The Guide of a MOSSLover

Dazzling Silverlight and SharePoint at SSWUG VConference

If you have questions or comments don’t hesitate to contact me.

posted @ Friday, April 24, 2009 8:47 AM | Feedback (1) |

INETA Community Champions Award

A couple nights ago I got an email stating that I won some award.  At first I saw the header and I was skeptical, because I had never really heard of the award.  I thought it was another scam where someone wanted me to throw them some personal information in exchange for some GBP...I opened the email and realized my INETA Mentor was cced and I actually won an award.  It's been a while since I've won an award.  In fact I think the last award I won was in high school or college and involved Cardinal's Tickets.  So I was a little surprised when they told me my community work had won me this award.  I guess this is INETA's equivalent to MVP (or so people keep telling me).  I guess at some point they will link my name, picture, and profile at this website: http://www.ineta.org/Champions/CommunityChampionInfo.aspx.
I guess as thanks goes I have to thank everyone I know in the community...Too many people to list...You know who you are...Special thanks to Jeff Julian, Lee Brandt, Brian Laird, Michael Lotter, Scott Spradlin, John Alexander, Doug Butscher, and Randy Walker...I don't think I'd be doing what I do without good friends who lead by example, especially Michael who deserves ten or twenty of these awards.  He's the event king.  Anyway I'll catch you all later.

posted @ Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:56 PM | Feedback (1) |

MCTS in WSS 3.0 Application Development

I passed it with a score that I like - 870.  I studied for a couple weeks and I did it.  I will do it for the other 3...My goal is to pass every single one of those exams by the end of the year, especially the dev ones before KB Man:)
I have a blog post upcoming I will be discussing how to create a custom policy and deploy code to the bin, because someone actually posed this question.  I also owe you guys an event receiver step by step creation on how to check in and check out files.  In the next few weeks expect both posts if I have the time.  Thanks to everyone who encouraged me and sent well wishes.  Don't think I could do it without people getting my back.

posted @ Thursday, April 23, 2009 11:43 PM | Feedback (1) |

Upcoming SharePoint Saturday Events

There are four upcoming SharePoint Saturday events all listed at http://www.sharepointsaturday.org/ with speaker information and submission information.  Some of them have registration links posted.  The four cities and dates are:

SharePoint Saturday San Francisco on Saturday, April 25th

SharePoint Saturday DC on Saturday, May 2nd

SharePoint Saturday Chicago on Saturday, June 13th

SharePoint Saturday Charlotte on Saturday, June 20th

If you cannot attend any of these events Mark Miller at http://www.endusersharepoint.com will be posting live feeds the day of the events, so you can watch the feeds and see what’s going on at the sessions through live bloggers.  Some events will be live streaming or posting videos from the events.

We may have future events in other cities, such as:

Harrisonville, Arkansas on Saturday, July 18th

If you are interested in creating a SharePoint Saturday event in your city we can help you by setting you up with a website, discussing how other events were setup, and possibly setting you up with some sponsors.  Please contact me through this website if you are interested or on twitter.  Mostly the work falls on  a coordinator in the city.  It is really hard work, but I will tell you it pays off in the end.  People really like free SharePoint Training.  Any help spreading the word for the events list above would be appreciated.  Thanks so much in advance ten fold.

posted @ Monday, April 20, 2009 2:02 PM | Feedback (0) |

70-541, Stump MOSSLover…

On Thursday I am taking 70-541…I am taking many practice exams, reading books, watching webcasts, and doing a billion other things…I encourage anyone to post on this blog thread or in email any questions to stump me related to the WSS 3.0 Application Development.  If you do it I’ll blog about the questions that you ask and research the answers more in depth and explain why that is the answer.  I encourage a good challenge.  Later on this month I will be taking the next exam which will probably be the MOSS Dev Certification and make a similar post.  Also, if you’ve taken the exam please refrain from posting exam questions, because I’m not too interested in exam cheating.  I’d rather see similar questions, but not specific questions.  Anyone can post, so go ahead.

Also, if anyone wants to form an online study group for future certs let me know.  I’m also for using skype or live meeting or something.

