Atlanta .NET Regular Guys

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This is the community blog for Brendon Schwartz and Matt Ranlett. If you want to see their technical posts visit http://www.sharepointguys.com

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Matt Ranlett said:

did I say absolutely hysterical enough? Well, it is. Check out the Turing test!

# August 10, 2005 11:20 AM

All I know is anyone that puts their results into haiku form is on the cusp of somthing special. Some VC needs to get those men to a company incubator, they need to be able to open up their research a bit.

# August 10, 2005 12:06 PM

Cyanbane said:

I loved Paul's post a few weeks ago, and picked up slashdot review off of his list, (few days ago I heard them mention him :) . I have been listning to a bunch of podcasts lately (prob an hour or so a day) and I am actually working on one that is non-programming related (for us vid game geeks). I had a post a few weeks ago about some that I listen to it can be found here others might like some of them:

<a href="http://www.cyanbane.com/2005/07/podcasting.asp">http://www.cyanbane.com/2005/07/podcasting.asp</a>

# August 11, 2005 10:27 AM

Cyanbane said:

yeah ignore the above html href. Try this:

http://www.cyanbane.com/2005/07/podcasting.asp

# August 11, 2005 10:27 AM

Cyanbane said:

This sounds like a weird relationship (MS and Tivo) Are they not competitors? (MSMCE vs Tivo's software)?

# August 11, 2005 11:27 AM

Kim said:

Why yes it does!

# August 11, 2005 1:02 PM

Darron said:

Maybe it's time we put up a 'good' schedule of all of the user groups. Better yet, make an rss feed that will give you a heads up the day before the meeting (or better yet, the morning of). I've planned to attend several, but always seem to remember them when I'm home, and my wife says "Why are you home? What happened to the meeting?".

Also, a link to the user group website on this post (or any about the group) could help. :D

# August 12, 2005 5:17 AM

Paul Lockwood said:

Congrats Matt, you make a great couple. That's a sweet story too.

# August 15, 2005 11:30 AM

Cyanbane said:

Congrats man. Thats awesome.

# August 15, 2005 11:42 AM

Michael Earls said:

Not sure if it uses the new PMC OS (which is supposed to support more than just MS formats), but it has the "Plays For Sure" logo, which means it can do everything the PMC can (and probably more).

This looks pretty sweet.

# August 16, 2005 4:02 AM

Michael Earls said:

Alright! The coolest thing in the world is to be with the perfect someone. That person that makes you better and that person that you make better.

Congratulations!

# August 16, 2005 4:03 AM

Michael Earls said:

TiVo and MCE provide products in two very different market segments. Though, I'm sure MS would love to have TiVo's market. You can't buy a decent MCE for the same price as an introductory TiVo. TiVo competes on price and MCE competes on features.

# August 16, 2005 4:06 AM

Venkat Polisetti said:

Congratulations Matt. You make a great couple and have a great, sweet and wonderful life together.

# August 16, 2005 5:08 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

Check out http://www.devcow.com ! =)

# August 16, 2005 11:29 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

Make sure if you come to the Hands On Labs that you thank Dan Attis. He put in a ton of effort on the content and making the images for everyone. Thanks Dan, Matt and Keith for all of your work and helping make an idea come to life.

# August 16, 2005 11:39 AM

Heidi said:

I can't believe I found this out on a blog.... tell Kim I am VERY disappointed...

# August 17, 2005 7:31 PM

Heidi said:

Hey Matt! Did you guys get engaged on Friday morning or Saturday morning? I'm very happy for you both! But Kim's phone must be broken... no call! :( Just kidding! Feel the love! I am SO happy for you both!

# August 17, 2005 9:09 PM

Kim (the lucky fiance) said:

Yes Matt, you are a LUCKY LUCKY Man...

Heidi, I stink, but don't worry, will talk your ear off this weekend!

:-)
Kim

# August 18, 2005 2:39 PM

Anirudh said:

Hi Matt,
Just wanted to let you guys know that it was a great experience. Thanks for supporting the local user community - this was a great idea.
Anirudh

# August 18, 2005 3:18 PM

Wallym said:

Congrats!!!!!!!!!!!

# August 19, 2005 4:58 AM

Some DE said:

I had no idea that Doug Turnure was such a handsome guy. No wonder people come to these code camps.

# August 22, 2005 1:33 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Sorry these photos seem so dark. When I look at them full sized, they seem to be bright and shiny. I'll keep that in mind when I post future photos.

# August 22, 2005 2:38 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Update - Mark Dunn will be talking about ADO.NET 2.0 and SQL 2005 while Shawn Wildermuth will teach you how to build a forms-based authentication website in 45 minutes with nothing but a whiteboard. I'm not sure what Don will present but I'm sure it will be top notch

# August 23, 2005 1:16 PM

Keith Rome said:

You keep on posting all these sharepoint tips and I am going to have to move your blog feed to the "Sharepoint" section of my blogroll!

# August 23, 2005 4:48 PM

Don said:

I have a few topics in mind (asmx, WSE, Indigo, VSTS, Service Orientation), but I hope to leave it openended so we're free to talk about anything (anything other than ASP.NET that is).

# August 23, 2005 8:43 PM

Joris said:

I tried it but it doesn't work, I just get a commandbox which keeps on running...

# August 25, 2005 2:50 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Joris - is Linda1 a valid user (or did you replace Linda1 with a valid user on the box)?

Make sure that the user is valid, that the path to iexplore.exe is valid, and that the web address is the address to your portal site.

# August 26, 2005 7:23 AM

Paul Wilson said:

Congrats -- where are you going?

# August 26, 2005 10:01 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I'm going to a company called Value Music Concepts. Their public website is http://www.musicforasong.com

# August 26, 2005 10:18 AM

Marcus Grant said:

What? More responsibility than working at MATRA? So you're going to spend more countless nights up awake?

Hehe, wish ya the best in your new place.

# August 26, 2005 6:30 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

update - I did subscribe to this. With this and Wired, I should be in the know!

# August 27, 2005 6:50 AM

Michael Earls said:

Congratulations! Good luck.

# August 30, 2005 1:47 PM

Kim Donohue said:

Good! Let's get one like that for the house!

:-)
KD

# September 9, 2005 8:05 AM

Kimberly said:

Who are these poor wumpus things? Why are these kids hunting them?

SAVE THE WUMPUS!!!

# September 14, 2005 6:48 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I also found this great discussion of cross-tabs online
http://weblogs.sqlteam.com/jeffs/archive/2005/05/15/5175.aspx

# October 4, 2005 2:32 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

http://www.abc.net.au/broadband/cna/
The video is updated even if the website isn't! This is still current

# October 5, 2005 7:04 AM

Caleb Jenkins said:

.Net Regular Guys Land VP Spot - Congratulations!

# October 7, 2005 7:26 AM

NJ said:

Congratulations!

# October 7, 2005 7:54 AM

Mark Dunn said:

Congrats guys! I'm excited about your involvement with INETA. I have a feeling you will accomplish a lot.

# October 9, 2005 11:34 AM

Venkat Polisetti said:

Congrats Matt and Brendon. I have every confidence that you both will fulfill the job right.

# October 10, 2005 3:44 AM

Heidi said:

Are you going to go with me to pick it up again? Please?

# October 13, 2005 12:32 PM

Marcus Grant said:

Should have watched Serenity. It was #2 in its first week and #9 in its second. We need to make it stay in the top 10! Gorram, I want sequels!!!

# October 13, 2005 8:33 PM

Chris Wallace said:

Don't they use that stupid Geek Squad group for pc repair?

# October 14, 2005 4:14 AM

Mark Dunn said:

Yeah, they have the Geek Squad. It's like Forrest Gump's box of chocolates - you never know what you'll get at one of their stores. Some of those guys are very skilled and I have to wonder what they're doing working for a BestBuy. The others are just making a check and gushing buzzwords to make customers feel they are competent.

# October 14, 2005 11:59 PM

John said:

Matt said...
"We've still got to get through the meetings tonight and tomorrow, but I think we'll have no problems."

Sorry about your uncooperative demos!

# October 18, 2005 7:36 AM

Michael Earls said:

Thanks for the nice comments. I'm not happy at all with that "song". I rushed it and there is too much sound processing. I meant to call it the "Dentist office mix", since it sounds like it would if you were on laughing gas listening to it at the dentist's office.

I'm still working on the others and they're coming along much better. That first one was an experiment.

# October 24, 2005 4:22 AM

Jim Wooley said:

I haven't tried it since beta 1 when it didn't work, but theat feature should be good for switching between presentation and development modes for those of us who do both frequently.

# November 7, 2005 11:12 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I think that you might find the post where I referenced a Visual Studio macro more helpful in switching between presentation and development modes. This change in environment seems to be aimed at switching between C#, VB, and custom screen organizations.

http://devcow.com/blogs/adnrg/archive/2005/09/09/94.aspx

# November 7, 2005 11:58 AM

G said:

thanks for this post..took me about an hour to find your posting and figure this out. I swear it should've been an easier thing to find....

# November 30, 2005 12:22 PM

Paul Wilson said:

That's funny -- everyone I talked to said the content was boring, much of it was disorganized, and a little of it was even broken. Did I see some good content too? Sure, but overall it was a waste of time, and everyone I spoke to (including those that aren't "insiders") said the same thing.

I don't say this to cause problems, but because MS needs to hear the truth so this can be avoided next time. I've been to great events -- and this wasn't one of them. Why? I think it was because the content was canned, but presented by others that didn't prepare it.

# November 30, 2005 5:38 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Sorry to hear about Gizmo -- dogs really are our best friends and little children.

# December 6, 2005 6:52 PM

THE SCHUETTE'S said:

SORRY FOR YOUR LOSS!

# December 9, 2005 6:34 AM

The Targovnik's said:

What a cutie!!! We will miss her.

# December 9, 2005 11:48 AM

The Jacob's said:

I will always remember Gizzy's interesting bathroom habits while dog sitting her. I will miss her a lot.

# December 9, 2005 11:49 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last week was a spectacularly crappy week for me.&nbsp; It started off with one of my dogs dying on Tuesday...

# December 13, 2005 5:29 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

When I took Gizmo to the vet last Tuesday, I asked them to do an autopsy to figure out why she (an otherwise...

# December 13, 2005 5:33 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Dan Attis has given several presentations to the various user groups (VB, C#) of his favorite dev tool...

# December 13, 2005 6:09 AM

Paul Wilson said:

Your best bet for termite letters is to never let termite coverage lapse -- although that's not something you can change after the fact. But in the future keep it in mind -- if you have termite coverage current (around $100/year if I remember correctly), then a letter should cost less than $50. But otherwise, if you don't have current coverage, then everyone is going to require an expensive "new" treatment.

# December 13, 2005 7:33 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Turns out that while I did let termite coverage lapse while the house sat unoccupied, the letter would still have only cost $125. Not great, but easily tolerable. I can't tell if I'm being ripped off with this "treatment" option or it's legit. I'll blog about this again when I have an update.

# December 13, 2005 11:23 AM

Keith Rome said:

Sounds like you have a potential career in plumbing.

When can you come look at my dishwasher and fix the leak that is draining down into my exercise room?

# December 13, 2005 11:51 AM

Kim D said:

Now I will never see you again....sniff sniff sniff.

KD

# December 16, 2005 10:42 AM

Jim Wooley said:

You may be banned from planning the menu, but we won't ban you from planning meetings. Thank you for stepping up and getting this meeting done. It was a good showing considering the circumstances. I second thanking Microsoft, and particular Doug Turnure for their ongoing support to the community both in terms of time and funding. Keep up the good work.

Jim Wooley

# December 20, 2005 6:51 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Chris Wallace posted his code - grab it here: http://uallas.com/blog/2005/12/21/AtlantaUserGroupHolidayPartyDemos.aspx

# December 21, 2005 4:50 AM

Kim Donohue said:

Lovely Pics, just lovely
:-)

# December 21, 2005 8:29 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Read with rapt attention as Rory gets to the bottom of the console shortage http://neopoleon.com/blog/posts/16887.aspx
-- Matt Ranlett

# December 22, 2005 6:01 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

We got word back from the vet on why Gizmo died so suddenly.&nbsp; Apparently for a long time now Gizmo...

# December 22, 2005 7:56 AM

Kim Donohue said:

Ummm, I think Baga is ITALIAN for grandmother, not Indian :-)

# January 5, 2006 7:42 AM

Jennifer said:

Actually Baga is not Italian (that would be Nona) or Indian (that would be Ba) but it is a word that Dominic made up on his own just before the age of 2 when he was trying to repeat the word "grandma" after hearing it from me and Raj. So Baga it is and Mom loves it. On a related note I called my maternal grandfather Bega and I made that up too so I guess it runs in the genes.

# January 5, 2006 12:41 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Congrats again !

# January 8, 2006 6:07 AM

Lynn said:

Actually Baga means best grandma. This of course from an unbiased opinion. I am glad everyone had fun in Savannah - it really is a neat city.

# January 8, 2006 12:58 PM

Aaron Cutlip said:

Awesome Dude! I did not even know you played basketball!

