HAPPY BIRTHDAY MARCIE!
Monthly Archives: July 2004
Using me for examples of why Smalltalk is better than .NET
James Robertson is a Smalltalk developer and prolific blogger. And he reads my blog. Often, when I write about a problem I have with .NET, he uses it as proof of why .NET is a terrible development platform. Here’s an example. I don’t mind, really. It’s kind of funny. And we have a little bit of a virtual relationship because of it, which I enjoy. (Especially if I post some bubbly anti-Bush comments.) My usual mantra with programming is “heck, if *I* can do it, so can you!“. So when I can’t do something, James says “if *Julie* can’t do it, then that proves that .NET sucks!“ He’s surely reading this even and hopefully smiling (or even grinning like the Cheshire Cat!) I just wanted to make note of it.
Steve Smith is really in Iraq now
I put a little yellow ribbon over on the right of my blog with a link to his site.
MS Community Site: MVPs, How to Start a User Group and more
I followed a link from John Bristowe to the Microsoft Communities site.
On there I saw a link for MVP Awards. It has all of the MVPs listed, with pics and bios and other information. We have a place where we can fill out all of this information. I had not yet seen it publicly displayed. Cool.
Then I followed a link for User Groups. There is a whole pile of informaiton on how to start a user group , how to find speakers, how to promote it. This is information that we also try to get out via INETA, so maybe we can find something in there to leverage in the User Group Relations Committee. Cool.
There is a TON more on the community pages. Definitely go cruise around!
Scott W bites the tablet bullet
Scott Watermasysk was asking around about the hefty Gateway Tablet PC. He said he just wanted it for email etc. I nearly whacked him upside the head (not really –he lives far away and my arm’s not long enough to reach all the way up there) and asked why on earth he wanted such a mammoth to do email? 🙂 I told him about the little love of my life, my Acer C110 and he just got one. Soon I have to give my Acer back to my client sniff sniff and will have a Toshiba M200 (1.1 pounds heavier), but I will be using it for more than email.
Don’t get me wrong. The Acer is a powerful little box. It’s just that because it is so small, it’s a little hard to crank out code on. The keyboard is 80% and the screen is small (and everything on it is tiny as it likes to be at 1024×768. So unless you have a burning need for a large screen (and full sized keyboard) and you are looking for something VERY portable that is still a convertible, this is definitely a great way to go.
new book – Beginning ASP.NET Databases: From Novice to Professional
This new Apress book by Dan Maharry and Damien Foggon looks like a great resource. It’s just gone to press so keep an eye out for it.
Redmond
will be in Redmond July 16-22nd with my hubby too! let the rumor mills churn. Just kidding – nothing exciting. I have to go out and convinced Rich to come as it will be the closest thing to a vacation this summer. He’ll probably hang out at REI while I’m on campus. 🙂
Hailstorm? eeeek!
Okay so it freaked me out just a little to see the word Hailstorm pop into my aggregator earlier this week. It’s source was this article on Microsoft-Watch.com about a proposed service by Microsoft, that Mary Jo says sounds suspiciously similar to the original description of Hailstorm. Hailstorm is one of the things that drove me into the arms of Java a bunch of years ago. .NET and developer services of course brought me back to Microsoft.
Here is how evangelism functions
A perfect example of how evangelism (of microsoft products, in this case, works).
Eric is the user group leader for Chatanooga Area .NET User Group and a member of the IENTA User Group Relations steering committee.
hangin’ out in the dotNetRocks Speaker Lounge
Last Thursday, Carl pulled together a bunch of people for a “speaker lounge” dotNetRocks show. It was a bit chaotic, but really fun . Along with Rory and Carl were me, Don Kiely, Kathleen Dollard, Bill Vaughan, Scott Hanselman, Patrick Hynds, Mark Dunn and Dan Appleman. I had a major lightning storm so I had to bail out just after Dan came on but he was awesome. I don’t really know Dan, but certainly I have benefitted from his experience quite a lot over the years. He has just done something very interesting, which is to write an internet security book for end users “Always Use Protection: A Teen’s Guide to Safe Computing“. He is on tour with the book and is such a great interviewee.
The discussion ranged from technical to very non-technical. So it really was just like hanging out with my pals in the speaker lounge (or the cabana!)