Wednesday, January 07, 2009
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I pulled into my driveway after work yesterday and my son immediately starts asking if we could go feed the ducks near one of the ponds in the neighborhood. I had told him yesterday that we could do it and so we grabbed some bread and his wagon and walked down there. My wife and daughter followed (at first, then raced ahead of us) on their bikes.
The pond we picked was along one of two main roads in our neighborhood. Even though the speed limit is 25 and there's a pool and playground near the pond there are still a fair number of cars that really whiz down that road. We have sidewalks and the pond is set off a good distance from the road so we thought we'd be fine as we started to break apart bread and throw it to the hordes of ducks that descended upon our little family.
We had been feeding the ducks for about 10 minutes when we heard a loud "BUMP!". I turned to the road and saw a small white car with a cloud of feathers flying around it. The car's brake lights lit up briefly and then the car continued on its way. I then noticed the small feathered mass in the center of a LOT of feathers in the road...some still swirling around in the breeze created by the car that had just caused this accident. My daughter screamed and started crying saying that the car had just killed that duck. We were easily 150 feet away from it so I couldn't tell if the duck was alive or dead from where I was but I offered to go check for her to see if it was OK. Thankfully my son was too involved in feeding the ducks to have noticed the whole incident.
As I walked closer to the duck I thought it was dead at first. Just a big mess of feathers around this mostly black mass in the road...then as I was about 15 feet away it raised it's head and looked at me. "At least it's alive" I thought, though I then wondered how badly it might be injured. I saw another car coming down the road so I stepped slowly into the road to motion for the driver to move around the duck and as I got closer it started to try to move but looked like it couldn't get up. I told my daughter the duck was still alive but might be hurt pretty bad so she could come see (there wasn't any blood around or visible external injuries) the duck. I tried to get it to move out of the road so that it wouldn't get plowed into again just laying there but it just looked around and wiggled a bit, never trying to move even when I tried to entice it with some bread.
A lot of cars passed by, oddly enough none willing to help or even find out what was going on until one guy in a truck stopped to ask if we needed help. Right about then one of my neighbors who's a police officer came by on his way home. I had explained what happened and how I was trying to get the duck to move and he was getting ready to call animal control when all of a sudden the duck stood up and slowly waddled off the road and back towards the pond. My daughter was real excited to see it move like that and I followed the duck over to the sidewalk where my daughter was. The duck stopped on the grass just off the sidewalk and sat down again. My daughter was still trying to get it to eat and by this time my son had run out of bread so he and my wife walked down to where we were...his 3 year old attention span quickly turned from the ducks to the police car that my neighbor was driving.
My neighbor and I ended up talking for a few more minutes and the duck ended up walking down the small hill toward the water and sat down again. It seemed the duck was fine, though understandably dazed. My wife and daughter raced off on their bikes as my daughter had wanted to tell one of her friends about this "adventure" and my son hopped back in his wagon so I could take him home.
Wednesday, December 03, 2008
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Thanks to everyone in Charleston who came out for that event yesterday! It was a good event, lots of good information and I even got to give a short presentation on Mobile development. Thanks Chad, Brian and Glen for coming down!
Friday, November 21, 2008
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One of the questions that has come up several times during my presentation on using the Windows Mobile State & Notification Broker to build call blocking applications or SMS Interception applications was to find out what effect multiple apps monitoring for the same state change event would have. I had suspected all along that each app would be able to handle it just fine since in essence the OS on the phone is also monitoring for that state change to accomplish the built in functionality at the same time your app is monitoring to accomplish any custom functionality.
I confirmed this last night with a little experiment on the Call Blocking application I wrote. I'll write that up further and post the examples to my VBMobile blog later on.
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
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I saw "big" news today that Google released a search app for the iPhone that lets a user search using their voice as input. Wow - I'm impressed. That's pretty groundbreaking.
Those of us using Windows Mobile Live Search have had this feature for some time...sorry Google/iPhone zealots!
FWIW, I'm not really bashing Google - they do their core function (search) very well. I just don't get all the swooning over Google/iPhone.
