Monthly Archives: April 2006

The Old School on Women in Business

Purely Personal

I was flipping through the latets Forbes Small Business (May 2006) this morning and nearly fell out of my chair when I read the last sentence of this letter to the editor. It was in reference to a recent issue filled with a number of articles on women-owned businesses. I can’t believe the guy actually signed his name and business name, too!

As a senior man in the small-business world (I’m 64), I read with great interest your articles about the growth of woman-owned businesses. You discount why men succeed at a greater rate than women – which I think is because men are more realistic. From the time they are little girls, most women are taught that looks, rather than learning to be smart, matter in business. Women cake on a fake face every day to alter their looks, yet expect everyone, especially men, to comply with feminine prerogatives. That has a chilling effect on business negotiations. Incessant narcisism is rampant in the feminine mind, and it can and does cloud business judgement.

Richard Royce
President
VenturEXPO Group
Pasadena, Calif.

I wonder if he knows that the Narcissism began with a man named Narcissus.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

The new improved Alentus web host

Community Cheerleading

Alentus has always been one of the ASP.NET hosts out in the front of the pack. It is where my own website and also the Vermont.NET site is hosted for nearly 4 years.

I just happened to cruise to their home page and saw that it has been totally spiffed up! That struck me because I have watched their “visual branding” evolve over the years. They really now finally have a good solid look that evokes the professionals that they are.

I also see they’re now hosting WordPress and DotNetNuke.

They now have a basic $8.95 ASP.NET 2.0 hosting plan. I tend to stay the heck away from hosting that is that low-priced because it is usually cheap for a reason. But this is no “budget” host. They are very technical and knowledgable about ASP.NET.

Though they offered to let me have some space on a test ASP.NET server before RTM, I have been too busy to update any of my sites. But a new VTdotNET site is in the works and it is time! Yay.

Kudos guys.



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

One of the pleasures of owning a small business in a small state

Vermont

Last week I had to send in all of my paperwork for my business quarterly taxes. There’s the 941 to the Feds,  a tax & withholding to the State of Vermont Dept ofo Taxes and one other to the Vermont Dept of Employment and Training.

I inadvertantently switched the checks for the two Vermont agencies, sending the E&T check to the tax people and their check to E&T. I am a sole proprietor … these are not big checks.

I actually got a phone call from someone this morning telling me that she had the right form, but the wrong check and she was going to “pink it over” (office internal mail) to the tax department. A phone call! Can you imagine? So I called the other department which is more automated and won’t be able to get their hands on the check I sent them – it will just get processed, but they will send me a refund. So I called the first woman back who was so nice and told her I would just send her a new check. No forms, no notes no explanation. She said just put my employer i.d. on the check and she’ll know what to do with it.

I know people with larger companies have issues with doing business in this tiny state, but it suits me just fine!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Code Camp 5 Schedule – WOW!

dotNET

I just took a look to see how the schedule is filling out for Code Camp 5 in Waltham, MA next weekend and was really impressed!

The stats

  • 47 sessions
  • 5 tracks
  • 19 speakers
  • 3 out of towners (I think that’s right)
  • 1 speaker who seems to be planning to do 6 sessions – maybe Thom is just supposed to select from them… 🙂


Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

More thoughts on TabletPC Killer App

Tablet

This is definitely something that’s on my mind a lot. I’m not marketing person and it’s not something I’ve been tasked with by a marketing person or the TabletPC team. It’s just something that keeps popping up and is very interesting to me.

This weekend while visiting friends outside of Madison, WI after Deeper in .NET, I learned that my friend’s partner, a painting contractor who is extremely non-technical, has a TabletPC. [read more …]

[A DevLife post]

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Pictures from Deeper in .NET and Wisconsin

Just Rambling

Some pics of my fun trip to Deeper in .NET in Wisconsin and a look around WI afterwards!

Flying out of Burlington VT, I finally got a decent picture of Lake Champlain. Of course this is nothing compared to what I was looking at.

Flying into Chicago here is the torquoise Lake Michigan.


Avonelle and Val
Bill Hatfied and Korby Parnell
Dinner at a local brew pub

The wings of the Milwaukee Art Museum.
This building is amazing. Look for pics
on the MAM site.
Local legend Dale Chihuly at MAM
My dear friend Martha Downs and
Korby at MAM.

What? Skiing in Wisconsin!
The Tyrol Basin Golf Course, err,
Ski and Snowboard Area.


a VERY impressive woodpile!

Combining ink controls and server controls on a web page

Tablet

A reader of my recent Ink on the Web article in CoDe Magazine (samples available here) emailed me with an odd problem that I had to see in action before I realized what was going on.

The problem was this. She had a web form with an ink-enabled winforms control on it that worked fine. But when she added an asp:dropdownlist, the page crashed. She said she got no error message.

I tried the same thing and received a big fat error saying “Control ‘dropdownlist1’ of type ‘dropdownlist’ must be placed inside a form tag with runat=server”.

Aha! In order to do most of the tricks I am performing with moving the ink control’s data from the client side to the server side require the form to not be a server-side form. Therefore “runat=server” does not exist in the form tag.

The solution is to have separate forms on the page for the ink control and the server side controls.

Kirk Allen Evans reminds us that only one server side form can be visible at a time, so you have to design your page around these limitations unfortunately. You don’t be able to have server controls in a form, then below that an ink control in another form and then below that more server controls in a third form.

The general html of the page would look like this:

 
<html>
<HEAD> …some stuff in here </HEAD>
 
<body>
<script> ..some scrpts here </script>
 
<!–this is the form that handes the inkable control. It does NOT have runat=server–>

  <form id=”inkForm” name=”inkForm” action=”Handler.ashx” method=”post”>

     <object id=”ComplexInkControl” classid=”InkControls.dll#InkControls.MyInkControl” style=”width: 100px;
     height: 100px” VIEWASTEXT></object>

  </form>
 
<!–this is the form that has server side controls–>

   <form id=”serversideFORM” runat=server>

        <asp:DropDownList ID=”DropDownList1″ runat=”server” AutoPostBack=”True”>
             <asp:ListItem>a</asp:ListItem>
             <asp:ListItem>b</asp:ListItem>
             <asp:ListItem>c</asp:ListItem>
             <asp:ListItem>d</asp:ListItem>
         </asp:DropDownList><br />

         <asp:Label ID=”Label1″ runat=”server” Text=”Label”></asp:Label><br />

     </form>

</body>

</html>

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont IT Jobs: Windows C/C++ Software Developer in Williston VT

Jobs

MicroStrain, Inc., a leading microminiature sensor developer, is seeking a Visual C++ developer responsible for creating and maintaining their flagship, wireless sensor network application, Agile-Link. Qualified candidates will be required to write documentation for Agile-Link’s development, code design, and testing. In addition, candidates must have strong teamwork skills to interact with various engineers, sales, and support staff in the development of custom applications and software development kits. 

Applicants must have 3+ years of software design and development experience on the Microsoft Windows platform, including an understanding of software life cycle design. Proven, advanced knowledge of C/C++, object oriented design, hardware/software interaction, and the Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC) are required. Candidates must demonstrate a strong debugging foundation, and a clear, critical writing and verbal skill set to describe any such discovered issues.

A strong working knowledge of Visual Basic, the Microsoft .NET framework, and open source operating systems such as Linux and FreeBSD are a plus. A Bachelors of Science Degree in Computer Science or better is preferred.

http://www.microstrain.com/employment.aspx Our employment page

Please send electronic resume to: humanres@microstrain.com and mention that you came thru vtdotnet.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org