Some notes about DevTeach: Early bird discount, user group discounts, get to know the speakers

dotNET

Jean-Rene sent out a great email about DevTeach today. Here are some key elements from it:

Save 200$ by taking advantage of DevTeach early bird.
This year, we are offering an early bird of 200$ CAN for attendees that are registering before February 28th, 2006. Registered attendees have accessed to the DevTeach 2005 Archive sessions material for download.

User group members rebate at DevTeach 2006
The User Groups Rebate program is back in 2006. We are offering 50.00$ off the registration cost to all members of user groups registered with INETA, Pass, Culminis or the Universal Thread User Group Meeting Tracker. To benefit of this rebate, members need to enter a rebate code when processing their registration. This rebate can be combined with the early bird discount which gives a 200.00$ rebate until Fabruary 28th. User group leaders can request this rebate code good for 50$ off the registration by sending an email to jrroy@DevTeach.com.

Get to know our speakers by reading their blog and listening to their talk show interviews.
Most of our speakers write regularly in their blog and have been interviewed by the Dot Net Rock Talk Show or the Visual Studio Show. Get to know our speakers by reading their blog and listening to their latest interview on talk shows. The DevTeach conference include a top selection of speakers having a strong experience in various areas. Most of these speakers are presenting at major conferences around the world on a regular base and in other areas as well such as user groups, corporate training and class training.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Are we on NetFlix “ship ’em slowly” list?

Purely Personal

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

ClickOnce wants me to update from the deployment server when I’m in debug mode?

dotNET

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.”)



Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont IT Jobs: Web Developer in Burlington

Jobs

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

Exactly WHEN did you ship that .NET 2.0 product?

Just Rambling

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

Unhappily accepting the “whole kit n kaboodle” with clickOnce- for now

dotNET

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