posted @ Monday, April 20, 2009 1:23 PM | Feedback (3) |

Two Weeks…No Bed…

All right so I exaggerated slightly with the title, but I literally did not see my bed for two weeks.  A couple weeks ago was Passover, so I flew to Florida to visit my grandmother.  Nothing exciting really, but Passover and fixing bugs.  Then my grandmother, her husband, and I flew to Philadelphia to see my cousins.  We had a pretty full house.  I stayed for about a week and drove into the New Jersey B&R Office.  I also spoke at the Philadelphia Office Geeks about Silverlight 2.0 and SharePoint.  It was a lot of fun and it was sort of like a spying mission.  I was going to come and check out the office geeks.  Just to see what local user groups were like.  It felt very much like the KC Office Geeks, except David Mann had a little bit of a different setup.  I like how he spoke about patches.  One of our ug leaders wanted to do something similar and it looks to work out pretty well.  I think we will start this up at the next meeting in May or the meeting after.  I think I could definitely mesh into the user group if I was living on the Jersey side closer to Philly.  Next time when I visit I want to check out the NYSPUG, NY SharePoint Developer’s User Group, and NJSPUG.  I noticed a lack of SPS events on the Philly and Jersey sides.  I’m not sure if a Philly SPS is a good idea and would saturate the area, but it sounded like they want something out in Philly at least.  I could definitely see myself helping plan something once I got settled in next year.  It’s really weird how natural this stuff comes now.  I’m already plotting what I want to join and do next year.  I sort of already know a few people, so it’s not like when I first moved to Kansas City.

When I first moved to Kansas City I felt like a fish out of water.  The only people I knew were from college and most of them had moved on to other cities or other places in the Kansas City Community.  It took me at least a month to force myself to attend a user group meeting.  For several months I was just an attendee.  The real turning point was joining KCOG and speaking that first time about disaster recovery.  Also, taking over KCOG in 2008 helped me out a lot plus attending all the events I attended last year.  I feel like I could move to a city now and I might actually know a few people.  Not a herd of people.  I’m still not a social butterfly, but I can go up to one person at a time and make a conversation.  Every day it gets better and better.  It’s really weird I still blush when someone comes up to me and I don’t know them. Somehow from my blog or twitter they know me.  I don’t like fame or recognition it’s not for me.  I had the most fun in St. Louis.  I met some good people at MOSS Camp, but inevitably the best parts will always be with the friends I am most comfortable.  I don’t regret not being home, but I am starting to miss it a little more.  I don’t think Gambit can cope with me being gone.  He was meowing all last night.  All this morning he kept jumping on me saying “Hi I missed you meow meow meow.”  Two more weeks at home and then I’m gone again…Time to catch up with people, then disappear again.  Definitely appreciating everyone a lot more. 

posted @ Monday, April 20, 2009 1:18 PM | Feedback (0) |

Free Events this Weekend

The next event going on is in Kansas City.  I’m not sure if they are still accepting others.  It is called Coders 4 Charity.  The event occurs Friday through Sunday.  You basically live at Centriq in Leawood, KS.  You are assigned a team and a charity.  This year I am going to be on Lee Brandt and Tim Wright’s team again.  We are the reigning champs creating a WSS 3.0 site for a Boyscout troop in Blue Springs, MO.  As last year we will most likely play a lot of Rockband in between coding and helping out charities.  If you would like more information please visit this site at http://coders4charities.org/.

There is another event in Richmond, VA, the Richmond Code Camp.  It looks like a lot of good names are on the list for this free event including, Jessica Moss, Kevin Griffin, Susan Lennon, and Kevin Griffin.  There are sessions SharePoint related and .Net General with JQuery, SQL, and other good technologies.  If you are on the east cost it looks like this is the free event to attend.

So there you have it one midwest event, one east coast event, and one west coast event.  Granted I’m not covering north and south in each area, but there is only so much knowledge I can retain and cover all at once.  The value of these events is great, because you get so much knowledge in the one hour plus sessions usually for the SharePoint Saturdays and Code Camps.  Coders 4 Charity though is very unique, because if you are like me you may not readily go out and volunteer at a food pantry or the habitat for humanity.  In fact I’m pretty sure habitat would not want me building a house, because I believe I would destroy it more than I would actually help out the project.  That’s why I do coders, so I can help out in my own way.  I also helped my team kick butt last year and any of you guys coming this year I’m challenging you to beat Lee’s team (that’s right bring it).  If you are coming this weekend I’ll catch you there.  If I see you at a future event then I will catch you at that event.

posted @ Monday, April 20, 2009 1:04 PM | Feedback (0) |

The Amazingness of Life

posted @ Saturday, April 11, 2009 11:51 PM | Feedback (0) |

I want to Update an Item, but I don't want the user to see an alert...

I saw this question on a certification exam for WSS 3.0. I narrowed down the answer and it appears that I was right. I wasn't sure if I was correct, so I consulted someone and they looked up the answer. I also went around google to see what is the actual answer. It turns out if you don't run Item.Update(), but instead Item.SystemUpdate() it doesn't end up modifying the Modified and Modified By fields.  This basically means that no alert will get sent when you choose this option over the regular update option.  It’s almost as if a ghost is modifying the fields, because you can’t really tell the fields are updated without paying close attention to what they were beforehand.  Pretty cool in theory, but if you use this option too much I can see it becoming unregulated code.  As Uncle Ben says, “with great great power comes great responsibility.”  You as the SharePoint Developer need to make sure you run all the options before using one piece of code over another piece of code.  With that I will catch you guys later.  That concludes your daily tip for today and possibly the week.

posted @ Tuesday, April 07, 2009 7:56 AM | Feedback (0) |