*Words of Wisdom From The Elder

Saturday was the Alabama Code Camp in Mobile, AL.  Doug and Matt, who run the Mobile .Net User Group, put on a heck of a show and raised the bar for code camps in the area.  I couldn’t believe how many speakers were there.  So many in fact there was only enough room for the majority of us to do one talk.  Speakers came in from as far away as Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi. 

Friday night the speakers got together at Felix’s Fish Camp off exit 27 on I-10.  I had the barbeque shrimp which came complete with a bib (pictured to the left which More Wally took).   Notice they don’t give me peeled shrimp.  At Felix’s you get the REAL DEAL on the shrimp complete with tails and heads.  I have to say it was some of the best shrimp I’ve ever eaten.  Their sauce was incredible.  Ellen went with me on this trip as well, she is in the picture but cut off a little.  She’d been to Felix’s before and said we should go.  She was right, the food was excellent!

We got to Felix’s a little late thanks to me printing off the wrong directions from the wrong starting location.  Basically at the end of our table was the .Net 3.0 track presenters with Jeff Barnes doing WCF, Todd Miranda doing WPF and me doing WF (workflow foundation).  The seating arrangement wasn’t planned, it just sort of worked out that way.  Also at the end was Jeremy Chance.  Honestly, Jeremy  probably knows more about tires and trucks than I do about workflow.  I did learn while eating supper that I could fit 32 inch tires onto my Jeep Liberty.  As Jeremy explained the 33’s are too big and will rub the sidewall.  See, told you he knew more!  

There were also three Microsoft DE’s there:  Doug “I do psycho analysis on the crowd while I present” Turnure , Joe “I wear women shirts to code camps” Healy and Brian “I still need more wally” Hitney.  Actually I don’t know if Brian needs more Wally or not, but I had to work it in somehow for Wally to get two links from this post or he’ll kill me!  🙂

Like I said earlier I talked about Workflow Foundation.  Today I might add we rolled out a significant feature for our internal Smart Client CRM application which leverages workflow foundation from our services layer (middle tier).  Cool stuff.  For a topic I chose something I’d been doing a lot of and that was writing custom workflow activities.  Not that I measured it but I probably wrote the most code of anyone at the code camp.  I wrote the custom workflow activity completely from scratch without any pre-done samples, kind of a different approach for a “code camp” I know.  I hope those of you that were in the presentation liked this approach and enjoyed it.  I personally always get more out of watching someone go through the process.  If not, let me know and I’ll never do it again!  In the end we built the the custom SendEmail workflow activity you see to the left which we could drag from the toolbox onto the designer.  Fun stuff!

During the code camp I made a connection with a fellow Mississippian who relocated to the area I’m in.  While we aren’t in the same city, he is still the only .Net developer I’ve met.  We may be organizing something in our area in the future so stay tuned!  Aubrey, we’ll hook soon I’m sure!

The only thing that got me down about the camp was the fact that I lost my dang Canon SD630 camera.  Well I didn’t lose it, I left it at the code camp on the desk.  See, you really “Can’t Fix Stupid!”  (inside joke).  This is a bummer since I had worked out my hotel for free and everything. I really thought I was pulling an almost free trip using my Hilton Honors Gold VIP points.  Instead, I’m out a $300 camera. 

I’m a Software Engineer so it is easy for me to work from home.  Give me a high speed Internet connection, VPN into the office, forward my calls and I can work.  I’ve been working at home now for almost two years.  When I first started working remote from Hattiesburg I didn’t know how things would work out.  But after several months I got into a really nice routine.  One of the things I noticed initially was I am WAY more productive than working in the office.  I gained anywhere from 1-2 hours of chair time each day by not having to drive into the office.  And since I was at home, it only took me about 5 minutes to fix a sandwich and I was back at my desk.    

We actually have a fair amount of people that work from home at Quicken Loans.  A lot of team members get to work from home for several months at a time as a perk.  I usually get asked for pointers and tips on how to work effectively from home by fellow team members.  Some of the things I tell them are company specific but others are just general.  The number one thing I tell people is to invest in a headset.  And by invest I don’t mean $20, $40, or even $100.  When I first started working from home I immediately started researching which headset I was going to use.  I settled on the Plantronics CS50/HL10 headset as I discuss below.  For those working from home, start with your headset.  You’ll be happy you did.

