The other day I was playing on my aging Powerbook and thought I'd investigate writing applications on Mac OS X using XCode.  I tried several years ago but honestly after reading some documentation on Apple's web site I wasn't any better off than when I started.  Instead of going the documentation route which didn't work I thought I would try a different approach.  Today we have something we didn't have years ago that is a lot better than documentation and that is called videos.  They say a picture is worth a 1,000 words.  Well a video is worth that times 1,000.  I jumped over to...

I just bumped into a LiveBooks support letter that tells their customers to not upgrade to Mac OS X Leopard.  Is it Apple FUD?  I don't know, but it is there for all to read and form your own opinion.  What is Apple's market share now?  5-6% market share?  We see these same type of articles when Microsoft releases a new operating system telling or discouraging users to wait for the first service pack.  Heck I've known people that won't even touch a 1.0 version of a Microsoft product.   It seems the same type of things are now being said on the Apple side...

That is the message Apple is sending to its enterprise customers with the release of its new Leopard operating system according to reports coming in from Java developers.  Apple isn't supporting Java 6.0 on Leopard and there are tons of problems even running the IDE on previous version.  Enough to drive one Java developer away from Apple completely and others screaming when is Java 6 going to be supported. It makes you wonder what Dale Frantz (pictured left) is going to do as a CIO who switched his entire company over to Mac OS X as reported in Computer World back...

Since SQL Server 2005 .Net developers and DBAs have had the ability to create custom SQL CLR types.  It wasn't until recent I found a few uses for them.  Not only did I find a use for them but a DBA who is a team member did as well.  If you would like more information about SQL CLR types or are new to them start by reading the introduction here.   What follows is a walk through from start to finish creating a user-defined type (UDT).   The project source code is available at the end of the article. Maintaining Data Integrity One of the advantages of SQL...

Day of .Net in Memphis is right around the corner.  I'll be there to speak on an Intro to Workflow Foundation as well as how to organize solutions and projects within Visual Studio.  Collin Neller is working hard to put the event on and there will be lots of great speakers there.  In no particular order speakers slated are Jeff Blankenburg, Mickey Gousset, Jon Box, Jerry Dixon, Alan Stevens, Tim Rayburn, Dan Evans, Dan Petit, Sudhir Chandraskhar, Michael Neel, and Allen Noakes.

As a team leader, one of my duties is one of the toughest jobs in the software business and that is communicating where a gigantic project is status wise.   There are entire books written on just how to judge where a project is as well as how to do projections and estimations.  Like everyone else I struggle with guesstimating when something is going to be done.  This is what forced me to change my quote for the blog recently to: Software is ready to be scheduled for production when the last line of code is written. While somewhat of...

If you are an experienced .Net developer more than likely you've come to a cross roads of sorts in development over which object model to go with.  Do you use Strong-Typed Datasets or should you write your own business entities from scratch or generate business entities using an ORM.  A reader emailed me asking my opinion the other day and the very question was also raised on Twitter by Joel Ross yesterday as well.  Here are my words of wisdom on the subject matter to help you hopefully arrive at a conclusion which road you may want to travel. Things to...

Be warned, what follows is YASBP - Yet Another Stupid Blog Post Dang you Chris Woodruff for distracting my Xbox 360 playing time tonight by posting your Simpson image to your site.  While I will never be able to gain back those precious minutes of Guitar Hero I do have something to show for my time.  In the end I have a new shiny image that is the spitting image of me Simpsonized thanks to a really cool site called http://www.simpsonizeme.com.  Before you head over there to generate your very own, you will need to know that you...

They say it isn't what you know, but who you know. I have a buddy that works for Comcast, Gary.  For those that have been paying attention, Gary is the same buddy that happened to have a new HDDVR on his truck and who helped end my three weeks of waiting for an HDDVR from Comcast.  It pays to know people (words of wisdom to live by). The last few times I've needed something I've had the pleasure of by passing the Comcast support center and have gone directly to a Comcast technician, Gary.  He gets free beer, and I get my cable issues resolved.  It is a relationship that works....

It seems that an article I wrote a while back is making its way around the Internet once again.  It never fails that once a year or every 6 months it pokes it's head up from the ashes, dusts itself off and finds new readers.  The article I'm talking about is this one: How an Open Source Developer Transitioned to .Net It is an interesting read and if you haven't read it, check it out. I started getting lots of emails from readers last night and this morning as the article was passed around.  One person emailed me a question...

Ok here we go again.  I've posted several personality tests to the site and usually several of you joined in by posting yours so here we go again! In the past we did: What Transformer Would You Be Programmer Personality So today let's do are you left brain or right brain. Here's my results which are pretty interesting.  I guess it means I am well rounded.  I think this means that I'm logically visual, articulately figurative and practically intuitive.  :)  If I ever have to interview again (which I hope I never do again) and someone asks me to describe myself that's what I'm saying: ...

I was catching up on some reading tonight and came across an article about an ex-employee at Google who filed a law suit because he felt he had been dismissed on unfair grounds.  One of the things noted in the evidence of the case was his colleagues referred to him as "old man", "old guy" and an "old fuddy-duddy".  Reading the comments on the article further down a person named johns had this comment. Applying to IT companies when you are mid 40’s or above is a real crapshoot. Age discrimination is rampant in IT. That got me to...

