Monthly Archives: February 2007

One more month as a homebody then it all starts again

Just Rambling

After 8 INETA trips (speaking at 15 user groups), two code camps (both overnight trips), conferences in Orlando, Milwaukee, Montreal, Bulgaria and Las Vegas and then summit at Microsoft – all of this in 2006, I promised myself that I was staying home for the winter. After the last trip (in early December) I was not going to travel again until DevConnections at the end of March this year. Though it ended up meaning that I had to pass on the MVP Summit in mid-March, I’ve stuck to my promise. (I’m sneaking past the fact that I’ll be doing a quick overnight in Albany at Tech Valley .NET (about 3 hours away) in mid-March.

But I can feel it starting again already. I have my reservations for DevConnections. The day after I return from Orlando, I have to drive to Massachussets for Code Camp for the weekend and then a few weeks after that I’ll be flying out to Seattle (see I get to go after all :-)) in April to speak at the South Sound .NET Group in Olympia. I’m skipping MIX07 but of course contemplating TechEd.

I will really relish the next month in Vermont, even if I spend most of it in front of the computer. 

Oreo’s – A great source of calcium

Purely Personal

At a recent check-up, my doctor reminded me that now that I’m getting to be such an old lady (okay, she didn’t quite put it that way) I need to be more conscientious about my calcium intake. I asked her if the half & half in my coffee counted. No. How about the small bowl of ice cream once in a while in the evening? No.

I remember my mother telling me about a doctor appt she had in her late 60’s (not so long ago) when the doctor complemented her on how strong and healthy her bones were. Her reply to the doctor was that it was thanks to all those cookies she eats, because when she eats cookies, she pours a glass of milk to go with them.

So after lunch that day, (thanks to my husband’s habit of stockpiling cookies in the house (which is normally a really big problem for me)), I happily placed 2 Oreo cookies on my plate, poured myself a glass of milk, and fed my bones.

Feb CTP of Orcas with LINQ and more coming soon

Data Access

Since a few people have asked me in email (which is not a problem…), I thought I’d make mention that the next CTP for Orcas is the February CTP. It is coming out either late February or early March. This version, though still a CTP, should have all of the LINQ and EF stuff updated and incorporated, including the UI stuff such as the designer and the templates that we currently have to go back to the May CTP for, as well as some major enhancements to LINQ in VB, a LinqDataSource for databinding in web apps and more.

Quickbooks OnLine Banking – Still crazy after all these years

Tools

I have been using Quickbooks since it’s DOS 1.0 version. I kid you not.

My pet peeve with this software is online banking. When I download my AmEx bill, it takes me a horrrrrrrribly long time to get the transactions into my register.

I paid $200 to upgrade from QB 2004 (?) to the newest version and even though there are some minor improvements, I’m still here looking at a few hours to deal with the many months of AmEx bills I have avoided getting in to QuickBooks. Every time I download and start working on it, I give up. So now they are piled up and of coruse I MUST get through them because it’s tax time.

I think it will take less time to just sit here with my paper statements and enter them by hand.

Why can’t they figure out a better way? I don’t need a vendor account for every random gas station I go to in my travels. Maybe I’ll try the aliasing and set up a “GENERIC GAS STATION” payee account and others.

Update: Now I see the benefit of the aliasing. The more info you have in there, the smarter it gets. It’s not perfect, but at least I got through it a little faster than before.

Who parked that car on our front porch?

Vermont

As the snow was piling up and the wind was creating drifts, the pile of snow building up by our front door at one point literally looked like the shape of a car! Here it was the day after.

Rich has been out snowblowing and shoveling on and off for three days now (in between skiing on the new snow at Mad River, off course). He’s just now attacking the pile. Check out the pink sunset in the valley, too. These are snow paths like I remember from my childhood.