As previously announced, it’s official! TechEd 2010 will (finally) be back in New Orleans! The dates are June 7-11, 2010. It’s been several years since I’ve been to New Orleans, but I always have a great time there and I’m very much looking forward to returning. The food, music, and atmosphere are wonderful. I hope to see you there! more
This week we’re moving our businesses from an office in Kent to one in Hudson, Ohio. I thought I’d write a little bit about some of the things we’re having to deal with as part of this process, and some lessons learned. In our case, this is going to be a multi-step move, in that we are moving in to space that is not yet full renovated so that we can be onsite while further renovations are completed (and then we’ll move again into the final space). Firstly, if you’re moving an office, you’re going to need to deal with all the usual things involved with moving in terms of services and utilities. This includes: Electricity Gas (unless all electric) Water Sewer … more
Lake Quincy Media uses SalesForce.com as our CRM to manage our leads and customers and keep our salespeople organized. Overall we’ve been very pleased with the solution, and we know plenty of others who swear by SF. So when I heard about their foray into Cloud Computing via Developer.Force.com (DFC), I figured I should check it out. Similar to Azure, you need to register to get an account and the SDK. They also havea free white paper and tutorials. The download looks something like this: The first PDF contains 11 tutorials that help you get started building your first app in the cloud: The second PDF is a 30 page white paper on “Force.com: A … more
Last week I visited the Space Coast .NET user group in Florida (courtesy of INETA) to talk about ASP.NET MVC and SOLID software development principles. If you’re interested, you can grab the slides and demos from the link below: Download slides and demos Big thanks to Robert “UncleBob” Martin, Mark Nijhof, and Derick Bailey for many of the slides and ideas in this talk. more
This Wednesday I’ll be in Florida presenting on ASP.NET MVC and Robert Martin’s SOLID principles of software development. The Space Coast Dot Net User Group is hosting me, and INETA is sponsoring the talk. If you’re in the area, please stop by to join in the event. More details: When: 630pm, 15 April 2009 Where: Space Coast Credit Union Corporate Headquarters 8045 N. Wickham Road Melbourne, Florida 32940 I gave this same talk last week to the Kent State ACM chapter and it went pretty well. I plan to tweak the demos a bit before this presentation. Ultimately, I’m giving this same talk at TechEd in LA in about a month, so these events are providing … more
Developer Tools Marketing at Microsoft is hosting a party at TechEd in Los Angeles once again this year. Here are the details: Let’s face it, going to a technical conference is good for your career but it’s not a whole lot of fun. You need an outlet. You need to have fun. Cheap beer and lousy pizza. We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Lucky Strike for a night of pizza, beer, and bowling. There is limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for? If you are attending the TechEd 2009 conference and you are a developer, you are invited. To register pick up your "duck" ticket (and wristband) in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools … more
HttpApplication.CompleteRequest is preferable to use for aborting a request in an ASP.NET application over Response.End, because it has better performance characteristics. If you’re using Response.End, you’ve probably at one time or another encountered the ThreadAbortException that goes along with it. The behavior of CompleteRequest changed with 2.0, as Rick describes here. However, the reason why you’ll most likely want to call CompleteRequest rather than Response.End is that, while it still short-circuits the ASP.NET pipeline (jumping immediately to the EndRequest event), it does so without throwing a ThreadAbortException. (thanks to Stefan Schackow for this tip) more
I’m really tired of the fact that computer manufacturers in general have yet to recognize developers as a separate demographic. If you do a search for “developer workstation” in Google, there are no links to any computer manufacturer on the first page (sponsored or otherwise). Search for “gaming computer” and suddenly there are all kinds of links: And no, Live Search isn’t any better: Search for “developer laptop” and at least Toshiba gets in the game with some sponsored ads. What’s my point? Computer manufacturer’s simply don’t find developers worthy of their attention. In fact, developer’s as a whole know this, which is why if you want to get a decent … more
I’m giving a talk this week at Kent State University on ASP.NET MVC and SOLID principles. It will be at 3:45pm on Wednesday, April 8th, in room 228 of the Match and Comp Sci building. It’s sort of a dry run for a session I’ll be giving at TechEd in May, but also geared more toward students. I’ll be sure to post the slides and demos here as usual afterward. If you’re a student at KSU or are in the area, please feel free to stop by (the event is open to the public). My plan is to spend a very small amount of time describing MVC (and ASP.NET), and the bulk of the time discussing best practices for OOP culled mainly from Robert C. Martin’s books, such as these: Agile … more
I’ll be attending and speaking at Stir Trek on 8 May 2009, which happens to be the date the new Star Trek movie opens (coincidentally). What is Stir Trek, you ask? Well, let me tell you (by means of cutting and pasting from the above-linked site, to save you from exercising your mouse-clicking finger): Stir Trek is an opportunity to learn about the key announcements from the Mix 09 conference, at a location that is a little closer to home, and in the comfort of a movie theater. There will be 10 sessions, in two tracks, so you’ll be able to pick the content that interests you the most. In addition, the day will include lunch, a raffle with some significant prizes, and … more