# January 8, 2006 3:05 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

Congrats, man!

# January 9, 2006 12:03 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Brendon, you've been working very hard trying to raise the bar when it comes to community involvement here in the Atlanta area and you deserve this recongition. Congrats again!

# January 9, 2006 4:13 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

So the lesson here is not to turn to the Modi family to learn actual language skills. They apparently speak the same language as Nell - http://imdb.com/title/tt0110638

# January 9, 2006 4:16 AM

Kim D said:

Congrats Brendon, this is a huge accomplishment!

# January 9, 2006 4:23 AM

Jim Wooley said:

There is an alternative to the Adobe Reader - FoxIt. Scott Hanselman just bloged about it (http://www.hanselman.com/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=b93fd18e-82cd-4038-9a1b-d7ed224d46ad). IT seems to work pretty well.</p>
As for anti-virusm, I'm surprised they didn't team up with grisoft who has a descent free anti-virus solution for individuals (http://www.grisoft.com/doc/289/lng/us/tpl/tpl01). The free version is more difficult to find now so I don't know how long they are planning on keeping it that way.</p>

# January 9, 2006 7:13 AM

Wooley's Wonderings said:

Congratulations to two new MVP&rsquo;s in the Atlanta, GA area. Brendon Schwartz&nbsp;and Eric Marvets....

# January 9, 2006 7:18 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I'll have to look at FoxIt. I agree that Grisoft's anti-virus tool is awesome. I use it on all my home machines (and all my friend's machines who use me as Mr. Tech-Support). Another free anti-virus alternative is Ewido (www.ewido.net) which not only kills viruses but spyware, worms, and trojans.

# January 9, 2006 8:48 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Check out this eWeek article. Its position is that the Google Pack isn't prep for a Google machine but is instead a counter to Microsoft Live: http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1909415,00.asp?kc=EWRSS03119TX1K0000594

# January 10, 2006 6:21 AM

Paul Lockwood said:

As I was saying last week, in terms of hours and effort expended Brendon deserves the MVP. It is a shame Microsoft picked only one of those who put in 20+ hours/week of their free time. Being honest and fair (Lariam episodes aside am I ever anything else?); given an impartial choice of just one person even I would have picked Brendon.

# January 10, 2006 6:53 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Chris Wallace of http://www.uallas.com provided a working solution - just use a new array instead of editing the original one.

# January 10, 2006 7:15 AM

Jim Wooley said:

As an alternative to using a new array, you may want to consider replacing the array with a NameValueCollection or, depending on your needs, a List<CustomLookup> where the CustomLookup class has a Key and Description property. If you concatenate the key and description (as it appears you are doing from the sample code), you won't get the key back to the BO. Instead, keep them separate and set the DisplayMember and ValueMember of the ComboBox as necessary.

As an aside, watch out for nulls returned from the SelectedItem/SelectedValue of the comboBox to your property set of the BO. Even if you designate the property to be of type String (not nullable string), the value in the property set may be Null and thus create unexpected results. The issue appears typically if trying to clear a previously selected value. Also, de-selecting a value does not fire SelectedItemChanged, thus binding to that event can be dangerous.

# January 10, 2006 7:40 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Ok, so let's see where we are. In Post1 I talked about getting an animated gif on the screen to indicate...

# January 13, 2006 10:59 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Ok, so let's see where we are. In Post1 I talked about getting an animated gif on the screen to indicate...

# January 13, 2006 10:59 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Ok, so let's see where we are. In Post1 I talked about getting an animated gif on the screen to indicate...

# January 13, 2006 11:00 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Ok, so let's see where we are. In Post1 I talked about getting an animated gif on the screen to indicate...

# January 13, 2006 11:00 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Great writeup. I'm glad to see the content juices running again.

An alternative to the above, you could use the BackgroundWorker component in 2.0. Ken Getz had a good set of articles on this for MSDN Mag last year. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/05/03/AdvancedBasics/.

# January 13, 2006 1:36 PM

Keith Rome said:

Sweet Mary, Mother of Jesus!

Matt is writing advanced .NET code?!

# January 13, 2006 2:07 PM

Doug Turnure said:

Hey, Brendon, I didn't give you anything you didn't deserve. You earned it.

Congrats, and remember me when you're famous ;-)

# January 13, 2006 9:18 PM

D'Arcy from Winnipeg said:

# January 14, 2006 12:13 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

So Kim and I are gently poking fun at each other for the romantic way I announced that I'd made reservations...

# January 17, 2006 5:49 AM

Jim Wooley said:

File this under "How to get a job at Microsoft without really trying". Too bad they won't pay for your receptionist duties.

Speaking of easy money, did you register 4for1pixels.com yet?

# January 17, 2006 6:23 AM

Kim D said:

You are a freak, and I am a freak becasue I love you

# January 17, 2006 10:39 AM

Wooley's Wonderings said:

When I started at my current company, I had the pleasure of dealing with years of legacy data that was...

# January 17, 2006 12:40 PM

Jim Wooley said:

Trackback: http://devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley/archive/2006/01/17/684.aspx

# January 17, 2006 12:42 PM

James Shaw said:

..and just in time for the Holidays. What a surprise :-)

# January 18, 2006 8:02 AM

GP said:

Wow...only a year too late.

# January 18, 2006 10:20 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

So Kim and I are gently poking fun at each other for the romantic way I announced that I'd made reservations...

# January 18, 2006 11:48 AM

Wooley's Wonderings said:

Congratulations to&nbsp;three new MVP’s in the Atlanta, GA area. Brendon Schwartz, Doug McDowell,&nbsp;and...

# January 18, 2006 7:27 PM

Chris Wallace said:

I'm pretty certain I've seen soething similar with just one instance of VS2005 running but usually after being in it a while and having done a fairly large amount of compiles.

# January 18, 2006 7:54 PM

Aaron Cutlip said:

Check out www.teamintraining.org. They will teach you how to train for a marathon (or half/marathon) in exchange for you raising some money while running for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. I plan on going for it after we we settle in to the new house. Up for a run?

# January 18, 2006 8:39 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I don't know if I'll realistically be able to run those distances anytime soon. Heck, I still can't even run a mile without having to walk at least once. I'll certainly look into Team in Training (I think I've looked at this before) and I'll definitely support you if you sign up. Right now I'm running on a treadmill in front of the TV, but when it warms up I plan on going outside with this. Maybe then we can get together for a run through Piedmont Park or Stone Mountain or something.

# January 19, 2006 5:28 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

I want to be a good boy, I really do!
Consider this scenario for me:&nbsp; I've got a SQL query which...

# January 19, 2006 1:39 PM

Jim Wooley said:

I just tried pushing 30000 records into a combo box using business objects populated by a data reader. The combobox was populated within 4 seconds and available on the screen. Thus there does sound like there is some additional issues with how the CBO is being populated in your code.

If you think about it, the data set is just an array of objects populated by a datareader under the covers. In addition, the dataset has additional functionality that is additional overhead a CBO wouldn't necessarily need, thus the CBO should be more performant.

Another extention to try as you are having fun with Background Workers: Open the form with the combobox set with the AutoCompleteMode set to SuggestAppend. Set the AutoCompleteSource to the lookup object once it comes back from the worker thread. That way, it should be populated before the user can get to it, but they don't have to wait for it to be populated in order to view the screen. Could be something to try.

# January 19, 2006 2:41 PM

Keith Rome said:

1. Run SQL Profiler while performing each test. The trace might provide some valuable insight.

2. Why force yourself into using the EntLib db block? ADO.NET is insanely simply to work with directly.

3. Actually, of the three options you present, #1 is the most elegant and prevents a few problems that #2 can cause. #3 is just simply not a good idea.

Some things that come to mind from reading your post though:

> Make sure you are only selecting out the fields that you need... no "select *" crazyness... you probably only need the key field and description field.

> 7000 records is a hell of a lot of stuff to dump into a selection box... you might want to consider another UI approach there.

# January 19, 2006 4:17 PM

Veruca Salt said:

I wouldn't touch a dataset with a 10 foot keyboard. EVER. Keith Rome are you freakin kidding me? #3 is simply not a good idea? Do you have any clue how to write maintainable code? DO YOU????

# January 19, 2006 5:37 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I should have specified that I'm only selecting a single field from the database. No "select * craziness". The key field IS the description field.

I agree that 7000 items in a single UI element sucks, but I'm not sure how else to present this to them. Basically, this app is a "warehouse configurator". There are 10 or so logical warehouses and a combined total of 7000 bins inside all of these warehouses. The requirements of the form are that the user can modify the settings of any bin in any warehouse. I'm open to UI suggestions!

And Keith, why do you think #3 is not a good idea? I don't believe datasets are bad things, but if I use option #3 - a custom collection of objects, all my databinding for my other form elements is done for me (practically). Why should I avoid that?

# January 20, 2006 5:00 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last night seven of us met at the 5 Seasons to talk about everything geeky.&nbsp; We talked about some...

# January 20, 2006 7:36 AM

James Shaw said:

hehe. It's a '64 (it was a good year!)

http://www.coveryourasp.net/1964Catalina

# January 20, 2006 8:48 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Sounds like our friend Jim doesn't have enough work to do - he's always on top of the latest and greatest.

# January 20, 2006 11:34 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

In my last post about data access woes, I talked about how using the Enterprise Library to handle my...

# January 20, 2006 11:45 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

BTW - it seems that my trusty copy of Depends.exe allows me to look into the function calls. Of course, it only gives me names, not parameters.

# January 20, 2006 1:07 PM

Paul Wilson said:

None of the 3 options you listed should perform badly, so there is either something wrong with your code or the Ent Lib code. I can't comment on which since I haven't seen your code and since I don't use the Ent Lib due to it being overly complex and nothing special. If you want raw speed then the pure datareader approach (#2) is going to win, but I would go with #1 or #3 since there shouldn't be enough of a difference to avoid the benefits of the other approaches. If you're one that likes CBOs, as it seems you are, then #3 sounds like the better of those 2 approaches for you personally.

However, that makes me wonder why you aren't using a good O/R Mapper to take care of this for you if you like CBOs. Not only would you not have to write and maintain a lot of code, but you'll also avoid the potential pitfall of things like hanging connections that can kill an app. Sure no one believes they will ever do that, and we all certainly know how to avoid it (at least I hope), but all to often things do get careless when you have to do it all yourself, which is why a good DAL or O/R Mapper can really protect you. I've seen this all too often, and even from very senior devs due to the need to cut-n-paste a lot of code (even in some "expert" books) -- so why write the code at all if something else will do it for you in a safe way every time?

One last comment, there are performance differences between CBOs and DataSets that aren't discussed much beyond the overly simple statement that DataSets have "more overhead". The simple story is that CBOs are typically faster for small recordsets, there isn't much difference for medium sized recordsets, and DataSets are actually faster for large recordsets! My experience is that 7000 records is in the medium range, and anytime you are doing a "large" amount of records you really ought to either be paging server-side anyhow, unless you're doing something like reports in which case CBOs don't really make sense.

# January 20, 2006 1:20 PM

James Shaw said:

Oh yeah, earlier this week in fact I told someone to grep for something.

*stare*

He had no idea what that meant. Isn't that sad?

(For you youngsters, today's equivalent adjective is "Google it" I think :-))

# January 20, 2006 1:56 PM

Aaron Cutlip said:

Someone already figured it out: http://www.engadget.com/2006/01/16/video-os-x-10-4-3-dual-booted-on-a-thinkpad/

# January 20, 2006 3:11 PM

Brendon Schwartz said:

I think it is great you use Dan to rate movies. =)

# January 20, 2006 7:21 PM

Keith Rome said:

Coding a custom business object and a custom collection merely for the purpose of loading a freeking combo box in the UI is not my idea of "maintainable".

A collection of Data Transfer Objects (Entities, Data Value Objects, whatever your preferred name for them is) is a good solution. But in that sense, isnt a Dataset really just a highly generic DTO?? Keep It Simple and don't overcomplicate the solution.

It has been my experience that when people talk about "custom business objects", they are referring to more than simple DTO's. These things typically include lots of bloat, BLL methods, even self-servicing lazy-loaded properties. Nothing kills performance like iterating a custom collection of thousands of these things while inspecting a lazy loaded property!

I gotta say, Paul W is right. a reasonable O/R mapper or DAL is what is called for here. The EntLib block (which is really a dumbed-down DAL) just isn't coming through. And given the incredibly simple requirement here (select one column from a table and bind to a combo box), CBO's / CBOC's is just a misallocation of effort.

# January 21, 2006 8:23 AM

Keith Rome said:

That rating scale is the most bestest ever

# January 21, 2006 8:27 AM

James Shaw said:

Awesome, that's Valentine's Day sorted. Thanks Matt!

# January 23, 2006 7:39 AM

Kim D said:

You are your freaky peeps are seriously starting to worry me!

# January 23, 2006 10:56 AM

Heidi said:

That Kim sure is a lucky woman...

# January 23, 2006 1:52 PM

Gerry Heidenreich said:

I want one!

