Blogus Maximus

I got hit with an interesting and troubling problem at work today. I won't go into specifics, other than to say it was an ASP.NET problem I hadn't encountered before and I was stuck.

So I thought about it and pinged one of my twitter friends who happened to be an ASP.NET guru (and insider) and she thought about it for all of about 4 seconds and said, oh yeah... I hate that, here's a link.

And wouldn't you know it, the link was to a blog right here on GeeksWithBlogs.NET. The blog entry totally solved the problem, and made the client happy. Life is good again.

So thanks Jeff and John, not only for being the uber cool geeks that you are, but for creating GWB.  You guys rock!  (and thank you miscellaneous asp.net blogger guy who works for Microsoft. you saved my butt. you know who you are.)


update: I just tried searching on GWB with the same terms I used on Google (where I found nothing) and wouldn't you know, it was the FIRST result. Good job guys.

In addition to learning WWF (that's Windows Workflow Foundation, Paul) I'm also reading a book given to me at the client, titled: eXtreme Project Management.

I haven't read any PM books before, and I've only just started this one. The intent is for me to read, discuss and learn, so I figure why not open it up to a broader audience and see what you think too...

1) Have any of you read this book?  It's by Doug DeCarlo, published in 2004.

2) If you have, what did you think?

3) Whether you have or not, if you know a thing or two about eXtreme Project Management vs Traditional Project Management... feel free to speak up as well.

Thanks!

edit: AaronE has a relevant blogpost here that is worthwhile reading.

If you're in the Kansas City area and you haven't heard about Kansas City Day of .NET (or KCDODN) then you're missing out.

KCDODN is Saturday, December 6th at the Centriq Training center.  (Go here to register...)

Looks like 4 tracks of .NET Developer goodness, including a session by yours truly.  GWB'ers Jeff and John will be there as well...  so come say hi if you're there.

Kansas City Day of Dot Net
	Development	Architecture	SharePoint	Special Interest
8:00am - 9:00am	Registration & Breakfast
9:00am - 10:15am	Russell Ball Increasing developer productivity with ReSharper	Raymond Magness The Idea Exchange: Managing Features By Inspiring Customers	Michael Lotter Building and deploying custom SharePoint Application pages (_layouts) with Visual Studio 2008	Timothy WrightUsing JQuery
10:30am - 11:45am	Chris Williams XNA Development That Rocks	Troy Tuttle Continuous Integration: The "Original" Best Practice	Todd Kitta SharePoint and Silverlight	Jeff Julian Developing Multi-Touch Applications for Windows 7
12:00pm - 1:00pm	Lunch
1:00pm - 2:15pm	Rob Reynolds Inversion of Control with Windsor Container	Dru Sellers & Chris Patterson Message Based Application Development with MassTransit	Becky Isserman Cheap and Easy Wildcard Search	John Alexander Developing for Microsoft Surface Applications
2:30pm - 3:45pm	Rob Kraft SQL Injection: How it works and how to stop it	Yair Segal Entity Framework versus Linq to SQL	Steve Walker Team Development using SharePoint	Muljadi Budiman Parallel Programming for Managed Code Developers
4:00pm - 5:15pm	Lee Brandt Your Code is Trying to Tell You Something: Reading Static Code Analysis Metrics using NDepend	Van Ice Adding Silverlight to your Enterprise Applications	Todd Bleeker Sharepoint custom membership provider	Shawn McCubbin Microsoft Dynamics
5:30pm - 6:30pm	After Party & Giveaways

I've been pretty quiet the last week and a half (at least in my blog... I'm still twittering plenty.) The reason for this is that I've started a new gig with Magenic and I've been really, really busy.

This new gig has me traveling from Minneapolis to a smallish town named Mitchell, SD and back each week. Between work and travel (and spending most of my nights getting up to speed on new stuff and new concepts) I haven't had much time to blog regularly.

