For all those out there interested in attending the Utah .NET User Group, we're meeting tomorrow (September 14th, 2006) at Neumont University in South Jordan.  This month the privilege is mine to present on the topic of Regular Expressions.  I'm very excited about the topic and am looking forward to it.  This can be a challenging topic to discuss, but I hope there's a lot of participation.

Anyone have any suggestions or things about Regular Expressions that they would like me to cover?

Time: 6:00 PM
Date: Thursday, September 14th, 2006
Place: Neumont University (10701 South River Front Parkway, South Jordan, Utah)

I have taken the time to finally install and get Live Writer installed and running - if nothing else to test it out.  I'm kinda liking it.  I can already tell that there are some things that I'd like for it to do a little differently, but I'm happy to experiment with it.

It sure beats having to deal with the FreeTextBox that is included with the .Text blog engine.  Nothing against FreeTextBox, per se, but there were always a few things that really bugged me with it (mostly how I couldn't ever go back and edit XML/HTML/Markup in my blog posts without resorting to my own 'fly by night' app that I threw together just so allow me to edit them).

In fact, I had installed Live Writer several weeks ago but was not successful in getting it set up to work with .Text, nor did I really take the time to do so.  However, I was reading Miguel Jimenez's blog today and found a nice little nugget.

When setting up a .Text blog in Live Writer you specify the proper blog url and your user name and password.  On the second screen you specify to use a Custom Blog (MetaBlogAPI) with a url of http://yoursite/blogname/services/metablogapi.aspx.  At first this didn't work for me.  If you get an error indicating that the user name is invalid, make sure that Web Services are enabled for your blog.  I had disabled them long ago, but had to reenable them today for this to work.

I'm digging this.  It's nice and convenient and I don't have to have a live connection to make my posts.  There are a million tools out there like this one, but this suits my needs just fine.

I usually refrain from making political or patriotic posts on this blog, but in lieu of the date, I'd like to make an exception.

There are events in one's life that leave an indelible mark in one's memory, an impression forever engraven.  I've been contemplating this a bit lately with today marking the 5 year (5 years!) mark of the Sept 11th terrorist attacks in New York City.  I can, as I'm sure many of you also can also, remember where you were at the moment you found out.  I was in Redmond, working for Microsoft at the time, and was there for training.  I recall vividly seeing the news on MSNBC across the campus and the hotel.  My first thoughts were of my family (I promptly called home to tell of the incident) and the well being of my loved ones.  I also wondered if I'd be able to fly home later that week.  I felt deeply hurt by the attack, and while I don't personally know anyone who lives on the east coast my heart was with them.

In similar fashion, I distinctly remember when the Challenger Space Shuttle exploded.  I recall sitting with my classmates in grade school watching the launch on the TV at the front of the room.  Just a few years prior we had the privilege of having the Space Shuttle Columbia land at White Sands, just a short 45 drive from my house in New Mexico.  I had great dreams and aspiration of becoming an astronaut all through my childhood, even into my teen years.  When we saw the explosion and ensuring plumes of smoke, my heart sank.  I won't say that this discouraged me in any way from becoming an astronaut (because it didn't), but it left such a feeling of mourning and sadness in my soul for the astronauts and their families.  Particularly, I felt moved for Christa McAuliffe and her family.

I distinctly remember the assassination attempt on Reagan's life.  While I was only a child at the time I recall feeling anxiety for him to recover.  I remember watching it on the news at my grandparents' house in Las Cruces.  We were all gathered around the TV amazed at the horrible experience.  I did and to this day, deeply admire and respect President Reagan, for who he is and what he stood up for.

These are just a few of the many, many events, albeit tragic events, that have left deep impressions on my mind (there are many other moments of elation and happiness that are just as poignant).

Despite these and other events, as a people we continuously unite under pressure and stand up for what we believe in.  May we be constantly united and stand up for what's right, not just in times of turmoil, but at all times and in all places.

By way of announcement, I thought I'd pass this along.  I'm very excited about it and plan on participating.

