Do you like to laugh?  Do you go to work?  Do you ride a unicycle?

Then Mondays is for you. 

From the folks who brought us Dot Net Rocks comes what promises to be a fantastic weekly radio talk show.  If you listen to dot net rocks, then you’re already sold.  If not, DNR is a talk radio show about .net programming.  It is a streaming radio show with a mix of technical content, and fun.  The DNR crew decided it was time to break the once 2 hour show into a couple shows. 

DNR will continue to be a technical broadcast once a week, while the rest of the fun, and some new fun, is pulled into Mondays, along with interviews that are not as technical in nature as what you will expect to see on DNR. 

Here Carl gives us a little teaser of what Mondays will have in store for us.  Be sure to check back Monday and get the full show, and tell all your friends!

Blog got a minor facelift.  Let me know if theres any issues.

Thanks RoudyBob.Net for the new skin.

Hi.  My name is Aaron Junod, and I am becoming addicted to xbox.  It all started when I got an xbox for my birthday this year.  I started dipping into top spin alot, and that was good and all, but then I found 2k5.  2k5 was just what I was looking for.  I started playing alot, winning championships, man I would skip great refactoring time just to try to win a few more trophies.  My friends started to try to intervene, but it was no good.  2k5 had me.

Lately I had started to recover.  Only indulging on the weekends, so I thought I had my addiction at least under control.  Today, though, I think I have had a major setback.  I thought I could ignore all the craze, but after a little taste this week, I had to get some Halo 2 action.

After just a little time with it, I think I can feel it pulling me in. Cancel all the plans, I'm busy.

If it were only that simple.  But I did get Halo 2, and I do plan on playing when I can.  I'm playing through the campaign a bit to see if I can try to hone my skills, but I will end up online sometime soon. 

gamertag tranqy

Thanks Cory Smith for a Gamertag image generator.

Nothing like a new toy to beef up posts on the blog.

Just noticed after you install biztalk, it's new xsd editor takes over as the default xsd editor.  That's great and all, but I want the normal editor when I am working on datasets, and the special one when working in biztalk.  The biztalk editor is not as friendly when looking at a dataset.

I doubt this is built into the IDE, but it would be nice to have context sensitive default editors.  Now I have a feeling I will be changing back and forth quite a bit as my biztalk workload grows.  Ugh.

Is it just me or after each time I update anything with biztalk my vs.net plug-in's have problems?

After I installed biztalk, after I installed the doc update, and after I installed the rollup, my plugins failed to load.  Once I turn them back on again, and restart the IDE, everything is fine again, but the first load afterwards fails.

Anyone else seeing this?

Well it's official, I will be taking on a bit of a Biztalk 2004 role here at work.  I'm pretty excited as I have wanted to learn Biztalk for quite a while, but it's not really the kind of thing I could see myself just doing for kicks. 

So you can expect to see more about biztalk as I go down this road. 

With absolutely no Biztalk experience, I figured I would start by reading the documentation (seems logical).  Our resident Biztalk expert (who has no blog) reminded me to do the documentation update, so thats where I started.  Not to rant, but why the hell do I need to have the original biztalk CD to install the documentation upgrade?  Of course I don't carry around our msdn binders (for fear of the IT folk cutting off my hands), so I was SOL.  I think it's kind of ridiculous to require the original CD for a documentation upgrade, but whatever.  Thats out.

So I started to read the bloggers guide to biztalk.  After making it through just a couple of the essays in here, I can say this is going to be a huge resource for me.  There is just a ton of content here, and at least what I saw was good content.  Real good.  I also appreciate that it is off the cuff, so it seems very honest. 

By the way, the biztalk install went pretty smoothly.  Our IT crew provided me with the staging doc that was used for the production build, and with a couple alterations I was up and going.  One word of warning, though.  When you install Biztalk make sure you have a path to your domain controller.  I run my domain at home, so my laptop is actually a member of my personal domain, not the corporate one.  This meant that I couldn't finish the config wizard until I was at home.  I hope this is an isolated requirement since I really dont want to promote my laptop to a DC. 

Ah some other links I found that I want to save. 

Aaron Skonnard on Biztalk and SOA
Jame's Blog with some interesting biztalk posts a while back I need to read (subscribed)
Jan Tielen with some biztalk 2004 downloads (subscribed)
Some biztalk articles refered to by James (above) by Canonical

 [Edit] Added biztalk category.

Here's another job posting.

We are looking for a SQL Server DBA in the Hartford area.  Candidates should be very well versed in SQL Server.  This is a perm position for a dedicated software company with a healthcare focus.  You will have the opportunity to work with the newest of technologies with a (small and growing) fantastic team. 

