Busy Week Next Week
01.06.2009 10:25:06 AM (Last Update: 01.06.2009 08:23:00 PM)
It's going to be a very busy and exciting week next week for .NET developers. Here's why.
That's a lot of information and community events in one week! Try to take advantage of it if you can.
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Flagged Links #24
01.05.2009 08:26:16 PM
"This American Measles" - To everyone: please vaccinate your kids. End of story.
"My Software Is Being Pirated" - DRM is useless. Piracy will always be around. Deal with it, and don't be a part of it either.
"Cosmic Rays in Memory" - Capturing a cosmic array coarsing through memory - very cool!
"API Hall of Shame #2 – Useless Exception Messages" - I love the exception messages that WCF gives when you have verbose messages turned on. Makes me cringe when I see useless messages like this.
"The 2008 Media Inflection: Meet Dr. Web, the New Gorilla" - No surprise here. Printed publications are dead. I'm down to subscribing to one magazine, and I'll probably dump that after a year.
"Hello, 2009" - I can't wait for SSDs to become commonplace.
"The Z2K9 Problem" - Bad Zune code! Bad!
"Wetware Refactorings" - Basically, keep switching things up.
"Writing a DisjointSet in C# with the help of Code Contracts and Pex" - Contracts rock. Pex rocks. 'nuff said.
"Online Courses" - I'm thinking of maybe doing something like this in the future. I've always loved learning, especially in the academic sense. Doing things online with a schedule that works for me is probably the way to go.
"Visualizing the Recent Yellowstone Earthquakes" - Holy crap, there's earthquakes at Yellowstone?! Run!! Seriously, this is an amazing way to see how the earthquakes unfolded using Mathematica.
"Commercial Fail" - The best line in this ad for this poorly named product? "My wife would like that!"
"Caliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and Silverlight" - I may be doing a lot of WPF development in the near future. Using a framework like this may help out a lot.
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"Coalescent"
01.04.2009 09:51:24 PM
I finished this book this afternoon. Basically, it's the story...well, it's two main storylines, with a number of smaller stories that tie in as well. There's a man, George, who after his father dies learns of a sister that was given away to a secret society in Rome when he was a very young boy. There's a woman, Regina, who lived around 400 ACE, who discoverers early on in life that things do not always go as desired. Throughout the book, you eventually learn of the tie between them and the other subplots.
I enjoyed this book. Some of the reviews from other readers didn't like it, but I think it has to be read with the knowledge that there are two other books in this series. Baxter doesn't tie up all the plot lines; in fact, he does a "what-the-hell" ending that demands you read the next one right away (which I will start tonight). I can understand if someone read this book by itself and went, "ok, that was stupid ending." It's not a bad ending per-se; it's just one that goes in a direction I didn't quite expect, and it pretty much requires more books to keep the story going. The writing is decent, but if you think there isn't a point to all of it, keep reading until the end. I liked how Baxter pulls it off.
I am a bit concerned that Baxter won't finish up some of the other storylines (like the Kupier Anomaly), but I'm intriguied enough to start the second book. Usually when I read a series of fiction books, I'll plug other books in between just to vary it a bit, but not this time. I don't know why, but I like what I've read so far in this series (called Destiny's Children) and that's why I'm jumping right into "Exultant".
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Last Day of Vacation
01.04.2009 09:17:49 AM
Tomorrow I go back to work after nearly 2 weeks of being on vacation. I've enjoyed my time off, but I'm starting to miss work. I actually enjoy what I do for a living, and I kind of miss not doing software development.
Oh, I'm also speaking at the Chippewa Valley .NET UG this Thursday - I'm doing my "Writing Better Code" talk. If you're in the area, feel free to stop by!
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New Spaghetti Code Podcast Is Online
01.02.2009 09:51:35 AM
Before 2008 came to a close, I participated in a roundtable podcast, and it's now online. You can get it here.
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Ryan's Freaking Me Out
01.02.2009 09:18:05 AM (Last Update: 01.04.2009 10:15:46 PM)
Lately I've noticed that Ryan seems to have a pretty good vocabulary. For example, right now I'm downstairs and I can hear him saying, "I want to go downstairs like a big boy." That's an 9-word sentence for a kid who just turned 2 a couple of weeks ago. He can also count to 5 (and sometimes higher than that) and he can say his ABCs. He's already asking "why?" questions. Like last night, Ryan and I were getting dinner and when we were parked in the drive thru, he said, "why are the fans off?" I didn't understand the question...until I looked in the restaurant and I saw that, yes, there were fans on the ceiling, and they were off.
We've talked to a couple of people that know child development and they've said it's pretty unusual for someone his age to know the stuff he does. We're not looking at doing anything different with him right now, but if he keeps going this way, we want to make sure his learning keeps progressing.
And yes, I know this sounds like I'm bragging about Ryan, but...well, yes, I am! Hayden's a pretty bright kid too, and they are my kids, so of course I'm going to be proud of both of them :).
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INETASpeakers += Me
01.02.2009 09:14:20 AM (Last Update: 01.02.2009 05:05:26 PM)
Yesterday I found out that I'm now an INETA speaker. This will be an interesting experience - I'm not entirely sure what to expect other than (potentially) speaking at more UGs.
And yes, I know the title of my blog is more VBish in nature. Using "This" just seemed out of place :)
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Back From Winter Vacation
01.02.2009 09:10:37 AM
We came back this past Tuesday after spending nearly a week in Wisconsin. I haven't been on my computer until last night, which is why I haven't said anything about it until now. Overall, it was a good time - lots of family visits and driving all over place. Liz and I got a hotel room Saturday night - it was awesome to wake up at 8 AM with no kids saying, "Time to wake up!"
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