I get up at 6am the day before the main TechEd event so I can be downstairs bright and early.  Today is the INETA User Group Leader summit – 12 hours of how to be a better User Group leader.  In talking last night to several of the people who are already here, Brendon and I have some great new ideas to try out on the groups in Atlanta.  I have a feeling that today is going to be a whole lot of fun.

— Matt Ranlett

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It’s Saturday, two days before the official start of TechEd 2005.  I’m travelling down to Orlando with Brendon, courtesy of Microsoft and the fine folks over at the CodeZone Refresh department.  Brendon and I participated (along with about 20 or so other people) in the beta testing program for the Code Zone refresh, and our participation in the beta test program earned us scholarships from Microsoft – free travel, hotel, and TechEd registration.  I want to thank Doug Turnure for getting us into the beta program, as it’s been AWESOME so far! 

Brendon and I get on a 4pm flight to Orlando where I end up sitting next to a guy from California who works for a Defense Department subcontractor building and maintaining armored vehicles for the military.  Interesting conversation, that one.  He also bore a striking resemblance to the guy who played Bernie from Weekend at Bernie’s (the dead guy).  Brendon and I get off the plane at 5pm and go down to get our luggage.  On the way to the luggage carousel, we meet Hugo, our limo driver, who is holding a sign with our names on it.  No shit – a limo (well, a Lincoln Towncar, but still nice)!  We get our luggage, drive to the HUGE J.W. Marriott which is attached to the Ritz Carlton down here, and get checked in by a pack of greeters and desk clerks who swarm over to us like bees to honey.  We thought we’d done something wrong, but they were just trying to be incredibly nice and helpful.  We get our stuff dumped off in our rooms and go to explore the area.  We managed to find the INETA pre-conference prep room and wander in to say “Hello”.  We meet Samantha Spears, Chris Wallace from Denver’s UG (not to be confused with the Chris Wallace of Atlanta), and more.  We chat and help them get all the name tags set up, along with Caleb Jenkins from Tulsa and D’Arcy from Winniepeg.  After helping out for a while and talking to the fine folks, Brendon, D’Arcy, Caleb, and I decide to share a cab over to the Geek Dinner hosted by Jeffrey Palermo.  $25 one way!  Anyway, we find the dinner and Rob Zelt of Raleigh and Chris Williams of Charleston.  Also in attendance is Scott Hanselman (who makes it away before Brendon and I can introduce ourselves) and lots of other really nice people.  We eat some food and make fun of Canadians (D’Arcy and Rob are Canadian) while the main group retires to the bar.  We were going to join everyone in the bar, but the true geek pops out and Chris announces he’s got to get back to his room quickly so he can charge his PDA.  Chris and Rob aren’t staying at the same hotel as Caleb, D’Arcy, Brendon and I, but because we’ve decide that the $25 cab is too expensive to take back to the hotel, so we convince Chris and Rob to give us a ride back to the hotel.  We then discover that, “Yes!”, you CAN fit six developers into a two-door Chrysler Sebring hardtop!  Expect fun photos from D’Arcy’s camera soon.  Everyone goes their separate ways back in the hotel.  I get back to my room to find a welcome food basket on my bed – chocolates, cheese straws, truffles, fancy water bottle, and a pocket knife of some kind.  I didn’t open the shrinkwrapping yet, so I don’t know what else is in there.

— trouble with the photo uploads = photos at the end of the week.

Expect sporatic reports from TechEd.  I’ll be recording as much as I can, but I don’t have Internet access in my room (I’m not paying $10 a night for Internet!).  Why do the more expensive hotels charge for the stuff you can get for free from the cheaper hotels?  Courtyard Marriotts give away wireless Internet access like it’s going out of style!

— Matt Ranlett

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I’m reading back over some downloaded blogs when I come across this entry by Jay Kimble over at CodeBetter.com.  Basically, Jay writes about his having noticed a sort of backlash against the DBA.  Take a look at O/R Mappers, object persistence, and even some of the older OODB stuff.  Jay postulates that there may be a rebellion of sorts against RDBMS, perhaps due to the power of the DBA or due to the difficulty of SQL.  His question – is the time of traditional RDBMS over?

I’ve asked questions in this blog before – about objects vs datasets, etc.  I’ve never personally thought about this particular set of questions before, but I can certainly see why someone might have questions like Jay’s.  Are we finally heading towards a meld of object based databases?  We’re able to put code in the SQL Server DB engine now, and object persistence and datasets look like we can take the data out of the DB and put it in the code?  Are we moving towards the next evolution in programmatic data storage?

What do you guys think?

— Matt Ranlett

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By creating a news reader for your online community won’t you lose sponsorship because not as many people will see the ads? Then we'll have to face the possibility of embedding the ads in the downloaded content.

—Brendon Schwartz

I was reading about the new NNTP service from http://forums.asp.net and i realized how fast things move.  I was talking to Matt about anther issue and in the time it took him to respond to MSN (like 3 seconds) I had moved to other topics.  How do we slow down?  Is it by adding back the ability to have NNTP readers?  Either way you look at it I think it is great to have the ability to have news readers on forums because it is just another way to get to the information.  Great job Community Server team!  My only request is that you be able to view them without having to have a user name and password.  Let me know if you get that feature.