Utah Code Camp
October 21st 2006
Neumont University
Salt Lake City, UT
The local .NET Users Group and SQL Server Users Group is conducting a "Code Camp" for local software programmers next month at Neumont University.  The code camp follows the Code camp manifesto that it is for the community by the community and always free.  We are looking forward to excellent sessions on lots of different topics. 
 
The Saturday, October 21st event is scheduled from 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM.
The conference is free please register at www.msutahevents.com.  We will have sessions for both Developers and DBA's. 
We will have a Sponsors area with lots of giveaways! 
If you would like to speak or are interested in speaking Please email Pat Wright at pat_wright@sqlpass.org.  Or visit www.msutahevents.com  for more
information.

Over the past several months (years) I've given a series of presentations on the topic of Threading in .NET.  These presentations have been to various .NET User Groups, at company 'brown-bag events', or even over Live Meeting.  They have been a real treat for me as I love the topic and it's near and dear to my heart.  I came across this free e-Book (also available as a PDF) that I would highly recommend to anyone wanting to dig in and learn more about Threading in .NET.  The e-Book is written using the C# language, but that shouldn't be a hindrance to anyone wanting to understand the inner workings of the topic.

Enjoy!

All in all, I must say that I am indeed a fan of the Web Application Projects (WAP) in VS 2005.  If you're familiar with web development in the VS 2003/.NET 1.1 world, then this provides a much more comfortable and familiar experience than the Web Site Projects (WSP) in VS 2005 out of the box.  I won't belabor the benefits of using them here as they have been covered extensively online.

I had created a WAP several months ago and came back to recently to update it and work on enhancing the functionality.  By way of tendencies, I like to design such that each class is an internal class (that is, not publically exposed) with internal constructors, methods, properties, etc.  As such, when I make a class public my intentions are clearer and the scope of the class is well defined.  Well, such a model doesn't work too well with WSP due to the myriad of assemblies created.  Today, however, in testing my application I was presented with an error message indicating that a class was “inaccessible due to its protection level”.  This warning indicates to me that I'm trying to use a class out of its defined scope (in this case - internal).

As it turns out my .aspx code-behind IS in the same project as the internal class, but the WAP was exhibiting behaviors reminiscent of the WSP.  In fact, the project would compile and I'd get .dlls generated in my \bin folder, but at runtime the .aspx pages were getting compiled into their own dlls.

The easy way to fix this (and I didn't know this wasn't here before) is to do the following:

1. Right-click on the WAP in the solution explorer
2. Select “Convert to Web Application”

That fixed up whatever was wrong with the project and now it works like a charm.

Jeffrey Palermo has assembled a great list of productivity features inherent in JetBrain's ReSharper (R#) that make it one of my all-time favorite tools.  I have a hard time remembering the myriad of keyboard shortcuts, but he mentions several that I use on a daily basis that make programming a joy.

It's a great reference for users of the tool and a great list of enticements for those not using it that want a boost to their programming environment.

I'm looking for laptop bag suggestions, ideas, and recommendations.  I currently have a great bag - it's an Ogio (I forget the model), but it's the best and most spacious bag I've ever had.  That said, however, I am in the market for something else.  I travel quite frequently and my bag weighs in excess of 50 lbs and my back is taking the toll - not to mention that it's a pain at airports.

Here's what I need in a bag:

• Must be able to have as a carry-on on a plane.
• Must be able to carry a Dell Precision M90 (17“ monitor) + accessories
• Must be able to carry a Dell Inspiron 8600 (15.4“ monitor) + accessories
• Must be wheeled - I don't want to carry it all the time.
• Have more room to carry 1+ external hard drives, headphones (Bose QuietComfort 2), power strip, etc
• Preferrably have more room for a few magazines, a book or two, papers, notebooks, etc.

Any suggestions?

I'm considering the following:

• BulkHead PRO 4:1
• Spire Meta (but I'm not sure if it'll hold two laptops + gear)

I've seen others but they're less than inspiring.  I'm hoping that people have some good suggestions 'cause I'm at a loss but I need to get one soon.