Lately I have been extremely busy helping with the We Are Microsoft – Charity Challenge Weekend. Well that weekend is almost here I am am extremely excited! The list of charities that were put together were absolutely amazing, the people organizing the event are extremely talented, and the event promises to be extremely high energy! The Bartlesville .NET User Group, that I am the President of, has put together a very good team of developers to compete in this challenge, and we promise not to take...

For those of you that may know, and those of you that don’t, I was scheduled to go to PDC 2008. The the inevitable happened. We ended up having issues with a third party vendor the week before I was scheduled to go. We also ended up having other issues and scheduling conflict that all came together to mean one thing, I MISSED PDC! I was so excited, I had never been a part of an organization that was will for me to go to one of the top conferences. But, the world’s aligned to keep me from my dream....

I was perusing Zain Naboulsi’s blog today catching up on my blog reading and I noticed a post he had that I knew I needed to pass on. If you have ever had the pleasure to attend one of Zain’s presentations or hear him speak on one of his webcasts probably one of the first things you notice about Zain is that he is a very prolific speaker. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work on my presentation skills, and Zain is someone who I would like to be more like in my presentations. Zain spoke at the...

For most of my career I have wanted to make a difference to society. Something that would changes someone's life, or leave a lasting impression. Part of this is because for part of my life I wrote Interactive Voice Response systems. You know the ones that no one likes, where the company you are trying to get support from specifically disallows “zeroing out” to an operator and forces you to wait through their nasty tree of menus and submenus. For the past few months I have been working up to this...

Here is a job opportunity I was recently notified of for someone interested in working in Tulsa, OK. Senior Level SQL Developer 6 month contract Microsoft SQL Server Developer and Data Analysis Darbi Newman Professional Recruiter JOCO Philtower Building 427 S. Boston, #12C Tulsa, OK 74103 dnewman@jocotulsa.com www.jocotulsa.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/...

Senior Project Manager 3-6 month extendable contract Excellent communication skills Good facilitator Works independently Semi technical Knows Microsoft Project and other MS Office products MUST HAVE 2-3 years current experience as a Project Manager Energy experience is a PLUS!!! Darbi Newman Professional Recruiter JOCO Philtower Building 427 S. Boston, #12C Tulsa, OK 74103 918-398-7593 x102 dnewman@jocotulsa.com www.jocotulsa.com http://www.linkedin.com/in/...

Being a user group leader (Bartlesville .NET User Group) I get a lot of messages for recruiters looking for jobs. Given the current market situation I like to pass these on. This one looks pretty interesting. If you are interested give Darbi a call and let him know I sent you: Know anyone (maybe you) who might be interested in the following position? It is located in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. It is a direct hire position with a great company. If you are interested or know someone who is, send me a...

I received the following email the other day: Jason, We would like to extend our thanks for your participation in the INETA Community Champion program and your commitment to the developer community. You faced some challenging competition yet your accomplishments speak for themselves. The Community Champion team is thrilled to inform you that you are one of our top ten winners for Q3 2008. Congratulations Jason! INETA will be announcing the winners this week in our November INETA Newsletter as well...

I just read the MSDN article on the Visual Round Trip Analyzer. This tool is awesome for finding bottlenecks in your web applications. It also allows you to see where your expensive download points are. With this tool I discovered that if I put a parameter after my large javascripts, such as JQuery, I can set the content expiration in the headers for 1 year. Then any time I need to change the javascript file (also works with images, css, etc...) the browser will then treat the file as new and redownload...

I got this email from Steve Ballmer. Okay I know if was more than likely a marketing person from Microsoft that came up with this not Steve, but I thought I would share it as it had some good information in it. I basically got this email because of some newsletter I signed up for on Microsoft's site. A Platform for the Next Technology Revolution During the past decade, a dramatic transformation in the world of information technology has been taking shape. It's a transformation that will change the...

I found a great series of on demand webcasts on the MSDN website. It took me a while to track down the full series but here are the links: MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 01 of 15): Overview (Level 100) MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 02 of 15): Contracts (Level 200) MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to Bottom (Part 03 of 15): Contract Versioning (Level 200) MSDN Webcast: Windows Communication Foundation Top to...

I received my MBA from the University of Tulsa in 2002 while working full time. I learned a lot from grad school and home to get another Master's degree in the future. The one thing I regret is that I should have looked at more schools for my MBA. TU at the time was rated in the Top 25 for Graduate schools in US News. So academia wise it was a great choice. The biggest thing I have learned since graduating is academics are not the only thing you should evaluate a school on. Even with getting a 3.5...

If you have never taken a look at Microsoft's Patterns and Practices site, you should! I find that I may not use all of the application blocks, guidance packages, or other things I see there, but I find value in pretty much everything on the site. I find that by looking though the source code I can find new uses for Design Patterns that I have been using for most of my software engineering career. You can find one of my favorite guidance packages here...

I have been a big fan of Launchy for some time. I find that it helps me be just a tiny bit more productive each day. It at least let's me not have to search through my start menu for the program I want to launch. However, today I found a new alternative provide by Microsoft Office Labs. This application has some real potential to replace Launchy on my laptop. I will continue to use and let everyone know what I find out. Check it out here: http://www.officelabs.com/p...

Ok so I did a little research and I found that the new version of iTunes pushed the MobileMe client to my Vista PC. I like Apple products, however I think if Apple keeps these tactics up of pushing unwanted software through iTunes (which we are forced to use by Apple in order to use their MP3 players), I will have to buy a new MP3 player, and stop using Apple products. Microsoft please hit the mark with Zune 3

Ok so I was having issues with my wireless connection so I went into my Network and Sharing on my Vista Ultimate PC. I found the following: Notice the MobileMe Preferences? Has Microsoft loaded this through a service pack or update? Or has iTunes loaded this through one of their updates? I don't subscribe to MobileMe and it isn't something I chose to install. I wish software vendors would stop forcing their wears on us. I assume this is Apple doing this as they did the same thing with Safari. I will...

Ok, I have been trying out Microsoft's new Live Writer product. Although, I find the product extremely helpful, I keep running into the same error. It seems to happen to me everytime I hover over certain links. It is starting to really get annoying. Below is the error. I so far enjoy Windows Live Writer, but if I cannot find the source of this error, I may have to stop using it...