Plantronics CS50/HL10

Your headset is something you will use everyday.  It is important you pick a great one.  Notice I said a “great” headset, not a good one, not a cheap one, not a descent one.  There is a difference in getting something that is good and getting something that is great.  I spent a lot of time researching my headset of choice before making the plunge.  I knew I was going to spend the majority of my time in conference calls, meetings, etc.  The features I wanted were wireless, enough battery life to last throughout the day, ability to answer if I was away from the desk and ability to get as far away from the desk as possible.

In the end I settled on the Plantronics CS50/HL10 which met all of my requirements. 

The Plantronics CS50 is a wireless headset that has a range of 300 feet from the base station and 8 hours of wireless hands free talk time.  You can buy the CS50 by itself, but don’t.  Without the handset lifter (HL10), the headset isn’t near as useful since you will not have a way to answer your phone if you are away from the desk.  The link I included above does include the HL10 bundle by the way.

The handset lifter sits on your home office phone and physically lifts the handset when you want to answer a call and drops the handset back down when you want to hang up. VERY COOL!  To use the lifter you do have to have a standard office phone the lifter will fit onto.  After mine arrived in the mail, I went to Office Depot with the lifter to fit it to a really good office phone.  The key is to not get one of the phones that are built at a high angle.  This causes the handset to fall off the phone when the lifter picks the phone up.  The flatter the better.

I’ve had my CS50 for about a year and a half now.  I haven’t had any problem with it except for some reason sometimes it takes it a few seconds to pickup the lifter after hitting the talk button.  All in all it has been the best thing I purchased for my home office. 

When I’m on long calls I don’t sit at my desk much.  I leave the desk and walk around the house.  Sometimes I jump on the treadmill if I am just listening in.  When I’m on long calls I pace around my house like a hamster in a cage.  My wife is worried I’m going to wear out our carpet pacing in circles from the kitchen, to the music room, to the living room and back to the kitchen.  If you think about it for a second I am at least getting some form of exercise.  If I’m on an hour conference call I may actually walk 30-40 minutes of it.  That’s a lot of walking if you think about it.  Yesterday for example I was on the phone for over 5 hours! 

The 300 feet range on the CS50 is impressive.  Example. Let’s say you are in the kitchen fixing a sandwich for lunch or on the way to the restroom and the phone rings. If you have your headset on just press the button on the side when the phone rings and it will answer (again, you need the HL10 lifter). 

The mute feature and volume control is located on the back of the headset and comes in handy as well.  I hate to admit it but I do some weird things while on the phone sometimes.  Sometimes I do light house work like sweeping the floor or venture outside play with the dogs.  I may even go all the way to the mailbox or water the flowers.  Without the mute button being accessible on the headset and the fact that it is wireless this wouldn’t be possible of course.  Now some of you may say, dude, your not paying attention if you are on the phone then.  Actually, wrong. I pay less attention if I sit at my desk.  Emails come in to distract me or instant messages.  I have found if I do something physical which takes zero brain power then I can still concentrate on the conversation.

As you can see, without my investment in my headset I would be severely tied my desk.  If you are working at home, take it from me, get a good headset, you’ll be happy you did.

Alfred Green who does a Podcast show called AG Speaks interviewed me a month or so ago and he finally got the Podcast posted up to his site.  I’ve known Alfred for several years where we first initially met at the Washtenaw Linux Users Group in the late ’90’s. 

The interview will probably give you more information about The Elder than you’ll ever want to know.  I’ve always found it interesting to know how people came to do what they do and the thought process that went into it.  This interview will provide you a lot of that information.  We started at the beginnings of my computer background and worked our way to almost present day.  It was a blast talking about what I’ve done, how I got started, and the journey that took me through Linux, Apple’s OS X, and now to the Microsoft platform.  Here are some of the things that were mentioned during the interview:

• Sinclair 2000
• Unix
• WYSE Terminals
• IRC
• Open Source
• Linux
• Business
• Programming
• Perl
• PHP
• Hardware
• Being a geek
• PHP Training
• Consulting
• Switch to Apple
• Teaching
• Switch to .Net

Lots of interesting stuff to say the least.  You can download the 1:27 Podcast from here.

