D'Arcy from Winnipeg

Where Has Estimate Goat Been All My Life?!

D'Arcy Lussier — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:47:58 GMT

As the website says,

Estimate Goat will give you estimates with the same amount of thought that goes into some projects/designs/requirements.

Too funny...check it out here.

INETA User Groups can get FREE Web Hosting and a FREE CMS!

D'Arcy Lussier — Thu, 08 May 2008 13:42:57 GMT

Telerik has partnered with Discount ASP to provide an unbelievable offer to INETA user groups: a FREE license for their Sitefinity CMS and FREE webhosting!

This is over a $1000 value being given away to user groups, and Telerik and DiscountASP should be commended for helping out the community in such a big way!

You can get more information at the link below.

http://www.sitefinity.com/product/features/free-offer.aspx

D

Webster's Definition of Disappointment: Chris Williams' 1000th Blog Post

D'Arcy Lussier — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:23:48 GMT

So we've had the first person hit 1000 blog posts here at GeeksWithBlogs, and I must be honest that although it wasn't me, I was still pretty jacked up to see what we'd get!

Unfortunately, what we got was a play by play of his enjoyment of a Cherry-Grape Slush and Tater Tots. Ho hum.

I was expecting something more along the lines of the flash and wow of his 500th post.

;)

Amazon Canada...hey, thanks for nothing!

D'Arcy Lussier — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:13:42 GMT

I blogged yesterday about the fantastic deals available on the Amazon.Com website.

Chris posted recently about how you can get the same great price in Europe for the ASP.NET 3.5 book.

Well I wanted to let all my Canadian peeps know that even though our dollar is on par or close to with the US, Amazon Canada is offering the same book to us for the steal price of $37.79!

Thanks a lot Amazon.ca!

D

Amazon.Com Offering Huge Savings on Tech Books

D'Arcy Lussier — Tue, 06 May 2008 02:17:53 GMT

Bill and some others have posted about noticing their book on Amazon was selling for $16.00. Turns out that Amazon is having a huge sale on a bunch of tech books, some with pretty significant savings!

You can check out the entire list here.

Mike Duncan interviews Justice Gray

D'Arcy Lussier — Mon, 05 May 2008 16:01:40 GMT

If you have time, you should check out Mike Duncan's interview with Justice Gray. It's pretty entertaining and funny, as are most things when Justice is involved. Some highlights:

- Justice weighs in on how 7 out of 10 presenters are posers

- Reveals he reads all my blog posts on Saturdays

- Flogs Donald Belcham...again.

- Admits to using Nivea for Men and Morning Scrub Invigorating Exfoliant

New NIN CD...for FREE

D'Arcy Lussier — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:51:04 GMT

Looks like Trent Reznor is following in Radiohead's footsteps and is releasing his new NIN disc for FREE on the net.

You can get more information at the album's site: http://theslip.nin.com/

New Dark Knight Trailer Posted

D'Arcy Lussier — Sun, 04 May 2008 15:13:10 GMT

http://www.whysoserious.com/happytrails/trailer.htm

Not sure how I feel about it...kind of makes Joker seem like a creepy child-clown...but maybe that's just my cynical Sunday- morning-I-need-coffee side of me talking...

Iron Man Was Awesome! Stoner A-Holes Not So Much.

D'Arcy Lussier — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:51:29 GMT

On a whim I called up a buddy and we got in for the 10:45 PM showing of Iron Man tonight. It was faaaaaaantastic! Great movie, which is good considering the horrible Marvel films as of late (Spiderman 3, Fantastic Four 2, etc.). Yes there was far fetched aspects of this film, especially around technology (seriously, a media player that you press a translate button on which converts Afghanestan speak to English?), and yes there were borrowings from other sci-fi franchises (like Tony's talking computers a-la Kitt from Knight Rider, or how the big fight scene was reminiscent of the final battle in Robo-Cop)...

But WHATEVER! The movie clipped along at a good pace, had good action, and Robert Downey Jr. was *perfect* as Tony Stark.

