Finally, my German last name on a book in German!

I picked this up when I was in Stuttgart last summer at the World Cup. This one now sits on my shelf next to the Russian version.

Some people ask me why I named my blog "Tales from the Doghouse", well it's because Hundhausen literally (but not accurately) translates to Doghouse, and "Tales", "Tails", you get the idea. I get a lot of miles out of this when I travel and meet new people. It's great!

Thanks to my friends at SetFocus for creating this poster for my INETA presentation at the Northern New Jersey User Group earlier this month.

I met Chad Z. Hower at Tech-Ed 2006 in Malaysia a few weeks ago, and was very impressed with his knowledge and presentation skills. Mostly, I was impressed with his extensive travel (makes me seem aerophobic), living overseas, and jaw-dropping stories. I just learned that Chad has gone independent, leaving Microsoft recently. If you are looking for an energetic presenter on all topics Microsoft-developer related, check out his professional site and his fun site.

Woo Hoo!!!

Check out Weird Al's latest song and video online, and see how many references you can relate too.

PS - Check your volume first.

If you hate coding JavaScript as much as I do, then you'll appreciate the 'lint tools.

Microsoft doesn't have a good JavaScript (JScript) IDE, and many JavaScript environments do not warn against questionable coding practices. It can be a nightmare when you actually want to write quality, maintainable code. That's where JavaScript Lint comes in. With JavaScript Lint, you can check all your JavaScript source code for common mistakes without actually running the script or opening the web page.

There's a downloadable lint for Windows as well as an online version for pasting and checking snippets.

That's right, Mark thinks he's going to be the next Carl Franklin, but those are big shoes to fill. As Mark puts it, his professional career is now over, as he will bear his soul on his weekly podcast Millahseconds. Note: these are not technical podcasts (far from it).

Also, I'll delegate the hat-tip to Scott Hanselman, because Millahseconds is an obvious play on words of (the original) Hanselminutes.

Next week on Tuesday, September 26, Microsoft will be rolling into town for a day of learning at the Edwards Boise Stadium 21 theaters. The event runs from 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, so be there by 12:30 to get checked-in.

"Get Connected with the .NET Framework 2.0 and Visual Studio® 2005 - These days, it seems like everything’s talking. Smart Client applications are sending emails and uploading and downloading files from the Internet. Browsers are talking to Web servers asynchronously. And enterprise systems are using a myriad of Web Services, .NET Remoting, and other technologies to get the job done. Fortunately, it’s easy to keep the conversations flowing with the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, Visual Studio 2005."

Visit this link for more information.

Yippee! Bruce Campbell is making another movie called Bubba Nosferatu, which is the prequel to (the really horrible B-movie) Bubba Ho-tep. I find it interesting that Paul Giamatti (an Academy award winner, btw) is also in the film. Maybe it won't be so bad! Here's the plot outline: this prequel to Bubba Ho-Tep finds Elvis shooting a film in Louisiana when he runs afoul of a coven of she-vampires.

You can find more on Bubba Noserferatu here: http://www.bubbanosferatu.com

And more on the original Bubba Ho-tep here: http://www.bubbahotep.com

Reporting in Team System is handled by SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services. As such, team members get to enjoy (and are restricted-by) the built-in report rendering extensions (CSV, Excel, HTML, Image, MHTML, PDF, and XML). What's missing from this list is the Microsoft Word DOC format and a richer Microsoft Excel XLS format.

This is where a product called OfficeWriter comes in. It enables you to use Excel or Word to create templates utilizing data markers and merge fields for databinding sections of the document to the various Team Foundation Server data items. After a quick configuration of Reporting Services, your reports can generate documents/spreadsheets based on these templates without the need for Microsoft Office on the server. There's also an integration with Reporting Services that will let you create these documents without any coding at all. Users will design their RDL reports using Excel or Word, without the need for Visual Studio or SQL Report Builder.

Check out their latest version of OfficeWrite (v3.6) at http://officewriter.softartisans.com

More and more individuals, companies, and organizations are standing up a wiki. I'm fascinated by their ability to be edited and contributed-to by the community. As such, I'm learning more and more about them.

Thanks to Martin Danner for pointing me towards this site, comparing the various wiki software out there.

Ok, this sounds like one of those useless blog posts about what I had for breakfast this morning or can you guess what I have stuck to the bottom of my shoe? Well, maybe it will be a post like that, I guess it depends on your perspective.

