I was recently tasked with implementing authentication and authorization in an existing WCF-based service using Windows Live ID. The service already had an extensive set of BVT tests that I didn't necessarily want to break. Integrating Live ID authentication...

So, I wrote a blog post a bit earlier on exposing custom controls for accessibility and automation in Silverlight. If you're only interested in the automation perspective and the Silverlight unit testing framework doesn't quite suit your needs, then there...

I was recently tasked with automating Silverlight Rich Internet Applications (RIAs) in our immediate group. Some tools out there provide limited assistance in this regard; for example, you can write unit tests against your Silverlight controls for in...

In the context of building out a web application, the corresponding DataContext is meant to be built out several times. The application's DataContext is constructed, some sort of data retrieval or manipulation is done, and then the DataContext goes out...

Like many people around the office, I've spent the last several weeks being completely enamored with LINQ. It started out innocently enough with a link to Joseph Albahari's LINQPad and it just took off from there. I'm pleased to say that it has pretty...

I've recently been tasked with implementing deployment automation for each component of a relatively large project. Armed with a colleague who had done similar work before, I dove into WiX with a great resource at hand :) Let me preface this whole...

Power was out for 9 days, from December 14th to December 23rd. Being stuck in freezing weather really helped take the edge off of Christmas :D Also, I'm pretty much useless without some sort of electronic gadget. The MSHTML COM object I was having...

My area of Washington is still without power after last Thursday's windstorm. Power went out on Thursday night, and as of this posting, there's still no power. I'm feeling pretty useless without electronics :D To do: Write a whiny post about the WebBrowser...

The 360 made it back, safe and sound, after three weeks of being out for repair. More correctly, a replacement unit made it back... And the unit that showed up is defective. It crashes frequently, the DVD drive is inoperable while the unit stands upright...

With my 360 out for repairs for the Thanksgiving weekend, I was looking for other ways to entertain myself during the long weekend. I've been running Vista as my primary OS since RC1 and swore I'd stick with it, but inevitably, I don't think Vista is...

I hardly knew ye . This crashing stuff just started happening suddenly last night, and was eventually followed by the red rings of doom. Crashing happens after a few minutes in some games, sometimes happens while the Xbox is starting up, sometimes happens...

The last two days have been pretty hectic. First thing Monday, we're hit with some odd behavior on a component that is part of the Windows Vista Enterprise registration process. Of course, anything that has to do with Vista receives pretty high priority...

Here's a fun way to spend a better half of the day :) We have a reasonably complex WinForms application that creates wizards and generates URLs for a given environment to access that wizard. The server names vary, and the WinForms app generates the proper...

I'm probably behind the times on this, but I just saw this video for developing on the Wii using this particular SDK. Speculation says this is going to be one of the more common implementations of the Wiimote, and here's my problem with it... When I think...

I've just recently joined a team responsible for an established ~6ish year old project and we have a pretty extensive automation framework in place already. I figured the Vista RC/RTM builds were the ideal time to make the transition to a 64bit OS and...