I had just gotten rid of was a piece of cake. This post is not code related but this experience was such a pain, I decided to hopefully help others by posting my experience here and really tell you how to set this up with full details which I did not find out on the net or at Slingbox.com. First though, it's amazing...
Technorati Tags: Silverlight,WPF,ASP.NET Well, I just started a new position as a C# Engineer at a great new .com. The people seem great here. And the cool thing is I will be not only doing what I love (more standard ASP.NET and Web design for a public website), I’m also going to be venturing into some WPF and Silverlight as well which is pretty exciting stuff. The application due to company disclosures I cannot say but Silverlight is perfect for the application I’ll be working on in a few months. I am a strong advocate for Silverlight. It is not...
Technorati Tags: Visual Studio Intermittently at times, Visual Studio for some odd reason, refuses to recognize web controls or C# syntax during a build/compile that you know is fine and I do not know why…it bugs the hell out of me. You’ve included all the right usings, assembly or project references, and the syntax you know worked before, but for some reason it just decides to piss you off when you try to compile by stating it is not familiar with the syntax or control. There are a slew of things one can try in order to sort of...
Technorati Tags: IPhone,Rants I have to say, I love my IPhone. But I have to say I hate ITunes in general as half the time, it prohibits me in terms of usability, and causes more pain than it does good. There are many reasons why ITunes lacks usability and but I will not go into all that now. I’m focusing today on the Gmail contact sync in ITunes for IPhone. The main issues I have with IPhone Sync & Google contacts are the following: 1) Whether you like it or not, ITunes syncs all contacts in...
(picture taken during training camp this year) Today, the coach Denis Savard of the Blackhawks was just out of nowhere fired. Pretty much everyone I’ve talked to thinks it’s very weird. Now if you’re not into hockey than you would not care. But let it be known that Denis Savard (the coach) is a respected Hall of Fame hockey player. Denis did very well last season and today, everyone is wondering wtf when they see that he was fired. Read here: Blackhawks fire coach Denis Savard after 4 games and Press Conference What I think is outrageous about...
Technorati Tags: Rants I can’t believe Microsoft would not let me browse some sites like today, such as when I was checking out the Microsoft Partner Site using Mozilla. I got this very strange error today while trying to look at the Microsoft Gold Partner site just for kicks to see what was on there lately: Problem Encountered You are using an unsupported Internet browser. Please use the most recent non-beta version of Internet Explorer to access this page. If you continue you will likely experience performance issues. Please download this supported version or proceed to the PMC page...
Technorati Tags: Rants I don’t know how many shops I’ve seen, interviewed with, or even worked at that wave the “We’re a Microsoft Gold Partner” geek flag waved around as if without knowing the place, we automatically are supposed to assume the shop is a credible development shop. Most of these are waved by non-technical managers that know nothing about quality code. This means nothing to me in terms of credibility & quality, and it’s clearly just a marketing term that only benefits Microsoft and somehow makes employers think they should be proud that they are a Gold Partner. It’s...
Technorati Tags: C# Today I had the need to take a list of names from a returned list of Custom Objects, and convert one of its properties it to a string that included some HTML. This is nothing fancy, and pretty standard/simple but I thought I’d post about it anyway. Since I did not need a custom ToString() method here to convert all properties of my object, I just created a simple method to iterate through the list of objects and add one of the properties to the StringBuilder object then return my string with HTML. The reason...
Technorati Tags: Design Patterns,Architecture I hear a LOT of developers refer to what are essentially N-Layers as “N-Tiers”. This kind of bugs me a little when I see or hear it from developers. First of all, they are not even close the same thing, and it’s important as a developer to get this straight so that you are using the terminology properly. The difference is simple but very important when you’re talking about your applications. They should not be loose terms and intermingled as about probably 90% of the developers out there that I’ve worked with seem to do....
Technorati Tags: Opinion I will give no explanation, because I think they speak for themselves, but here are some failures & Successes from Microsoft. Failures (not wasting my time on these, they just don’t let me easily and openly code good ORM, Patterns, etc. period) Typed DataSets SharePoint 2003 & 2007 New Entity Framework MS CRM Successes C# 3.0 .NET 3.5 VS...
Technorati Tags: Coffee We all know that for most of us who like coffee, it plays a huge part in a developer’s life. For me, it started with the fact that when working for Vitria Technology back in the day, we had a commercial espresso machine in our cafeteria. This is where I learned what espresso is, and what good coffee really is. From then on, I have become a coffee enthusiast and want to have fun and pass coffee information along in this blog when I have some good things to share. There is a difference between so-so...
Technorati Tags: Standards,Rants,Management,Series,Source Control I’m going to post a series of what I call “Red Flags” in development shops. Things that in some development shops happen frequently & also encompass one or more of the following below: 1) Destruct an overall development shop’s efficiency 2) Produce a team environment with unnecessary stress 3) Happen due to lack of standards/process and expectations 4) Happen as the result of bad management, bad attitudes, lack of professionalism, lack of ethics, or just bad business practice altogether These series of posts really start paint the picture of growing problems in many IT shops today,...
Technorati Tags: Job Searching Interviews tend to develop into their own animal. It’s not the fault of the company or manager setting up the interview, but just the mere fact that interviews by nature are typically a very discoverable experience for both sides. Therefore an interview anticipated to be x number of people and x hours could completely change for both sides and neither really has much control over it because both sides really need to get the information that they need to make that decision. With that said, many of times for example, you will find yourself...
