http://www.AcehAid.org
Day of .NET #6 in Chicago was today and so was Code Camp Charlotte. Next Saturday there is the Southern California .NET Technical Summit in L.A. and a Code Camp in D.C. Thom Robbins just announced plans for a Code Camp in NYC. There have reacently been ones in Philadelphia and North Carolina and they just seem to keep coming. I have been trying to list as many upcoming events as I can find out about in the INETA Newsletters. Definitely be sure I know if you have one coming up. It doesn’t have to be in the U.S. or Canada even.
http://www.AcehAid.org
Last week I bought a new machine for my Whidbey testing. It was a total steal. It arrived by UPS while I was gone today but had to be signed for. But the driver was enormously kind to leave his cell phone # and luckily he was still in my neck of the boonies so I was able to hook up with him and get my new computer. Luckily it will be raining a lot this weekend and I will replace my old tired box that is still chugging away with Beta2 with this speedy little guy.
http://www.AcehAid.org
http://www.AcehAid.org
Wow! This is great news. Andrew Duthie reports that there are only 25 seats left for next Saturday’s Mid-Atlantic Code Camp!!
Register quick if you haven’t yet and want to go!!
http://www.AcehAid.org
So I received my first CodeZone user group kit today. This is the one that goes to user group leaders. All of the digital content can also be downloaded by user group members who have signed up. In addition to digital content there are three books: O’Reilly’s .NET Compact Framework Pocket Guide, MS Press ASP.NET Mobile Devices and MS Press .NET Compact Framework.
The very first thing I thought of when seeing this was all of the people who are saying “CodeZone is out to replace INETA.” This box is very different from the INETA swag mailings and I see no cross over here at all.
The whole thing is geared towards Mobile Development. The production quality of the materials is astounding and a almost a little frightening. MS EMEA outsourced the development of a full blown mobile application to a few development shops which are promoted in the little accompanying booklet in a way that actually looks like magazine ads – but that’s fair, we all deserve recognition for our work.. However the fact that they are in the front of the booklet is actually very confusing and perhaps they should be put in the back. There is even a CompuWare ad on the back. The binder that it all comes in is super duper guper slick – but is generic enough to be reused for all of the CodeZone user group kits. Yes, the green girl is in there. I guess I’m not really the target market for this marketing effort – I have to say that the design doesn’t really appeal to me, but as 40+ female, I am such a teeny little slice of the demographics – so I don’t have a problem with that at all. I’m just a different kind of “hip”. tee hee
So that was my first impression. I KNOW that the whole thing is really geared towards getting developers really excited about doing mobile development (translation: there is not enough going on yet) and presenting a fantastic sample solution that not only is chock full of great code, but an app that I will assume has great architecture ideas as well as the business analysis that went into the solution.
The kit contains 3 cds. One is the Mobile Development SDK, another is a compilation of webcasts, demos, powerpoints etc and the last is the WeRock sample application – emblazoned with the slick graphics. It sure doesn’t look like a disc from the MSDN Universal Subscription!! 🙂
So I think what I will do is give away the entire kit to one lucky person in the group. However, I have that worry of raffling it off and someone who is not so interested winning it and then putting it on a shelf. Usually a good solution for that is having a bunch of things for raffle winners to choose from.
In the meantime, it will be a good vehicle for me to promote CodeZone at the meeting although right now that is the only value for *this* codezone site. Downloading the digital portion of the kit. In the future it will be a lot more.
http://www.AcehAid.org
I guess this is the definition of a geek vacation, but I much prefer Dave Burke’s idea of a vacation!!
Next week I will be going to Washington D.C. for a variety of things. First I am going to get a Wintellect brain infusion at Devscovery. That will be 3 days of intense learning with John Robbins, Jeff Prosise, Jeffrey Richter (I wonder if Sara has warned him that I’m coming. Maybe I’ll wear an “I Love VB” shirt. 😉 ) and some of the other Wintellects.
Then I get a day of rest with the Duthies and hopefully some real old-fashioned sightseeing! The next day (Saturday) is the Mid Atlantic Code Camp which I am sticking around for and was happy that the locals are letting me do some talks. I’m really looking forward to seeing some of my D.C. friends like Scott Lock and finally meeting Sahil Malek, Bill Ryan (unless he decides to go to Hooters or something) and some others that I have never met in person. If I’m super lucky, I’ll aslo get a chance to see some of my non-geek friends I haven’t seen in a while!
The line up looks awesome and there is also going to be a full day SOA track where they build an app. Heck, I’d almost skip my own talks for that! (Just kidding – I wouldn’t really do that).
YOu can register for Mid-Atlantic Code Camp here. It’s free and there’s still room!!
Posted from BLInk!
I have been struggling with a printer jamming problem for months. I even spent $400 on getting it repaired (it’s one of those big honkin’ LaserJet network printers) and still the paper was jamming.
I have had the printer for 10 years and have *always* used plain copy paper. For the past 6 or so it has generally been Staples brand copy paper.
I finally gave in and bought some multi-use paper. It costs more than twice as much and the legal size, which I have to use a lot of, seems to have no options except for one brand ($$ Hammermill) that we found at Staples. (I will do some further searches for that on the web) The jamming problem seems to be much relieved.
However, I was on the phone with a client who had been having the same problem and after many many visits from their repair guy, they finally started questioning the Staples copy paper that they have had no problems with for years. They ended up on the phone with Staples who apparently admitted that (this is just second hand and I could be incorrect on that statement) the paper had degraded and gave my client credit for their recent purchases.
That is annoying. I wasted hours and hours and hours dealing with the jamming problems and $400 too!
http://www.AcehAid.org
I just gave in and bought a new machine JUST for testing. It is faster than my regular development machine at 3.2 ghz, is a P4 and comes with 1 gig of ram already. They just kept slapping all of these discounts on ($50 off on any Optiplex between $400-$500 and $50 any GX270 or SX280) and the whole thing was under $400, no tax, free shipping. Not too shabby. It is going to replace my current left over test box that is 700mhz and has 512 mb ram (and runs Whidbey Beta2 and SQL Server 2005 Developer perfectly fine thank you very much!!) It was definitely a satisfying purchase!
http://www.AcehAid.org
Anyone catch this in Chris Sells’ post about the 2.0 version of his Windows Forms book?
we’re not updating the VB.NET version due to poor sales for VB.NET-related titles in general
That is a shocker to me – that VB.NET books are selling less than C#. I wouldn’t have expected it.
http://www.AcehAid.org