Ahh – looks like Sam gets to do this as part of his .NET Supreme Wonk Architect job. Darn it’s not fair :-). I still had my clients calling me today with all of the usual stuff and code to write that they are waiting for.  Then since dinner I have managed to knock off a few of my Vermont.NET and INETA tasks that have been piling up. So I am relying at the moment on what I’m seeing in blogs and on some lists and these three posts of Sam’s stuck out in the crowd for me.

Every week or so I go back to the Pearson Vue site to see if Microsoft has released the results of the Security beta test that I took in early May. It was a bit of a traumatic event as you can see from the blog post I wrote when I got home. Being a beta test you never know when you will get the results. I haven’t received any emails. But I just checked the site and…

Though I am no expert, I am glad to see that what I confidently know about .net security combined with the intuition that I have acquired over 20 years of software development saw me through. Phew.

I believe that I am able to use this test towards my certification. It is an elective toward MCAD or MCSD. So I guess that makes me an MCAD. Now I will have to take the web services to be an MCAD and the architecture tests for an MCSD. Someday…. 🙂

I am a die-hard NO WAY JOSE kinda girl when it comes using the visual data wizards for my apps. No for connections, data sets or anything. I like to write my own data access thank you very much and then hook everything up at run time. However, I got really stuck because not only do I not use them , I don’t  even know *how* to use them. I have let all of those demos slip out of my head to make room for things I need. But I got bit when I wanted to design an Infragistics UltraWinGrid at design time due to the fact that my datasource was somewhat complex and it is nice to see what I’m doing. I had a nice little typed dataset class that I created and wanted to assign it to the datasource at design time. Something I have never done! But the class was not available in the drop-down for the DataSource property of the grid. Finally I figured out to drag a “dataset” from the toolbar onto my form and that’s where I was able to select my dataset class.

I have to say, it was pretty handy! I wonder if it’s time for some remedial VS training… 🙂

I’m laughing because I’m thinking of Sam Gentile and his disdain for all things drag & drop – but Sam, I just had no way around it this time!

Though the cat got out of the bag a little early, the betas just launched! And a beautiful new MSDN developer center to go with them.

VS2005 Beta 1 (released June 29th)
How to get it MSDN Subscribers will be the first to receive Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1, which will be available for subscriber download within just a few days. MSDN Subscribers will also receive Beta 1 in their next MSDN shipments. Within a few weeks, non-subscribers will also be able to order a copy of Beta 1 for a nominal fulfillment fee.

Express Products (Beta)
VB Express, C# Express, Visual C++ Express, Visual J# Express, Visual Web Developer Express and SQL 2005 Express!

SQL 2005 Beta 2
hmmm – maybe they didn’t announce it yet – still looking…

Congrats to all at MS, including MSDN,  for so many launches!

From MSDN maven (ooh – that sounds old, but she’s not!) Sara Williams, this new feature of MSDN just went live:

At the MSDN Product Feedback Center, you can submit bugs and suggestions.  You can search through other people’s submitted bugs and suggestions.  You can vote for your favorites.  You can share workarounds.  And, you can see feedback and details directly from folks on our product teams.   Oh, and you can get notified when the status of an issue you’re interested in changes.