So, I'm going to try to make a conscious effort to reverse that trend. I still have a few more of my NINE Questions interviews in the can, so I'll be putting those out there, and I'll try to provide some updates on the fun experiences I'm having learning about Windows Workflow (among other things.)

(Besides... D'Arcy is starting to catch up with me and well, we can't have that...)

I just got the INETA November newsletter and as I'm skimming carefully reading every word of it, I see my name on the awardees list for Community Champion. Not knowing if it was me or another Chris Williams, I dropped a quick email to INETA and sure enough, it was me. Very cool.

 

 

Once a quarter, INETA will recognize leading contributors as Community Champions. In addition to claiming this prestigious title for twelve months, awardees also receive a letter of commendation, a certificate of achievement, much deserved online recognition, and a few great prizes.

 

Awesome!  I wonder what the prizes are.

(Edit: apparently the prize is my choice of an MSDN subscription, an XBOX or cash... that's a pretty tough choice.)

I'm out in Mitchell, SD for a little while and it turns out they have a .NET User Group that's been around for 2-3 years. Unfortunately I missed the meeting last night, since I just found out about them today, but I hope to catch the next one for sure.

If you're in the Mitchell, SD area and you don't know about this group, stop by the CodePrairie.net forums and introduce yourself.

http://www.codeprairie.net/forums

While at PDC08, I managed to corner Richard Campbell in the food court and asked him these NINE Questions on video. Enjoy...

 

The Chippewa Valley .NET Users Group is holding their first Code Camp on Nov. 8th, 2008 in Eau Claire, WI.

I’m one of the presenters, and I'll be talking about XNA. I think it's pretty neat how Doug Rhoten and Dan Krueger (the CVCC planning committee) are providing a Microsoft Technologies track and an Agnostic/Cross-over track.

With that, there will be sessions covering topics such as Cloud Computing, Rails, XNA, AJAX-enabled Websites with Java and NetBeans, C++, Real World practices with WPF & Silverlight, Agile Development using Scrum and Team Foundation Server, TDD in .NET and building web applications with accessibility in mind.

 

Where: Chippewa Valley Technical College, 620 West Clairemont Ave., Eau Claire, WI (map)

When: Saturday, Nov. 8th, 2008, 8AM – 5:30PM

I should preface this by saying I spent a fair amount of time working in the TorqueX Platformer Starter Kit (PSK) when it first came out (back in the XNA 2.0 days.)

I think it's great that Microsoft included this in the XNA 3.0 release (especially for the bargain price of FREE) and I certainly want to encourage them to continue doing this sort of thing, but I have to be honest and say that I'm not quite as impressed with this as I am/was with the TorqueX PSK. Of course Garage Games support of TorqueX has waned considerably over the last year or so, and maybe that had something to do with why we're seeing something like this now (pure speculation on my part) shipping with XNA 3.0.

One of the good things about the XNA version is that it has Zune and XBox support (projects) baked right in to the starter solution, which is nice.

The demo levels that come with it (and there are a few) are nicely done, though they lack some of the game elements (such as ropes, ramps and conveyors) that made the TorqueX PSK so handy.

The soundtrack and sound effect quality is good, as are the background and character sprites. (You get more of each with the TorqueX PSK, though the style is completely different... more cartoonish.)

I met Doc at PDC08, while he was facilitating the Open Spaces with Jason Olson and Alan Stevens. We managed to find a little time to hang out, chat and do these NINE Questions on video. For some reason, Soapbox took a day and a half to process it, but it's finally done.

Looks like we have ourselves a new president.

I've always considered myself apolitical, never really caring who was in the white house, mostly because I don't believe it made a difference. The disaster we casually refer to as "the last 8 years" cured me of that philosophy. Turns out, the incompetence of one man, can actually make a difference...

So, it was with gradually increasing interest that I began following the 2008 electoral race. This is a landmark year, in that no matter who won, things were going to be different. After all, not only would it be a vast improvement over the current administration, but it would also be a landmark election either because Barack Obama would become our first African American President, or because Sarah Palin would be our first woman Vice President.