Unfortunately, you get what you pay for...and paying for a movie that starts at 10:45 PM gets you sitting next to two pot-heads that brought their own beer and who got up repeatedly to "go to the bathroom". I also enjoyed them continuously hacking up their lungs throughout the movie, saying "Pepper T1t5" whenever Gwenyth Paltrow's character (Pepper Pots) was on screen, waving to their other stoner friends that somehow were sitting on the other side of us, answering their cell phone, and explaining how they were going to kick the crap out of some guy if they ran into him tonight. Overall they were mildly annoying and harmless, but still...UGH...

Best Company Theme Ever

D'Arcy Lussier — Fri, 02 May 2008 21:49:10 GMT

I forgot to blog about this...

When I was in Seattle for the MVP summit, we had lunch with some locals and Joe (I think it was Joe?) from the Mono team at Novell.

One of the locals was Ben Joldersma. We introduced each other, shook hands, and then he gave me his business card.

Skull Squadron

His company was named Skull Squadron! The discussion then followed...

Me - "That's not a Robotech reference by chance is it?"

Ben - "Well yes it is!"

Me - "I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU CONVERTED MYRIA YOU MICRONIAN SCUM!" (as I leap at him in the hotel lobby with a lamp from a nearby table).

Ok, no I didn't...we actually went and ate some great Thai food.

But I digress...

I checked out their website later that day, and saw what I can only describe as the coolest bio page for a company I've ever seen. (although maybe Joe Wright should have checked the backstory to Ben Dixon before donning the yellow colors ;) ).

Wondering if these flyboys are serious about their craft? Check out their portfolio page for proof that they're serious about web applications and web design.

MSDN Canada - Crack the Code Contest

D'Arcy Lussier — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:43:33 GMT

MSDN Canada has a contest right now called Crack the Code. You answer four "puzzles" (they aren't hard), and you're entered to win a $4000.00 Future Shop gift card. They have some early bird prizes as well.

You can check out the site here.

All I Want Is To Resize My VHD...

D'Arcy Lussier — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:56:56 GMT

So I tried to build a VPC to mess around with Biz Talk with, but I made one crucial error:

(Windows Server 2003 + Extra Windows Components + Visual Studio 2005 + SQL Server 2005 + Biz Talk 2006 R2 + .NET Framework 2.0 + .NET Framework 3.0) = just under 10 GB

Unfortunately, I WAY underestimated the amount of space and set my VHD size to...you guessed it...10 GB.

No worries, I'm sure there's a way to magically resize my...oh...there isn't? I CAN'T resize it? Hmm...

But then I found VHD Resizer. This is a tool that will supposedly resize VHD's. Wonderful, sounds like what I need!

Unfortunately I'm not sure if the tool actually worked. See, I can't just use this new VHD as my *new* hard drive off the bat. Even though the physical drive may be larger, the partition isn't. So it still reads as a 10 GB drive.

I found some blog posts that walk you through how to get around this, but it involves assigning your larger disk to the secondary drive slot of your VPC. No problem right? Well, problem: for whatever reason, and I triple checked my settings, my second hard drive never shows up!

At this point, I'm thinking that I'm just going to have to start over (it wasn't that much time, but it is annoying as hell), unless someone out there can shed some light on this?

Winnipeg Code Camp - Fall Edition!

D'Arcy Lussier — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 03:31:30 GMT

Our last code camp was a huge success, and we're planning on doing another one before 2008 is over!

This November we'll be putting on the next Winnipeg Code Camp, and we're already taking submissions for sessions/speakers. If you're interested in speaking, drop me an email via my blog and let me know!

We'll be updating the Code Camp site soon to reflect the new date information, so stay tuned!

Tech Ed 2008 - A Warning on Session Builder

D'Arcy Lussier — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 07:41:46 GMT

I went through my session builder for Tech Ed 2008 and picked out all the sessions that looked appealing. Now normally I wouldn't bother, especially this early. But I'm heading down on a work-visa: MVP's can work at the "Ask the Experts" booth at Tech Ed in exchange for a free pass to the conference. You have to schedule when you're *working* though, which also means you need to know what you want to take in beforehand so you know when to work.

