Monthly Archives: April 2004

Long-Awaited Crystal Reports .NETBook!

dotNET

This evening I received a reply to an email that I wrote 16 months ago!

In January 2003, I sent the following email to my user group:

Folks, go check out: http://www.crystalreportsbook.com

Basically the story goes that this book was written for APress and then the contract was cancelled due to a lack of .Net book sales. Too bad. Maybe O’Reilly can print it under their “Missing Manuals” category…

So, anyway, here is the link.

I suggest that the first thing to check out is the FAQ’s! Then take a look at the chapters online – for free, until a publisher is found.

I have put this link on our website as well.

Now if *I* were to write a book on Crystal Reports, it would probably look something like this:

“I love it I hate it I love it I hate it I can’t live with it I can’t live without it I love it I hate it I love it I hate it I can’t live with it I can’t live wi…”

I had cc’d the author, Brian Bischof on this email.

Tonight he emailed me back to say that the book, Crystal Reports .NET Programming, has been published and includes much of the feedback he has recieved in the past year and a half.

Brian – Congratulations and thank you for your perseverence!

I need a technical post

dotNET

I swear, I really am coding these days, but it’s nothing new. Just getting ready to crank out the puzzle pieces of a pluggable framework I devised for my client. It will handle possibly hundreds of different data entry forms for the various testing services they perform for their clients. The app leverages a boat load of .Net framework technologies and has been a blast to architect. I know that sounds so generic that I could be completely bullshitting, but most of what I have done for it is written about in a LOT of previous posts.

y’know that dream where you forgot to go to all of your classes?

Just Rambling

I know it’s a common dream for many – you walk into your class (high school? college) and there is a test and you suddenly realize that you have somehow missed all of the classes that semester and are wholly unprepared.

A few nights ago I had a new version of this dream. I had  to do two presentations at a conference. Both presentations that I had done previously. When I got to the conference, I realized that I had not spent one minute reviewing either talk since last time I had done it.

I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that I am doing my DevDays talk again tomorrow night? heh

Thom Robbins: Don’t just move your code to .NET, move your mind

dotNET

Thom Robbins is the Microsoft D.E. for New England. He blogs this morning about a recent presentation at a corporation that is heavily invested in VB6 and ready (?) to move to .NET. He makes a point that I have tried to deliver over and over again to developers.

Many times what people miss is that even though the code moves, you aren’t getting the full benefit of the .NET platform. …. In order to fully leverage the architectural paradigm shift and full power of .NET, it is essential that developers and architects approach applications with these expanded concepts in mind.

This is really one of my mantras when I talk to other developers. There is just so much in the framework that will make your life and your applications better. I understand that there are many situations where it is just not feasible to just redesign a whole application. As in independent who has total control over what tools I use, I had the good fortune to make a decision in the spring of 2002 that going forward, 100% of my new projects will be done in .NET.

GirlsGoTech.Org … Girl Scouts promote tech for young girls

Just Rambling

Thanks to Corey Gouker for not only blogging about this, but emailing me to make sure I hadn’t missed it!

The Girl Scouts have a website called www.GirlsGoTech.org and a t.v. ad campaign to go with it. They are trying to encourage young girls who are interested in tech to stay with it.

Forget Seventeen Mag , hooray girlscouts. There’s even an area to read about careers.

There is definitely a part of me that thinks – hey, let 12 year olds play – don’t push careers at them at this young age. But what’s the difference between the way we used to look at what it was like to be an astronaut or whatever when we were growing up?

Now they also need to educate adults abouto this too. I have heard a lot of stories about adults discouraging young girls’ interests in tech.