So, Team System Rocks is about to undergo a facelift in a couple of months. And I would LOVE to have a new logo for the site. However, I am "graphically impaired". So I thought I would see if there was anyone out there who could create me a new logo. And what better way to generate interest than with a contest?
So, here is the deal: Team System Rocks needs a new logo. I will use the logo on the site, and maybe on any materials I may make in the future (such as T-shirts, etc...). As far as what I want or don't want in a logo, I have no idea. Surprise me.
So, what do you win: A copy of Visual Studio Team Suite with a year subscription to MSDN Premium.
So, when does the contest end: August 31st, 2008
Send all contest entries to me at mickey_gousset@.hotmail.com. I'll announce the winner and unveil the new logo with the new facelift of Team System Rocks.
Let the games begin!
GeekFest Party at TechEd 2008 Developer Conference
Let’s face it, going to technical conferences is good for your career, but it’s not a whole lot of fun. What you need is an outlet. You need to have fun. That’s where we step in.
Cheap beer and lousy pizza!
We are bringing back GeekFest! Join us at Howl at the Moon
for a night of lousy pizza, cheap beer, dueling pianos, socializing and one wild rubber duck competition….yes, a rubber duck competition.
There is limited invitations available, so what are you waiting for. If you are attending the TechEd 2008 Developer Conference you can pre-register here.
Register and pick up your "duck" ticket in the TechEd Technical Learning Center (TLC) at the Developer Tools & Languages (TLA) information desk. You must have a "dick" ticket to get into the party. One "duck" admits up to two people.
When:
Tuesday, June 3, 2008 from 7:00 PM -10:00 PM ET
Where
Howl at the Moon, 8815 International Drive, Orlando, FL 32819
Ticketing
You must have a "duck" ticket to attend the party. One duck admits two.
http://www.sweeptheleg.com
If you remember the original Karate Kid movie at all, I promise you this is worth 7 minutes of your time.
The Cassini space probe has found evidence of seas on Titan, a moon of Saturn:
Saturn's moon Titan appears to have large seas filled with liquid gas, according to data collected by the Cassini space probe, scientists said Tuesday.
Liquid Gas? Anyone else find it hard to wrap their head around that? Of course, the seas are most likely composed of methane and ethane, so it probably wouldn't be that much fun to swim in anyway. And I'll bet the beach would really suck.
I found this over at Digg.com. Jeff Atwood has provided more detail than you could ever imagine on this problem:
To be perfectly clear, this isn't a Windows problem-- it's an x86 hardware problem. The memory hole is quite literally invisible to the CPU, no matter what 32-bit operating system you choose.
Jeff does a great job with charts and everything to explain why your Windows desktop will only see 3 GBs or so of RAM. Definitely worth a read if you have ever wondered about this question.
Jason Prickett has a post up on using PowerShell with the Team Build Object Model:
This entry is based on Team Build's next version which is available in a CTP release right now, and will be in Beta very soon (don't ask, I don't know when). In the next version of Team Build, we have included an Object Model (OM) that wraps all the functionality of the Web Services. This makes writing your own apps that need build information, much easier.
As I talk about how to use the methods and objects in the OM, I will show examples using PowerShell commands. PowerShell is an incredible recently new shell for Windows, that allows you to manipulate not just text output by command line apps, but real objects returned from any managed library. If you want to know more (and you should), goto to http://www.microsoft.com/PowerShell
As you may or may not know, I'm a Team System junkie (Team System Rocks!, anyone?). So I'm very interested in any tools I can use to increase my knowledge and power in Team System and Team Foundation Server. I'll be back to this post once I finally fire up PowerShell.
For anyone intersted in doing PowerShell cmdlet development, Mike Stall has a good post on using Visual Studio to create and debug cmdlets:
Here's how you can get a sweet Visual Studio development experience for building and debugging your own PowerShell cmdlet:
- It has Wizard support for initially creating the cmdlet,
- intellisense
- F5 build support which also registers your cmdlet
- provides the full power of the VS debugger including Edit-and-Continue when debugging your cmdlets.
I've not done any cmdlet programming yet (still on the To Do list). But being able to use Visual Studio and IntelliSense would really be appealing when I finally start.
If so, you should go read this eWeek article by Jim Rapoza. In it, he talks about Tim Berners-Lee talking to Congress and how what Tim had to say really made him realize his stand on Net Neutrality:
What if the Internet wasn't designed the way it was? What if it worked more like cell phone or satellite TV networks do here in the United States?
Hey, I hear there's this great search engine called Google that supposedly works really well and offers all kinds of cool online apps. Problem is, you have to be a Verizon customer to get it. And if I leave Verizon, I won't be able to access the eBay auction site anymore, because that's a Comcast-only site.
And if I leave Comcast, I won't get VOIP anymore, as Verizon completely blocks that. Oh yeah, I also hear that the BitTorrent thing you can do on Cox Communications' cable service is pretty cool.