Friday, November 07, 2008
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For those of you like me who missed PDC (though I did watch the streaming video as time permitted!) you can now catch some of the PDC content live at an event near you with MSDN Developer Conference. I'm going to try to head to the Atlanta one on December 16th. More details below as seen in Brian's blog:
The Speakers
Chad Brooks
Jeff W. Barnes
Wally McClure
Glen Gordon
Mark Dunn
Steve Porter
Murray Gordon
Todd Fine
Jim Wooley
Brian Hitney
Keith Rome
Todd Miranda
Dave Scruggs
Shawn Wildermuth
Mickey Gousset
Dan Waters
Bruce Thomas
Alan Stevens
The Buzz
The nature of software development is radically changing… Are you ready?
- Experience Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Platform
Create applications that seamlessly bridge the gaps between PC, Web, and phone - Be among the first to see Windows 7
See the latest advances in Multi-Touch Application Development - Take your .NET skills to the next level
See sessions on WPF 4.0, Silverlight 2, ASP.NET 4.0, Parallel Programming, Live Mesh and more
The Cost? Just $99.
And, did we mention that attendees will get some cool giveaways?
The Sessions
Cloud Services:
- Lap Around Cloud Services
- Developing and Deploying Your First Cloud Services
- A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services
- Developing Applications Using Data Services
Client and Presentation:
- Windows Presentation Framework (WPF) Roadmap
- Developing Data-centric Applications Using the WPF DataGrid and Ribbon Controls
- Building Business Focused Applications using Silverlight 2
- ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap
Tools, Languages, and Framework:
- The Future of Managed Languages: F#, C#, and Visual Basic
- A Lap Around "Oslo"
- "Rosario": A Sprint with the Next Version of Microsoft Visual Studio Team System
- Parallel Programming for Managed Code Developers
The Extras
In addition to the sessions above, there will be tons of experts on hand for you to interact with and ask questions!
Thursday, October 30, 2008
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The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is coming to Charleston on December 2, 2008 at the Embassy Suites Hotel (near the Airport)!
The MSDN Southern Fried Roadshow is a free developer event with a southern flair, where you will learn about some of the latest developments in Microsoft technologies. For December, 2008 the Roadshow will be presented by Architect Evangelist Chad Brooks and Developer Evangelists Glen Gordon and Brian Hitney. Chad, Glen & Brian will be loading up a minivan with lots of goodies, and trying to hit 4 cities in North Carolina and South Carolina in 4 days.
- Take a tour of Microsoft’s cloud computing platform and the services that make it easy to give your applications the most compelling experiences and features. Explore the journey a developer takes, from writing a service to launching that service in the cloud. Learn about the cloud services that enable developers to easily create or extend their applications and services.
- Microsoft Silverlight 2 provides a powerful platform for building the next generation of rich interactive applications on the Internet. In this session, we take a look at the programming model and tools that developers and designers can leverage to build these true next-generation experiences for consumers and business, and demonstrate building a rich interactive application (RIA) using Silverlight and Microsoft .NET.
- ASP.NET is evolving a very rapid pace, come explore all the latest features of ASP.Net such as Dynamic Data, MVC, and even take a sneak peak at the upcoming features in ASP.NET 4.0! We’ll look at some new features such as taking control of your Control IDs, using the DynamicImage control, and ViewState management options. We’ll spend plenty of time talking about MVC and creating applications based on this framework, so if you’re wondering how to leverage MVC in your web applications, this talk is for you!
We will also feature local speakers from each of our stops delivering short talks at the beginning of the Roadshow. These Homegrown Nuggets will sure be tasty!
Every attendee will receive a free MS Press book on Silverlight 2 (while supplies last) as well as pointers to tons of resources for further learning. Register today using the links below. Each day begins at 9 AM and goes until 3 PM. In keeping with our theme, a nice Southern fried lunch will be served.
