October 2005 - Posts
Go to Google on any holiday (like today) and check out the history of Google's holiday logos: http://www.google.com/intl/en/holidaylogos.html
-- Matt Ranlett
Congrats go to Michael Earls who has recently accepted a position with Microsoft as a Developer Evangelist.
http://www.cerkit.com/cerkitBlog/Is+It+Still+Cool+To+Say+I+Swallowed+The+Red+Pill.aspx
-- Matt Ranlett
I watched Suspect Zero (with Ben Kingsley and Carrie-Ann Moss) this weekend. Basically a suspense drama about some FBI agents hunting down a "super" serial killer. They get some help from a psychic ex-FBI agent (Ben Kingsley). Honestly, the movie reminded me of Seven with Brad Pitt, except I thought Seven was better. Still, not a horrible movie... check it out if you've got an hour and a half to kill some evening.
-- Matt Ranlett
This weekend was pretty fun for me – it was the annual Value Music Concepts manager’s meeting where all of the 70 different store managers are flown in for a weekend of business meetings and entertainment. As part of the office staff, I got to participate in the entertainment portion of the weekend.
Things got kicked off with a dinner at Maggiano’s where I nearly ate myself into a coma. Then, at the restaurant, some of the record labels that we work with debutted some new acts
Dark New Day
Jace Everett
Then on Saturday, we came back to the office for more entertainment. This time we got to meet two legends:
Charo – of Love Boat and Surreal Life fame.
George Clinton – leader of Parliament Funkadelic.
This was a lot of fun! Charo was incredibly gracious, friendly, and energetic. George Clinton was super friendly and so laid back I wondered how he ever got up the energy to perform.
— Matt Ranlett
Thursday night, the 27th - the next installment of the Atlanta Geek Dinner. This time we're in Alpharetta eating BBQ at Famous Daves on NorthPoint. Check out the details here (http://nerddinner.com/blogs/atlanta/) and remember to RSVP if you plan on attending
-- Matt Ranlett.
Last Friday, fifty two Atlanta area developers gathered in the Microsoft offices to listen to a presentation by Carl Franklin and Richard "Toy Boy" Campbell. They regaled us tales of Visual Basic.Net, nifty addins like CodeRush, and an awesome preview of Windows Mobile 5. Congrats go out to the guy (I forgot his name) who won the uber-cool grand prize of a not yet released smartphone from Cingular.
After the presentation and the swag giveaways (featuring an amazing array of "Clementine" performances) we all high-tailed it down GA400 to the Definition 6 office where we drank copious quantities of beer, Kentucky bourbon, and soda while playing Halo 2, practicing our golf swing, and chatting with lots of area developers. About twenty five people showed up to this event, and we didn't get out of there until nearly 4am!
Per the .Net Rocks Roadtrip blog, the audio from the Altanta trip should be online tomorrow.
-- Matt Ranlett
Kim and I went down to Piedmont Park Sunday afternoon to play flag football with a bunch of Kim's friends. Probably 15 to 20 people showed up to sit in the park and chat and between 8 and 12 of us were playing football at any given time. I left the game as the score was tied, 3-3. I knew I was out of shape, but mostly I was just out of breath while playing. Then Kim and I went home and were both so tired and sore that we could barely move off the couch! This morning I'm still sore, in all sorts of unexpected places. I've got to get more active than I currently am - being this sore and tired blows!
-- Matt Ranlett
I want to thank everyone who came out to sit in the audience and learn something about SharePoint. We've collected over 200 surveys from the attendees, replete with comments such as, "Great job!", and "Thanks for all the hard work!" I'm proud of the effort that went into this series of presentations and I think Brendon, Dan, and Keith are as well. The way I hear it, we've also brought a big project to our sponsor Intellinet, so they're also extremely pleased to have been involved. Good stuff all the way around!
