I started reading ASP.Net v 2.0 - The beta verion yesterday, and have started back up in whidbey.  After I started a new web site I had a project with a new default.aspx and a default.aspx.vb codebehind.  Odd, I don't remember selecting a language.  Well after thinking about the new no project model, it made sense as to why I could just specify the lanuage when adding a new file. 

ps. I quickly deleted the default.aspx in favor of its {sexier} version  :)

pps. Picture whidbey doesn't usually come through on this feed, but since I haven't done it in months I wanted to let anyone new know it's there. and hopefully more active.  Also, feel free to submit screenshots

UML can sometimes be a conflicting topic, but I feel it can definitely add value during the design phase.  I have had some thoughts about this for a while, and figured I would finally jot them down.  Turned out to be a more then a blog entry, but not something I'd want to submit to publish, so it found a home here in the articles section.

Design Abstractions intends to explain some of the design UML methodologies I use for some of the smaller things I do.  This article speaks to creating design artifacts with a limited design time, or small team.  For example, this is the type of design I do for my own “stuff“.

Feel free to comment as it could certainly become somewhat of a living document.   

Link

So I was hunting around for some articles today, and happened upon 15seconds.  To my surprise, right on the front page, it lists the most popular article, and holy cow, it's my build system article.

Being my first professionally published article, I'm pretty siked.  Now it's time to roll up the sleeves and write another.  Thanks everyone who read it, and thanks to those who have emailed me about the article!

I've complained before about this, and it still plagues us here and there.  Basiclly, large vb.net projects that bomb out the IDE from time to time.  Somedays I never restart the IDE, sometimes I restart it a couple times an hour.  Nothing like an intermitted problem that stops everything to boost productivity.

Well, unbeknownst to me, MS released a patch many months ago to help combat the issue.  I will apply this today and see if it helps at all. 

Thanks Panopticon Central for the heads up

From scoble's link blog. 

Instant classic.

I have setup the new B1 bits for community server as I said I would, but it ended there.  Hey, I got Need for Speed 2 this weekend, and well, thats the end of that story. (note so instead of new content, would you guys settle for pictures of my pimped out mx-5?  :) 

I hope to set some more of it up this week, and possibly try to get a trigger working so posting to 1 blog might post to both.  Overall, so far, CS beta 1 looks pretty good.  Still some definte rough edges, but such is a beta.

You can get there from http://blog2.iceglue.com

You heard it right, there is a beta released.  Congrats to Telligent on the release.  I'm sure it will be a good one from that group of rock stars.

I was just talking to another blogger yesterday about when we might see this, and if we should edit .text .095 or not.  Guess not  :)

I will probably try to upgrade over the weekend, and run parallel until I see how the new beta is.  I will let you guys know when the new bits are live.

Check it out here

Jeremy C. Wright has started up a blogger jobs blog.  The idea is to post jobs for bloggers, or for bloggers to post jobs.  Nice.  Check it out here.

[Edit]
Little did I know but Jeremy is also the person behind ResumeWiki, a new community resume site for posting, and critiquing resumes.  Just wanted to spread the good word.

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.