Register here for the Charleston show: December 2 - Charleston, SC
Can't make the Charleston show? See if one of these events is closer to you:
December 3 - Wilmington, NC December 4 - Raleigh, NC December 5 - Charlotte, NC
Thursday, October 23, 2008
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Seeing all the chatter on blogs and twitter, it seems nearly everyone is headed out to PDC...well if you are, here's a chance to score a free license for an awesome piece of software. If you haven't heard of or used CodeIt.Right you're really missing out. SubMain's trademark line says it best:
Static Code Analysis + Automatic Refactoring = Painless Coding Guidelines™
So how do you score your license? Simple, attend PDC and meet up with Serge Baranovsky and simply tell him about your favorite feature of CodeIt.Right, what you don't like, ideas for improvements, etc. Read all the details on the offer and get info on where you can find him @ PDC by reading his blog entry here: http://submain.com/blog/PDC2008CodeItRightLicenseGiveaway.aspx
After the tremendous outpouring of support I received when I announced on this blog a need for help during a time of need for my family, I wanted to help spread the word about another fellow developer/geek who's in need right now. Read all about it here: http://keithelder.net/woody.html
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
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October Meeting - 23 October 2008 6PM
New Features in C# 3.0, PIZZA, AND FREE STUFF
WHAT MORE COULD YOU ASK FOR?!?
This month's meeting will start off with Pizza and then break into a presentation covering what's new in C# 3.0 by Chris Eargle.
In C# 2.0, we received many features already present in other object oriented programming languages. C# 3.0 took a radical departure, presenting us with more a revolution rather than an evolution. Many of the language features have not been seen in an object oriented programming language before. We will take a tour of the new language features in C# 3.0 including extension methods, lambda expressions, type inference, anonymous types, and LINQ. These features will be demonstrated, and we will discuss best practices for using them.
Presenter - Chris Eargle
Chris Eargle is an independent consultant in the Columbia, SC metro area. He is currently an architect working on the South Carolina Integrated Tax System. Chris is the president of the Columbia Enterprise Developers Guild and is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in ASP.NET.
To register, for more info and for directions click: http://gcnugoct08.eventbrite.com/
Monday, October 20, 2008
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After getting used to the full blown version of TFS (first 2005, and then 2008) I ended up doing an install of TFS Workgroup Edition to play around with to see if it would work for some smaller home projects. After setting everything up, imagine my surprise when I went to access it using a named account rather that the "TFS Setup" account. I received an error:
TFS 3011: domain\user is not a licensed user
Doh! A quick check of the global group membership settings and I discovered a "licensed users" group. I put my named account in there (the TFS Setup account was already there) and my problem was solved.
Hopefully this will help someone out who's exploring the TFS 2008 workgroup edition!
Thursday, September 25, 2008
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I imagine a ton of people all over the planet are staring at the same thing right now...
Friday, September 19, 2008
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SQL Saturday is a free, one day conference organized mostly by local Information Technology Professionals. The conference sessions cover a wide range of Microsoft SQL Server technologies from beginner to advanced. Whether you are a DBA, software application developer, Business Intelligence architect, or IT Manager there are sessions scheduled to meet your needs. The conference has attracted some very experienced and knowledgeable presenters who have presented at some of the largest conferences in the industry. SQL Saturday #9 will be held, Saturday October 11th, at ECPI's Greenville Campus 1001 Keys Drive #100 Greenville, SC 29615. Doors open at 8:00 A.M. Door prizes will be given away at the conclusion of the conference. Space is limited, so please register now at www.sqlsaturday.com. For other technology events and news in Update South Carolina visit www.gsatc.org .
Monday, September 15, 2008
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SQL Saturday #9 scheduled for this year on October 11, in Greenville, SC is looking for speakers. If you are interested let me know and I'll get you plugged in.
For more information visit: http://www.sqlsaturday.com/eventhome.aspx?eventid=12
Thursday, September 11, 2008
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The GC.NUG meeting is OBE - I'll post information about the next meeting as soon as it's available.
If anyone's interested, Brian Hitney and I are meeting for lunch at Queen Anne's Revenge on Daniel Island at 11:30.
Wednesday, September 03, 2008
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