Check this out... http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/23/flying_car/

# January 25, 2006 7:22 PM

wallym said:

Congratulations Brendon

# January 26, 2006 9:33 AM

Jason Hoekstra said:

Two words, [smashed together] BellSouth. No issues since installation in Sept 2005. 3 meg down, 384k up. BellSouth DSL replaced our Charter Communications cable modem and we haven't looked back since. We're in Smyrna btw...

# January 26, 2006 11:45 PM

Jason Hoekstra said:

Yuck! Either I didn't close some tags or HTML is not welcome here. Sorry for the mess!

# January 27, 2006 2:57 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I used to use Bellsouth's DSL but I switched for the higher speeds cable modems offer:
(from www.comcast.net)
* Comcast speed tiers range from 4.0 to 8.0 Mbps download speed (maximum upload speed from 384Kbps to 768Kbps respectively). The speed tier received and pricing will vary depending upon the speed tier selected and the level of Comcast video service and/or digital telephone service (if any) received. Speed comparisons are for downloads only and are compared to (as applicable, to 56K dial-up, 768Kbps, 1.5Mbps or 3.0Mbps DSL).

# January 27, 2006 4:28 AM

Chris Wallace said:

I did something similar, only at work and with a database backup. Oops! I forgot which file recovery progam I used but it was about $40 and well worth it since it bailed me out.

# January 29, 2006 3:45 PM

KD said:

Wow, that Kim girl sure is nice, I would think most women would have tried to mame you after that incident! :-)

# January 30, 2006 4:29 AM

Jim Wooley said:

I second the recommendation for the w3cSchools site for the XPath tester. It got me up and running quicky. In addition, you might want to check out the Xpath Xpress sample app on GotDotNet (http://www.gotdotnet.com/Community/UserSamples/Details.aspx?SampleGuid=4f976e6e-9474-4813-b1cd-5e565f3219f9). I use this tool for testing out XPath queries and seeing the results quickly.

# January 30, 2006 8:18 AM

D'Arcy from Winnipeg said:

Can't Canada just be declared an unofficial state so we can cash in on some of these things? Seriously, is it that hard to add a population on par with California to a marketing campaign?

Sigh...at least we have hockey...

D

# January 30, 2006 8:51 PM

KD said:

That is why I keep you around babe, good food, and you know how to fix my computer :-)

# February 1, 2006 5:20 AM

Jim Wooley said:

It does that for l3sb1an also. See http://devauthority.com/blogs/jwooley/archive/2006/01/17/684.aspx

# February 1, 2006 1:15 PM

Anonymous said:

That's pretty silly that they don't consider even the "s" on the end. :)

# February 1, 2006 1:47 PM

Keith Rome said:

Go with the crackberry if your employer is footing the bill. You should have no problem transferring your number (which is what I did when Intellinet supplied me a crackberry). Just make sure that they will be willing to release the number back to you later if you ever leave the company.

I assume your employer has blackberry enterprise server? That helps a lot with contact/calendar/email sync.

# February 2, 2006 2:07 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I've decided to go with the crackberry. I can't transfer my phone number for some reason (it has to do with some kind of accounting thing, apparently the contract is tied to the number or something) so I'll keep my phone on the cheapest plan and forward all my calls to the crackberry. I'll be setting this up during the weekend.

# February 3, 2006 5:08 AM

Chris Wallace said:

And when Blackberry is shut down? It's likely to happen within the next month. The govt is already scrambling court orders to try to at least keep their service active but they aren't concerned with joe consumer.

# February 4, 2006 10:10 AM

Kevin said:

I like my crackberry, but I think that you'll find that the version that you're looking at is too hard to type on efficiently. Why not get a version with a fullsize keyboard? If you find that too builky to hold up to your face as a phone, you can always get one of those bluetooth thingies that the star trek wannabes are all wearing these days. Also, consider keeping your home cell phone segregated from your work cell -- do you really want to give your hom number to everyone to whom you give your work number?

Unrelatedly, did you see this CNN blurb listing being a dot net developer as one of the top new jobs? http://money.cnn.com/2006/02/03/pf/pay_hike_jobseeker/index.htm?cnn=yes

# February 4, 2006 11:55 AM

Marcie said:

Congratulations, you have just sold your soul to corporate America :) Just teasing you, let us know how you like the device.

# February 8, 2006 2:35 PM

Gordon Whitlock said:

Congrats all the way from Jacksonville, Florida!

# February 13, 2006 8:08 PM

Adrian said:

Well that tells us a lot! Check out justplaystion3.com, they have more information about the launch and actually have sources!

# February 13, 2006 8:38 PM

Keith Rome said:

Another "must-have" crackberry tool: Berry 411

Search for it on Google and try it out. You will never need to call directory assistance or consult a phonebook again.

# February 15, 2006 10:22 AM

Kim D said:

At this point I would rather he had discovered crack itself...this crackberry has got to go
:-)

# February 16, 2006 4:44 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Better than Berry411 - Google Local is now available for your Blackberry. Search the web, get addresses which you can map with Google Maps right on your phone. Phone numbers are also revealed! Totally awesome!

# February 17, 2006 5:43 AM

Jason Hoekstra said:

Unfortunately, this is typical customer service with the larger banks. I have similar (constant) frustrations with Fifth Third (which is well known in the north). Constantly depositing personal checks in my business account and vise versa. Deposits from large banks take 7-10 days to clear. (Wasn't the purpose of Check 21 banking laws to process checks faster?) Endless IVR menus which makes it impossible to speak to a CSR.

My preference is with the smaller banks. They work harder for your money because they have to [in order to stay in business]. We're slowing moving our accounts to eBank in Atlanta, which is working out very well.

# February 17, 2006 10:09 PM

D'Arcy from Winnipeg said:

Welcome to the 360 club! I really like CoD2 as well, but I wish they had a better online game-setup process. I don't think there's any way that you can invite specific people into the game...always seems just random...which sucks if you want to play with buds.

I think you should definately get Madden as well, so that during this horrible stretch off time called the "off season", you can still experience the joy and wonder of the 2006/2007 Superbowl Champion Atlanta Falcons!

;)

btw, on the wireless controller and battery note: now, I'm not hardcore with playing, but I play at least a few times a week...and I got my 360 back in November when it first came out...and I haven't killed the AA batteries that came with the control yet! I bought the battery packs, but man...those AA's just don't die! Very impressive.

D

# February 24, 2006 4:30 AM

Tim Farley said:

There's also an Atlanta connection to that video. One of the hackers is played by Caleb Sima, the CTO of Atlanta-based SPI Dynamics.

# February 24, 2006 1:15 PM

Kevin said:

Thanks, Matt!

# February 25, 2006 7:47 PM

Rob Zelt said:

Whan are you guys bringing the road show to Raleigh?

# February 26, 2006 4:48 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I think working at SPI Dynamics would be a lot of fun. Slightly scary when you learn how insecure your identity really is, but a lot of fun.

# February 27, 2006 4:44 AM

Paul Lockwood said:

Thanks for the public feedback + private 'how you can be even better' email. Both are much appreciated. Of course you too are improving as a presenter - practice and preparation seem to be key.

As I keep saying everyone should try at least giving a ten minute presentation at our local VB or C# group. All the regulars to these groups will be very supportive to any newbie presenter.

# February 28, 2006 2:09 PM

Kim D said:

Damn you are a lucky man!

# March 2, 2006 9:01 AM

Mom said:

I think you both are lucky!

# March 3, 2006 11:12 AM

Kim D said:

I have TONS of gripes about the XBox...where do I begin?

:-)

# March 6, 2006 5:53 AM

Insight Global said:

Anyone that would be interested in something like this, who also has 10+ years in the IT field, and has knowlege of Microsoft Identity Integration Servers (MIIS) give me a call. I have a great opportunity that would interest you.

Ariston Bowers
(404) 257-7921

# March 9, 2006 10:13 AM

Kim D said:

My b-day was great....thanks Matt!

LOVE YOU

# March 9, 2006 1:01 PM

Kim D said:

Could you guys get any sexier?

# March 16, 2006 7:38 AM

Chris Wallace said:

http://b.muglets.com/MS-1MMO-B

# March 16, 2006 4:21 PM

Jim Wooley said:

Omea Reader (the free version) has a fully functional newsgroup reader. Hook it to the msnews.microsoft.com groups and you are good to go. That's how I am monitoring some of the VB groups now. There is a wealth of information there and in the MSDN Forums which also has a RSS feed option.

Beware, if you have trouble keeping up with blogs, trying to keep up with the forms and newsgroups is 10x as hard. At least with Omea, you can set up a search for your name and try to keep up with people who respond to your posts that way.

# March 21, 2006 2:15 PM

Aaron Cutlip said:

Now I understand your fasination with your new coffee machine. :)

# March 30, 2006 11:35 AM

Eric said:

Woot! Gratz Matt.

# April 4, 2006 8:00 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Yeah! Congrats Matt! We'll have to start calling you guys the Atlanta Regular MVPs. :)

# April 5, 2006 5:00 AM

Kim D said:

I am so proud of you baby!!!!!

Love,
KD

# April 5, 2006 10:50 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Thanks to everyone who helped out by nominating me and continuously mentioning me to the MVP people at Microsoft. I really appreciate it and plan to continue with all the work that earned me this award.

# April 5, 2006 3:08 PM

bseman said:

I am sorry about your friend's Dad and about the baby.
Stop in next time
How are you?

# April 5, 2006 6:43 PM

Kim D said:

Thanks for the sweet words.

# April 6, 2006 8:50 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Hopefully I'll have CAPTCHA comment filters online and working soon too. The new version must have done something to expose me to comment spammers as I'm suddenly getting hundreds of spam comments

# April 10, 2006 5:56 AM

Paul Wilson said:

I liked your user group summaries, and I would read them again if you started back. But I also understand that you can't do everything, so I have no problem if you don't.

# April 11, 2006 4:17 AM

anon said:

Bring it back. Long versions were better. That way I dont have to go to them all.

# April 11, 2006 6:29 AM

El Guapo said:

I would like to see coverage of the meetings, since I can't come much anymore since they moved to Alpharetta. The longer the better.

# April 11, 2006 6:57 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

If you ever get the chance to go out to eat with him again, let me know and I will stop by.

# April 11, 2006 9:32 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Edwin has come and gone. I did manage to get a copy or two of his new album signed before he left. He also told a funny story of being at a dinner with Jessica Simpson. He apparently didn't know how to act so he just stared at her until she got visibly uncomfortable. He was pretty funny.

# April 11, 2006 11:08 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Ok - people like it. I'll try to do more posts. I just put up the one about last night's SQL Server UG meeting.

# April 11, 2006 11:46 AM

Mom said:

Great photos! I can't wait to see some more. Glad you and Kim had a wonderful time. We're happy to have you back home again. Love, Mom

# May 16, 2006 3:12 PM

Cyanbane said:

Nice Post.

# May 17, 2006 10:13 AM

Outsider said:

I was very gullible and got badly defrauded when I first moved to Maine last year. It was a new experience, since I 'm pretty well convinced that such a corny old scam would never be attempted in a more modern and civilized area.

But there are crooks everywhere. And most Mainers - are terrific people.

Unfortunately, I'm all alone and legally illiterate, and every lawyer in this town works for the crooks, and after months of searching, the only folks who would even talk to me were the many online, militant Maine bashers. (Some of whom told me my life was in danger, which made me very paranoid, and probably damaged my own credibility.) But I was finally feeling better....until I got wind of Lance Dutson's story, and his treatment sounded eerily familiar to me.

But whenever any of these Maine bashers called Maine the most corrupt state in the union, several people would counter - "No... It's Georgia".

I don't personally know much about Maine, other than it's very beautiful, and there are some fantastic people, but this particular town (And maybe the MOT...?) DO seem pretty corrupt on the surface.

But I happen to know that dishonesty itself is stupid and self defeating. Most people probably want to be honest coming out of the gate. If there's corruption, then it's been going on for so long that people don't know how to change it.

I'm sure none of these people graduate from school, then tell themselves: "Oh, Good! Now I can go work for the government and be a crook!"

I'm from Massachusetts. where we all waited 10 years for the Big Dig, so we could get to a town 10 miles away in less than an hour. A jillion dollars later, when it was finally finished, it was discovered to be defective and unsafe. Some government people won't even take their kids through it.

And nobody even seems remotely surprised.

So. Who am I to bad mouth Maine?

Maine has experienced a HUGE influx of people since 9/11, (even coordinating the traffic lights is a chore.) Add that to the new tech revolution (new to most Mainers) and their natural insular suspicion of outsiders, and some of what might SEEM to me like corruption may just be ...."Inertia"...or - in my case, maybe incompetence, myopia, or even extreme xenophobia.

At any rate, now, when I contemplate Maine's 'corruption', I will think of Georgia, and be comforted.

And the good news is that it's getting harder for bad guys to hide anywhere, because the world's too small.

# May 17, 2006 3:44 PM

Dan Attis said:

What exactly does "Imagine that of all places for the Mad Mexican he picked Canada." mean? Is there a problem with Canada (<--- shameless plug to incite useless debate).

# May 18, 2006 5:19 AM

KDR said:

Glad it went well babe!

