Join members of the Visual Studio Team System product group to discuss features available in Visual Studio Team Foundation Server, Team Editions for Architects, Developers, Database Pros, and Testers. In addition, discuss what's new in the latest Community Technology Preview (CTP).
Join the chat on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 from 10:00am - 11:00am Pacific Time.
That's right. Seattle Code Camp 2.0 is upon us, with a late-breaking venue change ...
Camp will be held at Nintendo's DigiPen Univeristy, which is very near the Microsoft Campus.
Consultants from our company will be doing talks on SQL Server, Team System, and Ruby. See you there, this Saturday and Sunday (October 28 and 29).
... to make it cooler in our training room.
Ok, here's the formula: Take 2 HVAC technicians ... 
A laptop, network cable, one hour of time, and one of these funky things ... 
and before you know it, our training room (and less grumpy students) are cool!
That's right, John Lam, a respected developer, and partner of ObjectSharp in Toronto will be joining Microsoft in January 2007. Could it be all of his hard work creating RubyCLR has paid off? He won't say.
Congrats on the "friendly takeover" of Microsoft, John. Good luck, and make cool things!
Read John's announcement here.
EBay always makes me laugh. What some people will do to sell their product!
Take this example of an auction for Team Foundation Server ...
Look what the seller is throwing in to "sweeten" the deal ... "USA Customers get FREE Maple Syrup and Crystallized Honey samples from Vermont. USA Customers get one 1.7 oz. sample of 100% Proof Grade A Maple Syrup from Maple Grove Farms and one 2 oz. sample of Grade A Crystallized Honey from Champlain Valley Apiaries."
If you want to run a free diagnostic and inventory report on your system, then check out Belarc Advisor.
The Belarc Advisor builds a detailed profile of your installed software and hardware, missing Microsoft hotfixes, anti-virus status, CIS (Center for Internet Security) benchmarks, and displays the results in your Web browser. All of your PC profile information is kept private on your PC and is not sent to any web server.
I downloaded, installed, and ran the report in under a minute. It breaks it down by area: operating system, system model, processor, main circuit board, drives, memory modules, users, local drive volumes, network drives, printers, controllers, display, bus adapters, multimedia, communications, other devices, virus protection, missing Microsoft security hotfixes, installed Microsoft hotfixes (by product), software licenses, software versions, and a System Security Status score (x.xx out of 10) with details!
Best of all, it's free!
I'll have to admit that it's been a few years since I've studied and compared disk defragmenter software. I've always just right-clicked my drive and let Windows defrag it. I've never really been impressed, however, with the results, even after running it three times.
After the first run:
After the second run:
After the third run:
So then I installed and ran PerfectDisk 8.0 which beats the built-in defragmenter software in many ways.
You can see the before:
and after of its run:
and then back to Windows to see its results:
 You decide for yourself!
I just ran across my Visual Studio 2005 Team System book in Hungarian. Very cool! 
Check out the Interbook.hu site for more information. I'll see if I can't get a copy.
Peter Nowak's book on CF development for mobile devices has just been released. The book is in German.
I met Peter awhile back at Tech-Ed Europe 2005 and he gave me a lot of good feedback on my Team System book.
Nice work Peter!
I just watched the trailer for this movie, and it looks great!
Based on the epic graphic novel by Frank Miller (think: Sin City), 300 is a ferocious retelling of the ancient Battle of Thermopylae in which King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) and 300 Spartans fought to the death against Xerxes and his massive Persian army. Facing insurmountable odds, their valor and sacrifice inspire all of Greece to unite against their Persian enemy, drawing a line in the sand for democracy. The film brings Miller’s (Sin City) acclaimed graphic novel to life by combining live action with virtual backgrounds that capture his distinct vision of this ancient historic tale.
There should be a couple of trailer links in the blog, or you can click here to watch the trailer on MySpace.
Attaboy Martin! Good looking post on SandCastle, btw. Sandcastle produces accurate, MSDN style, comprehensive documentation by reflecting over the source assemblies and optionally integrating XML Documentation Comments.
Be sure to mark his blog, so you can follow this rambling genius architect.
I enjoyed traveling to Spokane (I have family there) and presenting to the Spokane .NET User Group (SNUG?) on various SQL Server 2005 T-SQL, engine, and data type enhancement topics. This was my second INETA event, and they just keep getting better.
One of the attendees works for a company called SprayCool, which has a technology for keeping mission-critical servers and data centers cool, and running smoothly. This has to be the "coolest" thing I've heard of in awhile! SprayCool is the process of using liquid evaporation, or phase change, to cool electronics. A fine mist of coolant is sprayed onto electronic hot spots and immediately evaporates. The vapor is then captured and the heat is rejected as it circulates through a heat exchanger. This results in an extremely efficient method of cooling.
I just heard about this new add-in that helps VB6 developers integrate .NET Windows forms into their existing applications.
This is just another example of Microsoft's support for "VB Fusion".
The Innovators Network, in conjunction with Kickstand and Idaho TechConnect, are bringing their "Turning Your Innovations Into Successful Business" breakfast seminar to Boise on Oct. 3rd. The seminar will be held at the Red Lion Downtowner beginning at 7:30 AM.
For more information, click here.
If you will be in Boise on Wednesday, October 25, then you should attend this banquet!
The guest speaker is Jerry Saltzer, Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His presentation is "Risks of Failure: Coping with Complexity", a look at some of the recurring problems with building computer projects and techniques that have proven useful in coping with complexity.
- Where: Farnsworth Room (Second floor of the Student Union Building at Boise State University)
- When: Doors open at 6pm, dinner at 6:30pm, speaker following dinner. Goes til around 9pm
- Cost: $20.00 for the general public, $15.00 for IEEE members, and $5.00 for IEEE Student members. IEEE members may invite up to one guest at the member rate; further guests pay the general public rate.
Make your reservation by October 19. Click here or here for more information.
It's been a long time coming, and will address many common problems people have been running into. Get your hands on the beta and start giving feedback today!
Read Brian Hary's post for more details. You can find SP1 at the Microsoft Connect Site. (Remember that it is beta software)
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.
(Click to enlarge)
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