—Brendon Schwartz

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It is funny who we trust and don’t trust on the web with all of the sites that require logins today.  It seems like everyone wants your information and that you must supply it for so many things.  What happened to the days on the internet when you could just anonymously view things and not have to register for them.  I just ran into a situation where a friend of mine (Matt Ranlett) would not use his passport on a site, but he logs into like 200 sites a day.  It is so funny that he would not trust using his passport.  Come on sign up Matt everyone else is doing it.

—Brendon Schwartz

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Jim Wooley and I showed the group a little higher level material this time.  Jim showed off Generics, using the WhiteHorse class designer and separate code implementations contrasting inheritance, interfaces, and generics.  Using simple examples he showed us how generics preserve Intellisense and provide faster runtimes over 100,000 iterations.  Despite being a contrived example, we saw clear differences in performance over significant numbers of element access.

I showed off the Observer pattern using the example provided by the Head First Design Patterns book (this went on the white board) and an article from OnDotNet where a reproduction of a binary clock sorta demonstrates the concepts of an observer pattern.  The thing I learned most from my own presentation is that I need to spend more time reading that Head First Design Patterns book.  I felt like I understood what I read, but I had a hard time explaining it in a way that made sense to everyone else.  Actually, I had a hard time explaining the example they used in the book to illustrate the bad way to do things.  Everyone got the correct “pattern” method right away.

— Matt Ranlett

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Alright folks, let's form us a Mobile Madness team and win those cool mobile phones.  Brendon Schwartz and I signed up to play on Wednesday.  So far, Rob Zelt wants in.  Who else wants to join the fun and take home some cool stuff?

-- Matt Ranlett

[Edit] - I had to change the date to Tuesday as the #1 choice for this event.  The other times conflict with other events.

There's going to be a lot of fun stuff to do at TechEd.  I'm talking about stuff beyond the conference sessions themselves (and there are some of those which look so cool I'm already drooling)

Mobile Madness - they give you a new smartphone to run a scavanger hunt with - winners keep the phones

Parties

Parties

and more!  Much more!

-- Matt Ranlett

Bill Baker, the general manager for SQL Server Business Intelligence with Microsoft is coming to present to the SQL Server User Group.  To accomodate Bill's busy schedule, the SQL Server group will be meeting in the Microsoft Offices in Alpharetta on Thursday, July 21st.  The doors open at 6:30 and Microsoft will be providing some refreshments.

Come one, come all, learn the magic that is BI.  Be sure to register at the SQL Server group website

-- Matt Ranlett

I am not sure where most people find tools to motivate themselves, but I tend to find music inspirational.  As far as music goes Hans Zimmer is the best composer to me.  You may ask who he is, if so check out the movies he has worked with.  Rain Man, Backdraft, Radio Flyer, A League of Their Own, The Lion King, Crimson Tide, The Rock, The Preacher's Wife, As Good As It Gets, The Prince of Egypt, Gladiator, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down, The Contender, and much more!  I really feel that with motivation you can push yourself beyond the limits that you thought were possible.  I suggest checking out one of his albums (scores) and see for yourself.  Usually when I feel like I am tired or can’t do anymore I put on some Hans Zimmer and complete what needs to be done.

—Brendon Schwartz

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My vacation consisted of 1 movie (The Longest Yard – very entertaining), 3 meals out, 1 concert in a park (Edwin McCain), 6 hours in the office on Saturday, and 8 hours of billable support calls!  I’m still looking for my day off!

— Matt Ranlett

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I’m not sure why, but figuring out WMI with Microsoft's resources seems to take forever.  I have spent a couple days looking over WMI and trying to figure out how to use it the way I want.  I didn’t find any good .NET resources until the 3rd day when I had already started to figure out what I needed.  That being said, this is the best resource for .NET and WMI that I have found. www.enterprise-minds.com by Klaus Salchner.  He has wonderful examples and the best articles on how to use WMI with .NET.

The one major thing that is missing with WMI are the tools to make it understandable and simple.  I know it is mostly for sys admins that do scripting, but it shouldn’t be so difficult to find out how to use it.  If anyone has worked with WMI leave us some links or resources of better places to find things.

Here are the resources that I finally found that were useful.

• Klaus Salchner – www.enterprise-minds.com
• Using WMI
• Windows Mangement Instrumentation (WMI)
• Managing Applications Using WMI
• Querying with WQL

—Brendon Schwartz

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I am Kung Fu Master. I like to be in control of myself. I dislike crowds, especially crowds containing people trying to kill me. Even though I always win, I prefer to avoid fights if possible. What Video Game Character Are You?