# May 18, 2006 9:29 AM

Heidi said:

Nice to see Doug doing some recreational reading! You know what they say... you learn something new ever day!

# May 18, 2006 12:53 PM

Doug said:

:-)

Nice job on the Code Camp, Brendon. I thought you and Matt went over and above, and I appreciate it greatly...

# May 18, 2006 1:44 PM

John Walker said:

Doug,

Don't start read right on midle book !!!!!

# May 18, 2006 1:57 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

The more I show this to people, the more I like it!

# May 22, 2006 5:23 AM

Tom said:

Did you try the 'Other' Amazon.com's. When I buy books, a lot of times I get books from Amazon.com.uk, they have a lot of books that won't be released in the US for some time. Maybe the on for Italy has it.

# May 22, 2006 8:07 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

There doesn't seem to be an Amazon.com for Italy and the UK version doesn't seem to carry anything different from the US version. That's a good thought though. I've also not tried any other book sites (bn.com or fatbrain.com for example). I'll expand my search area. Thanks.

# May 22, 2006 8:40 AM

KDR said:

Baby, You don't need to read any books, i can tell you how those amazing things were built, they probably hired a female architect, and a female construction crew ;-)

# May 22, 2006 12:46 PM

Jan Tielens' Bloggings said:

I love reading SmartPart success stories! Matt Ranlett has a nice one: "So I've just wrapped up a quick...

# May 23, 2006 2:00 AM

HMS said:

You know what they say... if you want something done right, put a female in charge!

# May 23, 2006 4:49 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

No, I didn't know they said that. Can you prove it? Where's your supporting documentation? Statistics? Anectodal evidence?

# May 23, 2006 7:35 AM

HMS said:

I think my source was your wife??? Are you saying she's wrong? :)

# May 23, 2006 8:25 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

She's frequently wrong. Just ask her to sing some children's songs for you and listen to her make up lyrics as she goes... ;-)

# May 23, 2006 8:44 AM

KDR said:

Thanks as always for your support HMS.

We both know we are right.......matt, if not for a woman giving birth to you, you would not be here.......what more proof do you need?
hehehehe

KDR

# May 23, 2006 12:32 PM

HMS said:

I just want to say, for the record, that they were done on Monday AM. For the record.

# May 26, 2006 7:48 PM

HMS said:

The guy in picture 77 is way HOT.

# May 26, 2006 7:50 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Just so you know, the whole "concrete house" thing came from discussions of the architecture in Italy and how amazing it was to walk down a street and see buildings from 300, 500, and 2000 years ago. They built buildings from stone and concrete, buildings that last. We build them out of wooden frames and they fall down inside of 50 years. So when I looked online to see if they build stone and concrete homes in the US, I found that they're frequently cheaper, more energy efficient, and significantly more durable. THAT is what I was talking about! I'm not crazy!

# May 30, 2006 9:19 AM

El Guapo said:

I could have saved you time with this guaranteed reponse : This Is Not A Bug

# May 30, 2006 10:38 AM

Jim Wooley said:

We've heard veiled threats like this before. Hopefully this time we'll hear more than the potato chip eating accomplishments of a local community leader.

# May 30, 2006 12:20 PM

Keith Rome said:

Sadly, the "Great Tortilla Chip Scandal" of 2005 was also a completely fabricated and unsubstantiated rumor being spread by that flappy-headed canadian.

# May 30, 2006 4:15 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

"Flappy-headed Canadian" - I like that!

# May 30, 2006 5:53 PM

Greg Young said:

You are correct. As I say in my post it is not a bug.

It is however a breaking change from 1.x. My emails to MS have actually been suggesting a compiler switch for predictable floating point operations (in fact I went so far as to suggest that it be turned on by default).

# June 1, 2006 8:50 AM

Paul Wilson said:

Hey Matt:

I'm pretty sure you won't find anyone that will tell you that a Roth (or any after-tax) plan is better than a normal (or any pre-tax) plan. Why? There are at least two things that you have forgotten. First, the typical assumption is that you will be in a lower tax bracket when you retire than you are now -- typically a valid assumption, but I suppose you could question that. The other issue however is the time-value of money -- $8400 extra today, if invested properly (or used to pay off more costly debt) is probably going to be worth more than $13,044 in 30 years. What do you think?

# June 1, 2006 12:14 PM

Wallym said:

Glad to see that you like the pics I took. :-)

# June 2, 2006 10:21 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I'm not sure I'd agree with you on this one Paul. I think that I did a bad job of explaining things here so I'll point you at this article - http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/rothira/rothcontribs.htm. It does a better job of showing how Roth accounts help you shelter more money from taxes than a traditional account.

Of course, if we believe Neil Bortz and help his Fair Tax scheme pass Congress, all of this is moot.

# June 2, 2006 10:37 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

PS - the problem with my example is that I assumed that you put away $7000, but I used pre-tax dollars on one side of the equation and post-tax dollars on the other side. My bad.

# June 2, 2006 10:38 AM

Jim Wooley said:

You have stumbled upon two of the areas that Active is not strong in: Drill-down and crosstab. I have created a crosstab report in Active and it is not a simple process. I should write it up one of these days. Basically it entails taking a tabular data source, crunching through it inside of one report to create a datasource with dynamically added columns when new key values are included. Then dynamically generating a new subreport based on the values of the dynamically created crosstab datasource. It works, but is definately hard than it should be. No single tool is a panacea. Each should be used for what it is good at. Active Reports is great for reporting and printing, but not so nice for interactive processing (which is often better done through a more standard UI anyway.)

Another tool you may want to look at is Dev Express's Xtra Reports at http://www.devexpress.com/Products/NET/XtraReports/. I haven't tried it, but have heard good things about it. It appears to have drill-down capability, but possibly not crosstab/pivot.

# June 2, 2006 12:00 PM

Mark Dunn said:

The single best thing I can say about ActiveReports is it isn't Crystal. I had to use Crystal for quite a while, which does a lot but its full of bugs. I really like SSRS. Its big shortcoming before 2005 was lack of an end user ad-hoc report designer. That has been addressed in 2005.

# June 4, 2006 2:48 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

Are you bragging? :-)

Us girls have decided that you are now our official Maj Man Slave....you will have to travel around house to house and help us out.
This is an honor.

Love you!

# June 7, 2006 8:55 AM

Community Server Daily News said:

Ve have vays of making you talk. Efforts continue in providing more and better Community Server documentation

# June 7, 2006 12:38 PM

Karen said:

At least you came out to greet the ladies, which is more that your father ever did!
Did you clean up after they left?
Have a good time in Boston.
Lovel
Mom

# June 8, 2006 8:45 PM

Keith Rome said:

Two things to try...

1. All those SELECTs should probably be SETs since they are being used for simple assignment

2. Use a SET NOCOUNT ON as first thing in the proc and SET NOCOUNT OFF just prior to the final SELECT that actually returns data

# June 9, 2006 9:29 AM

HMS said:

I don't want to run the scan. It's going to tell me I'm bad, and then I'll have to have my hubby fix it. He works with computers. :)

# June 9, 2006 12:39 PM

El Guapo said:

Eh... killer web apps?

How about my difference #1 : NO WEB PROJECT FILE

What is up with this? This has been a total disaster for my team and for what reason? None that I can see. Some jack@$$ manager thought it would be cool not to have a project file and now we are screwed.

And dont tell me to install some unsupported add-on. We are working in an enterprise environment and cant afford to be jumping off bridges just because you said so.

# June 9, 2006 6:13 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I used to get calls from friends of friends. For a short period of time many of these individuals were having problems "getting e-mail" via their dialup accounts on Windows 95. I actually had to institute a $50/hour nusance fee so I wouldn't get abused. I made something like $500 doing this. Normally I'd fix the problem inside of 20 minutes and spend the rest of the hour teaching them how to use their PC. The customers always thought they were getting great value for their money and I eventually fixed everyone's computer well enough that I never got called back.

I'm of course always on call to family and close friends, but I don't mind that.

# June 10, 2006 4:08 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I feel more comfortable with SELECT rather than SET, it's just a habit. Howvever, this article's author has done some great research and comparisons between SELECT and SET - http://vyaskn.tripod.com/differences_between_set_and_select.htm.

# June 10, 2006 4:15 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

I have heard the same complaint many times El Guapo and since I am going to Tech-Ed this week I will sit in on Scott Guthrie’s presentation “WEB315 ASP.NET: End-to-End - Building a Complete Web Application Using ASP.NET 2.0, Visual Studio 2005, and IIS 7 (Part 1)” and ask him why they made such a change and what they feel the correct way to implement an Enterprise application is. I feel that the templates in Visual Studio do not lend well to being used in Enterprise applications in general. Wait and see what he has to say in another post.

# June 10, 2006 3:34 PM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

It turns that some of my friends were unable to make it to Tech-Ed this year and you might be in the...

# June 10, 2006 3:48 PM

Greg Young said:

I really wish I could be there :(

# June 11, 2006 12:44 PM

El Guapo said:

Cool, thanks!

# June 11, 2006 5:28 PM

Chris Wallace said:

I'm not near as "paranoid" as you but mine stays clean from viruses, spyware, and malware. I guess I've just developed a sixth sense (so to speak) of what sites are safe and which ones I need to avoid.

# June 12, 2006 4:14 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Conga-rats. You only have a couple days to try to beat Michael Earls' record. I look forward to hearing all about the event when you get back.

# June 14, 2006 1:01 PM

KDR said:

I am so proud of you baby!!!!!!!

# June 15, 2006 4:00 AM

D'Arcy from Winnipeg said:

Hey Matt, congrats! But just FYI: you only need 5 exams to get your MCSD, not 6...if you play it right. Here's my suggestion:

For your MCAD, write the Web .NET and WebServices exams. Microsoft will let you write the web exam as your elective if you have your windows exam for the prerequisite, and vice versa. Plus, you need to have both web and windows for your MCSD. So once you have these three, you only have to write the 70-300 and one elective exam.

Good luck on it mang!

D

# June 15, 2006 8:29 AM

Joe Healy said:

Congrats! From the Florida guys....

# June 16, 2006 7:06 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Thanks for the new "title". I'm not sure Darwin would see it the same way. I do hope people appreciate the presentation.

# June 19, 2006 8:30 AM

Josh Gough said:

Congratualtions Matt! I passed the 70-315 in April and have been slow towards preparing for my next one. Jim Wooley did kindly point out that Web and Windows are the two easiest exams of the bunch :-)

Anyway, here are my notes about 70-315:

http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/joshuagough/archive/2006/04/15/136815.aspx

# June 20, 2006 5:58 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Sounds like things you could consider incorporating into your day job. Lucky guy.

# June 21, 2006 12:56 PM

Noah Coad [MS] said:

The party was a blast! It was great seeing you there. Look for me, I'm the guy in the red Hawaiin shirt. :)

# June 22, 2006 9:32 PM

Noah Coad [MS] said:

Way to go Matt!! You're one of the 1/3 of MVPs that are certified as well. Very cool.

# June 22, 2006 9:33 PM

Noah Coad [MS] said:

Actually, it is recommended that it be a _dedicated_ Win2k3 Svr box. If I were to run TFS personally, it would be on a box I wouldn't dare touch for anything else. It is very particular, especially around security. For example, say you install TFS on a 100% clean install of Win2k3 (as it should be), then decide "hey, I want to build a web app w/ VS05 on the box" STOP! If you allow anonymous access to port 80 (the WSS site), everything comes to a halt. You can't even connect to the TFS server (from what I hear). Long story short, just put it on a dedicated machine and don't touch it for anything else... is recommended.

# June 22, 2006 9:39 PM

Heidi Schwartz said:

I'm sure however big the machine is will be the perfect size. Really. And no, you DON'T need three more machines for Noah's suggestion (thanks a lot, Noah) ;)

Heidi

# June 23, 2006 5:34 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

Thanks for the advice Noah, I am pretty sure I will have trouble with my home installation and will make sure to have dedicated machines in the field. But as my wife reads this she says "Good try Noah, I am not going to get anymore machines!". So I will try my best with the installs, she what works and what doesn't and at the end of the day probably just reinstall W2K3 and VSTF because that is what I really bought it for. Another idea is to run Virtual Server on that machine for the other components that I really want.

# June 23, 2006 5:36 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last week I was fortunate enough to go to TechEd and while I was there I was lucky enough to meet someone...

# June 23, 2006 5:59 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last week I was fortunate enough to go to TechEd and while I was there I was lucky enough to meet someone...

# June 23, 2006 6:00 AM

Alan Stevens said:

Brendon,

Sorry to tell you, but you can't even install on W2K3 if it is a domain controller. They changed this at RC, if I recall. It ticked off a lot of people upgrading B3 boxes.

++Alan

# June 23, 2006 6:06 AM

John Walker said:

Brendon,

If you put to many applications to one machine at home. I believe you have extra 16 hours a day wait your machine open next application. Just remenber honey doing list must be install in there too.
I have eight machines at home. My wife said" Any more machine move in, you and your machine move out same time".

