I submitted a Birds of a Feather submission for Tech-Ed 2008.  The title of it is ".Net War Stories".  I've always wanted to moderate a BOF session at Tech-Ed but just never really came up with anything I was willing to submit.  For the past several days I have been thinking a lot about .Net.  During a conversation after work with a friend last week he said, "I get more out of talking to you in one hour than I would have if I'd spent that time at the computer reading countless blogs and documentation."  He wasn't saying...

I've said for years that I always wanted to work with people that were passionate about technology.  After countless blog comments, a podcast that will never air, tons of discussions and numerous interviews this week I am changing my mind.  I've said it and have heard others say it.  The word passion comes up a lot in technology.  I went to the dictionary and looked up passion.  Here are the relative points in relation to technology. PASSION intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or...

Have you ever watched the movie Forrest Gump?  If you are reading this article the odds are pretty high you have.  As you watched the movie did you notice how Forrest told his story?   Forrest wasn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but yet he was able to paint a picture that drew the listener in.  He didn't use big words to speak or even speak in a lavish tone.  Yet his story kept audiences glued to their seats.  It is a true classic.  We can all learn from Forrest, especially software developers. How To Communicate With Others Before...

After the Launch Event was over on Tuesday it was time to get the preparations started for the Geek Dinner.  I made a quick phone call to PizzaPapalis to place the order and get things rolling.  At this point I still had no idea how many people would show up but I kept checking my email looking for cancellations.  To my surprise there really weren't any.  A bunch of us took the People Mover directly from the Renaissance Center to Greek Town.  This worked out really well since it dropped us off a block from the place.  The...

This past week I have been in Michigan.  My reason for traveling to Michigan this week is I spoke at the MSDN Launch event in Detroit and used the time while I was up to work onsite this week as well. This is the first chance I've had all week to sit down at the computer and just vegetate.  It is good to finally just sit down at the keyboard and not have Power Point or Visual Studio open worrying about demos and presentations.  Five presentations this week wore me out.  Launch Event Tuesday was the Launch Event in...

Tuesday March 18th is the Detroit, MI MSDN Launch Event for SQL Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Server 2008.  I'll be speaking at the event on the topic of "Defy Occasionally Connected Challenges with Smart Client Applications".  About The Event The Detroit event will celebrate the launch of Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008. The event will bring together IT Pros and Developers to get an in-depth, up-close look at the new products and will give attendees an opportunity to meet with our Partners as well as members...

For years my wife and I have argued about Dinner vs Supper.  Believe it or not depending on which part of the country you are in saying dinner can actually mean lunch.  My wife thought I was just stupid for years when I would argue with her that I had heard people use dinner to mean lunch.  I searched the Internet over for proof that I wasn't crazy and finally found something. Standard Version Breakfast Lunch Dinner Southern Version Breakfast Dinner Supper The word "supper" typically means the last mean of the day but for whatever...

One of the new additions for Windows Workflow in .Net 3.5 was the ability to host Workflows using Windows Communication Foundation.  Two new activities were added to help with this.  The ReceiveActivity and the SendActivity.  I was recently playing with this and ran into a configuration error so I thought I'd post this to help others.  After I had configured my workflow with a ReceiveActivity I added a WCF IIS project to my solution.  I configured it the way I thought it would work but I kept getting this error.  This was suppose to be a simple "hello world"...

Alexa.com is an interesting site that tracks web site usage based on the installations of its toolbar within browsers.  Alexa then mines those numbers to come up with web site reach, rank and page views.  Google's toolbar does something very similar but isn't reported publicly.  Today I was visiting Alexa.Com curious as to what the top traffic sites were.  I usually browse by Alexa occasionally just to see how things are shaking up or down.  To my astonishment, here is what I saw.  Live.com was ranked higher than Google.Com. Reach Taken back by this I started to dig...

Already on Twitter?  Follow Me Twitter is hard to explain to those that aren't using it.  Even I was skeptical about how much I would use it at first. For a long time I have avoided sites like MySpace and Facebook but I've always had a blog, a cell phone, and email.  Those three items made me feel connected.  If I had something to say, I'd blog it.  If someone wanted to reach me electronically they could send a text message or email.  Lastly they could just call me.  Little did I realize how disconnected I was until later...

Visual Studio has long supported the concept of opening more than one file.  Most all IDE tools and text editors support this concept so it is nothing new.  In Visual Studio as files are opened they are displayed along the top in tabs (also a standard convention).  This allows developers to switch between files they are working on easily.  However there are times when developers need to compare two files at the same time.  Using Tabbed Groups developers can view files vertically or horizontally.  There is also the ctrl-tab feature which allows developers to quickly switch between files they have...

Parents love to take pictures of their children.  My Mother and Father were no exception.  There is one baby picture that easily sums me up as a person and predicted future roles in my life.  I happened to come across that baby picture this morning while cleaning up some files.  I hadn't ever paid that much attention to it but it speaks volumes to me now that I'm older.  Throughout my life I have been a performing artist, singer, speaker, and actor.  I think this picture really shows even at a young age I was already showing signs of my...

For several years I have been hosting this .Net based web site with WebHost4Life.  The past several months the traffic on the site has gone up to the point to I started noticing long wait times, slow load times, and timeouts.  The final straw was when I sent a link to someone and they told me the site wasn't loading.  It was time to move. WebHost4Life has served me well over the years and they have a great control panel.  They work on volume so stacking a lot of domains onto a server is what they do and how they...

How many times as consumers have we seen stupid things on web sites that make us go, huh?  The web is still full of useless clicks, forms, terms and conditions we never read, and countless choices with the ever changing landscape of custom interfaces that force us to re-learn each and every time we visit a site.  Here we are in 2008 and we still have to go through hoops and hurdles to use the web on a daily basis.  Gone are the days of blink tags and scrolling marques but other things exist today that still get in the...

Last April I did a real world test with Mono which is an open source project to run .Net applications on various platforms by Miquel de Icaza.  I took an enterprise application that was built from scratch in .Net 2.0 and analyzed the application.  There were 1878 methods within the application that were missing.  Let's see how far Mono has come using the same application. Review From Last April There is an easy tool available to test .Net applications if they are compatible with Mono.  It is called the Mono Migration Analyzer (MoMA).  Using MoMA last year yielded these results....