June 2004 Blog Posts
The challenge: Allow users to define the columns shown and order for datagrid displays in ASP .NET webpages. Here is my first stab at a solution.
I'm going to create a class object called Employer, with some text fields, a true/false to be displayed as a checkbox, a hyperlink on the company name, and an image path (just so we can cover several different types of columns in one example). I am not going to post the class layout, just note that the properties in the class are as follows:
Type
CompanyName (hyperlink)
Length
Position
Phone
Supervisor
ImagePath (image)
IsChecked (checkbox)
So the first thing I did was write an xml...
Being it's free and all. Anyone know how I could get netmeeting to automatically enable the desktop sharing option so that I could remotely administer a machine without having to have a user say “yeah, go ahead”?
Seems like this would be a much cheaper alternative to pcanywhere
Anyone have any recommendations for dedicated server solutions? I tend to hear good things about Rackspace but I think I'm technically competant enough to not need a fully managed solution. I've been glancing at some offerings from Hostway and Serverbeach, but haven't heard much about them good or bad.
I recently signed up for the 1and1 ms developer package which gives you a slot for asp.net development and a small sql server space for $19.99 a month. I'm pretty disappointed in it, the sql server tool is really really bad and I haven't been able to get any asp pages working yet.
Bestbuy was running 18 months same as cash on laptops. I picked up a Compaq, athlon xp 2800, 512mb RAM, 40GB hard drive for $1150 with a $300 mail-in rebate. That's a pretty decent laptop for the price! I plan on using it for sales presentations and product demos. The geek in me wants to upgrade it to 1gb ram, but the realist says I don't need it for what I'm using it for. We'll see who wins that battle. =)
First thing I did when I got it home was blow the operating system away. Man I hate all that...
So I'm sitting here at my full time job pondering on my next steps. It's no secret that I have been in the process of launching my own business, and with my full time job sucking up so much of my time I haven't been able to apply the amount of time I'd like to the business.
Interestingly enough I had a recruiter from IP Logic offer me a 3-4 month contracting gig for a pay rate that nearly doubles my salary. I met with the client and I think I'd get along just fine with their organization. It's also full scale...
So we're working on getting a user's full name out of Active Directory services for headers in our webpages. Basically we just want to say "Welcome |your name|" somewhere in the header.We built and tested a class that seemed to work fine, here's the code snippet:public class User{ string loginName; string fullName; public User(string LoginName) { loginName = LoginName; fullName = GetDirectoryServiceProperty(loginName, "Name"); } static string GetDirectoryServiceProperty(string ObjectName, string PropertyName) { DirectoryEntry de = new DirectoryEntry("LDAP://yourcompany.com"); DirectorySearcher aSearcher = new DirectorySearcher(de); StringBuilder filter = new StringBuilder(); filter.AppendFormat("(anr={0})", ObjectName); aSearcher.Filter = filter.ToString(); SearchResult sr = aSearcher.FindOne(); if (sr == null) { ...
www.dotnetcharting.comI don't have a very warm track record with third party tools. In general, I have found most of them to be pretty complex to use and time consuming to learn to the point where it isn't worth me pursuing them.So I downloaded the developer trial of dotnetcharting's component with pretty low expectations...I WAS WRONG.I had this tool installed and a simple sample chart up and running correctly in less than 20 minutes. Very impressive. It even has a drill in feature. I did a very very basic drill in, so I'm not sure how customizable or complex you can get...
So my little home business project is off the ground and ready for that first customer. I sort of fear sales though, and I know that the Google adword campaign I've launched probably won't be enough to bring in some customers.
So now I'm thinking about doing some pitching of my services locally. Not overly sure of how to do the approach though. I really hate the idea of cold-calling etc, but I'm having trouble thinking of ways to get someone to listen to my few minute marketing presentation without doing it.
Any sales types out there? How would you go about...
Here's my official VB Roadshow report from last night:
First I did the reverse user group thing. A few developers were picked to represent the local community to give feedback to the Microsoft representatives. A few things we talked about:
- I want it to be an IDE feature that I can take a database table from my server explorer, drag it onto a blank class, and have it generate properties and private variables for each of the fields in the table.