JW

# June 23, 2006 8:46 AM

Noah Coad [MS] said:

# June 26, 2006 7:10 PM

Chris Wallace said:

Looks like it uses Prototype and Scriptaculous which I've blogged about favoring over Atlas or any other "AJAX" alternative since they don't invalidate your code. Behaviour is another good one to look at.

# June 27, 2006 3:47 AM

Alan Stevens said:

Matt,

Congrats! You and Kim look teriffic together.

++Alan

# June 27, 2006 8:14 AM

KDR said:

It's a good thing I love you, becasue you are a wierdo!

# June 27, 2006 12:21 PM

Sahil Malik said:

I'm always nice when drunk :)

# June 27, 2006 5:46 PM

Ken Robertson said:

Since the module was written by me and isn't directly supported by Telligent, would be easiest to just ask me the question directly. :) Can email me at ken AT qgyen DOT net.

To pull them directly from the gallery, you need to define the CSModule for the gallery mode, and then you use [photo:1234], 1234 being the PostID of the image, which you can get from the URL. IE, if the URL to view the image is http://devcow.com/photos/tech-ed_2006/picture944.aspx, then it would be [photo:944].

One of the other Telligent guys, Jim Martin created a way to add an image from the gallery using lightbox through the CS UI... have to find his module, but he has a little howto here: http://photogblogs.com/blogs/jim_martin/archive/2006/02/01/1484.aspx

# June 27, 2006 9:23 PM

Jennifer said:

You guys look awesome. Matt, have you been hitting the gym? =)

# June 27, 2006 10:00 PM

Heidi said:

You can schedule a meeting with me anytime! :)

# July 5, 2006 11:02 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Ok - get a room you two!

# July 5, 2006 11:22 AM

Heidi said:

Wow - sexy pic of Trisha! And yes - she is wife approved! :)

# July 6, 2006 5:50 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last week I received my new machine that I am going to use for ever server Microsoft server product under...

# July 6, 2006 6:04 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Last week I received my new machine that I am going to use for ever server Microsoft server product under...

# July 6, 2006 6:10 AM

Dan Attis said:

Ha! That speaks for itself! Should keep you all quite for a while as you find other reasons to pester me.

# July 6, 2006 7:54 AM

Heidi said:

Hey Dan! That shouldn't take too long for these guys! :)

# July 7, 2006 7:01 AM

Noah Coad [MS] said:

Awesome! Give it up for the devs. I may give Office 2007 another try...

# July 7, 2006 8:01 AM

Stacy Draper said:

The material you guys put together was very well Thought out. This is a great presentation to give. It was a real treat meeting you! It's too bad you didn't get a chance to meet Duray, he did the heavy lifting on this. I just came to help out with labs and the last presentation. We both appreciate David Noderer for putting people in seats.

I blogged a couple of times about the course:
http://www.wildwires.com/Blog/PermaLink,guid,adb5e47c-a02a-467c-9a9f-d83409cd8508.aspx
http://www.wildwires.com/Blog/PermaLink,guid,f348f0cf-78b5-4dc4-b2bc-6c20fb4add5b.aspx

The courseware is really put together well and covers all 4 of the different learning types. The course really flows well and has great information at the various levels, even if you already know everythhing about SharePoint. If you get a chance to attend it or give it you should jump at the opportunity.

# July 8, 2006 5:32 AM

Heidi said:

Does this mean you'll stop asking me the date all the time?

# July 11, 2006 6:51 PM

Jenna said:

I was expecting it to be hot guys...but I mean..they're all like really old..you need to get some hott 16-19 year olds...lol.!

Welp, thanks
bye!

# July 12, 2006 7:41 PM

Steve said:

Is there a way to disable error reporting via the registry?

# July 14, 2006 1:59 PM

Keith Rome said:

Yes but then I would be giving up that strange satisfaction obtained by knowing that you are fighting "the man" one small step at a time.... in this case by spamming the author everytime their bugs cause interference with your current work...

# July 14, 2006 2:00 PM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

As always perform at your own risk and edit the registry at your own risk it could cause problems
Here...

# July 14, 2006 3:16 PM

El Guapo said:

You got to be kidding me... Whats to prevent me from entering someone else's number connecting them to the Porn Palace or something ? I predict this feature will be over soon

# July 17, 2006 12:26 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

fun pranks to commence....NOW!

# July 18, 2006 8:20 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Before anyone thinks that this is just a spam fishing expedition, I've already been in contact with this person several times.

# July 18, 2006 9:19 AM

KDR said:

Oh wow, we are soooooo lucky. Two Xbox's in the house......soooo lucky.
Is anyone reading any sarcasm into this? I hope so.

# July 18, 2006 11:04 AM

Cyanbane said:

Damn matt, you totally shoudl have ran for some office today.

# July 18, 2006 11:09 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

KDR is just jealous - she wishes she could be the one winning!

# July 18, 2006 11:31 AM

John Kirkwood said:

That would make some great swag.

# July 18, 2006 8:53 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

I agree - it WOULD make great swag. IF I were willing to give it away.

Kim is resisting my desires to keep the Xbox. We only have 2 TVs and one is in our bedroom. She doesn't want to bring an Xbox into our bedroom. She'd rather I sell it. I told her that I might prefer to give it away and she practically beat me up while calling me crazy. Well, all decisions on what to do with the thing will have to wait until I actually have it.

# July 19, 2006 4:26 AM

KDR said:

Poor Matt.....his crazy wife not wanting him to give away a $400 toy.
:-)

I told you that you could give it to someone in our family....at least half of them are worth it ;-)

# July 19, 2006 6:01 AM

Heidi said:

Yeah - let's keep it in the family!

The Atlanta MSPro's Family, if you know what I mean!

Come to Mama, Little XBOX 360! :)

# July 19, 2006 7:06 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Did you see in the rules that the odds of winning are determined by the number of entries? Apparently only 830 people entered!

# July 20, 2006 7:02 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

We showed up early enough to see all three opening acts before catching the YellowCard show.&nbsp; Also...

# July 20, 2006 8:11 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

And the cow must be happy not mad!

# July 20, 2006 9:29 AM

KDR said:

Love the fancy pics of you two :-)

I think the cow should be Mad, much "cooler" that way ;-)

# July 20, 2006 9:57 AM

KDR said:

The lead singer of Rock Kills Kid is HOT....worth going to ladies if they come to a town near you!

# July 20, 2006 9:59 AM

Cyanbane said:

Bovines should not be angry.

# July 20, 2006 11:56 AM

Jim said:

I'm not sure about "regular guys" wearing Tuxes. Sure you had to shell out the bucks for the wedding pics, but is this really the place for them ;-) Otherwise, the theming looks good.

# July 20, 2006 12:17 PM

Heidi said:

Also, from an artistic standpoint, since Brendon is facing to the right in his picture, he should be on the left, so that he is facing the middle of the page. Otherwise it looks funny.

And, as good as you two look in the tuxes, I have to agree that it looks a little out of place. Maybe we can have a "photo shoot" with you two, and you regular guys can pose for me and Kim! ;)

But I also want to say that it's a great start - I think you've done a fabulous job, and it does make the site look much better! Great job!

# July 20, 2006 12:44 PM

Konstantin said:

Matt,

Was great to meet you last night. Enjoyed the dinner and the conversation.

Konstantin

# July 21, 2006 9:32 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

We're still looking.&nbsp; I previously posted an image of a sitting bull.&nbsp; I was actually envisioning...

# July 21, 2006 9:33 AM

KDR said:

Crap....all I can say is Crap.

# July 21, 2006 10:32 AM

KDR said:

I like the milk carton...unqiue and fun

# July 21, 2006 10:32 AM

Darron said:

That one was me. I hate I missed it. Got called away on a client issue.

# July 21, 2006 11:00 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Over the weekend I received a notice that I had a $400 credit waiting for me on Amazon.com.&nbsp; This,...

# July 24, 2006 5:39 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Over the weekend I received a notice that I had a $400 credit waiting for me on Amazon.com.&nbsp; This,...

# July 24, 2006 5:39 AM

Heidi said:

Congrats Matt! I know you'll have lots of fun!

# July 24, 2006 1:21 PM

Heidi said:

Do you think my hubby would mind if I play around with this? Oh well... I guess if I break something, he can fix it. Happy unblocking!

# July 26, 2006 3:26 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Sweet - when you actually follow directions, it works! I whipped up a simple little web app to give our DCC his MSDN Flash updates so I don't have to do it manually anymore. I put it online and followed directions to edit the web.config file and now everything works.

# July 27, 2006 6:45 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Good write-up (except for the mis-spelling of my name) and presentation. I missed the meeting summaries that you were so good at.

# July 27, 2006 8:12 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Oops! I corrected the name spelling for you.

# July 27, 2006 9:36 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Let it be known that I have less BS on there than Brendon does!

# July 27, 2006 12:51 PM

KDR said:

Ok, I have to back up Brendon on this one, Matt is normally full of BS

Your loving wife ;-)

# July 27, 2006 2:23 PM

charlie arehart said:

Hey, Matt, here are some free alternatives to Captivate (not completely comparable, but good enough for what you describe, I think). One is even an MS solution that many do miss:

http://www.camstudio.org/

http://www.debugmode.com/wink/

Windows Media Encoder 9:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/howto/articles/screencap.aspx

# July 27, 2006 7:28 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Wow - thanks Charlie!
The Wink tool looks really cool. I'll have to give it a shot. Of course, I've also got a copy of Camtasia that I've never tried. I've got loads of stuff to try out.

# July 28, 2006 7:50 AM

charlie arehart said:

Hey Matt, I'm a fellow HUGE fan of keyboard shortcuts (I don't use a mouse, but once in a while am forced to use the glidepoint on my laptop). You (or readers) may enjoy hearing of some others related to working with Remote Desktop. Check out my blog entry:

http://www.tipicalcharlie.com/swapping_windows_with_remote_desktop.htm

A true keyboard fan might otherwise be seriously hampered while working with/in a remote desktop session, and not even know there was a better way. :-)

# July 28, 2006 1:54 PM

charlie arehart said:

Glad to help. Hey, one other question: your blog doesn't have a place to enter email, and as such it doesn't send any email to us if you offer a response to a comment (as above). That leaves us having to remember to come back to see if/when you may have. Is that intentional? Any reason not to offer such an email mecanism? If you don't mind sending me a note to let me know you do respond here, I'd appreciate it. :-) charlie (at) carehart.org

# July 28, 2006 2:11 PM

Chris Wallace said:

I thought you were a developer? I'm glad I don't work where you do. As bad as where I am is, at least we have server and network admins.

# July 31, 2006 7:27 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

We're a small IT shop so I have to wear multiple hats. Most days I'm a developer. Some days I'm a DBA. Sometimes I do networking. Sunday I was an electrical engineer. That is part of the fun of working in a small shop - jack of all trades (master of none)

# July 31, 2006 7:39 AM

presidentbaltar said:

Hey guys. New to the site and I'm really liking it. Remote access is kind of a pet obsession of mine and I was really glad to see you hyping Logmein as I think their product is great. I would definitely reccomend IT reach to anyone in the IT industry as well. Best of luck guys. I'll be reading!

# July 31, 2006 7:46 AM

Jim said:

Just to show how bad the storm was, I was at a concert in the Georgia Dome that night and we had a 45 minute rain delay... INSIDE THE DOME! There was a leak and water was streaming inside in the top section. I feel for you. Life in a small shop can be quite challenging at times. Too bad the people calling for support didn't know to call the person who shut off the breakers.

# July 31, 2006 8:38 AM

Chris Wallace said:

My employer sends me a statement yearly that shows me how much they paid for various things in my name (includes healthcare).

I can't speak for the drug market, but I know how hospital charges work.

Say you go to the ER for something and the total bill is $5000. You pay your $100 co-pay. The insurance company has a contractual agreement with the provider and they pay $500. The other $4400 is written off by the provider as per the agreement with the insurance company.

Same situation but you don't have insurance. This time you can either pay early and get a prompt pay discount (say 20%) so you pay $4000, or you work out a plan and pay the full $5000.

Does that make your more angry or less angry?

# August 1, 2006 7:31 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Jim Wooley pointed me to Chris William's blog post about working on the help desk. It's pretty topical for this past weekend: http://geekswithblogs.net/cwilliams/archive/2006/07/31/86737.aspx

# August 1, 2006 7:38 AM

KDR said:

I agree that insurance has become very high, but who do we blame?

Not the companies, they make ZERO money off of giving you insurance and they do everything they can to keep costs minimal to keep their employees happy. I work in HR, and I see the insurance bills, they are astronomical. So if your company pays any part of your insurance, be thankful, not angry.

So who is left? Doctors, Nurses, medical supply companies, hospitals, drug companies, Medical staff, pharmacies, etc....these are the people making billions of dollars every year.

People in Canada get free Medical, but our employees that we hire from there say it could take you 3 months to get in to see your internest......so you pick? I would rather be out of pocket some money, see my Dr., and keep my health intact.

# August 1, 2006 7:46 AM

Chris Wallace said:

Kim-

The doctors, nurses, hospitals, and medical staff don't make any money off healthcare for the most part. The non-profits spend everything which isn't that much. We can't even get proper PCs and servers here because there's never any money due to the shoestring budget. I don't know for sure but I suspect the for-profits make most of their money off investments. Doctors that don't have their own practice (not including plastic surgeons) don't really make all that good considering the loans they're left with after school and the cost of their malpractice insurance. The pharmaceutical companies and medical supply companies are the ones getting rich.