-- Matt Ranlett

The kind folks in the UK sent me a link to a series of short (15 minutes or less) webcasts called MSDN Nuggets.  Waiting for something large to compile or for some kind of batch process?  Spend the time constructively and watch a short video that teaches you the power of docking Winforms components or something.  Bonus, all the presenters seem to have that fun UK accent…

— Matt Ranlett

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So I’m getting ready for an international business trip (more details in a later blog) when I notice that my brand-spanking new passport has my name spelled wrong!  I’m apparently Matthew Steven Rancett.  Rancett?  I even gave them my old passport with my name spelled correctly!  It’s RanLett!  The lower case L and C don’t look anything alike and they’re located on opposite sides of the keyboard!  Come on, people….  Now I’ve got to call the Passport office and see if this is going to be a problem.  And I need it in 2 weeks!

— Matt Ranlett

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I’m not talking about the original Showtime series.  I don’t know who’s been reading this blog, and for how long, so I’ll catch you up.  After six years of marriage, Deanna moved out of the house in October of 2004.  Our divorce was finalized the following January.  In the time between now and then, I’ve met Kim.  We’ve been dating for several months now.  I’ve spent a lot of time sorting out my feelings these past several weeks, and now I feel like my head is on straight.  So last week I used the L word and told her that I love her.  I think I could possibly have been more romantic, but I’m a computer programmer, not a soap opera star.  Anyway, she says she loves me too…

Anyway, I figure a week went by, so I’d share with the rest of the world…

You may now all go back to your regularly scheduled programming.  Pun intended.

— Matt Ranlett

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Check out the unofficial list of unsolved codes and ciphers, including the Beale Ciphers which might have been the inspiration for that utterly uninspiring movie National Treasure.  Included in the list are some ancient scripts which have defied translation for nearly 4000 years!  Don’t forget about the coded messages left behind by the Zodiac Killer – not all of these have been broken and the killer has never been caught.

— Matt Ranlett

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I freely admit that I’m a Microsoft fanboy when it comes to the Xbox vs PS2 discussion.  Sure, the PS2 has like 10 times the number of games, but 90% of them suck!!  The original Xbox had so much going for it (hard drive, online play, etc) when it came out that I couldn’t even consider the PS2.  Sony seems to be coming back with some improved features for the PS3, but Microsoft is widening the gap, crushing the PS3 with provable hardware superiority:

(from Bit-Tech.net)

• 3 CPU cores, each with a form of HyperThreading for 6 simultaneous instructions
• The graphics engine of the Xbox 360 is nearly 2 years in the future for PC cards
• Heatpipe based liquid cooling = quiet in the living room
• Wireless controller that charge batteries via USB (plug in when not in use)
• Built in Media Center Extender (dammit – now I have to buy a Media Center PC)

( from the “Xbox Live Director of Programming”, a 4 part series )

• Xbox 360 has more general purpose processing power and more memory bandwidth than PS3
• The PS3 excels at floating-point operations, which are less important in the time of GPUs
• Xbox 360 has a faster GPU w/double the texture samplers of the PS3
• Xbox 360 has over 5 times the RAM bandwidth for SPEED!

More hardware based reviews here
CNet previews the Xbox 360 here
PlayStation.com shows off the PS3 tech specs
CNet previews the PS3 here

All of this has me so excited that I’ll probably be in line somewhere at midnight to get mine (provided I don’t pre-order or win a free one).

— Matt Ranlett

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[Edit] – Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 WILL be backwards compatible with existing Xbox games.  The announcement was made at E3, ending months of speculation.  The post I’m linking to is actually from a Microsoft Xbox developer working on backwards compatibility.  This is fantastic because I currently own 24 Xbox games (I buy them off of Ebay at an average $9.00 per game, including shipping).  That would be a big waste if I couldn’t play my existing games on the new console.

I’m going to have to give my rusty time-management skills a workout.  I’d previously cut DNR recordings from my schedule of “Things I Can Do In A Day” because I’ve been putting in more time on job and community related activities.  I’m sure I’ve missed some great episodes (all available for download after the fact).  I was reading through the blog on www.msquaredweb.com (just who is Mark, anyway?) when I found a reference to the coolest demonstration of XHTML and CSS I’ve ever seen. 

You absolutely must check this out: www.csszengarden.com

Thanks for the link Mark!

— Matt Ranlett

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Brendon pointed me to this link where Tim Heuer writes up an excellent post about what every SharePoint developer ought to know.  Check it out!

— Matt Ranlett

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I've apparently got too many e-mail addresses to manage.  I found out through an e-mail from the local radio station that I won free tickets to an AudioSlave concert.  The concert was Monday at about 9pm.  I checked my mail on Monday at 11pm!  D'oh!

-- Matt Ranlett

I just finished watching Mike Benkovitch’s excellent introduction to replication in SQL Server 2005 webcast and heard that MS is deprecating Attach and Go replication in Yukon.  Uh oh!  We use that at our company to prevent the distribution database from being overwhelmed by the sheer size and volume of our snapshots.  We’re going to have to come up with a new plan if this one isn’t going to work anymore.

— Matt Ranlett

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You've all heard of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon game.  How about finding the shortest path from anything to anything.  Omnipelagos do this.  Check out the link between Kevin Smith (director of Clerks) and bacon (yummy pork product).

-- Matt Ranlett

Pat Piccolo has posted some of his photos from Code Camp online.  Check them out here.

— Matt Ranlett

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