I’m not sure if I should cry in relief or frustration. I just spent hours and hours trying to get at the cause of a NullReferenceException being thrown by my application. I could not trap it, inspect it or even get rid of it by grabbing a straws. I finally got rid of it, but only by a stroke of luck. [Read more …]
[A DevLife post]
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Our NetFlix facility is 100 miles away in White River Junction Vermont. It takes one day for mail to get there. We can’t figure out why the website says that movies are “received” by them 6 days – 4 business days – after we mailed them back.
I don’t think we are uber-renters, destined for the list that we’ve been reading about lately. But it’s pretty annoying and of course not very easy to complain to anyone. The only types of problems they seem to let you report are if you are missing a sleeve or scratched DVD. Otherwise you get in a hopeless loop searching for a way to contact them.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Here is a project that I am now publishing through clickonce.
I just opened the project up in VS2005 and saw all of these warnings. Sheesh, here we go again…
(Note: I got an email from Patrick Darragh who is a Program Manager on the VB Team and has a lot to do with ClickOnce. Patrick tells me that “those warnings are controlled by the ‘Verify files uploaded to the server’ property on the Publish Options dialog off the Publish tab. If you uncheck this property, the warning should go away.”)
I couldn’t resist buying my honey a big ol’ bag of M&Ms for Valentines Day because I knew I had M&M wrapping paper at home. Heh heh.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
Would you like to work out of a newly renovated office with awesome views, great
co-workers and the best coffee machine in Burlington, VT? Do you have solid web
development chops, good customer service and interpersonal skills, the ability to
work under deadlines, and a good sense of humor? This job may be for you…
Union Street Media, a leading Vermont web design and development company, is seeking to add
a new Web Developer to our team. Since 1999, we have developed database-driven web sites
focusing on visual appeal, usability, and search engine prominence. The company serves over
250 clients in three primary business areas: real estate, e-commerce, and content-driven sites.
USM is a young, aggressive company requiring its employees to wear many hats. As a member
of our development staff, the person who fills this role will be responsible for helping in the
development and support of our clients’ web sites. The role requires timeliness in project
delivery, attention to detail, and a high degree of professionalism. We’re looking for a
hard working team player who enjoys working on the web. Those who don’t play well
with others need not apply.
Previous experience at a web development or marketing firm is preferred, but not required.
The position comes with a host of benefits including health insurance contribution, a gym
membership, dog-friendly atmosphere, and access to our stash of ski vouchers.
Functions/Responsibilities:
• Strong people skills and team mentality
• Work with all members of the USM team to develop web sites for clients
• Build sites using USM’s CMS; design custom templates for various modules.
• Thorough understanding of HTML, CSS, Photoshop, Web Standards, usability
• Working knowledge of PHP, MySQL
• Keeping skill set up to date with current design and technologies
• Help with support tickets, spam filtering, DNS changes, setting up FTP and email accounts
Compensation:
Commensurate with experience
Schedule:
This full-time position in our Burlington, Vermont office is open immediately.
To Apply:
Email resumé, cover letter, and three references to jobs@unionstreetmedia.com .
No phone calls please.
Union Street Media is an equal opportunity employer.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
I’m looking at a VS2005 ad in CoDe Magazine – part of the “spot the difference” campaign. The before picture has people meeting around a table with an obvious work load ahead. The after picture shows them after they have launched their product. But there is something bugging me about the after picture. The gold master framed dvd on the wall is dated October 7, 2005. So they shipped their product based on VS2005 Beta 2? Eek!
okay back to work…
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
I have really been trying to force ClickOnce to let me publish ONLY the changed files, but according to this forum post by David Guyer, I should probably just give up.
Here are my issues.
1) Moving the new deployment folder and manifest to the production server takes way too long.
1a) part of the reason for this is that I have 3rd party dlls that I have as INCLUDED rather than Pre-Requisites. Even with all of my security, I’m a little nervous about controlling the deployment of 3rd party licensed tools and this feels safer. So with some Infragistics, Janus and XCeed components, this adds 4.5 MB to my deployment files. This is one place I will have to focus on paring it down. However, with the rate at which infragistics updates its components, this provides another excuse for leaving it in the Includes.
2) Even though all of the documentation promises that the client ONLY pulls down the new files from the server, the update dialog says that all 6MB are being downloaded and looking in the GAC I see all of the files in the latest folder, not just the new ones. This is acceptable wrt speed on the intranet, but what about our dialup users out there on the web. I’m not the only one who is questioning this.