Insurance companies pay far, far less for a medical procedure than you would pay yourself so I suspect they do pretty well too.

We (speaking generally) actually drive up the cost ourselves also though. Matt mentioned he rarely goes to see a doc (same goes for me) but the majority of people grossly abuse their insurance. You've got people who take their kids to the ER because they passed gas. People that go to an ER because they have a cold. I could go on all day..

# August 1, 2006 8:14 AM

Paul Wilson said:

First, let me state uncategorically that I agree that the costs of health care and insurance are out of control in this country, so I'm in no way criticizing that conclusion. I do however have take issue with your idea that because you are young and have not had many problems then you should be insured for less. I don't claim to know the actual numbers, but for argument's sake lets say hypothetically we can expect 1 out of 100 previously healthy young people to experience a severe medical problem this year. That might be due to any number of unavoidable problems that can arise, whether it be health conditions like cancer or some type of accident. Now lets hypothetically assume that these severe cases average $250,000 in medical expenses, including doctors, hospitals, labs, drugs, etc. Yes, that's a very large average cost, but again keep in mind that I'm only talking about the 1 in 100 that have end up with a severe medical problem, and given that assumption I can tell you from personal experience that costs do in fact add up very quickly. So given these assumptions about costs and frequency of occurrence, then we should expect insurance to at least be $2,500 per person, which would be $10,000 for a family of four. Now add in the much more frequent moderate problems, that might hypothetically occur 1 in 10 cases and maybe average only $25,000 in expenses, and you end up with another $10,000 for a family of four on average. I'm of course just guessing, although I think they are off the top of my head reasonable guesses, and we haven't even considered that insurance companies are allowed to make a fair profit, but I don't honestly think $28,000 for a family of four is all that unreasonable -- given the current system anyhow.

Then there's another issue that is of a moral nature -- the idea that younger people should pay less because they are healthier, and conversely that older people should pay more. This is where people are simply not like cars -- cars are property and you should pay more when you choose to buy more, but most of us accept that people are something very different, and that we should value those of all ages. Do we really expect 20 year olds to pay less than 40 year olds and that they in turn pay significantly less than 60 year olds who in turn also pay significantly less than 80 year olds? I think most of us do accept that such a system would be very wrong, not to mention a system like that would affect you personally soon enough as you age since before long you would find yourself making far less money each year due to increasing insurance costs. Now that's not to say that some differentiate cannot be made on other bases, and indeed they already are -- for instance, you will pay more if you are a smoker seeking personal coverage, although you don't typically see that difference in corporate group plans -- and that may be something you can debate. Actually, even in those cases there are some pretty valid statistical reasons to ignore such things in group plans since the whole point is that groups are more statistically balanced and therefore can be insured for cheaper, but I agree you can debate some of the finer details, and some companies do in fact acknowledge such issues with differences in costs. Anyhow, I would hope that you reconsider your statement that you should pay less than your co-worker that is taking chemotherapy drugs, and note that I left off the "older" part since you're making a very big assumption that cancer only affect older people.

While my wife may be a little older than you, she's not that much older, and its only a matter of "luck", or divine providence depending on what you believe, that she got cancer and you did not. I'm sorry if that's a little too personal, but can health insurance really be discussed without talking about real people and how it affects their lives. Yes, my wife was diagnosed with *** cancer about 1 1/2 years ago, and the various types of cancer can hit just about anyone at any age. My wife had 8 rounds of very expensive chemotherapy, along with the very expensive drugs that accompany it, followed by 5 weeks of very expensive radiation, followed by very expensive surgery to remove the cancer, followed by yet more surgery for reconstruction (which will still have further minor surgeries). We had good insurance, but we still paid over $15,000 for our share of medical expenses and insurance, on top of all the lost pay that my wife incurred after she used up all her paid leave, and I'm pretty sure the insurance paid more than $100,000 of medical expenses -- and those estimates don't yet include the ongoing costs this year. I don't think my wife anywhere near as bad as the 1 in 100 case, although she may be worse off than the 1 in 10 case, but insurance must statistically accomodate all types of cases, and I know quite a few people of all ages and genders affected by cancer and heart problems. I'm also aware of the much bigger problem since I hear about a lot of these people from my wife since she is a nurse -- there are many stories of the very young affected by serious and expensive problems that could just as easily be the young and healthy young man that you believe you are today.

Again, I do agree there's a problem with the system, and while I have my own ideas on how it could be better I can also readily admit that there are many possible ways to improve the system. I just hope that we as a country get brave enough to get out of the politics to try something, as long as its reasonably fair and doesn't put the burden on those that are sick, older, or poor -- because we have to be moral as well as fair. By the way, to add more personal perspective, my wife and I have also had to pay more than our fair sure of expenses in three very common cases where insurance did not pay anything at all -- definite proof that things need reforming. The first case was that my mother-in-law was hit with early onset dementia, and while she did have very good insurance, it seems that the inability to take care of oneself is often not considered a medical condition. That left us as caregivers at first and eventually paying out of our own pockets for an "assisted living" home, and since we were young and short on money ourselves we could not afford a real nursing home or assisted living home, so we still have nightmares thinking about how we forced her to live out her last few years when we were no longer able to care for her. Next, during that same time frame, we found out that we were unable to naturally have children, so we took part in several rounds of fertility treatments, which insurance did not cover (some plans do, but of course those employers pay more for that). By the way, please note that I am not even talking about the most expensive types of fertility treatments, as we could not afford those and since we decided it better to adopt at that point, but we still paid a heck of a lot of money out of our own pockets. Finally, we did adopt our two children, and while it sounds terrible to talk about such things in monetary terms, lets just say that cost us a pretty penny which set us back financially for several years since we were already short on money from the other problems. Note that while I agree that adoption is not a medical expense, its still fair to discuss it in the overall conversation since we effectively saved our insurance company from the very real medical expenses that would have been incurred with two pregnancies and childbirths that everyone else with insurance gets.

I realize that's a lot of very personal stuff, and my point is not to make you or anyone else feel sorry for me in any way -- my point is that even young and healthy people can have expensive medical problems. I'm also trying to point out that I agree that our medical system does need some type of major overhaul, since the expenses are both spiraling too much out of control, and since many times even very common problems fail to get covered. Finally, I've learned something else in my experiences, which is why we must bring the personal into these discussions -- and that is that the young and healthy don't even have a clue how many people around them are affected by these types of things. I have met many people that have had cancer in the last 1 1/2 years, and heard stories of many more that are in people's families that I have met, and yet these people would never tell someone like yourself (young and healthy) about these experiences. Sure you know academically that many people have cancer, and you probably even know some affected, possibly even in your own family, but I would bet that you fail to see how truly common it is until you or someone very close to you enters that world. And the same thing is true of dementia, infertility, and adoption -- it amazes me how many people I personally know that have experienced one or more of these thing, and again I would bet that you fail to see how common these things are. I'm sure the same thing applies to me also when it comes to the many health conditions that I don't have personal experience with -- some of them I'm aware of academically since I'm well read and since my wife tells me about people she see's as a nurse, but I'll never really know. So the next time you're thinking that you pay far too much for medical insurance, directly or indirectly, since you are young and healthy, instead consider how lucky you are to be young and healthy -- and while you won't stay young for long, I do hope that you will lucky enough to remain healthy.

Oh, and for KDR, I can't speak about the rest of the health industry, but I don't know any nurses getting rich. Nurses are often verbally abused by both patients and doctors, and they work in severely under-staffed conditions and get little respect from the hospitals that employ them. They also have very physically demanding jobs (half the nurses I know end up with back and/or foot problems), are exposed to all sorts of sicknesses, and are lucky if they even get to go to lunch or get a bathroom break. There also seems to be one or two terrible co-workers on every unit that makes everyone else's life a living hell, but those people are never dealt with by management that is more concerned about staff shortages, even though its often those same rotten co-workers that are actually causing some of that very shortage. Nurses certainly are getting paid better than fast-food workers, so I don't mean to imply poverty, but they certainly aren't getting rich, and they certainly ought to make a lot more money for the crap they have to put up with, but they are the bottom of the totem-pole and therefore disposable and/or interchangeable as far as the decision makers are concerned. By the way, unrelated, but I think the same could be said for teachers -- they aren't living in poverty either, but they deserve a whole lot more than they get for the crap that they have to put up with, and yet society tends to not value them very highly either.

# August 1, 2006 10:42 AM

Greg Young said:

This is a very interesting topic.

If you look at the statistics huge portions of the money are ending up in the hands of trial lawyers. Of course companies are using 4000% mark ups when if there is a problem with their service/medicine they get sued for hundreds of thousands of times the fee renderred.

Socialized health care has driven down the costs of care in many nations but I do not believe it was actually the socialization of health care that actually caused the effect. Tort reform is a necessity when socialized health care is implemented as it suddenly becomes the government's money that is being hit as opposed to the consumers.

"So who is left? Doctors, Nurses, medical supply companies, hospitals, drug companies, Medical staff, pharmacies, etc....these are the people making billions of dollars every year. "

How about the trial lawyers? They are the ones making huge amounts of money.

Check out http://www.atra.org/

# August 1, 2006 11:12 AM

Trisha Lacey said:

I love the new logo! Go Cows! er, DevCows!

# August 1, 2006 5:01 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

General replies to previous comments:
Chris - If the insurance companies can use their massive economic representation to force hospitals to cut such large amounts of the bill, couldn't some of the same kinds of cuts be applied to the rest of the population? Doesn't this indicate that there is a large margin in some aspects of hospital billing? At what point does it stop becoming a for-profit business and start becoming price gouging?

Kim - While I have to agree with later points that not all portions of the medical establishment are at fault, it's hard not to argue with your point when biotech companies are making record profits second only to the windfall profits currently being earned by the oil companies.

Paul - I do agree with some of your points and I of course sympathize with your story. My point wasn't to justify charging people increasingly more for required health coverage as they age, merely that the average corporate citizen has no real choice as to the level of health coverage they elect. If offered the choice, some people would prefer a larger salary to a larger amount of health care coverage. Why not offer the ability to pick and chose what services I need? As a previously young single man, I had extremely low need for the labor and delivery coverage included in my company plans. Shouldn't I have been able to forego that coverage in exchange for a lesser premium or perhaps greater coverage in some other area? I am not pretending to suggest that I can offer a solution to the issue, but I think part of the problem has been the relatively inflexible insurance offerings and the hidden costs to the consumer.

Greg - My younger brother is a lawyer and while I hope he makes a killing if only so that he can send me extremely inappropriately expensive birthday gifts (luxury automobiles accepted), I'm sure he'll be among the first to tell you that the massive profiteering in the American legal juggernaut is suspect from a moral standpoint. Cases like the tobacco class action suits where billions were paid to law firms are enough to turn anyone's stomach. I'm hopeful that he'll make an appearance here and share his feelings on the topic.

# August 1, 2006 5:24 PM

Chris Wallace said:

I agree with you to a point and most hospitals in our area are not-for-profit (just an FYI). I completely think it's BS those without insurance are expected to pay far more than what an insurance company gets away with. At the same time, probably only 20% of those people actually wind up paying and it eventually goes to collections or gets written off. In either of those cases the hospital usually never sees the money. It's really a lot more complicated than that but I'm not qualified to explain in detail as I just have a high-level understanding myself.

# August 1, 2006 7:21 PM

Chris Wallace said:

I love Trisha. Err, I mean I love the new logo too...yeah.

# August 1, 2006 7:22 PM

James Shaw said:

Yeah, nice job. The font goes really well with it.

# August 2, 2006 5:53 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

Jervis E. and Matt did a great job, we will reskin the front page shortly so let us know if you have any tip and tricks when reskinning Community Server.

# August 2, 2006 7:43 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

After the power outage at the office here this weekend, the nine Blackberry phones suddenly stopped being...

# August 2, 2006 12:08 PM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

After the power outage at the office here this weekend, the nine Blackberry phones suddenly stopped being...

# August 2, 2006 12:10 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

This blog from the MS Exchange team is basically no help at all - http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2006/01/13/417440.aspx

# August 2, 2006 1:06 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

So I'm on hold again with the Blackberry people. I decided not to call Microsoft yet

# August 2, 2006 1:24 PM

Chris Wallace said:

IMoo

# August 2, 2006 5:20 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Blackberry service is restored! Yay!

So basically what I did was
1) In the Active Directory Users and Computers...System...AdminSDHolder...Properties - check allow inheritable permissions.
2) Remove the blackberry service account from all users, domains, OUs, etc.
3) Readded the user and gave it Send As permission at the domain level.
4) Gave the users in my domain the ability to inherit permissions (some were set that way and some were not).
5) Went into dssite.msc and replicated the Active Directory connections on my 2 domain controllers.
6) Stopped the Blackberry Router service. Wait 10 minutes to ENSURE AD replication has proliferated and restart the router.
Bingo - I'm able to send from my phone and my 'test' phone. All of my users are able to receive the message. I'm waiting on them to each independently reply to the message on their blackberries to confirm that the problem is over.