If you are interested in more details, please contact me using the link on the left, or email tranqy at gmail dot com.

Core technologies
SQL Server 2000
Biztalk 2004

More details here

As I posted earlier, cerulean studios is working on the next release of Trillian, of which I am a huge fan.  Just went throught the product tour, and there are certainly some features I am looking forward too.

The serverless IM looks very cool.  Will be nice to be able to IM to co-workers without going through a server.  I really like what they have done with the history, that looks like a huge improvement.  I also like that the windows will automaticlly turn interesting words into what looks like links to wikipedia, very, very cool. 

There are too many new features for me to talk about them here, and I haven't even touched the product yet.  Looks like it is a closed alpha, of which I did not sign up to participate, so I will be waiting on the bench.  Guess it's time to finally renew my membership.

Saw think link over on Scoble's link blog, and wanted to post about it so I can at least find it later.  Biztalk is something I have been wanting to jump into for a while, but of course never have the time.  When and if that time comes, it looks like this chm might be a terrific starting point.

Check it out here

[UPDATE]
GDN seems to be having issues.  Here is a direct link to the blog of the person who is aggregating this great info.

Check it out here

 [Edit] Added biztalk category.

Just saw the the CT Dotnet developers site is updated, and the next meeting will be Robert Hurlbut speaking on CAS. 

Nov 23rd (5:30pm - 8:00pm)
@ Farmington MS Site

Details here

Was just browsing my bloglines, and saw a post from Bill Evjen about a concept he has dubbed Code Brew.  Basically, 4 developers sitting around a table knowing they have about 30 minutes of lead time to either show something off, ask questions, or work through a problem. 

This is a fantastic idea.  Not only in the context of usergroups, but I could see alot of value for this in development teams too.  It would be nice for a ui person, middle tier person, db person, and architect to talk in this context.  This could facilitate knowledge transfer between groups in small personal pieces, as long as it didn't become one long bitch session. 

I wanted to post this to try to keep the word moving on gatherings like this.  I am yet to go to a CT .net developers sig (partly my laziness, partly because its being restructured), but if anyone in the CT area would be interested in one of these, drop me a comment and we'll see if we can get it organized.

And yes, I do plan on attending the next CT sig  :)

Oh this hurts.  This cuts down to the bone.  I knew refactoring in vb.net whidbey would be limited compared to c#, but now, well, it's just out.  /me sheds a tear.  I'm sure I am in the very small minority, but I would even rather have refactoring then e&c.  Oh well, no point in ranting about it, we all know how features can get cut when it comes crunch time.

So, onto the real subject.  Those of us that are stuck in vb.net, (stuck is relative, from a c# guy  :), and still want to refactor, we still have some options.  Hopefully these options will grow in time, but so far I have only seen these.  If anyone knows of a comparison, please post it up.  Or if there are other tools that also target vb.net, or will be targeting it soon, drop a comment.

Net Refactor
Refactor!

I'm interested to see what kind of response I get from this.

We are looking for a network admin/engineer.  Candidates should be well versed in windows technologies, cisco knowledge is a plus.  This is a perm position for a dedicated software company with a healthcare focus.  You will have the opportunity to work with the newest of technologies with a (small and growing) fantastic team. 

If you are interested in more details, please contact me using the link on the left, or email tranqy at gmail dot com. 

The position is in the Hartford area, approximately 20 minutes out of Hartford.

Core technologies :

Windows 2003
Biztalk 2004
SQL 2000 (Very large databases)
All new stuff, on a new infrastructure.

 [EDIT]

Got some more details from mgmt.  Here is the official job. (Word doc)

Just over a month ago, I purchased the new MS wireless notebook mouse.  I figured it was time to update the blog with my thoughts.

In a word, this mouse is awesome.  I still find it to be very comfortable, and in fact now I wish I had one on every PC I own.  My old Logitech and MS wired optical mice just don't feel right anymore.  I love the shape and the feel of the mouse. 

Performance wise I couldn't be happier either.  The response time is very good (much faster then older wireless products I had tried).  I like my mouse fast.  I set the speed to the top end, and acceleration about 3/4's the way up.  Most people that try to use my mouse or trackpoint take have to take a second to get used to it.  The amazing part, though, the mouse keeps up.  I am yet to even feel like it's lagging behind me, at all.  This is also on any surface because I use the mouse on the couch ALOT.

