There is talk of forming something along the lines of the CodeBrew that Bill Evjen started in St Louis or maybe a PubClub which Stan Schultes and Russ Fustino are doing in Florida. Stay tuned.
Posted from BLInk!
EBay drama
Rich and I were bidding on a pair of Sherpa Snow Shoes with step in bindings. They have stopped manufacturing them (ummm out of business) and we have been trying to get some for two years. A pair came on ebay for $60. We were the only bidder at $60 for days and days. Of course, when there were only 4 minutes left, a “sniper” appeared. (I have also sniped before successfully…so I am not saying there is anything wrong with it.) I was upstairs watching and refreshing, over remote desktop to my computer downstairs. When I saw that the person had overbid my max, I went to put in a new maximum bid. It asked me for my password again. That was downstairs next to my computer. I have a broken foot and am on crutches and there were only 3 minutes left! I managed to get down the stairs without killing myself. I had to get the screen warmed up, log back into my windows session and enter the password. I managed to do this with 20 seconds left. I had to raise my maximum 2 more times and managed to get them! Oh the pounding heart! But I really wanted them! I have a pair of Sherpas with lace up bindings because I did not have crampon compatible hiking boots at the time I originally bought them. Now when Rich and I are winter hiking, it takes me about 10 minutes to get into my snowshoes, so I have been really wanting these for years. Sometimes Rich lets me use his and he uses mine so he doesn’t have to wait for me (he can lace ’em up faster) Hooray!!! These are fantastic showshoes. I have no idea why they went out of business.
Posted from BLInk!
Roman Rehak shows us that SysAdmins don’t necessarily get full data access
Makes perfect sense. Just because you are a sysadmin, does not mean you should have access to all fo the data in SQL Server. In his weekly SQL Server Tip, Roman explains how to set more concise accounts and permissions.
Posted from BLInk!
ADO.NET 2.0 Category
I decided to move all of my posts regarding ADO.NET 2.0 into their own category.
http://www.thedatafarm.com/blog/CategoryView.aspx?category=ADO.NET2
Posted from BLInk!
Kudos to Halley Suitt and Worthwhile Mag.
Worthwhile sold out
Posted from BLInk!
ADO.NET 2.0 Hypothesizing vs. testing
One of the new features in ADO.NET 2.0 is the DataTableReader. I read about this and invented all kinds of great uses for it in my head. The DataTableReader is a firehose from a DataTable or DataSet, much like a SQLDataReader is from a SQL Database.
I dreamt of ability to disconnect the DataTableReader from it’s source and move it around. Thus having a really light weight version of the data much in the same way many of us will stream SQLDataReader (or other) into an array or some other object to move it around without any extra overhead. But I was so wrong – really misunderstanding this class because I hadn’t CODED anything with it, just read the documentation and hypothesized.
Actually DataTableReader is pretty cool. Not only do you have a new great way to iterate simply through a datatable or dataset, but it will really stream the data live.
Example – you create a SQLDataReader and halfway through reading through it, someone deletes a record in the database that is ahead of where you are in the stream. The SQLDataReader won’t reflect this change. If someone wants to delete a record that is before that point (I have only tested this by literally opening up the database), they can’t.
With the DataTableReader, if you have some asynchronous work being done, someone can possibly add or delete rows and the DataTableReader handles this really nicely. If you add or delete a row that is before the iterator’s row pointer, the row pointer will not be affected (I tested this) and if you add or delete a row after the row pointer, that change will be reflected as you continue to iterate through the rows. Suh-weet!
I also checked to see what would happen if you created a DataTableReader from a DataSet and then mid-stream, added a new DataTable to the DataSet. This does NOT get picked up by the DataTableReader.Posted from BLInk!
BillG on Microsoft’s major financial and other investments in the TabletPC & Speech Recognition
Richard Sprague pulls an interesting quote from a recent Fast Co. mag interview with Bill Gates.
Many people think of the TabletPC as a laptop with inking capabilities, but there is so much more to it. The speech technology is really advanced and I learned a lot about what has gone into it and where it is going from some of Microsoft’s “big brains” when I was at the Tablet PC DevLab this summer. But that’s still not all. The inking and speech are part of the full stratum of what is really the mobile pc.
Posted from BLInk!
Blink Update
I just updated the installer for BLInk! to include the new “get categories” feature.
Below is what the page looks like.
This post explains how it works.
Posted from BLInk!
What do you do with a broken foot?
I can’t bear the idea of sitting around for 3 weeks. Sure I’ll get lots of work done, but puh-lease! Of course now there’s snow on the ground, so walking the dogs is not going to work. And if we go on the road, I can’t really hold two 140 lb dogs on leash while I hobble on crutches. My neighbors have already gone skiing (where there is snow being made) and they are going to have to learn not to talk to me about that. I think I’m going to have to do lots of exercises during this time so that when I can ski again, my legs won’t be lasagna noodles. Egad – day 3 and I’m already whiney. It’s really beautiful out today. Thank goodness for all of my big windows and a nice view and my wireless!
Posted from BLInk!
and your mother’s maiden name is…
Don Kiely blogs about something that has always bugged me.
Posted from BLInk!