Category Archives: Just Rambling

Symantec Subscription Upgrades tick me off

Just Rambling

Every time my husband or parents have to update their Norton Anti-Virus subscriptions I get irate. Their upgrade process is so confusing and I am confident that iit s inentionally designed to get people to buy more than they need when they upgrade. For example, when Rich gets into the upgrade path from NAV 2003 it shows him only three options: 1) update NAV2003 subs for $24.95 with no more tech support, 2)update to NAV 2005/ PasswordMinder bundle for $39.95 or 3) a 3-pack of NAV 2005. There is no link anywhere on that page to find any other options. He doesn’t need Password Minder. So instead we go directly to the Symantec site and choose Products then Upgrades. We say we have NAV 2003 and want to upgrade. It shows us our options. NAV2005 and Norton Internet Security. In the NIS block it says “protect yourself from x y and z viruses” as though you get that with NIS and not with NAV. Additionally, NIS basically does what Windows Firewall does, doesn’t it?

In the grid showing differences it does not have “windows 2000/NT/XP” checked for NAV 2005 but it does for the other. I patiently make my way through to order the upgrade to NAV 2005 with subscription and it’s only $5 more than renewing the NAV2003 subscription. That’s cool. Then it shows him another option – renew for 2 years, not just one, for only $5 more. That’s good. We won’t have to go through this nonsense again for 2 years. Then the checkout screen finally arrives and it is $41.95 instead of $35.95. They ahve added a 60 day download option in case I don’t download it today. I uncheck that and update the cart back to $35.95.

This is just SO aggravating and they have used this trickery for years. Remember when you bought the program and paid $3.95/year for virus subscriptions?  I know there are SO many more viruses for them to keep up with and I don’t have a problem with paying more for the virus subscriptions. But it ticks me off that it’s this confusing for someone like me – imagine what an average home user goes through.

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Virtual Earth does Ink!

Just Rambling

I have added ink to Virtual Earth. It wasn’t easy, but I’m a bit of a pitbull when the computer tells me “no you can’t!”. Thanks to Dr. Neil Roodyn and ViaVirtualEarth for lots of help with building in additional features like zooming, panning and searching, to my application. ViaVirtualEarth is already a phenomenal resource for working with Virtual Earth and also has a great gallery of other applications people have written.

check it out

www.thedatafarm.com/virtualearth

A few caveats:

  • Requires  the TabletPC 2005 Edition (on a tabletpc or with the TabletPC SDK install)
  • It won’t work with a full zoom out (showing the entire world) and I have to build something in there to prevent users from doing that
  • Pushpins won’t get carried over to the inking page
  • There are probably more. It is a work in progress…

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Code Camp 4 (Waltham) Agenda is forming

Just Rambling

The agenda for Code Camp 4 is coming together as people send in their sessions. I can see we will have some travelling speakers again, like Raj Das coming from Chicago (yeah!).

I sent Thom Robbins a gaggle of talks to choose from and he selected four. Eeek! 😉

I will be doing

ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL Server 2005

Web Service Security Basics – Demystifying the cryptography tools used in WSE, Indigo and Beyond (just a new title for my favorite talk)

Programming with Virtual Earth

Overview of WSE 3.0

Better get crackin’….

Register Here

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I had a dream…

Just Rambling

Last night I had a hard time getting to sleep as I worried about all of the commitments I have made and how I am going to accomplish them. (Somehow it always works out though) This happens every time I am so terribly irresponsible to do something like – shock! – go for a bike ride on a nice summer Saturday afternoon. No, it shouldn’t be this way, but, oh well.

So when I finally did get to sleep, I dreamt that I was attending a huge event in a huge room with a LOT of developers (think keynote address at PDC for size). In this room, we were each given documentation for a new piece of technology. The first part of the documentation was pure reference material — how it works — and the 2nd part was a big hands on lab. I was *still* plowing through the documentation while many people were asking very specific questions about the coding, since they were somehow already into the hands on lab. They were being heralded because they were pointing out very helpful problems with either the lab or the technology itself. I think we were into day 2 or 3. Finally I turned to the woman sitting next to me and asked where she was at in the process. She was reading the docs too, but she had teamed up with other people in the room and other members of her team were deep into the labs. I told her, “well, I have always worked alone. I’m not used to teaming up with people. I guess I’ll just have to live with my slower pace.” Uggh. For 20+ years, this is the way I have worked. I can’t imagine working any differently or god forbid, having employees. I defnitely can’t imagine paying someone to be on vacation when I never get to take one! (yes, perhaps I would have more time that way…) I’m sure the other part of this is that while diving specifically into things like ADO.NET 2.0, WSE3.0, etc., I have still not actually built a ASP.NET 2.0 website, for example, and therefore I have not been a great source of feedback. I think it’s part of the keeping up with the Joneses thing, and I should be happy with what I am able to do and equally happy that there are also plenty of people with the time and energy to provide lots of great feedback on things like .NET 2.0, Indigo, Avalon, etc.

Well, it’s raining, so I don’t have to worry about being tempted to go on a bike ride on this Sunday morning. Back to work, I guess! The hard part is what on earth do I select to start with? I suppose whatever is due the soonest, as always…

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Indigo and Morts and hiding the goo behind OO like code

Just Rambling

Oh how I hate saying I’m a Mort, but by John Cavnar-Johnson’s definition, I am I am. The reason I don’t like aligning myself with Mort is because by definition, Mort has no desire to know what’s going on under the covers. I remember when Sam Gentile showed us Indigo samples at VTdotNET, after I had just seen lots of cool contract first stuff at TechEd, I was disappointed to see it looked no different than writing a web services today in VS2003. But I guess that’s Microsoft’s point of making Indigo accessible. But in doing that, is Microsoft crazy gluing these training wheels on?

Maybe there is another place for people like John and me. Somewhere in between the rose colored glasses of the RPC facade and the Tim Ewald school of hand coding angle brackets.

I still have a LOT to learn about Indigo and am really looking forward to digging into it. I also look forward to reading what I hope to become a very interesting and educational discussion (both sides of it) continuing on John’s blog and elsewhere.

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