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Random Friday: On Turning Four

June 10, 2011 in Articles, News, Reference

No, I’m not talking about my mental age. My son turned four this past week which means I’m four years into my world domination plan . One of the gifts we gave my son was a toolbox with plastic toys so we can train him on building the mega-lasers and fortresses needed to take over the world. Turns out that before you start dominating the world, you have to start taking baby steps. And then toddler steps. And then 4-year old running terror steps. In these past four years, I’ve learned a lot. For example, you can get a four year old to believe anything. That’s come in useful as a tool for manipulating my child to do my bidding. We were at the mall one day and he asked about a picture of a zombie with rotting teeth and without skipping a beat, my…(read more)

Tags: .NET, asp, Blogging, c#, family, host, hosting, microsoft, Personal, programming, Random, soccer, sql, vb.net No Comments »

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Random Friday: My Accomplishments

June 3, 2011 in Articles, News, Reference

It’s that time of year at Microsoft when managers are busily preparing reviews of their reports and preparing for the big stack ranking . Yesterday, my manager sent out an email asking his reports to email him with their accomplishments in the past year to help jog his memory. This arms him with important information when he goes to the matt for us arguing why we’re more deserving of a higher ranking than some other manager’s sad report. Here was my response. In the past year, I… Escaped from a black hole. Twice. I forgot my jacket in there and had to go get it. Discovered an albino polar bear. Proved Fermat’s Last Theorem as well as his penultimate theorem. Found Waldo. And made him change out of that ridiculous shirt and hat. Discovered he…(read more)

Tags: .NET, asp, c#, Friday, host, hosting, Humor, hyperbola, hyperbole, microsoft, Personal, programming, review, sql, stack ranking, vb.net No Comments »

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Random Thought Friday

May 27, 2011 in Articles, News, Reference

I’m reading through the archives of a blog where the author posts something random every Friday (yesterday was Thursday, and tomorrow is Saturday). His Friday posts are completely unrelated to the main theme and content of his blog. I like that idea a lot. I don’t blog as much as I used to mostly because I feel the need to spend so much time on each blog post. A lot of the posts I write take a bit of research and experimentation before I’m ready to post them. But a random thought? I can pull one of those out of my ascot any day of the week, and twice on Friday. But I’ll only do it once. And yes, thanks for asking, but the thought has occurred to me that I already have another medium where I post random thoughts 7 days a week, Twitter (I’m @haacked…(read more)

Tags: .NET, appreciation, asp, c#, Friday, host, hosting, microsoft, Personal, programming, sql, vb.net No Comments »

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Making Let Me Bing That For You Open Source

May 12, 2011 in Articles, News, Reference

Almost two years ago, I announced the launch of http://letmebingthatforyou.com/ , a blatant and obvious rip-off of the Let me Google that for you website. The initial site was created by Maarten Balliauw and Juliën Hanssens in response to a call for help I made. It was just something we did for fun. I’ve been maintaining the site privately always intending to spend some time to refresh the code and open source it. Just recently, I upgraded the site to ASP.NET MVC 3, refactored a bunch of code, and moved the site to AppHarbor . Why AppHarbor? I’ve heard such good things about how easy it is to deploy to AppHarbor so I wanted to try it out firsthand myself, and this small little project seemed like a perfect fit. I had been working on the code…(read more)

Tags: .NET, appharbor, asp, bitbucket, c#, host, hosting, letmebingthatforyou, microsoft, Open Source, OSS, Personal, programming, sql, vb.net No Comments »

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End Of Year 2010 Extravaganza

December 31, 2010 in Articles, News, Reference

It’s the end of the year and it’s time for the annual year in review blog post. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t worry, you remembered to turn off the stove before leaving. You’re also probably thinking, “do we really need an end of year blog post from everyone?”. I asked on Quora , and the answer is a definitive no, we don’t. This is my absolutely unnecessary self indulgent end of year blog post. I wouldn’t have it any other way, would you? I didn’t want to settle with an ordinary “Ho hum bore you to tears 2010 Year in Review Blog Post”. Mainly because I hate to see you cry. Really. Please stop. What I wanted was nothing short of nuclear supernova fireworks, dancing panda bears, and double rainbow fish that shoot sparks out their butts…(read more)

Tags: .NET, asp, c#, end-of-year, host, hosting, microsoft, Personal, programming, sql, vb.net, year-in-review No Comments »

