*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

 It is interesting to see what others are saying about the summit and the best way to find out is just read people’s blog.  John C Bland is the CEO and founder of Katapult Media.  He is sitting in front of me at the summit and he’s been blogging all day.  We spoke during lunch today and he has a lot of experience in PHP and Cold Fusion so it is interesting to see what his take aways are from the perspective.   Check out these two posts from John on his blog.

1. Microsoft folks are cool

2. ScottGu, LINQ, ASP.NET, IIS 7, and Atlas rock - see this post if you want to get more details on what Scott showed during his session and what John thinks about what Scott showed. 

On Wednesday I left the warm comforts of Hattiesburg, Ms and headed to Redmond, WA for the Asp.Net Microsoft Web Dev Technology Summit.  Upon arrival guess what the weather was?  Rainy.  Guess what today’s weather is?  Rainy.  Guess what tomorrow’s weather is?  Rainy.  Ok, so it is rainy here, you get the idea and needless to say I miss my 90 degree weather and sunshine.  But I am not here to talk about the weather, I’m here to talk about the summit. 

Asp.Net Summit Wednesday

Last night we had a meet and greet at the hotel and I got to meet a lot of the guys attending.   At the meet at greet I got to finally meet Joe Stagner.  It was an earth shattering experience as the clouds parted in Seattle and the sun shown through.  I think I even heard singing as we shook hands.   Ok, so it wasn’t quite like that but it was great to finally meet him.  And of course I couldn’t go without mentioning Drew being here as well (even though I shouldn’t mention him because he has the Ohio State ring tone on his phone).  At the greet I got to talking to Susan and Dan who had a great interest in hosting.  Having years of experience I showered them with thousands and thousands of things they could do better in the hosting space. Hopefully they didn’t hit information overload.  Toward the end of the meet and greet I got to talking to Reg Cheramy.  We decided to go get some wings down the street since both of us enjoyed spicy food.  Reg told the waitress to insult the cook and make them as hot as they could.  She thought we were joking so when the wings came out, they were mildly hot.  The wings were so good in flavor we decided to get another round and we really told her to insult the cook.  She came back and said “Game on!”.  They threw everything they had at us on the second round.    While they were hot, they were not earth shattering, but worthy of a runny noise and eyes nonetheless.

ScottGu in Action

Thursday morning we took the shuttle to the Microsoft Campus where we had breakfast.  After breakfast Scott Guthrie showered the summit with about 2 hours of Asp.Net 2.0 and IIS 7 goodness.  There are a lot of PHP programmers at the summit that were seeing Asp.Net 2.0 for the first time so it was cool to see them going “cool, wow, ahhhhh, hmmm”.  And who better to show them .Net but Scott.  After Scott’s session I was talking to a few of the guys that introduced themselves as PHP developers and asked what they thought about the session.  The common response was they were shocked at what Scott was able to build in just a few hours complete with database updates, Ajax, etc.  A couple of takeaways that should be noted were URL rewriting and Control Adapters (http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/67276kc5.aspx) . 

URL Rewriting Example for web.config

<rewriter>

<rewrite url=”/products/(.+)” to=”/catalogue.aspx?category=$1? />

</rewriter>

In the above example it would turn a URL like this:

http://mysite.com/catalogue.aspx?category=1  (which isn’t the prettiest URL) to….

http://mysite.com/products/refinance  (which is much more user friendly)

The rewriting example Scott showed is done with http://www.urlrewriting.net which is community sponsored and a free download.  But as Scott said, this will be baked into the system later on.

Control Adapters 

Another takeaway of Scott’s session was Control Adapters.  Microsoft got a lot of feedback about controls that send their output such as tables.  For those junkies that want to do extreme compliant HTML but want to still have properties of the object to use control adapter is the answer.   For example the TreeView control renders itself as a table.  While the control is extremely powerful, what if you wanted it to render itself with dvi tags?  Essentially what the control adapter allows you to do is override the output of a control like the TreeView and have it output the HTML as div, ul, and li tags. 

Other Sessions Today

Bill Wilson presented on http://www.codeplex.com which is a web site that Microsoft launched to provide developers familiar with windows software an easy way to build and publish an open source project.  Similar to http://www.sourceforge.net but SF is primiarly Unix driven which if you don’t know Unix, CVS etc you aren’t going to have a clue how to use SF.  CodePlex fills the gap for developers by using Team Foundation Server as the source control system and provides an easy way for developers to host an open source app.  Good stuff.

Saturday October 28th is the Alabama Code Camp in Montgomery, AL.  Some great speakers are getting lined up and although I had to pay Joe Healy a large amount of money to speak at the event, he finally let me in  I will be doing two sessions on Smart Clients.  One is an intro to Smart Clients and new features of Visual Studio.  The second one I’m doing is all about the Enterprise Architecture of Smart Clients.   Others are covering Atlas, Mobile 5 applications, ADO.Net 2.0 and lots more.  Should be a great code camp!

