IRR Callups – “This is news?”

Community Cheerleading

That’s what I thought too when I first saw the headline earlier this week on CNN that the IRR’s were being called up and it was the first time since Desert Storm. I thought that’s what Steve Smith was and he got called up in April. So I decided I must just be confused, but Steve confirms that they are talking about the exact same class of reservists that he fell into.

I had a nice surprise the other day when I was automatically signed me into i.m. by opening up a vpn connection. I got pinged by Steve who was on leave for a few days, so I got to chat with him for a while. Ever the geek, he told me he had just finished downloading Whidbey Beta1. 🙂

He’s back at Ft. Bliss now and due to go to Kuwait any day now and then Iraq shortly after that. Think good thoughts…

lost pocket pc = new pocket pc phone?

Just Rambling

I give up. I really truly lost my pocket pc. I think I left it in my room in the hotel in Montreal last week. I didn’t realize that I was actually that attached to it. It had my name & address & phone # on the back and can’t be much use to anyone without the perpherials (battery charger, etc). Maybe it will show up in the mail someday.

I think it’s replacement will have to be a pocketpc phone though.

Update: Dec. 15, 2005! It’s back after 18 months! Check out this new post.

First time letting a designer muck with my asp.net pages

dotNET

There is a super duper young guy at one of my client’s who is a very talented graphic artist with plenty of java website experience – you now… one of those Mac users :-). He was tasked with adding a little more flare to some of the internal websites I have done for his company. I was a little nervous about how this would affect my websites. I sent him the html for the pages he was to work on and he sent me html pages back. All I had to do was copy and paste the key segments from the html he returned back into my original pages and upload the revised aspx along with some stylesheets and a separate images folder and voila – new look, same old functionality. That was my first experience partnering with someone on the UI portion of asp.net sites. So I’m glad it worked out well. Oh, I had warned him not to touch the <asp: > controls or I would chop off his head, so that seemed to pay off. (And I believe his ego has recovered from the threat…)

Nice quick overview of the new tools by Sam Gentile

dotNET

Ahh – looks like Sam gets to do this as part of his .NET Supreme Wonk Architect job. Darn it’s not fair :-). I still had my clients calling me today with all of the usual stuff and code to write that they are waiting for.  Then since dinner I have managed to knock off a few of my Vermont.NET and INETA tasks that have been piling up. So I am relying at the moment on what I’m seeing in blogs and on some lists and these three posts of Sam’s stuck out in the crowd for me.

VSExpress Developers?…VSExpress MVPs?…VSExpress User Groups?

Just Rambling

I was thinking about the void between the .net mvps and the other MS technology mvps at the mvp summit in April and wondering if there is going to be a similar community gap between vs express developers and ummm … what will we be called … “real”?… developers. I imagine there will be many people who just stop with the express products rather than using them as a stepping stone to .NET development. Will they be embraced in our community or treated like 2nd class citizens? Hey, does that mean VB developers will finally have someone to pick on now*?

Seriously. I really was wondering about this as I was considering Avonelle’s post on trying to understand the VS2005 Express products in relation to VS2005. This probably means it’s time to go to sleep.

*kidding…I’m KIDDING!

Holy Crap! I passed the Security cert test

dotNET

Every week or so I go back to the Pearson Vue site to see if Microsoft has released the results of the Security beta test that I took in early May. It was a bit of a traumatic event as you can see from the blog post I wrote when I got home. Being a beta test you never know when you will get the results. I haven’t received any emails. But I just checked the site and…

Though I am no expert, I am glad to see that what I confidently know about .net security combined with the intuition that I have acquired over 20 years of software development saw me through. Phew.

I believe that I am able to use this test towards my certification. It is an elective toward MCAD or MCSD. So I guess that makes me an MCAD. Now I will have to take the web services to be an MCAD and the architecture tests for an MCSD. Someday…. 🙂

Remedial VS: Learning to drag & drop in Visual Studio

dotNET

I am a die-hard NO WAY JOSE kinda girl when it comes using the visual data wizards for my apps. No for connections, data sets or anything. I like to write my own data access thank you very much and then hook everything up at run time. However, I got really stuck because not only do I not use them , I don’t  even know *how* to use them. I have let all of those demos slip out of my head to make room for things I need. But I got bit when I wanted to design an Infragistics UltraWinGrid at design time due to the fact that my datasource was somewhat complex and it is nice to see what I’m doing. I had a nice little typed dataset class that I created and wanted to assign it to the datasource at design time. Something I have never done! But the class was not available in the drop-down for the DataSource property of the grid. Finally I figured out to drag a “dataset” from the toolbar onto my form and that’s where I was able to select my dataset class.

I have to say, it was pretty handy! I wonder if it’s time for some remedial VS training… 🙂

I’m laughing because I’m thinking of Sam Gentile and his disdain for all things drag & drop – but Sam, I just had no way around it this time!

ECHO ECho echo: VS2005 Beta and Express Betas and SQL 2005 Beta 2

dotNET

Though the cat got out of the bag a little early, the betas just launched! And a beautiful new MSDN developer center to go with them.

VS2005 Beta 1 (released June 29th)
How to get it MSDN Subscribers will be the first to receive Visual Studio 2005 Beta 1, which will be available for subscriber download within just a few days. MSDN Subscribers will also receive Beta 1 in their next MSDN shipments. Within a few weeks, non-subscribers will also be able to order a copy of Beta 1 for a nominal fulfillment fee.

Express Products (Beta)
VB Express, C# Express, Visual C++ Express, Visual J# Express, Visual Web Developer Express and SQL 2005 Express!

SQL 2005 Beta 2
hmmm – maybe they didn’t announce it yet – still looking…

Congrats to all at MS, including MSDN,  for so many launches!