Going through my garage, organizing my camping gear, I found one of these SimCity "The Card Game" promotional cards we had created from when we owned the Bard's Quest and Bard's Quest Software, back in the mid-1990s. It was the "Historic Depot" card and could actually be used when playing the game.

I also donated fifty (five zero) technical books to the Boise Public Library last night. It was sad to let them go, because I spent many a cold night curled-up next to my Inside SQL Server 6.5 book, learning the intricacies of locking. My apologies to my author friends if your books got "repurposed" last night.

Microsoft works when they get feedback about their software and services. Their Connect site enables this and allows you to participate in several ways, such as downloading the latest software and written material, taking surveys, exchanging ideas in newsgroup forums, and, most importantly, providing and reviewing feedback about your experiences.

Here are the types of resources you will find at Connect:

• Announcements - New information for connection participants
• Articles - Articles that are related to the connection
• Surveys - Surveys can be used to collect information
• Events - Dates for upcoming events that are related to the connection
• Links - Web site links that relate to the connection
• FAQs - Frequently asked questions about the connection or program
• Downloads - Software, whitepapers, and other information
• Product Keys - The product keys that you need to run the downloaded software
• Newsgroups - Forums for discussing current connection issues
  

I can always spot the true geeks at the user group meetings and conferences, because not only do they know who Nancy Davolio is, they've seen her photo. My INETA presentation earlier this week for the Northern New Jersey .NET User Group at SetFocus in New Jersey include such wise souls as Al Smith, and together we explored the subject.

It seems that "Nancy's" photo changes with each version of Access (2003 version) ...

The Nancy that I grew up knowing


Nancy 2003

Who will we see in Office 2007?

Turns out this mystery has been blogged about before.

I just learned about the gethuman project, which is a consumer movement to improve the quality of phone support in the US. This is a free website, run by volunteers and powered by over one million consumers who demand high quality phone support from the companies that they use. The most popular part of the gethuman website is the gethuman database of secret phone numbers and codes to get to a human when calling a company for customer service.

Last Friday, Scott Chestnut passed through Boise, so Becky (Rosholt) Madron put together an impromptu reunion for the old man. We met at a new pub/eatery in Eagle called Artesian's.

(Can you recognize any of the Twin Falls class of '86)

Here are my slides from yesterday's presentation at Tech-Ed 2006 SEA. Thank you to the many delegates who joined me for the session.

Visual Studio Team System Public MSDN Chat

Come and join members from the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Architect, Developer and Tester editions and Team Foundation Server. There will be experts on hand to answer your questions, so we hope to see you there!

Join the chat on Wednesday September 6th, 2006 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific time.

To add this to your calendar, click here.

To see your local time of when this chat is, click here.

Some students told me about this book, and I think I'll pick it up. Steven Borg just bought a copy as well.

The book is titled "Expert .NET Delivery Using NAnt and CruiseControl.NET (Expert's Voice in .Net)", a hardcover by Marc Holmes (APress) and has received good reviews.

I heard a cool idea from an attendee of Devscovery last week. He said that his wife is a consultant who switches tasks throughout the day. Like most consultants, we have a hard time remembering what we did (or didn't do) throughout the day.

Their answer is to just run a screen-capture program like Camtasia or something like it, and configure it to shoot a snapshot every 5 minutes or so. This way you can play back at the end of the day and have a semi-recollection of what you've done!

Thanks to Eugene and his crew over at Attrice, the makers of the Team Build Sidekick and other Team Foundation Sidekick widgets. They have just published a nice article describing how they have used the Team Foundation Server Version Control object model and VS automation to implement their product's functionality.

Check it out.

Thanks to Steven Borg for letting me know about FlickrStorm, which allows you to search by keyword and find photos other people have uploaded. Sweet!

If you are in the Seattle/Redmond area, join me tonight while we look at CTP 5 of the Visual Studio Team Edition for Database Professionals.

I'll be starting at 7:15 pm tonight in building 40 at Microsoft. Click here for more details.

I was recently at a client site in Phoenix, teaching a VSTS/SCM course. They have integrated an Ambient Orb Device into their automated build process. If the build passes, it glows green. If it breaks, it glows red.

The orb is inside the developer manager's office, so the devs can peek inside. My understanding is that they have about 15 minutes after seeing red to fix the build and re-run it, before the manager gets an email message.