I just got back from the MVP Summit in Seattle, WA where 1700 MVP’s from all across the world representing some 90 different countries came together.  I’ve been to various technical conferences including the Office Developer Conference, Tech Ed, and PDC.  All of these conferences are great, but honestly, the MVP Summit was the most interesting one I’ve attended. 

As you notice on my blog I don’t display the MVP logo, and for good reason since I’m not an MVP. I received a special invitation to attend the summit back in January as a special guest this year (very cool).  I’ve been very active in the community the last year or so and it was nice to get recognized for my contributions running an internal .Net User Group as well as speaking at a lot of Code Camps, User Groups, Conferences, etc. 

Sunday

I arrived on Sunday evening to the Westin Hotel where I was staying.  I left the house that morning around 5:30 AM and arrived in Seattle around 5:00 PM.  With the time zone difference I was traveling about 14 hours so obviously I was dead tired.  For those of you that are shocked it took me 14 hours to get to Seattle don’t be.   The funny thing is I was talking to one MVP I met at a summit last September who was from Germany.  We compared notes and apparently it takes longer to fly from Hattiesburg, MS than from Germany.  Go figure. 

After getting unpacked I met up with Josh Holmes, Microsoft Evangelist and friend from the Heartland District, Cory Smith, and Denny (another DE from Microsoft) in the lobby of the Westin.  We then headed to the Party with Palermo with thanks to Corey for giving us a ride.  Party with Palermo is turning into a larger event each year thanks to Jeff’s great party organizing skills (or would that be 5ki11z? 🙂 ).   Jeff did an outstanding job organizing the party complete with sponsors, giveaways and food.   After the event started shutting down everyone piled into the lobby of the Westin and continued the geek conversations way into the night.

Monday

Monday we spent most of the day in the Expo center networking and meeting the MVP Leads after registration.  I think I stood up all day with my back pack on so needless to say my dogs were barking (that’s southern slang for my feet hurt).  When I got to the hotel that evening I was extremely tired but we had to attend the large dinner event.  They organized the dinner parties that night by region.  For example the Americas, Japan, etc.  This made it easy to find people that were in your area and spoke the same language since the dinners were separated.  The best part about the dinner was it was in the Westin so I didn’t have to leave the hotel.  They had karaoke setup for the mixer after the dinner (along with Xboxes) and this one guy sang “Wanted, Dead or Alive” by Bon Jovi and rewrote the words to the entire song to be technical geek speak.  Hilarious!  When it was over I went down the escalator and straight up to the room. 

Tuesday

Tuesday was the big day.  Bill Gates was giving the keynote at 9:00 AM.  Everyone was shuffling around trying to get breakfast and get into the keynote room for good seats.  The keynote Bill gave was about 20 minutes long and very general.  The best part of the keynote was the question and answer.  A high school computer science teacher from Florida asked a great question as to what Bill would do with the $20 he got from Steve Balmer at another conference.  Apparently Steve handed them out to the crowd.  His question was directed at how to build the next generation of computer scientists and what Bill would do with the $20 or even twenty million dollars. 

The best question well, it really wasn’t a question but more like a request, came from Lorin Thwaits who had a copy of an old Altair manual with him.  I won’t repeat what happened, just read the post on Lorin’s blog.  The other thing about this keynote that is of interest is the fact that it may very well be Bill’s last one. 