I've never really given Net Neutrality a bunch of thought before now, to be perfectly honest. But I grew up with the Internet, and I use the Internet daily to provide for my family. So yes, I am spoiled to the openess of it. And while I don't be-grudge companies for wanting to make more money and profit for themselves, their employees, and their shareholders, I think the fractioning of the Internet would be a horrible thing, and would set us back many years.
As Jim mentions, look at the many innovations we now take for granted becaue the Internet is so open. Search engines, email, all of that could change (not for the better IMHO) if the NET becomes more proprietary.
So if you haven't given it much thought before, now may be the time to put some time and research into this issue. Because it could affect you for many years to come.
The Windows PowerShell Team Blog has a nice post, including sample code, on Start-Demo: Help doing demos using PowerShell:
I decided I had had enough of that nonsense and decided to write a script which would run a demo for me. I've called this function: Start-Demo. I've attached it to this blog entry. I have to say that I'm pretty please with how it came out.
I'll not pretend that I completely understood the script, being the PowerShell novice that I am. However, I did think it was an interesting use of dogfooding. Plus, how cool is it to be able to do a demo for Bill Gates.
PowerShell has been on my list of things to investigate since it came out. James Manning has done a great job of providing script examples and such for how to use PowerShell with Team Foundation Server, which has me amped up enough that I'll need to do some investigating. I like the potential that PowerShell shows, now I just have to figure out how to make it work best for me.
Rob Caron is having a little too much fun with SoapBox:
All in all very funny stuff. I can definitely relate to the Copier one.
I have not really heard of SoapBox before. Apparently it is MSN's take on YouTube. I'll admit to browsing the occasional video on YouTube, just like everyone else in the known world, so I'll have to give SoapBox a spin and see what might make it stand out from the pack.
Anyone out there used SoapBox yet?
Walter VonKoch is on MSDN TV talking about RSS in IE7 and the RSS Platform.
If you are interested in how IE7 displays RSS, and want a very basic introduction to RSS in IE7, and Microsoft's Simple List Extensions, you should watch this video. It is about 15 minutes, with 12 minutes of it being actual, kind of interesting demo.
For example, IE7 has that cute little RSS icon in the task bar, that lights up when you visit a website that has an RSS feed. But how does the website know you have a feed? By adding a <link> statement, similar to the following, in the <head> section of the page:
<link rel=”Alternate” type=”application/rss+xml” title=”Title Of My Feed” href=”[link to the XML RSS Feed]” </link>
That's all there is to it. I think that is kind of cool.
I'm not sold on using IE7 has my RSS reader, as I am pretty much a FeedDemon devotee. But I will of course try it out.
I've been working for <a href=“http://www.notionsolutions.com“>Notion Solutions</a> for about a month now, but this weekend was the first time I have met all the other employees. We had a company meeting at our headquarters in Dallas, TX. It was nice to finally meet, in person, all the people I've been communicating with via email and instant messaging. The first day of our meeting was all business, with each of us presenting to the others, to recieve some contructive criticism. I ran into an issue where, when I had my VPC full-screened, my entire system slowed to a crawl. It was click, “wait 5 seconds”, see the result. I wasn't the only one who had that problem, but it kinda threw me off my game. That, and I was extremely nervous.
The second day was “team-building”, AKA fun! We played WhirlyBall (think lacross with bumper cars) and then hit Dave&Busters. Not having a Dave&Busters anywhere near me, I loved it! But it was over all too soon, as I had to get to the airport. And of course, after standing in line for 45 minutes to try and check a bag, right when I got to the counter, the system went down. But I was still able to get to my flight no problem and get home to see my girls.
I feel really positive about this career change. The guys and gals I am working with are all super-smart and nice, and I think the company itself is on very solid footing. Remember, if you need help with Team System, <a href=“http://www.notionsolutions.com“>check us out</a>!
A special thanks to Paul for driving all weekend (I'm a small town Mississippi boy, so I don't drive well in big cities!).
Ok, time to start trying to revive this blog (yeah, how many times have you heard that before from bloggers). Seriously though, most of my blogging takes place over at Team System Rocks!, where I blog about Team System. At the advice of John Alexander (one of the co-founders of Geeks With Blogs), I'm going to start cross-posting information to this blog as well. We'll see how that goes.
In other news, I have a new job. I now work for Notion Solutions, a software consulting firm specialing in Visual Studio Team System. As I happen to be a Team System MVP, and have a strong passion for anything and everything Team System, I think this is going to be a really good fit. I've never done consulting before though, so this could lead to some interesting blog posts.
Right now, I am struggling trying to get Outlook to connect to my company's exchange server. More on that in a future post.
I have downloaded and installed the beta of IE7. So far, there are things I definitely like about it, which I will post about in the future. But I'll tell ya, there are some sites out there which is is NOT very compatible with. It also doesn't work very well with the blog editor for GeeksWithBlogs.
Its worth looking at, but you will encounter some frustrations if you try and turn it into your main browser at this point.