UPDATE
I have been keeping at it and learned a little more about #2. Yes, I have to publish the entire app over again, but if I do it right, the files that are not new will not get downloaded. The way to acheive this is to make a copy of the previous deployment folder, which will mean all of the previous files will match up with the hash that the client machine has for them. Then use the MAGE tool to create the manifest. (See this msdn doc and look for the “next steps” section re: updating.) Then the client machine won’t bother pulling those down again and instead, grab them from the last folder. Or something like that. Either way, the client will still say “downloading xxxMB” where xxx is the size of the complete app, but it is only downloading new stuff from the web server and kind of “cross-loading” so to speak from a sibling folder already on the client.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
.Net Software Developer
MyWebGrocer seeks bright, motivated, energetic and inquisitive software developers. Projects vary from E-Commerce and Handheld PDA applications to Interactive Shopping Circulars, Recipes Engine, Interfaces and Websites. We are a small dedicated team that is looking for 2 additional developers which share our enthusiasm and dedication to developing market leading solutions. The successful applicant will have experience with ASP.NET, C#, SQL, Visual Studio and JavaScript. Exposure to Web Services, SQL DTS and C++ considered a plus. Salary commensurate with experience.
Please send your resume and salary requirement to jobs@mywebgrocer.com.
MyWebGrocer, a privately held LLC, is the leading independent E-Commerce service provider to the American Grocery marketplace serving hundreds of retailers nationwide.
The jobs are in Williston, Vermont
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org
My mom is at Westminster this year again because Bumper was competing in this, the biggest dog show in the U.S. I think Bumper is the third one of my parent’s dogs that has gone to Westminster. Oddly, the man judging the Newfoundlands picked one of his own dogs (a dog he had bred) as Best in Breed. It’s astonishing that there isn’t a rule about something like that, but boy are there a LOT of politics in the dog world.
In 1999, Annie (who is now 9 years old) won an Award of Merit at Westminster, which was a big big deal.
Here’s a picture of Bumper and a link to the BlueHeavenNewfoundlands website.
Vermont.NET turned FOUR at our meeting last night and we had a joint meeting with the Vermont SQL Group which is a spin off of VTdotNET. This was the 2nd of our two launch events (the first was related to INETA and the 2nd to PASS) so we had 5 more VS2005/SQL Server2005 licence packs to give away.
So, I counted 46 at the meeting. That is our 3rd largest meeting ever.
1) Ken Getz (INETA): 50
2) Keith Pleas/Thom Robbins/ INETA 100th Speaker event and MSDN film crew: 50
3) Laura Blood/Roman Rehak/SQL2005 Launch: 46
4) Rocky Lhotka (INETA): 40
5) Laura Blood/VS2005 Launch: 40
Laura and Roman did an awesome job. Laura presented the slides that MSDN created for these events. That was some chore because each slide was jam packed with information, so she pointed out highlights. Then Roman did the demos and he used a lot of his own (from his job as SQL Server guru extraordinaire) and also a few from some other sources that he acknowledged.
The most interesting thing to me was my new persective on Service Broker. I have only really looked at it from what it provides for Query Notification and didn’t really “get” it’s real purpose. Now I realize that the reason for this is because I am a) not a DBA with the problems that it solves and b) not doing big time enterprise work. I understood the queues and the services but was missing the big picture. But I finally got it and it’s really easy – by sending processing chores off to the service broker, you can distribute your processes (much more easily than the previously available methods). Some examples: Scenario A is where you send a process such as executing a particular query off (asynchronously) to a service broker on a different box. Scenario B is where you queue up requests to be processed over night. It was a real “AHA!” moment.
He also did a great xml data type demo where he showed the difference between finding a needle in a haystack of xml formatted data stored in a (???) varchar field and finding that same needled with the data stored in an xml data field. The xquery/xpath was much more efficient, cutting a 40 second search down to a few hundred millseconds. Then by applying some of the indexing you can do with the xml data type, it got down even more.
There were many other great demos – CLR in SQL Server, and a B.I. demo – something I have never looked at or considered before – from Integration Services. Very cool, very impressive.
Thanks to Laura and Roman for a great meeting.
A few other highlights: cake for our 4th anniversary and goodies from local MSDN DCC Susan Wisowaty. Susan lives in Burlington, but is the DCC for New York and New Jersey.
Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org