After the keynote we broke out into sessions.  After the first round of sessions I had lunch with Neal Ford (who gave one of the keynotes at CodeMash where I spoke at in January) and his friend Michael Li from Canada.  There was also an architect from Google as well at our table but I can’t remember his name although he does speak a lot.  I didn’t get a chance to talk to Neal much at CodeMash so it was good to get better acquainted.  The rest of the day was spent in sessions.  INSERT NDA HERE.  That night they bused us to the Museum of Flight where we had dinner, karaoke and a jam session.   I stumbled upon Brian Prince and we hung out near the karaoke area.  The karaoke they did was a little different. They had fake money you had to collect to participate in to win prizes.  Example, if you are wearing a watch you get $400, or you get $100 for any white articles of clothing.  Other examples would be everyone that dances on this next song get $500.  It was a good time.  I have a video of Brian in the conga line that I’ll post soon.  This was the biggest event of the week and a lot of fun.  By this point though, I’m a walking zombie by the time we get back to the hotel at 11:00 PM.  However, everyone is in the lobby chatting it up so the networking and geek talk must continue! 

Wednesday

Wednesday we were on campus meeting with the product teams.  INSERT NDA HERE.  That evening after the sessions the majority of us headed over to the Microsoft Campus store to pickup some goodies.  The line was incredibly long and the whole process took several hours.  I picked up a new VX6000 camera since my Logitech camera doesn’t support Vista drivers.  Then we headed over to the evening dinner with the product teams.  There I hooked up with Joe Healey, Developer Evangelist from Florida, and I got introduced to a lot of the guys in his area including Stan Schultes, Tom Fuller, and Florida Regional Director Shervin Shakibi.  Since we got back to the hotel early, we hung out with Joe at the Redline Hotel and grabbed some solid food (hot wings, a true southern delicacy) since there wasn’t any food left at the dinner that night by the time most of us got there from the campus store.  They were absolutely hilarious.  Great bunch of guys.

Thursday

Thursday we were back on campus wrapping up the sessions from the product teams.  INSERT NDA HERE.  

Summary

As you can see it was a busy week.  I left a lot of people out that I talked to above so I hope to work them in here during the summary.  The people at the summit is what makes this summit so great.  I had deeper technical discussions at this summit than any other conference I’ve attended.  It was awesome to be surrounded with such intellectual people who are truly passionate about their technology.   It is so easy to identify people based on their expertise of their MVP award who have the same interest to immediately start comparing notes.  I remember Cory Smith and I got into a conversation with Nick Parker in the hotel lobby about the value of Smart Clients.  Nick was playing devils advocate which made it just that more interesting. We were also sitting with Scott Hanselman that night in the lobby of the hotel as well which will make any conversation interesting.  DonXML and I had a great conversation about DataSets and when to use and not to use them.   I had another great conversation with a special guest named David.  We talked about the Smart Client Software Factory and compared notes on building Winform apps as well as Smart Clients.  Jim Wooley, who I met in Montgomery at a CodeCamp, and I tackled about everything it seemed.  Jim is “all in” when it comes to LINQ so if you want some LINQ info, check his blog.  Jim and I are for the most part in the same area or are involved in the same community area (Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi) so we’ll be seeing more of each other I’m sure.  Bill Wagner, Josh Holmes and I got into a Google Maps vs Live Search Beta discussion when it comes to Pocket PC.   The conclusion was you need to load both on your Pocket PC phone since depending on the area you are in, one has better map support than the other.  Shawn Wildermuth and I got into a “which RSS Reader” is best.  He’s a fan of Google Reader, and I like to use RSS Bandit.  He broke out his laptop and gave me a whirlwind tour of how and why he likes Google Reader.  Shawn, in case you read this by chance, I’ve been using Google Reader for a week now just for kicks.  Stay tuned for a future posts about it 🙂  There are numerous other conversations and people I met and I wish I had more time to cover them all. 

 All in all it was a great time and an awesome experience.  Thanks to everyone who I met and thanks to Microsoft for allowing me to attend, it was awesome! 

While this article is about, hmm, 9 months old right now, I just stumbled across it.  Call it fate if you like that I was eventually destined to read it.  The article covers some great tips on how to make FlyOut panels and how to create things like Collapsible Menus in Windows Forms 2.0. 

The examples are in VB, but they do have C# and VB in the samples download.  The article can be found here:

http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa730847(VS.80).aspx