All posts by Julie

Joel Spolsky on one man shops

Just Rambling

Avonelle points out Joel Spolsky’s comment in a discussion about being a one-man shop and Christopher Hawkin’s response.

Although Joel’s backup logic is bull, I do agree with his main “thesis” – that a consultant is not an entrepreneur. In 16 or so years I have been a consultant, I have never considered myself an entrepreneur or a start-up business, so I don’t even care about qualifying that one.

However, he uses some dead-wrong points to back up that statement. Pure bull.

I am hardly the low man on the totem pole with my clients. I am a business partner – a trusted business partner. The owner of my largest client absolutely sees me that way. I have acquired such a good understanding of his business over the years that it is not uncommon for him to discuss other areas of his business (other than technology) with me and seek my opinion.

Perpetual Job hunting. My very first client came to me as a referral. I had a full time job then and was not even looking for contract work. Since then, almost all of my work has been word of mouth for all of these years. That does not mean that I “put the word out” that I was looking either. I’m talking about totally unsolicited. The only real caveat to this is that when I moved to Vermont, I needed a full time job in order to get a mortgage. At that time, I did have to actively look for a W-2 position.)

Back to work…

Posted from BLInk!

GetDataReader already obsolete?

ADO.NET 2

(aha! just getting a new name: CreateDataReader. Thanks for the info Jackie and Kawarjit (from the AD0.Net team!)

whoa. I just noticed this in the online docs that come up through the msdn library with vs2005 (which points to this link)

The same holds true (as per the above set of docs) for DataTable.GetDataReader.

However, if you browse to a separate source of docs at http://msdn2.microsoft.com/library/0xbt1065.aspx there is no indication of it being obsolete.

It works just fine in the October CTP bits I am using. I’m confused.



Posted from BLInk!

.NET Devs site: this is just what I would write if I had the time (and the knowledge)

Community Cheerleading

Brad Wilson pointed to a new article on www.DotNetDevs.com, which prompted me to go over to the site and see what else is there. What I saw thrilled me. A host of articles that are aimed at removing the bridge of fear that many people have of particular topics. “Reflection Demystified”, “Understanding Isolated Storage”, “Using Encryption in .NET” and more. The authors of these articles understand that “you can’t know everything” and just because you don’t understand a particular topic or concept, does not mean you need to be addressed as though you don’t even know how to turn on a computer. Nor do they speak in tongues, taking a topic so deeply that there is no place for you to hook in so you can understand what the heck they are talking about. This site is looking like the chapters of the fantasy book I was dreaming of writing (but probably won’t ever really write). Kudos to Brad Wilson and the other authors on the .NET Developers site.

Posted from BLInk!

INETA Swag box and thanks Programmer’s Paradise

Community Cheerleading

My INETA Winter Warmup arrived today. Dave Totzke did some hell of a job getting vendors to contribute. Here is a list of all of the vendors who contributed stuff. But I wanted to say an extra thanks to Programmer’s Paradise. They also made an incredible donation. They packaged and shipped the mailing. Not only was it packed like a pro, but think about the fact that this went to all of the user groups in North America. That’s about 250 groups. That’s 250 boxes to pack and 250 * ?? for shipping each box. At least $5/box right? This is a huge contribution. So thank you SO VERY MUCH to everyone at Programmer’s Paradise!

Posted from BLInk!

Amazon Theater – Watch short films right on the amazon site

Purely Personal

Very cool!!! Short films do not have many venues outside of film festivals in the u.s. Amazon Theater is actually showing some right on their website! Granted there is some serious product placement going on. I don’t know if the films are created with the goal of featuring items you can buy on Amazon, or if Amazon scours the films to find items that they sell. But there is a page that says “see something you liked in the movie? Buy it here“ Sheesh – but still….



Posted from BLInk!