Sometimes you read a blog post and you are so excited to see such a feature announced in a new product that you blog about it yourself.  This is one of those posts. After moving to Windows Vista I had troubles with RSSBandit and had fallen behind on my news needless to say so sorry for those that already read this announcement from Olaf about EntLib 3.0. Moving from environment to environment is something a lot enterprise customers deal with.  We spend thousands upon thousands of dollars replicating environments to test our software, yet we are left normally...

For the past several days I've spent a lot of time trying to get up to speed using Windows Communication Foundation.  I've seen or watched enough "Hello World" demos of WCF over the past year to choke a good mule to death but I haven't had a chance to write anything using WCF for real world experience.  I knew I'd get around to it eventually.  This is the point where you actually learn how to use a technology anyway.  Having done large scale applications with Asp.Net web services for quiet sometime I honestly didn't figure it would be that difficult.   I was wrong.  My first real world...

Before I start this article, let me be up front and state that I do not use DataSets 100% of the time.  I do use the heck out of them in demos and presentations because, well, they demo well.  There is a never ending debate on whether to use DataSets or not.  I say use them, but not in all situations.  That's my official stance on them.  In a lot of cases they make sense, espeically when doing binding to a DataGrid and reconciling changes, in others they don't.  We are not here today to argue for or against them though.  What I will share with you are some...

If you've been waiting for the right job to come along, specifically a job opening at one of the top companies in the country, your wait is officially over.   If you are passionate about programming and designing large scale Enterprise systems where you get to have a direct impact on the business, we need you! We have several .Net Engineer openings available at my current employer Quicken Loans.  You can't be considered if you don't apply and you won't get preferential treatment with your resume if you don't contact me directly! We have openings in several different areas and need people who have skills in...

I started using Vista during my work day now since I recently got a new laptop from work.  There are a few quirks that I've ran into.  Only one major road block and that is because of hardware driver support.  More on that in a bit. The first application  up is Outlook 2007.  Before I go on, let me say that not everyone will have a quirk with Outlook 2007 because my quirk is caused by a vendor not supplying Outlook 2007 updates.  For those of us at work running Outlook 2007 there is a work around, however, this blows my mind that a vendor has known about...

Believe it or not, engineers or developers tend to structure their applications in Visual Studio various ways.  For those that are just learning .Net and Visual Studio it is hard to decide where to put things.  Hopefully this article will provide some guidance. Where did I put that file? So you've decided that you want to write an application in .Net.  For learning purposes you start adding controls or pages to your application and you are well on your way to making a somewhat usable app.  After awhile you start to notice your solution becomes a cluttered mess with files and...

The answer is I don't know but to be honest I wish it could.  Especially several years ago when my father at the age of 51 was diagnosed with Cancer.  Less than six months after getting diagnosed he passed away.  This is the time of life I refer to as the glory years.  The time when you really get to enjoy your family, see your kids grow up and succeed.  Not to mention see grand kids.  Sadly this was robbed from my family and my father because of Cancer.  Am I bitter, YES!  That's why this article intrigued me today which was...

 Windows Vista was officially released upon the world yesterday.  If you are thinking about upgrading you have a lot of decisions to make. How old is your computer? Are you better off buying a new one? Which components should you upgrade? Will your hardware be compatible? Will there be driver support? And the list goes on and on.  If you are thinking about upgrading I think this upgrade chart will help you out.  I know it helped me in upgrading to Vista I'm sure it can help you out as well.  Enjoy!