Things are changing. I spent most of this evening wondering how it would turn out. At the time of writing this, CNN has pronounced a winner. It's not who I would have picked, not that the other guy was much better, mind you...

Time will tell.

I spent some time chatting with Kevin Hazzard at PDC08 and managed to catch it on video. Enjoy.

While hanging out between keynotes at PDC08, I managed to get Ted Neward to sit down and answer NINE Questions. Enjoy.

Theo and I have been good friends for years, and he's one of the more interesting (techie or otherwise) people I know, so it was a no-brainer to ask him to do this interview. He responded quickly and of course, I tucked it away and promptly forgot all about it... until now. So without any further delay, I give you this NINE Questions (the lost episodes) interview with Theo Moore:

1. Where are you from?
Boy, that's a hard one to answer. I was raised in Florida, but I suppose the closest I've had to a home is Charleston, SC. Currently I live in Fort Mill, SC and work in Charlotte, NC.

2. Who do you work for / What do you do? / What is your "product?"
I work for EquiFirst, LLC...one of the few mortgage lenders still in business. I am currently the Software Test Automation Lead (by default; I am the only one). I mostly build internal testing apps in .Net, QuickTest Pro or whatever discipline required. It is particularly interesting work since I am not constrained by things like schedules, legacy code, project management, etc. I am basically free to approach any problem space and apply whatever technology is most expedient with the greatest chances of success.

3. How did you end up where you are now?
I got out of the Navy and decided I didn't like working on Nuclear Reactors (seriously), so entered the IT world. I'd been doing "shade tree programming" while I was in the Navy (dBase III and IV apps mostly), so the leap was not a great one. I started working for Blackbaud, LLC in Support (ye gods, I hated that) whilst I established sufficient credibility to get on the Consulting arm as a developer, specializing in database conversions and software customizations. I've moved in and out of the development and qa disciplines throughout my career a a few different employers.

4. You've had a pretty good mix of Dev and QA in your career. Which do you prefer and why?
You know, I don't know that I prefer one or the other, but if I had to pick one, I'd choose QA and for a very odd reason. I approach QA automation as a development project; you'll never be as successful as you'd like to be in automation until you do. So long as you treat it as an extension of manual testing, you'll never get the bang out of it you want. I mean, it's code. Sure, it's VBScript, Java, TSL, or whatever scripting/testing language you use, but it's still code. It has the same challenges and requires the same disciplines (coding standards, reviews, source control, etc.) that any project does. So from a certain perspective, they are very similar....or they are in my approach. I prefer QA automation, however, because I've gone to several locations as "the" automation guy; I get to build the automation presence from the ground up and mold it in my own image. I build the testing framework from the ground up. One of my former employers is still using my framework (with some mods) that I wrote years ago. That's pretty cool, and when hired into a development position, there is often too much legacy code around to make your mark like that.

5. What are some of your other technical interests / areas of expertise? 
I don't really have any specific area of expertise as most of my career has been spent across disciplines. I suppose you could say I am very skilled at automation framework design and implementation, though. I am more of the "jack of all trades" developer who learns disciplines as needed. I do love game design and NETCF development, though.

6. What are some of your nontechnical interests? 
I am an avid hockey player/fan, would-be guitarist/singer and exercise nut (a recent change). I am a big ol' geek at heart, also. I attended DragonCon this month and have plans to book my room and tickets this week for next year. I play WoW, read books, act as a "half-a**ed philosopher (I am your typical over-analytical thinker), and I am also a gardener (vegetables mostly). And in my spare time....

7. Any thoughts on the recent social networking boom? 
You know, a year ago I scoffed at the social networking thing. I originally thought that Twitter, for example, was silly. Now, I am very busy Twitter user. I still don't go to my MySpace or Facebook page very often, but I am on my blog a good bit (http://www.diesmia.com).