The best part is the battery.  I am still using the battery that came with the mouse, the single, included AA battery.  And don't think that I use this thing for a couple minutes a day.  This battery has lasted through a month of continuous pounding, at least 10 hours a day, sometimes more.  I have even forgotten to put the base back in the mouse to “turn it off” a few times over night.

In the end, I have been very happy with the purchase, and would highly suggest this mouse to anyone looking for a wireless mouse.  You won't be disappointed.

Our management team all run around with these sexy little treo devices, and I absolutley love the size and functionality they have.  The one thing that has always stopped me was that it's palm.  I'm not bashing palm by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm an MS guy.  Now even a managed Ms guy, so unless it has the CLR, I don't want it.  :)

I was surprised to see this, and very excited.  Although I thought the new audiovox was my next phone, I would much prefer a treo with windows mobile.  Counting the days..

Smartphone thoughts link

I just can't get enough wiki.  I was first introduced to a wiki about a year ago when an old client showed me one they had for their product.  My initial thoughts were yeah thats a cool way to build documentation, whoo hoo. 

In the past year, though, I have noticed that I started using onenote alot to organize things.  Then, I started to not use it.  Not because I didn't like it, or it didn't meet my needs, just that it was cumbersome.  It would take longer to open onenote, get to the tab I wanted to enter the notes into, and enter the notes then it would take for me to drop a notepad doc on the desktop.  So old habits returned.

So then I saw flexwiki was released.  So I figured I would install it and see what I can do with it.  I first started using it to organize some thoughts on some home projects I was working on, and quickly found it way to easy to create new content.  As things progressed, I started using the damn wiki for everything.  So now at this point, I am pretty much organizing my life in my wiki.  I also have some old sharepoint portals that I am going to port the content into my wiki.  I love the damn thing. 

So first off, if you haven't played with a wiki yet, you should at least take a look.  Setting up flexwiki took all of about 5 minutes, and learning the basics took a whole 10 more minutes.  Time well spent in my opinion.  I also wonder how many people are running local wiki's to organize their life?  I know the wiki culture is “open to everyone”, but I also find it has great value for a personal organization tool.

Who doesn't like something for free?  If you haven't seen any of these sites yet, there are a number of promotional sites that give out free stuff if you get others to sign up.  After doing a bit of research, these look like the real thing, so I am going to post a couple of my referer links up to see how it goes.  Once I get the referals I need, I will start swapping out the url's with urls for other people.  If you would like to have your referal url posted, please drop me a comment.  Any referal links posted in the comments will be deleted.  If you have a referal link for one of the sites I didn't sign up for, send me a comment and I will swap those out right away.

Free ipods
Free personal video player
Free flat screen

Others I didnt sign up for

Free desktop computer
Free mp3 player
Free Handbags
Free DVRs

Info links I found in my research

Info on the deals
A success story
Another success story

I'm not going to rant and rave.  As I have said to a few select friends, this years election, much like the past one (and maybe even the past few), is a lose lose choice.  I'm a coder, not a politician, but I can see when something is broken, and right now our system is broken.  Only the best puppets make it to office (be it senate, house, or president. and even most state offices), and to be a best puppet you had damn well better be in the upper echelon of society.  Maybe one day we can hope for a government for the people of the people, but that has been gone for quite some time.  I don't want joe homeless in the senate, but maybe someone who understands the majority of the population would be nice. 

I am also politically under-educated, to my own fault.  I hardly read what they say, or read the analyst's take on what they say.  It's all part of the problem.  Puppets I tell you, but in this instance the puppets are puppeteering the next level of puppets.  Bleh, the whole system is fucked.

Anyway, to get back to the point, a few things have moved me in the past couple weeks, and I wanted to share them.  They are of course the same things that a lot of people have already spoken about, but I will say them again anyway. 

Go watch this interaction between Jon Stewart and the CNN show Crossfire.  It's really good stuff.  I have always been a huge fan of Jon Stewart, but this may be a defining moment for him.  I have never had more respect for him then after watching this.  His followup here is pretty good too.

Speaking of Jon Stewart, go get America the Book.  I was even reading this while watching Ken Jennings last night, so yes, it is that good.  My friends and family will tell you I don't read, unless it's related to code/computers.  This is true, but I won't be touching any of those MS Press books till I'm done with this one.

Lastly, go watch Eminem's new video here (wmp, real, lyrics).  Thanks Miguel De Icaza for posting these links, I wanted to look for them last night.  Caught a few seconds of this video on TV, and knew I had to find it.  I have been a big fan of Eminem for quite a while, so of course when he puts out a moving track like this I have to endorse it. 

So the moral of the story?  Go next Tuesday come hell or high water and do your civic duty, and write in Jon Stewart.  :)