I've got Microsoft calling me BACK at 1pm to ensure the problem is resolved. I spent an hour on with them at work yesterday, followed by another 20ish minutes at home. Then this morning I came in and did some digging on my own to get to the above steps.

# August 3, 2006 5:17 AM

steven vore said:

I just can't wrap my brain around the combo of coffee and coke, it's one of those things that I can't imagine putting in my mouth.

# August 3, 2006 11:45 AM

John Walker said:

Matt,

Should looking MS -AD web cast first or invite he or she
on web cast do demo config AD in User group meeting.

# August 3, 2006 12:21 PM

Tara said:

So what did you buy for your awesome wife? Hopefully something really nice.

# August 4, 2006 6:06 AM

Stacey said:

What do mean what did he get her.. isn't his presence enough?

# August 4, 2006 6:20 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Funny!
While you might initially think my mere presence should be enough, the real gift for Kim is the widescreen monitor. As crazy as it sounds, she spends far more time infront of our desktop computer than I do. I tend to do more work on my laptop. She said, and I quote, "I'd love to get a nice big flat panel monitor. It would be better for my eyes and would give us more room".

# August 4, 2006 6:36 AM

Jill said:

Thanks for the diaper tips :)!

# August 4, 2006 7:15 AM

KDR said:

I did say that, but the monitor is clearly for both of us......you are SO IN THE DOG HOUSE!

# August 4, 2006 7:25 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

I checked with her - she's kidding. No dog house for me.

# August 4, 2006 7:41 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Now that I just went on that Amazon.com shopping spree, Brendon asks me a valid question, &ldquo;What...

# August 4, 2006 9:11 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

Now that I just went on that Amazon.com shopping spree, Brendon asks me a valid question, &ldquo;What...

# August 4, 2006 9:27 AM

Mom said:

What did you get for your loving parents who brought up such a great, caring, sennsitive, smart ... son!

Just kidding,
Love you!

# August 4, 2006 9:53 AM

Chris Wallace said:

Quad-core will be out by end of the year.

# August 4, 2006 1:08 PM

Heidi said:

Wow! It doesn't even look like one of those cardboard cut-outs at 6 Flags! Just kidding! Very neat pic - now where's the story???

# August 5, 2006 3:31 AM

Mark said:

You're right. It says "Playstation."

# August 5, 2006 7:25 PM

steven vore said:

dang, now you're almost old enough to be a Geezer! :-)

(URL to be sent via email)

# August 6, 2006 12:50 PM

Jim Wooley said:

As one gets older and more self sufficient, you will find that there is less you need to get as a gift. You simply get it when you need it. The nice gifts then become extravagences (things you don't need but are nice to have). Otherwise, you will be stuck with gag gifts. Of course, the one thing you probably need, we can't give you--more time to use the stuff you already have.

# August 7, 2006 6:47 AM

Jim Wooley said:

If you think that one is cool, check out the Live Labs' photosynth video at
<a href="http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html">http://labs.live.com/photosynth/video.html</a>. You could potentially stitch your photo in with others from around the world and get an immersive experience.

# August 9, 2006 7:34 AM

Jennifer said:

Happy birthday Matt!

# August 9, 2006 8:14 AM

Heidi said:

If I remember correctly, someone told me the actual Red Sox had an away game that night. The actual autograph signers were ex-Red Sox. But I don't remember who they were... the flyer from that night says "Red Sox Alumni Players", but that's it.

# August 9, 2006 6:23 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Yes - I don't think they were current players. I was wondering which ex-players they were and I thought I remember someone saying that one of them was a Hall of Famer.

Oh well.

# August 10, 2006 5:07 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

I've been waiting around for a new phone with a great set of features.&nbsp; I've posted about it once...

# August 10, 2006 5:50 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

I've been waiting around for a new phone with a great set of features.&nbsp; I've posted about it once...

# August 10, 2006 5:51 AM

KDR said:

Story Behind Photo:
Granny D is a BIG President Bush fan....he was hosting a "dinner" (you pay a ridiulous fee for what is probably chicken and peas) but you get to see him and of course have your photo taken. It took place at one of the large hotels in Vegas.

She said he was very nice, and she had a wonderful time.

What can I say.....some Grandmas bake, some knit, and some like to watch CNN all day and vote Republican ;-)

# August 10, 2006 8:45 AM

Aaron Cutlip said:

I always check the following SP sites:
1) http://msdn.microsoft.com/office/server/moss/community/
2) http://www.spsfaq.com/
3) http://www.msd2d.com/default_section.aspx?section=sharepoint

# August 10, 2006 2:20 PM

John Walker said:

I need that phone for my Boss

# August 10, 2006 3:11 PM

Jim Pennington said:

Thanks, I had the same issue and I am following your steps. I'm keeping my fingers and toes crossed.

# August 11, 2006 8:39 AM

Tommy Ryan said:

Here is a forum on TechNet devoted to MOSS 2007 Beta:

http://forums.microsoft.com/TechNet/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=545&SiteID=17

# August 13, 2006 2:39 PM

Brendon Schwartz said:

Aaron, all great sites but the problem is most of those have 2003 information in them too.

Tommy, great site also but it does not have developer focused material in it, just IT Pro.

One good place I found for just MOSS 2007 developer material is http://www.sharepointu.com/forums/default.asp?forumid=72 look at the (Programming and Customization) forum. The problem is everything is all in one forum.

# August 14, 2006 4:22 AM

Marcus Grant said:

She doesn't watch Fox News?!?!?!

# August 14, 2006 8:33 AM

Chris Wallace said:

Both links point to the office list. :-)

# August 23, 2006 6:42 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

By the way - I knew about the memory limits and their recent increases, I just didn't know the mechanism for that increase was this AWE memory API.

# August 23, 2006 10:20 AM

Chris said:

Fantastic. I thought I was going mad wondering why I couldn't change the build configurations until I came across this.

# August 23, 2006 8:29 PM

Mark said:

I just got one too, and had the same question :)

# August 28, 2006 11:08 PM

Mark said:

RealVNC together with BarracudaDrive solves ALL of my remote access problems and it is FREE!!. BarracudaDrive is bundled with a HTTPS tunnel that solves two major problems with RealVNC. The tunnel makes the VNC connection secure. The tunnel also bypasses my company's very restrictive proxy and makes it possible to run the VNC client from behind my company's firewall. BarracudaDrive also includes a WebDAV server that makes it possible to securely copy files to and from your home PC

RealVNC client and server:
http://www.realvnc.com/

BarracudaDrive server:
http://barracudaserver.com/examples/BarracudaDrive/

HTTPS Tunnel client:
http://barracudaserver.com/examples/BarracudaDrive/HttpsTunnel/

# September 5, 2006 11:27 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Thanks for the nice writeup. If you missed the presentation it is similar to the one I did at the Atlanta code camp. We recorded that presentation and the webcast is available at http://devauthority.com/files/13/jwooley/entry1376.aspx. Also, the slide deck and demos are basically the same as those from the Jacksonville CC which are available at http://devauthority.com/files/13/jwooley/entry2407.aspx

# September 6, 2006 8:18 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

Great job baby!

# September 6, 2006 1:21 PM

Jim Wooley said:

Thank you. You're swell! (I guess that makes 1,000,001.) If anyone wants to see the rest of them, check out http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10051&storeId=10001&partNumber=nfg2687_DK&rank=P1R1S&searchValue=thanks+a+million. No, really. It's quite a hoot.

# September 10, 2006 12:30 PM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

All weekend I&rsquo;ve been playing the Xbox on my new 19&rdquo; widescreen LCD monitor.&nbsp; I have...

# September 12, 2006 11:07 AM

KDR said:

Baby, I did not complain, I was only expressing my discontent, there is a difference!
:-)
Kim

# September 12, 2006 12:43 PM

James said:

What does that mean, loosing the facility?

# September 12, 2006 4:32 PM

Mom said:

Congratulations!!!!

We are so happy for you and Kim.

# September 13, 2006 12:40 PM

vern said:

" It doesn't have Blogjet's ability to get the previously posted blog entries for editing."

Actually, it supports that beautifully. If you click "More" below the listing of recent posts, you can select the actual blog and it will retrieve up to the last 25 posts, which you can edit and repost. It should be able to go further back, but perhaps that will change in a later version. Like in PostXING where you can just enter a number for how many posts back to go.

Perhaps that can be remedied with a plugin...

# September 18, 2006 11:46 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Vern is absolutely right. Cleverly hidden under the "More..." icon right on the main screen you have the option of editing and correcting previously posted blog entries. Sweet.

Hmm.... Maybe this WILL replace BlogJet as my prefered tool

# September 18, 2006 1:55 PM

vern said:

It has replaced both BlogJet and PostXING for me.

The only thing I wish it had was ftp for images, binary data, etc.

Of course, if my server didn't suck so bad, I could upgrade my versio of subText and have RSD and the media thingy that doesn't require ftp...

# September 18, 2006 7:23 PM

El Guapo said:

I don't understand why the predicate doesn't take a parameter. In almost every case where I want to use a predicate, I want to pass in a parameter (like you needed). They should have made the delegate signature with a "params object[] parms" parameter. What would it hurt?

# September 19, 2006 5:22 AM

Rob Zelt said:

"The only thing I wish it had was ftp for images, binary data, etc. "

Ahh but it does... Under "Edit Weblog Settings" from the "Weblog Menu" on the 2nd page of the setup wizard is an Image Publishing option that lets you specify an ftp site/folder and credentials for images. Works slick.

# September 19, 2006 5:39 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Brendon really does have odd taste in music. It's almost as bad as Kim's taste in music!

# September 22, 2006 7:40 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

Now that is one sexy beast!

# September 22, 2006 10:30 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

Matt,

Don't take it out on Brendon and I that you do not appreciate quality music, and I don't care what you say....no one sings better then 50Cent!

# September 22, 2006 10:31 AM

KDR said:

It was awesome! Thank goodness one of us can cook!

# September 25, 2006 10:43 AM

Mr Mad said:

Thank you Thank you Thank you

# September 26, 2006 9:41 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

don't let Brendon minimize his role in the text of the article or in setting up the contacts. I just act as his code monkey, churning out content.

# September 27, 2006 7:43 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

Congrats to both of you!!!

# September 27, 2006 9:15 AM

Jim Wooley said:

Congratulations. Just don't let them work you too hard.

# October 3, 2006 2:03 PM

KDR said:

So proud of you baby!

# October 3, 2006 2:12 PM

steven vore said:

congrats man, have a good time. (and let me know if your old company wants to hire me :-) )

# October 3, 2006 6:44 PM

Keith Rome said:

Congrats dude! Welcome aboard!

# October 5, 2006 3:08 PM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

This weekend was fairly busy - filled with visits from friends, meals out, movies, and a 5K walk for...

# October 9, 2006 7:24 AM

John Doe said:

Good thing,
I am NOT ask you for marry me.!!!

# October 10, 2006 6:07 AM

KDR said:

Congrats on the new job Brendon!

# October 10, 2006 6:26 AM

Kim D ranlett said:

Just to Clarify......are you saying all women are impulsive, disorganized, and exaggerate????

I think you will be sleeping on one of the dog beds tonight ;-)

# October 10, 2006 6:28 AM

Jim Wooley said:

I wouldn't say I would use any of those adjectives to describe either of you. It just goes to show how accurate those tests can be. By any chance was it the Harrison Assessment? I just love being asked if I prefer apples, oranges, rock music or working with numbers...

# October 10, 2006 6:37 AM

Straight Man said:

And here all this time I thought it was the other way around and that Brendon was the woman in your pairing.

# October 10, 2006 7:17 AM

Paul Wilson said:

Congrats Brendon.

# October 10, 2006 7:18 AM

John Doe said:

Okay than, I may ask Brendon to marry me. But... Matt he too pretty...

# October 10, 2006 10:26 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Ok - some of you people are frightening!

The tests came from www.rightpath.com. I have no idea what kind tests they are but that's the sort of question I was asked (rank which word I most closely identified with)

# October 10, 2006 10:59 AM

Glen said:

Awesome Brendon!!!

# October 10, 2006 1:52 PM

Rik said:

Congrats Brendon. ...try not to forget us little people :o)
...especially if you need a good UI guy!

# October 11, 2006 10:20 AM

Heidi said:

-----< "Brendon, on the other hand is apparently impatient, insensitive, bad listener, blunt and overbearing. ">-----

Finally, someone agrees with me! I have proof - and in writing, no less!!

# October 16, 2006 6:50 PM

John Doe said:

Heidi,
Can you put a lot make-up on Brendon? Just made him more pretty than Matt...

# October 17, 2006 6:25 AM

StevenHarman.net said:

# October 25, 2006 8:35 AM

urmila said:

That helps!! :) Thanks

# October 28, 2006 9:43 AM

Alan Stevens said:

Great news! I've already put it on my calendar.

++Alan

# November 4, 2006 6:29 AM

Herr_Ziffer said:

It should be added that this is perhaps the best time of year for Atlanta. All the trees are turning to green's gold hue.