I think actually you explained it best once when we were discussing text messaging (which is now my preferred method of communication). People want to know what you're doing, but they don't want to talk about it. The asynchronous conversation is direct and to the point. You can communicate in nice, tidy bites (bytes?) without fully disengaging from whatever else you're doing. I feel connected without feeling tied into a conversation.

8. What's something the world at large probably doesn't know about you? 
I am a closet Patsy Cline fan. Seriously, I love her voice and music. 'Course, I can only listen to her for about 15 minutes before I need Paxil to combat the depression.

9. Any tattoos?
I have nine at last count. Got my last one (http://tinyurl.com/675tdl) on my honeymoon. :-) I am sure I am not done. Once you get one, you always refer to your "next tattoo" rather than say "if I get another one".

This is another in a series of interviews conducted at PDC08. This time we're talking to Jeff McWherter.

While at PDC08 I managed to score a couple books which I'm looking forward to reading.

Amanda Laucher was nice enough to give (lend?) me her copy of: Foundations of F#
For wearing an Orange bracelet, The Code Project handed me: C# 3.0 Unleashed
While I was gone, I received a package from O'Reilly containing: Facebook Cookbook
and another package, also from O'Reilly, which contained: Programming ASP.NET 3.5

Of those, I'm definitely interested in the F# and Facebook titles up front, and then I'll see what's on the stack at that point.

In addition to those titles, I'm also working my way through the Microsoft Robotics Studio book and my one leisure reading title: Star Wars - Legacy of the Force - Betrayal (apparently the 1st of many in that series)

On top of all this, I'm furiously trying to work my way through tech-editing an XNA book (that thanks to PDC08 I'm a little behind on)

While at PDC08 I managed to capture a fair amount of video footage.

I spent a good part of today trying to convert it to a usable format. I wasted a ridiculous amount of time and effort trying to get Windows Movie Maker to work. This is an incredibly frustrating piece of crapware, not only does it not work well (for me at least) since it kept throwing exceptions and crashing... but it also can't be downloaded except via Windows Update and can't be uninstalled via any normal method (Add/Remove Programs) so I wasn't even able to repair my installation. I'm stuck with this garbage on my machine.

I managed to actually convert ONE video (that of Alan Stevens) before it started repeatedly crashing. Unfortunately, in spite of much searching for answers or workarounds, I never could get WMM working properly again.

While chatting with the aforementioned Alan Stevens, he suggested I give Expression Encoder a try. After some fiddling and tweaking, I'm happy to say this has produced excellent results. I've converted about half of my videos so far and I'm gradually uploading them to Soapbox.

Now if only I could get around the 100meg (per file) limitation on Soapbox.

Fwiw, Soapbox works GREAT with LiveWriter since I can just link to my videos directly from within my blogposts. LiveWriter logs in and lets me pick the videos with just a couple clicks. very nice.

While in Los Angeles, I sat down with Amanda Laucher for a quick catchup since our initial NINE Questions interview a while back. In this interview, we talk a little about SoCal Code Camp and PDC08. Enjoy.

While at PDC08, I managed to get a few interviews on video. Alan was the first of those and probably one of the best. Without any further delay, here are NINE Questions with Alan Stevens:

 

So far, PDC08 has been pretty awesome. I spent a good part of yesterday wandering around the expo area and checking out the various Microsoft booths and vendor booths before settling down in the open spaces area.

One thing I saw that was especially interesting was the XNA booth, where they were showing off XNA 3.0 and the new Platform Starter Kit. Although the graphics are different, the demo is reminiscent of the TorqueX PSK. Hopefully it will be as easy to work with. I guess I’ll find out on Thursday.

This morning I’ve been catching some of the keynote and hanging out with the various Twitter Tribe and getting their thoughts and comments on what they’ve been seeing.

It’s been an interesting morning so far… between computer problems and ridiculously early wakeups (thanks to noisy neighbors.) Grabbed some breakfast downstairs at the hotel and it was time to head to the second day of code camp.

After getting somewhat lost, I eventually got here and found the right building for my talk. Made it just in time to catch the first session (he was starting late due to technical difficulties with the room.)