After paying my Jeep off last week I had some extra cash to get something I have been wanting to get for a long time and that is a self defense pistol. After looking, thinking, researching, reading, talking to friends and getting everyone’s input under the sun, I finally decided on the Ruger .45. While no one person recommended this particular model, the reviews on it were great and it had a lot of safety features I wanted. I picked the gun up at a local store in Hattiesburg called Big Buck Sports. I had visited the store about 5 times before making a purchase and each time I went into the store, I dealt with the same kind gentleman at the store. His patience with me, my questions and his immense knowledge is what kept me coming back. Before purchasing the Ruger I probably looked at over 100 different types of pistols at various merchants and gun shows. I looked at Glocks, Sig Sauer, CZ, S&W, FNH and more. Each one I looked at was either priced really high, didn’t offer single and double action, didn’t have the safety features I wanted or were really big and bulky. I was looking at either .40 or .45 caliber and depending on the gun I found is what I would wind up with. One thing that everyone told me that I talked to was either to purchase a .40 or a .45. The .40 has more velocity and is considered to offer a great combination of knock down power, velocity and less recoil. However, the .45 offers more knock down and stopping power. After arriving at Big Bucks yesterday evening I walked up to the counter and started searching the counter for new guns that may have come in. I didn’t notice the Ruger at first but it wasn’t long until the sales associate pointed out they had just gotten it in the day earlier. Upon picking up the P345, it immediately felt as if I was picking up a pistol I had owned for several years. The grips just felt natural and were fitted to fit my larger hands. The size of the P345 is even great for a conceal and carry weapon as well. It isn’t as big as other .45′s (which was one reason I hadn’t initially settled on purchasing a .45). After investigating the pistol things really started to shine about the P345. For starters there are four safety features on the gun. More than any other .40 or .45 I had looked at. Here they are:

1. Ambidextrous safety – The safety is located on both the left and right side of the gun. I’m right handed so having it on both sides doesn’t really matter to me, however, the location of it is natural and easily excessible with the thumb. It feels very easy to pull out of a holster and flip it off.
2. Unobtrusive safety lock – On the right side of the gun, when you put the safety on there is a whole whereby you can take the lock provided by Ruger in the case and lock the safety on the gun. There is no way to fire the gun at all once it is locked.
3. Chamber loaded indicator – On the top of the barrel there is a loaded indicator that rises once a bullet is in the chamber. This is a great safety feature which provides a quick and easy way to know if the gun is loaded. And not all guns have this type of indicator but you see it a lot on Rugers and I like it a lot.
4. Magazine disconnect safety – This feature seems to be controversial among different gun owners but one that is admired by those in law enforcement. If the magazine is dropped out of the gun, the gun will not fire at all, even if a round is in the chamber. The gun functions as normal but just doesn’t fire. For those in law enforcement this is a welcomed feature. If the officer is about to loose control of his gun, he can eject the magazine and render the gun useless.

Safety Lock

As you can see, Ruger has put a lot of safety features into this gun. The size, safety features, and the price of $419.00 (less than a truck payment) is what put me over the top to purchase this model. Most everyone that has a self defense gun agrees that an unloaded gun is a useless gun. Being able to keep the gun loaded while still maintaining safety is important to me and the Ruger makes that possible. So far I’ve only put one round through it but the trigger pull was smooth and not heavy. The recoil was very manageable as well. All in all I’m very pleased with the quality, price, and saftey features of the gun and would recommend it to anyone that is looking for a self defense pistol.

I just got of the phone with my wife. She was explaining to me that a person she works with fiance is a nurse at the local hospital and reported there had been 45 cases of the West Nile virus in the past three days here in Hattiesburg, Ms. What is going on!? I just got my new lawn mower and had planned on mowing the yard again this evening but now, I’m not so sure. According to the current numbers, there are only 32 reported cases in Mississippi. Either someone is stoned, can’t count, or the bugs down here are now fighting back! Updated September 2nd, 9:15 PM
My wife wanted me to correct the fact that it wasn’t someone she worked with at WCU, but rather a student of hers. Which I also might add was 2nd place in Miss Mississippi pagent this year. Another update on this is the local paper ran an article that not all of these cases are being reported to the state because some of the blood tests are being run by offices that are contracted for the hospital and aren’t required to report back to the state. I find this absolutely stupid. The CDC should step in and make this a federal rule that anyone who can run a blood test has to report back to the state their findings when it comes to diseases. Why is it I seem to be the only one with any common sense in this state?