Once Brendon, Dan, Keith, and I finish polishing the material, we're going to get it to the Microsoft SharePoint team to give a final review. Once we make the required changes based on the SharePoint team's comments, we'll be distributing the content via the Microsoft DEs and through INETA. Hopefully we'll be seeing other SharePoint 1, 2, 3! presentations around the country and perhaps beyond. I've heard of interest up the East coast as well as in Canada. This proves that there is a great deal of interest in SharePoint and I'm hopeful that our training material might be valuable to everyone who receives it. Of course, when we are finished with the SharePoint team review of the content, it will be placed online for any registered member of the Atlanta Microsoft Professionals to download. We won't be offering the Virtual PC for download as the file is too large, but we will be providing directions on how to build your own Virtual PC.
Thanks again to everyone who came out and was so supportive.
-- Matt Ranlett
It's taken us something like a hundred hours to get where we are now, but we're finally here. All the Content CDs and Virtual PC DVDs have been pressed, the slide deck and hands on lab document have all been polished, pizza has been ordered, and we're all wearing our fancy presentation shirts. Today is the day for our final, 300 level presentation of Windows SharePoint Services in the SharePoint 1, 2, 3! training series. This week, in SharePoint 1, 2, 3! we'll be looking at the SharePoint Object Model, document event handlers, web services, and external applications interfacing with SharePoint. Brendon and I will be standing in front of the crowd tonight, so please come, even if only to heckle.
We've collected over 200 surveys so far, and every survey has generally reflected glowing reviews. We've gotten some constructive criticism and lots of unbridled praise for working so hard to put on this free community training event. I truly believe that Brendon, Dan, Keith, and I have put together a training package worth hundreds of dollars and we're giving it all away! You may ask, "Why would anyone work so hard to build something so nice and then give it away for free?" I think the answer must be that we're completely insane! That and we felt we could really do something valuable. We set the bar really high when we started this project, and I think we've blown everyone away - including ourselves. I looked back over our documentation, and we've got over 100 pages worth of step by step Hand on Labs documentation. We've got about 100 slides across all three slide decks. We can truly take someone who's never seen SharePoint before, put them through this material, and have at the end a person who is significantly better prepared to work with SharePoint as both a business manager and as a developer. I'm not saying that this is the only material you'll need if you want to take and pass the Microsoft exam 74-133, but you will be significantly better prepared.
The best part of getting this material together has been that I've gotten to spend a LOT of time with Brendon, Dan, and Keith. These three guys have been a blast to work with and I've learned a tremendous amount from each of them. I can't say that I'm sorry to see the end of our 14 hour meetings every Saturday (and our once a week 5 hour meetings) but I'm glad I went through this. I learned a great deal about building an effective team, about SharePoint itself, and about how a seemingly simple task can turn into a humongous undertaking by simply saying that you want to do it "right".
We've still got to get through the meetings tonight and tomorrow, but I think we'll have no problems. We're ultra prepared and now we've got the mac daddy of all powerpoint remote controls!
-- Matt Ranlett
We are having a long afternoon of working on SharePoint 1,2,3!, but I just downloaded Michael Earls new song “Just in Time”. I am playing it for everyone to hear. The song is pretty good and I am enjoying hearing what Michael is coming out with.
Check it out
http://www.cerkit.com/cerkitBlog/cerkit++Ambient+Assemblies++1+Just+In+Time.aspx
—Brendon Schwartz
I've been spending some quality time with InfoPath lately, trying to soak up as much as I can about it while preparing a demo for the SharePoint 1, 2, 3! training event on Monday. Now, InfoPath is, to me anyway, a completely new and unfamiliar Microsoft Office product. I'd never used it before and I wasn't even sure what it did beyond the abstract, "it helps you fill out forms". Now that I've been spending some time with it, let me clue the rest of you in: InfoPath might just be the best program in the Office suite besides Outlook! I'll be honest - I might be overly excited b/c it's so new to me, but there are some SERIOUSLY sweet features built into InfoPath.