The Elder is officially back from DevLink.  Time to catch up on work, sleep and set the sights on future talks.  Before I put the DevLink memories to bed here is a recap of the conference.  Thursday Thursday night as noted here, the speakers ate at Stoney River.  I took pictures of everyone so check out the speaker pictures.  And yes, Wally is in most of them because everyone needs http://www.morewally.com in their life (for those that have been paying attention).   One thing I didn't post about earlier was I did get into a discussion with Brad Abrams at dinner about Smart...

We kicked DevLink off last night with a speakers dinner held at Stoney River Legendary Steaks.  I don't know about everyone else but my steak was fabulous!  My compliments to the sponsors for picking such a great place.  Everyone had a good time and it was good to see people I hadn't seen in a while.   You are probably wondering who was there so I made it a point to take a picture at every single table last night to document who was there.  You can view them here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/keithelder/sets/72157602387712580/ See if you notice a theme to some of the pictures, surely you'll get it.  Hint, everyone needs more of it.  :)...

I'm not a link blogger and don't plan on becoming one so don't expect too many of these type of posts but JoelOnSoftware has a really good article about why he thinks Gmail is Lotus 123 and this new up and coming SDK is Windows.  For those of us that like speculation, what ifs, and some history mixed in this is a must read for you.   Check out the post here: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/09/18.html BTW the up and coming SDK doesn't exist, he's just speculating but interesting thoughts nonetheless. For those of you that purchased an iPhone and put the unlock software...

Alabama Code Camp was in Birmingham, AL this weekend.  Friday we kicked it off with a speakers dinner  where we had some outstanding tex-mex food.  And then after the event, the speakers and the code campers went out to Buffalo Wild Wings as seen in this pic.  It was good to see fellow MVPs, Todd Miranda, Jeff Barnes, Jim Wooley and a I met a new MVP which leaves in Tupelo, MS, Mickey Gousset.   Finally I get to meet someone else from Mississippi!  It was also good to see Doug Turnure, the DE for this area. I spoke on...

Kind of a weird title but it makes sense if you know what I'm talking about.  I was working through some final demos with Client Application Services for the code camp in Birmingham this weekend and found out that the enumeration within the <system.web.extensions> within the web.config file is misspelled. Here is what I'm talking about:   You can see when I typed out this property for the profile element I spelled it correctly, yet the Intellisense points to a different spelling.  I wouldn't have caught it but I got a compile error and noticed there was a warning as well.  I looked...

At work we have a home grown system we use to track bugs, tasks, projects, etc.  We have a lot of fun with it mainly because we can and because it is just a part of our culture.  To celebrate my new MVP award this week, Jona came up with a different twist on what MVP actually stood for.  Pretty funny given my track record of being on phone calls working from home and shooting an occasional varmit from my deck.  It passes the time.  

After several months of using Twitter, I'm still twittering.  I guess because other friends are as well.  As soon as I forget about Twitter I get a text message from someone reminding me haha.  For those that are new to Twitter here are some commands you can do on Twitter if you have setup IM or your mobile phone. track iphone Send this via your phone or IM client and anyone who updates in public mentions "iphone" you'll get it on your device in real-time.  From there you can send "whois username" to find out more about that person, or "follow...

From To  About a month ago a lot of our Blackberry users at work switched from using the RSA SecurID token (you know, those tokens that go on your key rings?) to using their Blackberry devices to generate their keys so they can access the company's VPN.  It is nice since you have one less device to carry around.  Not owning a Blackberry and having a Windows Mobile device I wanted to do the same thing.  There have been times where I absolutely forgot to take my RSA Token with me and therefore I...

No the sky isn't falling and it isn't snowing in Mississippi but ScottGu, GM at Microsoft, just dropped a bombshell.  The title says it all, the source code for the .Net Framework will be released with the .Net 3.5 and Visual Studio 2008 release. The source code will be released under the Microsoft Reference License and will include a lot of the base class libraries to start (System.IO, System.Collections, Asp.Net, Winforms, Ado.Net etc.   LINQ, WPF and other libraries will follow later. What does this mean for developers?  Well it means that when you are debugging you can debug all the...

If anyone is in between point A and B and wants to car pool up to Nashville for the Devlink conference that I blogged about a few weeks ago let me know.  I have plenty of room in the Aspen and could use the company. Use the contact me link on the blog to email me if you don't already have my contact info.  I'll be leaving on Wednesday morning and returning on Sunday just as an FYI in case someone is interested.

Our salmon trip for 2007 was a success!  We had a great time on Lake Huron and the weather was only really bad the first day.  The wind was blowing into the bay at about 20-25 mph producing some nice size rollers.  I wound up on the winning boat, the Striper, and on my rookie voyage salmon fishing I caught the most fish!  Never under estimate a southerner when it comes to fishing.  For the most fish award I would like to thank Abu Garcia for making the 6000 model and Berkley for the IM7 rod.  Without you two, it wouldn't have been possible.  ...

I'm sitting in the Memphis, TN airport waiting on my flight to return home and I decided to fire up my laptop to check email only to find out the sky is falling and it is snowing in Mississippi!    Why?  Well, I just received an email from the MVP program at Microsoft awarding me the MVP award for 2008 in Visual Developer - Client Application Development.   It truly is an honor to be recognized for this award.  I'm speechless.    Thank you Microsoft and a big thanks to Rafael Munoz my MVP Lead. I look forward to seeing all the other MVPs in the program at various...