Dan Rigsby – Duplexing WCF in the Enterprise. This was a good talk and Dan’s a good presenter. I was a total WCF newb, so this was quite informative. The only down side was this one dude who kept cracking stupid jokes and interrupting with semi-relevant comments during his talk.

Up next is my XNA talk, then lunch.

After a quick lunch (Baja Fresh), it’s back to the sessions.

Next up is Amanda Laucher’s talk: F# (Functional Programming @ The Office.) This is an interesting session because it gives info about when/where to use F# rather than just how (syntactically) to use it. Also some discussion of building a DSL w/ F#. The session was originally listed as a lecture, but has evolved into an open discussion, with some of the MS (F#) guys pitching in as well.

Catching a break with D’Arcy. Got to See Jason Mauer (DE), Morgan (INETA) and a few other folks I haven’t seen in a while. Gonna chill for a bit (it’s pretty toasty here) and then head back and catch another session before the SoCal Dinner.

Caught a cab from the hotel to Code Camp, although the cab apparently couldn’t come onto the campus, so had to hoof it a little, once I knew where to go.

Ran into Rob Zelt (INETA Pres) and Daniel Egan (former INETA Pres, now MS DE) chatted for a minute, got registered, grabbed a muffin and was off to the first session (Scala).

Unfortunately, the first session was having some technical difficulties but they got resolved fairly quickly.

The Scala talk was pretty interesting and while it was Java-centric, it was close enough to C# to easily follow along. Feels a lot like F# in terms of what it can do, only a bit moreso. Good talk.

Took a quick break to find a soda between sessions, walked around a bit and did a brief video (15 seconds?) for Daniel and then hit the food court / store. Grabbed a couple sodas and headed back only to notice a soda machine right next to the room I was in. (How the hell did I miss that?)

Chris Smith’s “Intro to F#” talk had already started, so I grabbed a seat and hung out for that. Most of it was stuff I had already seen in the demos and tutorials, but he also talked about OO coding in F#, and Async/Parallel programming… both of which were cool.

(Chris is a good presenter, with a relaxed and humorous style. Handled questions well, including the one guy who was kind of a pita.  Definitely a fun session.)

 

Time for lunch….

Here's my vote of no confidence for Obama and McCain. I think we're hopelessly screwed no matter which one you vote for.

Andy (The ZMan) Dunn initially suggested it, and it makes sense, so I've decided to run for office in 2012. I know it seems a little early, but trust me... raising that kind of capital takes time... and while you might think I'm joking now, in four years you'll be ready for me... guaranteed.

Shortly after announcing my intent (via Twitter, follow me @chrisgwilliams) to run in the 2012 Presidential Race on the Geek ticket, my respected colleague Andy Leonard (@AndyLeonard) announced his candidacy on the Nerd ticket.

I've already named an excellent running mate, RachelAppel (@RachelAppel on Twitter) who stands for the same things I do and all geeks should.

We've got a campaign manager, Amanda Laucher (@Pandamonial) who will be busy lining up public appearances and making key introductions to all the right people. After all, it's never to soon to start thinking about the future.

A vote for Williams / Appel in 2012 is a vote that says "Hey, you've already proven we can do a lot worse!"



I'm Chris G. Williams And I Approve This Message!

I've known Kirstin pretty much since she came to Magenic, and she's one of the smartest (and most energetic) people I know. Shortly after joining our team, she was off and running and hasn't slowed down yet. Through dogged persistence (and a few emails), I was able to keep up with her long enough to ask her these NINE Questions:

1. Where are you from?
St. Paul/Minneapolis, MN. I had a brief stint in Silicon Valley right at the beginning of the tech bubble – that was cool! Got home-sick though.

2. Who do you work for / What do you do / What is your product?  Give me the 10 second pitch...
I am a consultant for Magenic Technologies. I write code. I don’t specialize, but I tend to focus on the middle tier and database design/development  because that’s where the fun problems are. And I push processes like Continuous Integration pretty hard.