- Some guys where talking about having some disatisfaction with deployment in the enterprise, particularily being able to see which files...
Here's a fun one to wrap your brain around.
I have a certain female friend, we'll call her jenn for the purposes of this story. A few years ago when I was in college living with several roommates in an apartment, my one roommate had some... plantlife growing in his closet. Because they were in the closet, he needed to set up some lamps that were on an automatic timer.
So one day Jenn is visiting us, and she finds the plants b/c the lamps were on at the time and she though he had left his closet light on. Now she...
I'll be attending this event and I'll also be attending a reverse-user group before the event where a group of leading area developers will get some face time with some members of the vb team.
I'll try to filter out the marketing goo from the subjects of real value and post tomorrow.
I decided that for today's post I would write about a concern I've had with every company that I've worked for in IT.
Arrogance, plain and simple. So many IT workers seem to have this holier-than-thou attitude toward their users. (SNL even has a skit about an obnoxious IT guy) Users are clueless, they are a pain in my ass, they don't understand how anything works, etc etc etc. This attitude is apparent to the end user, who doesn't generally challenge the IT worker because:
They really don't understand.
They need the services of the IT worker.
If someone approaches you with an arrogant attitude,...
On the lighter side of things, I felt like sharing some of my annoyances.
1. Programs that have a non-critical event (ie not a catastrophic failure) that grabs focus when said program isn't the current active window. *looks menacingly at his toolbar* If my pc isn't about to melt down, then you stay out of my workspace unless I deliberately summon you. (or at least have an option to control said behavior)
2. Webpages that set focus to the first editable control. Pages don't load immediately every time, often some graphic is holding up the process, but I'm already off to the...
Do you people out there in web-land find yourself making alot of custom controls?
The place I work in is predominately old school FoxPro with a desire to start moving towards .NET. One of the things they've done is create a cubic ton of custom controls (it's been a very steep learning curve getting into their systems for me as a developer... for example there are like 10 different custom combo boxes...).
The theory, as described to me, is that every control should know how to "wire itself" (big chunk of the applications here are just form data in/out to sql server),...
#region shameless plug
Just registered my business! I'm pretty excited to be throwing my hat into the small business arena.
I put a draft of my company site up at http://www.easywebapps.com I already have a few beta clients and I'm probably going to go “public” with the site with google adwords etc. in a few days.
My business is based on the belief that the technology is powerful enough and scalable enough that full featured business applications can be provided over the internet to small businesses. I plan on hosting ASP .NET business applications under a subscription based model.
I've done alot of work with local govt, schools,...
The company I work for does insurance/benefits stuff.
I recently had the opportunity to make a journey to their main office (they have several locations around the country) and I noticed that alot of the data entry work was being done on old windows 98 machines running the home-grown foxpro applications that have been developed.
Now I was hired recently because the company is starting to explore .NET and with my main focus having always been on ASP .NET. When I got to thinking about how the workstations are old win 98 machines I started to believe that maybe the company doesn't want to bear...
I have entirely too much to say to post in a feedback, so here are some of my thoughts on open source / outsourcing. My open source vs closed source really brings Microsoft vs the World to mind.
Open source has come a long way, but it still has a long way to go. Don't forget that Joe Average is the majority of the market. Joe wants something that installs easy, isn't gonna give him any compatibility issues, and feels familiar to what he has used before. Until linux/open source gets to that point, MS will continue dominance. The other advantage MS...
If you were going to implement an ASP.NET application where groups of users would have their own SQL Server database... how would you go about managing the user's connection string? I'm facing this problem right now and trying to come up with the “best“ solution.
Now off the top of my head I've thought of a few solutions.
1) Store connection string in session variable on login from web config or other store.
2) Have the login name specify a domain which can be parsed on every page to read from the web config or other store.
#1 I'm not overly fond of for nothing...
So I've decided to throw my hat into the blogging arena. Like a good host, I should introduce myself before I really get to blogging.
I'm 25, newly married, and I've had a pretty odd career doing work with Microsoft (by accident, my first company out of college got gobbled up by them) all the way down to a small company of 60 employees. I love .NET and tend to hang out on the ASP .NET side of things. I'm proficient in both c# and vb .net.Outside of my full time job I am in the process of starting my own software...