# November 10, 2006 7:15 AM

El Guapo said:

Errrr.... Lenox is not downtown :)

# November 10, 2006 12:52 PM

Dan Attis said:

Why on earth would someone think they needed nested anchor tags? The very thought of it makes no sense. That is a weird one.

# November 15, 2006 5:08 AM

Steven Vore said:

I'm right there with Dan - my first thought was "Why?" Did they explain what their rationale was for doing that?

# November 15, 2006 9:18 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

The code was not written in house, so I have not idea what they were thinking. It appears they thought that the anchor tag without an ID or href would work like a div. No other info besides that, sorry.

# November 15, 2006 9:42 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Lenox isn't exactly "downtown" but it is the big intown mall and the only one that can even remotely qualify as downtown. I did say that I was in Midtown...

Either way, that's still a lot of trees to be well inside the city limits of a major metropolis

# November 19, 2006 9:09 AM

Chris Wallace said:

Going off the comments and my own thoughts, this one belongs on the daily wtf.

# November 22, 2006 7:40 AM

Jason said:

I'm sorry, but if you are two minute walk from Lenox, you are absolutely, positively not in Midtown. Lenox is no where near downtown and downtown does have a mall at Peachtree Center. Just because you are ignorant of intown geography doesn't mean you can play it off as no big deal. Just admit you don't know what you are talking about and all will be forgiven.

For your future reference, heading south Midtown starts when Peachtree crosses the interstate and Downtown starts at North Avenue. Both would take several HOURS to walk to from Lenox Mall.

# November 22, 2006 8:28 AM

Daily News Faq List said:

Brendon Schwartz shares a Coke and a smile (kinda) about his Community Server experience on the Atlanta

# November 22, 2006 8:58 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Yeah Jason, you're right. I'm being lax in my geography references here. All I'm trying to say is that I'm in the middle* of a major US metropolis and "look at all the trees"

*middle refers to an approximation of the center of Atlanta, give or take 20 miles

# November 22, 2006 4:07 PM

Miguel Castro said:

This is a nice surprise - let me be the first to RSVP.
cya in Atlanta

# November 26, 2006 8:20 AM

Aaron Cutlip said:

I'll be there.

# November 30, 2006 10:28 AM

Rik Robinson said:

Count me in.

# November 30, 2006 11:28 AM

Chris Wallace said:

I'm in.

# December 1, 2006 5:51 AM

Paul Lockwood said:

Work willing I'll be there.

# December 1, 2006 7:05 AM

Steven Porter said:

I'll be there.

# December 1, 2006 8:01 AM

Marshall Harrison - "the gotspeech guy" said:

My son got on the same day you did and we both love it. I'm holding off on buying one hoping they will just give us one at the MVP Summit in March.

Have you tried installing the software on a different PC? I wonder if the second PC will recognize your music. My son tried it and it didn't see his music but I haven't tried to troubleshoot it yet.

# December 1, 2006 10:16 AM

Dan Attis said:

Is Matt buying us all dinner and drinks? Yippee! See ya there!

# December 1, 2006 1:16 PM

Matt Ranlett said:

Hey there Marshall!
I've not tried putting the Zune on another machine yet, but my understanding is that as long as you purchase the music you can redownload what you've purchased from the marketplace onto a new PC. I could be completely wrong, but I believe I read that somewhere online.
I hadn't even thought about getting one at the MVP Summit. That would be totally auwesome!

I'm glad you like it. I can't believe you're waiting to go get your own, unless you regularly steal....borrow.... your son's. I love to sit at work listening to mine all day. I find that I get so much more done when I tune out the distractions and that's easier when listening to good tunes!

# December 2, 2006 11:13 AM

Greg Young said:

I thik I will be there.

# December 2, 2006 3:30 PM

Marshall Harrison - "the gotspeech guy" said:

I can't believe I'm waiting either but I have stolen his Ipod Nano so that will hold me over for awhile.

# December 3, 2006 5:07 PM

Rik Robinson said:

Sorry, but you'll have to move me to the MAYBE column. I'd love to be there, but "Zappa Plays Zappa" is the same night and I may be there instead.

# December 4, 2006 5:24 AM

loon said:

hey... nice review... i will go try it out

# December 4, 2006 7:17 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

Me and my famous husband.....will you start giving out autographs soon?

I am SO PROUD OF YOU!

Love,
Kim

# December 5, 2006 10:47 AM

Living with my Zune - after 12 days :: Newstack said:

PingBack from http://keep-separate.newstack.com/living-with-my-zune-after-12-days-2/

# December 7, 2006 9:42 AM

Atlanta .NET Regular Guys said:

I've talked about LogMeIn.com before, but now there is an awesome new tool from these same folks (I...

# December 8, 2006 10:00 AM

Mark Dunn said:

What's the last word on venue? Matt and I talked about 5 Seasons or Joey D's Oak Room. Let us know which one.

# December 9, 2006 3:16 PM

Chris Wallace said:

It was looking pretty good until they zoomed in..

# December 11, 2006 3:32 AM

Chris Wallace said:

I'm not going to be able to make it as originally planned.

# December 12, 2006 8:55 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Dinner was great. We ended up with only 8 people at dinner after 4 of the RSVPs backed out for various reasons. I had a good time, most of which I spent talking to Shawn W. and Paul L. Miguel ended up sitting on the complete opposite side of the party from me, although from the way the folks around him were laughing, I bet he had a great time.
Next time I'll try to plan a little more in advance with fewer location changes.

# December 14, 2006 2:19 PM

Shawn Wildermuth said:

I wonder if many people from the Geek Dinner got sick. The day after we met, I got sick as a dog...flu-like symptoms...I am blaming you.

# December 16, 2006 7:59 AM

Brendon Schwartz said:

See I told everyone I didn't go so that they wouldn't say they got sick from me! Can't be my fault! Sorry to hear everyone got sick too. =(

# December 16, 2006 2:50 PM

Dan Attis said:

I'm healthy as a horse, so I'll have to put the dinner theory to rest.

# December 17, 2006 7:21 PM

Dan Attis said:

Wow, that calendar is a GREAT idea! I wish I would have thought of that!

# December 18, 2006 1:13 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

My husband is amazing......thanks baby!

# December 18, 2006 1:17 PM

Jennifer said:

oooo ... Nice job Matt! The calendar is a great idea. Kim, did you get him some (pink) shirts? hehe. =) Happy holidays!

# December 20, 2006 4:31 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

hey Jen,

hehehe, got him and raj matching pj's!

# December 22, 2006 12:27 PM

loon said:

I personally recommend belkin brand, have you heard of it before? Reason is because i do not need to worry about how to install. You just have to insert you cd and everything will just fine.

loon
greeting from webhostforasp.net

# December 23, 2006 9:06 PM

Dan Attis said:

Congrats Matt. That is a pretty impressive timeline for the last two. Who took the test for you (just kidding!).

# December 28, 2006 1:00 PM

Dan Attis said:

I would classify that as a 200 level feature. Could it be any more inconspicuous?

# December 28, 2006 1:16 PM

Paul Wilson's .NET Blog said:

I&#39;ve been tagged by Brendon , so here are 5 things that you don&#39;t know about me: While I was

# December 29, 2006 6:06 AM

Mirror blog entries from the industry said:

I&#39;ve been tagged by Brendon , so here are 5 things that you don&#39;t know about me: While I was

# December 29, 2006 6:34 AM

Mom said:

Actrually, Matthew you forgot Sun School plays. And it was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I still have the poster and t shirt! You were great in all your acting jobs.
Love,
Mom

# December 29, 2006 9:08 AM

Jeff Pulver said:

Thanks for playing blog-tag.

Best wishes for 2007.

Best regards, Jeff

# December 29, 2006 4:26 PM

Mel said:

Matt - speaking as someone that actually CLAIMED you as a pal back at old Evans, you forgot to mention your unbelievably bad taste in clothes - remember the PLAID shorts and the goofy striped shirt you used to wear when we all went up to the lake? Fashion sense - Zero, but you were certainly one of the nicest, best friends a person could have! Love ya & Miss ya - Melanie : ) Yeah, dig out the yearbook, dust it off, I'm in there!

# December 29, 2006 8:32 PM

Paul Wilson said:

Congrats on MVP again, as well as the articles and book. And the Atlanta .NET community pretty much owes it all to you couple of guys.

# January 1, 2007 1:21 PM

Rob Windsor's Weblog said:

I don't know if this is the next big blog thing or not but I have been chosen to participate. Through

# January 2, 2007 2:13 PM

Rob Windsor's Weblog said:

I don't know if this is the next big blog thing or not but I have been chosen to participate. Through

# January 2, 2007 2:13 PM

B-Daddy said:

Man 1 out of 5 friends that acutally did it. That is no good!

# January 2, 2007 2:23 PM

Eric Engler said:

This also works in Visual Studio.

# January 2, 2007 4:20 PM

Heidi said:

I DO think that is the funniest thing I've ever seen.

# January 3, 2007 6:18 AM

Dan Attis said:

Oh my... That is pretty funny.

# January 3, 2007 6:21 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Holy Macaroni - it's Mel! You should totally send me an e-mail with an update of what's been going on since we last saw each other - 10 years ago!

# January 3, 2007 6:52 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

CONGRATS!!!!!!!!!

# January 3, 2007 6:53 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

I would just like to clarify that you are now cool.......you married me ;-)

Besides, geeks are great husbands!

Love you!

# January 3, 2007 6:56 AM

Kim Ranlett said:

My little genius......very impressive!!!!!

# January 3, 2007 6:58 AM

Jerry Dennany said:

Congrats - a well-deserved award!

# January 4, 2007 11:58 AM

Keith Rome said:

Dude, you should have ping'd me. I have a floppy image (a vfd file) that I use all the time for this - it has an old version of Ghost that works perfectly for expanding disks. All you have to do is power down the VM, mount the floppy image into a virtual floppy disk device, then power on the VM and run through the Duplicate Disk Image wizard... After that you just power off the VM, unmount the floppy image, and start the VM back up. Ghost handles resizing the volume partition for you.

# January 4, 2007 2:12 PM

Jim Wooley said:

Way to go.

# January 4, 2007 5:54 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

Congrats!!!!!!

# January 15, 2007 11:11 AM

John Walker said:

Should change the doctor: Male doctor to female doctor.
"This way may be you can get well".
Alway work for me. I don't know about you....

# January 15, 2007 12:17 PM

David L. Walker - .NET Solution Provider said:

I just happened to see that Brendan Enrick tagged me, thanks a lot! :) After having read several of these

# January 20, 2007 9:49 PM

Jim Wooley said:

Thank you for setting a record in swag as well. For anyone interested, we are already starting to post speakers session materials at http://www.atlantamspros.com/codecamp/Sessions/Downloads/tabid/159/Default.aspx

# January 22, 2007 6:40 AM

Heidi said:

That thank you card reminds me of two guys I know.... who could that be????

# January 22, 2007 12:21 PM

Jerry Dennany said:

Kudos to all the organizers. This was a great event! Good job, guys.

# January 22, 2007 8:07 PM

Michael Rivera said:

You guys did a great job! The event was excellent.

# January 23, 2007 9:37 AM

Steven’s Notebook » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-23 said:

PingBack from http://steven.vorefamily.net/2007/01/23/links-for-2007-01-23-2/

# January 23, 2007 3:37 PM

Steven’s Notebook » Blog Archive » links for 2007-01-24 said:

PingBack from http://steven.vorefamily.net/2007/01/24/links-for-2007-01-24/

# January 23, 2007 9:32 PM

Kim Ranlett said:

You guys should give yourselves a pat on the back.....what an amazing turnout, and what amazing prizes!

I am not even a developer, and I think I want to go next year!

:-)

# January 24, 2007 11:44 AM

Rashid Z. Muhammad said:

Hey guys, I was at the Code Camp and had a great time. Congrats on making it look so easy and I'll be back next year with more friends!

# January 25, 2007 12:42 PM

Cory said:

Simple question...why are people still developing sites that are designed for IE only? The launch event site mentioned in this post doesn't display the event info when using Firefox and this site has a horizontal grey bar going across your faces in the header of the page when viewed in Firefox. I understand you guys support Microsoft, but not everyone uses IE. I'm not trying to Microsoft/IE-bash, but I just can't believe there isn't more effort among developers to make sites comply to web standards and be viewable in any browser.

...just my $.02

# January 30, 2007 4:54 AM

Matt Ranlett said:

Cory - you need to check which version of FireFox you are using and perhaps disable some malfunctioning addin. This page works perfectly well in FireFox - http://devcow.com/photos/blog_posts/picture2723.aspx

# January 30, 2007 5:55 AM

Cory said:

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.1 and I'm pretty sure Firefox extensions aren't causing this (http://cory.deppen.us/images/devcow.jpg). Also, your image of the event page doesn't show the event details in Firefox (http://cory.deppen.us/images/vista_launch.jpg). Selecting the city should refresh the details area, but it doesn't in Firefox. Again, I don't think an extension is going to cause this behavior.

# January 30, 2007 6:34 AM

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