3. How did you end up doing what you do now?
During my gig in Silicon Valley mentioned above, I was a Chemical Engineer at a fab. At this time Statistical Process Control and Demming were just starting to come into vogue, and I was tasked to implement these concepts on my processes. In order to collect the quantity and frequency of the data I wanted, I soon realized that an automated data collection system was called for. Being in the valley and palling around with other engineers and developers, and remembering how much fun I had at computer camp when I was ten, I decided to roll my own. I purchased VB 3.0 and an Access Database, ordered up several PC cards that I could connect to thermometers, pressure gauges, etc, and away I went. I soon discovered that this way more fun than my day job, so I went back to school in a Masters program, and slowly transitioned from engineer to full time software developer. Now here I am!! And loving every minute.

4. Ok, so you have an engineering background, how does that play into your software development work?
I still have that engineering brain… you can take the girl out of the factory, but you can't take the engineer out of the girl! So I tend to have a laser-like focus on whatever is currently capturing my attention. (As those of you who follow me on twitter know!) I am very detail-oriented, and am a natural problem solver. This makes me a perfect fit for heads-down coding and debugging. I have trouble seeing the larger picture. (I will never be a Project Manager!) I don't only not see the forest for the trees, I pretty much only see the chlorophyll molecules on the leaves on the trees. I also see everything as a process,  and therefore I am known as a “Process person”. But only to the point where process adds value. When the process becomes the focus of the effort and solving the business problem a by-product, something’s gone terribly wrong. It drives me nuts when things could be done a better way, and it's not.

5. As a consultant, you've had your share of good and bad projects, what's the most interesting (project / environment / client / whatever) you've run into so far?
I was on a project where the application was a web application that was going to be deployed to sites that lacked a high speed connection. Therefore, some of the most critical requirements were performance-related. Performance was not tested nor addressed until almost 3 years into the project, when it was in user-acceptance testing. The application could not come near to the performance requirements, and furthermore, it was way too late to fix it. Some unfortunate architecture decisions made early on in the project rendered the application “un-fixable” without starting over. The project ended up being canceled. As an engineer, I think that application performance (or any other quality metric) should be treated in the same manner as the metrics in my factory processes were. Following a performance strategy from the beginning of the project could have averted this disaster. Problems could have been found early-on when there was still time to change the application.

6. So what are some of your nontechnical interests? What do you do when you aren't geeking out?
Mostly I am a Mom. I run daily as my mental health plan, and I love to mountain bike. Single-track only though, so because of the time commitments involved in driving to a trail and riding, I don’t get to do it very much.

7. Any thoughts on Twitter? Facebook? Social Networks in general?
I like being able to keep up with people from whom I am separated geographically.  The “Twitterverse” as we call it, is an awesome network, social, and technical support group. Whenever I am stuck on something I put it out there, and within minutes will have knowledgeable people anxious to help. This field is so broad that there is no way to keep on even a fraction of what’s new. Having a network of people a click away is a huge asset. Then there is the social aspect. In my everyday “real world” life I don’t have much contact with “my kind”, and Twitter allows me to the ability to “converse” with people who share my experiences, interests, frustrations, and humor is at anytime – day or night.

8. A lot of folks probably know you as the TFS Chick, but what's something most people don't know about Kirstin Juhl?
Umm.. that’s TFS Princess to you! I am a hard-core coder more than a TFS person. I push process because it allows me more time to write better code under less stress. I love data, and therefore I like to focus on application/database performance analysis and tuning as well. I am most interested in looking at the raw data collected in the TFS data store over the life of the project and seeing if there is anything we are missing with our current metrics reports. I am looking for new ways to measure/monitor/control software projects and applications. Why? Because process improvement was my entire first career and I guess I drank the kool-aid, as they say. But before I could generate/analyze the data, I had to learn how to use TFS.

9. Any tattoos?
No. But I do have two piercings…