InfoPath allows you, the business user (not the developer) to create a form designed to receive and store all kinds of data. You can add text fields, drop down lists, rich text boxes, etc. You can enforce data validation rules on these fields, ensuring that important fields are not left blank and other match the patterns you are looking for (phone numbers, e-mail addresses, etc). You can tie the form to external data stored in a database, SharePoint, or web services. You can have 200 people fill out 3 forms each, then merge all the data together into a single master copy in Excel. You build ActiveX controls right inside of the InfoPath application (using C++). You can add Javascript, you can make the form look pretty, you can ask it to dinner and a movie... Ok, maybe not that last bit. Still, I'm pretty taken by InfoPath. I bet the reason people don't use it more than they currently do is because they're more comfortable with Excel and just don't know how InfoPath fits in. I'm hoping to change that up some by talking about it every now and then. I'm going to see if it fits in with any of the work we're doing here in my office. This is too sweet a tool to leave in the toolbox.
-- Matt Ranlett
Just last weekend my wife went to pick up her home laptop at BestBuy. I figured we should use the service plan we paid for. The computer was doing ok, but the keyboard had a button missing and the touch pad did not respond well. We got a call 14 days later, which is the longest they say it will be, to come pick it up. Great, so my wife goes up to pick it up and they tell her they replaced the keyboard and hard drive. All the while I am at home working on a BizTalk 2006 presentation when I get a call “do you want them to reinstall Windows XP Home or do it yourself?” Do I what? Are you a @#$%ing moron? I wanted a new keyboard and touch pad not a brand new #$%^&ing hard drive that will take me hours to reinstall.
It turns out that they claim that the hard drive had a bad sector that made the touch pad not work. Well really my wife told them it sometimes blue screened, so they just replaced the hard drive instead of testing anything. I asked them for documentation that it was bad or why they had not called us and of course they said “We have no #$%^ing clue we are just store employees”. The best part is that when they went to reinstall XP Home for me the repair place had managed to break the CD-ROM that was perfect before it went it. Needless to say I am pissed.
You might say that is what was expected from BestBuy’s support, but seriously why does BestBuy have to have such bad service on electronics, especially computers.
Finally the best part about it. While my wife was waiting, a man came up with his computer and a zip disk. They told him it would be 90 bucks to get his computer backed up. 90 bucks to run an application? I need a job like that.
—Brendon Schwartz
http://www.ineta.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=0&tabid=32&NewsID=3
Here is the official press release that Matt and I are going to be working with INETA as the Co-VP of Technology. We look forward to getting some volunteers from the community to help us out.
Thanks to everyone that has helped us over the last 2 years.
—Brendon Schwartz
I finally have less than100 follow up emails and my desktop only has 50 items on it so I think I am getting caught up. As we start down the home stretch working on SharePoint 1,2,3! I find that in theory there should be more time for family and friends. Unfortunately if you know me well enough, extra time means extra ideas that I try to convince Matt to do. I should thank my wife here for all of her support and strength. I am trying to plan out what the Atlanta .NET Regular Guys are going to do during Q1 of next year and it looks very full, so if you have suggestions for Q2 let us know and we can try to work them in.
Some highlights for Q1 that the Atlanta .NET Regular Guys are working on:
Like I said there is a lot going on and we want to get more people involved in helping out and growing a stronger community in Atlanta and world wide.
—Brendon Schwartz
In the theater:
A History of Violence
This was full of graphic sex and ultra-real violence. Ed Harris was good as a really scary guy, but otherwise I was generally underwhelmed by the acting - especially from William Hurt (whom I normally like).
Rental:
The Family Guy - Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story
While not as constantly funny as I'd hoped, there were parts of this movie that were so funny I was gasping for air I was laughing so hard. I highly recommend this for anyone who likes the Family Guy, the Simpsons, or Futurama. I think my favorite character is the dog.
-- Matt Ranlett
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