Anyway, the point of all this is that I'm really looking forward to taking in some BizTalk sessions, but I was disappointed when I reviewed the sessions that there were very few BizTalk slots. Now, this is important:

I was selecting each Day/Time Slot and filtering by that.

So after everything is slotted in, I thought "hmm, I wonder if there are any sessions on the IT Pro side of things.". So I went to the Tech Ed IT Pro site and saw that oh...you can do a full session catalog listing. No Biz Talk showed up, but I thought...maybe I'll just double check on the Dev side.

I bring up the session catalog, and I filter *by keyword* (since I'm doing the full catalog and not per day).

WHOOMP

That's the sound of a plethora of sessions I had never seen before showing up on my screen. Puzzled, I took a deeper look at some of these. What did I find? A bunch of sessions with *awesome* sounding titles, but a "No timeslot assigned" tag!

Really?! So we know there are sessions, but not all are assigned yet? I guess there's still some logistics that need to happen, but I'm hoping that they get this input sooner than later, otherwise it'll suck for those of us already making our plans based on incomplete information.

8 Reasons Why You MUST Attend Dev Teach Toronto

D'Arcy Lussier — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 05:18:11 GMT

Dev Teach Toronto is only a few weeks away, and if you haven't registered yet you need to do so NOW! Why? Because otherwise a very angry French man will kick your @$$. In fact, you should review Guy's blog post although I must warn you, reading it might mislead you. You might be sitting there after reading his post thinking:

Gee, I can't go to Dev Teach...I wouldn't fit in...I don't...

a) have facial hair

b) suffer from baldness

c) know how to talk to girls

d) know how to speak Hebrew

I'm happy to report that *none* of those things should be a deterrent to you attending Dev Teach.

(Note: For the record, Guy did mention that he "selected the prettiest ones"...read into the facial hair and baldness angles as you will...)

However, you may be thinking "Hmm, this is an impressive group, but are there any *other* speakers coming to Dev Teach? Well yes, yes there are my friend! Gaze upon the magnificence below...

Derek "East Coast Metrosexual" Hatchard

When he's not looking for the closest bag store you can find Derek geeking out on his Mac. This bastion of East-Coast Machismo will *wow* you with his recollections of what he wished he knew when he graduated (and word has it this isn't *just* about technology, hear that ladies?)

JP "Real Men Don't Need a Mouse" Boodhoo

The man who always has a free USB port is back, ready to evangelize to the masses about generics, DDD, and why you need to stop feeding the unnecessary mouse market...real men know their shortcuts beyatch!

Jean-Luc "Paparazzi" David

A community favorite, one of our own Microsoft Developer Advisors is speaking at Dev Teach. But be careful...chances are that when you attend his session, you'll also be gracing his Flickr page later on...and when that happens, your status will be elevated from "attendee" to "LEGEND VIA ASSOCIATION"

Jim "Sexual Chocolate" Duffy

Jim Duffy is the Ebony to Rod Paddock's Ivory, but don't let this cauldron of sexual chocolate intimidate you. After he indoctrinates you into the love-sect that is Virtual Earth and ASP.NET, you'll be feeling the love!

James "The Godfather" Kovacs

Oh, you aren't using an ORM? Oh, you are, and it isn't NHibernate? I hope you like sleeping with the fishes, 'cause the kingpin of the NHibernate Mafia is coming to Toronto...and he *DEMANDS* respect!

Donald "Igloo of Love" Belcham

Edmonton's premiere bachelor and supposed protoge of Justice Gray is back to wow you with his wisdom on brownfield projects, CC and Nant, and something to do with bulls.

Rob "Luscious" Windsor

*MEOW* Rob would like to introduce you to WCF at Dev Teach, and he's also going to be showing you how to upgrade from VB 6.0 to .NET...over a nice bottle of Pinot Noir and some raw oysters...

D'Arcy "Don't Dare Me, I'll Do It" Lussier

Oh yeah, I'll be there too. ;)

Now if *THIS* group doesn't get you registered for Dev Teach, I don't know if *anything* will!