Well, at least trying to decide the certification story. I haven't taken the exams for 2005 yet, let alone 2008. SO, early thoughts on where the SQL story might go are causing some churn, concern and heartburn. Be that as it may, I am considering, note...

That's right, we have extended the betas for 3 .NET exams so you have an opportunity to register for, and take the following: Please note the following restrictions before attempting to sign up: 1) Not available in China, India or Pakistan 2) There...

If you have taken a Microsoft beta exam and made comments on the questions at the end, you may be wondering where they go. Does anyone read these? Do they make a difference or do we discard them without a though? Rest assured that each and every comment...

That's right, Seattle couldn't provide enough snow so I had to head back home for Christmas. Seriously, I will be spending Christmas with family in Atlantic Canada and my parents still only have dial-up so I will not be posting much over the next two...

Ok, so we have communicated to you about Visual Studio 2008, but some of you are saying what about SQL Server 2008? Well, as you may or may not know, SQL Server 2008 will not ship until some time next year, 2008. As a result, you have lots of time to...

Ok, that's sort of like a marketing thing where I put a headline out there just to get you to read my post. Sorry, but I have a very serious question to ask you and I need your feedback. For those of you who are developing using Microsoft's Visual C+...

Traditionally, we have created exams with development language support for Visual Basic, C# and C++. A recent revelation if you will, of the 70-502 WPF exam, showed that not all technologies support all 3 languages. There is no designer support for WPF...

So, I took my Zune out today so that I could listen to music while I worked.  It has been in my backpack for a couple of days now. This is the original 30GB Zune model and it has worked exceptionally well since I have had it.  I installed the...

So, as I dig deeper into this whole Visual Studio 2008 story, seeking alignment with products and industry use, one thought continues to occur to me. This thought leads me down a path that in my mind makes sense but may not resonate well with all. ...

I know a lot of you are waiting for this and I do apologize for the delay. The issue with this current certification path is in the changes reflected in the product, coupled with the Technology Specialist certifications that are about to release. Early...

If I were to ask your interpretation of the following two titles, what would your response be? Web Developer ASP.NET Developer Think about those two terms and tell me what comes to mind. If you were to post a job opportunity for a Web developer, what...

After a long trip back home, and an even longer time getting dug out from under a week's worth of email and work put on hold, I finally find time to post to my blog. I want to express my sincere thanks to the MCTs who helped us staff the Microsoft Learning...

Even though Windows Embedded has been around for some time, there hasn't been a Microsoft certification program for it per se. We have exams on WIndows Mobile 5.0 and will be releasing exams on 6.0 as well, but for the hardcore Windows Embedded (CE, XP...

You're savvy in the ways of C#. You know the .NET Framework like the back of your hand. Or do you? Just when you thought there were a plethora of dev languages to choose from, the waters become murky again. Out of our research labs and into the...

Is your role that of a software tester? Do you spend your days writing test code for your organization? Do you yearn for a central location where you can discuss practices, tools and testing in general with your peers? MSDN has the site for you. Today...

I was holding off as long as I dared but alas, the cat has been let out of the bag. Microsoft Learning's former developer certification Product Planner, Howard Dierking , took the opportunity to work with MSDN magazine as Editor-in-Chief. Congratulations...

What are the must see sites/locations/attractions while in Barcelona? Keep in mind that my days will be spent at TechEd but I will have a fair bit of perhaps two days for some site seeing. How much Spanish do I need to know? I've noticed some similarities...

So, there is a good chance I will attend TechEd EMEA in Barcelona, Spain for Dev Week, Nov. 5 to 9. What is Spain like in the fall? Never been there. Spanish is the dominant language so how much do I need to know to function well? This will be a good...

So, for a University course in Computer Science, I need to write a research paper on security in modern operating systems. If all I had to discuss were user authentication and authorization mechanisms in Windows and UNIX/Linux, that wouldn't be too hard...

Got it on Friday afternoon, as of Sunday, I had completed the entire campaign. My son finished it on Saturday. Of course, I don't spend hours on end playing it so I imagine others had it beaten the first day they had it. Still, it was enough of a challenge...

Yes, that's right. After a completely not understandable delay of almost a month after my move to the new house, my DSL connection was up and running on the 26th just like they said. So, what was the "not understandable" part? Well, I realize that not...

Talk about your cool tools, the Visual Studio Team System group has just released a CTP for a web access client for Visual Studio Team System. Visit Brian's blog for more details. I have tested this with TFS 2005 and it works great. Why? Well because...

This post is a result of being behind someone in a manual shift car yesterday who clearly had no idea how to drive it. Having been a driver instructor and driver examiner in the Canadian military for some time, perhaps I'm a little too hard nosed on...

As I continue my experiences with ClearWire, I am running across more items that are actually issues for me.  I run a web server where I test technologies and code samples etc.  I want to be able to test these from systems outside my own network...

Ok, for no reason at all, today my Notebook Presenter Mouse 8000 appeared to stop working. This is a major catasophre for me because I hate touchpads. The mouse has been working great for quite some time albeit, the last couple of days I noticed some...