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See Me in Brazil and Argentina in March

December 21, 2010 in Articles, ASP.NET, ASP.NET MVC, aspnetmvc, News, Reference

Along with James Senior , I’ll be speaking at a couple of free Web Camps events in South America in March 2011. Buenos Aires, Argentina – March 14-15, 2011 São Paulo, Brazil – March 18-19, 2011 The registration links are not yet available, but I’ll update this blog post once they are. For a list of all upcoming Web Camps events, see the events list . If you’re not familiar with Web Camps, the website provides the following description, emphasis mine: Microsoft's 2 day Web Camps are events that allow you to learn and build websites using ASP.NET MVC , WebMatrix, OData and more. Register today at a location near you! These events will cover all 3 topics and will have presentations on day 1 with hands on development on day 2. They will be available…(read more)

Tags: .NET, argentina, asp, brazil, c#, host, hosting, microsoft, Personal, programming, sql, vb.net, webcamps No Comments »

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How Would You Maximize Profit From A Time Machine?

December 18, 2010 in Articles, News, Reference

At some point, everybody and every team makes a mistake they regret and wish they could take back. During our regular status meetings, I sometimes make the mistake of saying something like “if I could go back in time, I’d tell myself not to make that decision.” Image from the greenhead . That tees it up for our lead developer who’s so smart even his ass is smart. You might say he’s a smart ass. His response is usually “Really? I can think of a lot better things I would do with a time machine.” Which got me thinking. Hypothetically speaking of course, if I did have a time machine, how exactly would I maximize my profit? Often, time travel questions fixate on boring topics such as if you could meet anyone in history, who would it be? Lincoln?…(read more)

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Attention Denizens of Black Rock City

August 30, 2010 in Articles, News, Reference

Our eye in the sky reports two angry evil (but devishly good looking) cyborg units, XSP 2000 and TRS-80, are fast approaching Black Rock City. They are considered very armed and dangerous. In fact, they are mostly armed and not much else. These cyborgs do not come in peace. I repeat, they are to be considerd hostiles. However, we’ve received a secret communiqué that reveals a weakness built into these cyborg models. Due to a lack of TDD during development, a bug in their FOF system (friend or foe) causes them to view anyone offering a frosty beverage to be a friend, not foe. Any attempts to engage with these hostiles will result in calamity unless you offer them an ice cold beverage. For the sake of your beloved city, I suggest stocking up….(read more)

Tags: .NET, asp, burning man, c#, cardboard, cyborgs, host, hosting, Humor, microsoft, Personal, programming, robots, sql, vb.net No Comments »

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Back from Alaska With A New Release of Subtext

June 28, 2010 in Articles, News, Reference

My son and I returned from a week long vacation to visit my parents in Anchorage Alaska last night. Apparently, having the boys out of the house was quite the vacation for my wife as well. We had a great time watching the World Cup and going on outings to the zoo as well as hiking. Well, at least one of us was hiking while another was just enjoying the ride. We hiked up a trail to Flattop which has spectacular views of Anchorage. Unfortunately, we didn’t make it all the way to the top as the trail became a bit too much while carrying a toddler who was more interested in watching Go, Diego, Go episodes on his iPod. Funny how all that “hiking” works up an appetite. Also, while in Alaska I gave a talk on ASP.NET MVC 2 to the local .NET User…(read more)

Tags: .NET, Alaska, asp, c#, DotNet, host, hosting, microsoft, Personal, programming, sql, Subtext, vb.net No Comments »

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Is Arrogance a Factor in Success?

June 6, 2010 in Articles, News, Reference

I saw a recent Twitter thread discussing the arrogance of Steve Jobs. One person (ok, it was my buddy Rob ) postulated that it was this very arrogance that led Apple to their successes. I suppose it’s quite possible that it had a factor, but I tend to think Steve Job’s vision and drive were much bigger factors. This idea is a reflection of a pervasive belief out there that arrogance is excusable, perhaps even acceptable and admirable in successful people and institutions. In contrast, I think we’d all agree that that arrogance is universally detestable in unsuccessful people. But is arrogance necessary for success? I certainly don’t think so. I think there’s an alternative characteristic that can lead to just as much success. Joy. My example…(read more)

Tags: .NET, Arrogance, asp, c#, host, hosting, Joy, leadership, microsoft, Personal, programming, sql, success, vb.net, visionary No Comments »