Monthly Archives: January 2006

Hooked on TimeSnapper

Tools

I’m pretty slow on the uptake sometimes. Leon Bambrick’s TimeSnapper app was the top pick of the Larkware 2005 Developer Tool contest. I knew then that I needed to look at this program, but it unfortunately was on a long list of things I needed to do. Over the last few weeks, however, it bubbled up to the top, as I have been thinking about the crazy way I work when I’m in front of the computer. With little patience at my disposal and always so much to do, I can’t even wait 5 seconds for something to load up on my computer, and will go do something else to fill the void. Check email (which of course could steer me on a whole new course at the flip of a switch), newsgroups, the news, my blog reader, my own blog stats, another client project that I had a thought about. Anything and everything. And it’s got me a little worried.

So I decided I would try TimeSnapper to really see if it’s true. How long do I stay focused on any one project over the course of the day. And the answer is scary, but I will keep that to myself.

The program is surprisingly lightweight, taking advantage of our massive hard drives rather than memory. Not only can I gather evidence of my terrible habits (which can someday be used to cure me of them?), I can also go back and figure out when I stopped working on something billable even if I forgot to log out of my timeclock application.

Not only that, but in it’s simplicity, as one user testimonial says “it just works”. Thanks Leon. I’m not really sure if this is going to be a healthy mirror to hold up to myself, but hopefully it will have good effects!!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

More about .NET Windows DLL Hell

dotNET

Although my own recent DLL hell with VS2005 is in design time, I have learned quite a good lesson about dynamically loading assemblies and the dll hell you can introduce in that way.

I have an application that makes heavy use of Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom where I pass in the path of a DLL to be loaded. The DLLs are randomly added to the application as we create them.

What I learned was from this post of Suzanne Cooke’s about the difference between Load and LoadFrom. Load will load assemblies that are in the GAC (and a few other .NET locales) and is a big help in avoiding dll hell because the GAC does a good job of versioning. LoadFrom will load from a  file that you explicitly tell it to and cares not about versioning. There are a lot more pointers to be aware of here. Check out her post on choosing a binding context (Load and LoadFrom are binding contexts) as well as her related post about switching your code from using LoadFrom to using Load. Suzanne writes the kind of posts that cant’ be read lightly and I can’t really absorb their lessons unless it’s something that I need to know. And I needed to know this today!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

My side job: travel agent

Just Rambling

One of the pain in the rear parts of doing a lot of travel is doing a lot of travel coordination. It actually is quite time consuming to find the right flights at good times, with short layovers and not overly expensive rates. Then there’s finding hotels, dealing with the usual variety of room rates and lastly coordinating anything else that might be involved. Even when you have a travel agent helping you, there are still a lot of decisions to make. I think for every event I go to, I probably spend at least a few hours on this.

Even with my little overnight trip to do an INETA gig at TechValley .NET in Albany next week, I spent time figuring out where to stay (finally settled on a hotel in Saratoga Springs with the benefit of meeting up with a friend), if I should take a train (turns out it would be a lot more hours than driving and still include driving) or even rent a car (though I discovered the only option there was to drive 30 miles north to Burlington to get a car before heading south to Albany). So in the long run, I  have a simple plan – hop in my car and drive to Albany. But given the options, the budget and my own schedule, it was not a “no-brainer” and I infectiously put way too much thought into it.

When Kate and I sent to South Africa, we spent hours and hours on i.m. trying to find flights that we could meet up on that would be amenably priced for Microsoft and would get all of the mileage credits to our own frequent flier accounts. Then we had to go back and forth with Microsoft’s travel coordinator over a series of about 20 emails. I bet we each spent at least 4 hours doing that. This, of course, does not include planning our outings.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

INETA’s Formation – perception vs. reality

Ineta

D’Arcy Lussier writes:

Flash back a few years to when .NET was an emerging technology. Microsoft put their marketing muscle behind the promotion and creation of user group communities: groups of geeks getting together to talk about CLR goodness. Their plan worked to perfection, and user groups sprung up all over the world! An organization (which I’m a membership manager for), INETA – The International .NET Association, was created and helped bolster the user groups by providing guidance, speakers, and support.

I see it very differently.

Flash back a few years to when .NET was an emerging technology. INETA – The International .NET Association, was created by a handful of user group leaders (led by Bill Evjen) in an effort to bolster the user groups by providing guidance, speakers, and support. When INETA (with help from Microsoft’s Eric Ewing) demonstrated to Microsoft how important the user group community was, Microsoft put their marketing muscle behind the promotion and creation of user group communities: groups of geeks getting together to talk about CLR goodness.



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

INETA User Group Leaders: How did you make your launch dvds?

Ineta

I am ready to give up.

We have our 5 dvds worth of content to share with our user group members but have still, after two months of begging favors, not found a way to get the copies made efficiently.

I know Lori Mckinney burned all 700+ dvds herself on two normal home dvd burners.

First we have to get someone to pay for 250 blank dvds. Then we have to find a way to copy that many.

I can’t find anyone to do it for us for free or cheaply. The best offer I had was still going to cost us $750.

How have you solved this dilemma?

Update: Here is how we are doing it! Our D.E., Thom Robbins, hooked us up with 250 blank DVDs and I have now gotten a number of user group members who have committed to burning anywhere from 4 to 10 sets. So I will burn about 10 sets myself and then mail those with a bunch of blanks to these people who will bring their burned sets to the next meeting! Yay!!



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org