January, 2006

I noticed the other day, that I had several comments folks had left queued up waiting to be published (comments are moderated, so they don't appear immediately). I'm occasionally not as good as I'd like to be about approving comments promptly. So if you...

I'm a little late in posting the following from my friends at NoVaSQL...the meeting is tonight, so don't miss it. See you there! The Northern Virginia SQL Server Users Group ( www.novasql.com ) is announcing its first session for 2006 to benefit...

I should say two particularly useful posts from Scott. If you're a web developer and you're not following his blog regularly, you're missing out. These have been out for a bit, but I think they're definitely worth highlighting for anyone who might have...

From Jeff Beehler's blog: Sorry for being so quiet recently…we’ve been busy wrapping up our next pre-release of Team Foundation Server. This means we’ve been fixing tons of bugs (including many reported from you through the forums and Product Feedback...

Get it here . If you're not familiar with Enterprise Library, here's a description: The patterns & practices Enterprise Library is a library of application blocks designed to assist developers with common enterprise development challenges...

Then you might want to check out the upcoming webcast on the Teamprise plug-in for Eclipse . It's this Monday, January 23rd at noon pacific time.

The folks organizing the Pittsburgh Code Camp (aka Western PA Code Camp) have settled on a date, and it's April 8th. They're still working on updating the web site, but in the meantime, you can register here . There's a good group working on this, so...

There's a new user group in the area, targeting integration and connected systems technologies. It's called the Microsoft Integration and Connected Systems User Group (MICSUG) , and their website is at http://groups.msn.com/micsug . The group will...

Just a quick reminder that my good friend Geoff Snowman will be at the BaltoMSDN user group tonight expounding on the wonders of BizTalk Server 2006. Those who've seen him know that Geoff's a terrific speaker, so don't miss it! The meeting starts at...

From my friends at HRSSUG: HRSSUG ( http://www.hrssug.org ) is having our Launch event on Jan. 19th at 6:30 pm, Electronic Systems, Inc. in Va. Beach. We have VS and SQL 2005 software, books, and other goodies to raffle. Susan will be presenting...

I ran into this issue preparing for the Visual Studio 2005 launch last week, so I thought I'd share the solution...if you're trying to reformat a date column in a databound ASP.NET 2.0 GridView control, you may have discovered that just setting the DateFormatString...

So I'm finally getting around to blogging about the DC launch of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 last Wednesday at the DC Convention Center, in part because I spent part of the tail end of last week sick...go figure. But I'm happy to say that...

Very exciting day today. We're going to be putting on the final Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event today in Washington, DC at the new DC Convention Center. We're expecting several thousand attendees, and when I got a look at the keynote room last night,...

If, like I do, you do a lot of demos, sample projects, or just things that you tinker with, you may find that your Recent Projects list on the Visual Studio 2005 start page gets pretty full and cluttered. If so, you may have wondered if you can clear...

A few months back, I did a "power session" webcast entitled Exploring Virtual PC for Beta Environments , in which I provide an overview of Virtual PC and discuss the advantages of using it for running and evaluating beta software, with some emphasis on...

I've gotten this question from a number of folks over the last few months, so I thought I'd post some links to information about the new generation of Microsoft certifications and exams. There's an FAQ here: http://www.microsoft.com/learning/mcp/newgen...

Here's a good place to look .

Just looked this up for a customer, so I figured it was worth sharing more broadly. If you're planning to migrate a Visual SourceSafe 6.0 database to Team Foundation Server, you'll want to check out the following articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/akashmaheshwari...

For those of you who may not have heard, Microsoft has released an update to address the recently reported issue with processing of WMF files in Windows. You can obtain the patch through Microsoft Update, or using the Automatic Update feature of Windows...

My colleague at Microsoft Al Noel just gave me a heads up on a new book coming soon from Steve McConnell called Software Estimation: Demystifying the Black Art . Al had a hand in reviewing the book, and given McConnell's past contribution to the art of...

If, like me, you are hopeless with web design, but still need to get a sharp-looking, standards-compliant web site put together, and don't want to go to the expense of hiring a professional graphics team, I've got good news for you. The folks at the...

From my friends at Roanoke Valley .net User Group : Happy New Year! I hope everyone had wonderful holiday season. Our first meeting of the year is just two days away. The meeting is at the Roanoke County Public Safety Building and begins at 6pm...

From my friends at the Central Maryland Association of .net Professionals : Central Maryland Association of .NET Professionals (CMAP) Main Meeting Tuesday, January 3rd, 2006 - 6:30 PM UMBC Technology Center 1450 South Rolling Road Halethorpe...