Software Development
This year I am going to CodeMash, and I couldn't be more excited. Last year I came very close to going, but tough financial analysis ended up nixing it. This year, we've made the adjustments, and I can't wait to go!
For those who don't know of it, CodeMash is a two-day language-agnostic, developer-centric convention. There are sessions on languages from Ruby to C#, and a bit of everything in between. It's held at the Kalahari resort in Sandusky, OH, which also features a huge indoor water park. If our children weren't currently full-time drowning hazards, I'd bring the...
Long live Developer Beers! Alt.bug has been a lot of fun, gathering .Net developers via Twitter and blogs for beer and good discussion. But, in getting beers after the last Raleigh.rb meetup, I realized there are many developers out there who exist in totally different ecosystems, but who have great insights, and an appreciation for beer. I think in changing the name, we can alter the focus, and make Developer Beers a chance for software development professionals to gather, outside of platform, and exchange ideas on software development. Also, in changing the name, and the focus, I'd like to also...
I've been in enough companies, that I have started to develop an almost pathological aversion to meetings. The wikipedia entry on meetings actually touches on the problems I run into: "In organizations, meetings are an important vehicle for personal contact. They are so common and pervasive in organizations, however, that many take them for granted and forget that, unless properly planned and executed, meetings can be a waste of time and resources."
So, how properly plan and execute a meeting? I have a few rules that help:
Does this have to be a meeting? Some meetings are often...
Happy to say I managed to back up the data, test drive 2.1 locally, and push it up to the site here to finally run on Subtext 2.1.
True credit goes to Phil Haack and the guys on the SubText team for making an OS blog engine that "just works".
2008 was a pretty good year: I left a job where the path forward was to abandon my .Net skills in favor of learning Java, and returned to Progress Energy to develop and support .Net applications. I was elected President of TriNUG, and given the opportunity to stop whining and start making TriNUG better. I started using Twitter, and really grew my community of peers by dozens. I feel like if I don't put something down for where I want to be at the end of 2009, I will spend much of the year drifting about. So here...
RDU Code Camp was yesterday (Nov 15). It was just an awesome time. From what folks say, it went very well. I'd like to thank all of the folks who made this possible:
Chris Love - Chris was the original driver for doing another Code Camp this year. He took the lead on getting the speakers and sessions together, and stepped up to handle the emceeing on the event.
Rob Zelt - Rob secured all the swag for the event, resulting in some very happy folks when they left yesterday afternoon.
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RDU Code Camp is this Saturday, Nov 15, from 8:15am to 5pm. Door open at 7:30am.
It promises to be a great day full of developer-oriented content. In addition, there will be an Open Spaces, and an XBox 360 for playing Rock Band! Lunch will be provided, and there are prizes at the end - hope to see you there!
There have been numerous postings announcing that Microsoft is going to start shipping jQuery alongside Visual Studio. If you haven't read about this already, see Scott Guthrie's post.
This is wonderful news for the developer community for many reasons.
First, the acceptance of jQuery by Microsoft should be contagious. A lot of large enterprise organizations get their software from Microsoft, and their software tools from Microsoft. The rule in those circles seems to be "No one ever got fired for using Microsoft", and so, Microsoft tools tend to dominate the short list of what can be used in an enterprise environment. With...
RDU CodeCamp is coming!
Nov 15, 2008 at ECPI in Raleigh we will be having the RDU CodeCamp. Registration will be coming soon.
Currently, we are actively seeking speakers! If you are interested in speaking at RDU CodeCamp please drop us a line at http://www.codecamp.org/Speakers.aspx - We would love to hear from you.
Yesterday I had a live production app start suddenly raising errors after being in fine shape for over a year. In digging into the code to see the guts of the error, I found this:
if (Session["PhaseTypeID"].ToString() == ((int)Enums.PhaseType.Study).ToString())
The session variable isn't being tested for null in this case, it is being used via the toString() call, so when it is null, as in this case, it throws an "Object reference not set exception".
When confronted by code this wrong, there is an overpowering urge to fix it. In my case, I was ready to pull the session vars into the base...
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