Please join us at the Utah Fall Code Camp this coming Saturday, November 3rd, 2007.  This event is going to be excellent!  Come check out the site, register, browse the schedule and more.  Here's the official announcement:

Utah Fall Code Camp

Nov 3^rd 2007

Neumont University

Salt Lake City, UT

www.utcodecamp.com

 

The local Users Group Community is conducting a “Code Camp” for local software programmers at Neumont University. This Camp is Free to all.

 

We have a diverse topic range for this code camp. You can see the full list of sessions and speakers at www.utcodecamp.com We will be giving away at least one IPOD, software, Shirts, Books and Lunch and Breakfast will be provided. 

 

You will need to register on the site to be eligible for some giveaways so you need to go register now at www.utcodecamp.com if you haven’t already. If you registered on www.msutahevents.com you will need to re-register at the code camp site.

If you're developing ASP.NET applications on Windows Vista that are utilizing the Visual Studio-provided web server (a.k.a., Cassini) then you may have run into an issue where, when attempting to debug your website, Visual Studio immediately drops out of debugging once your application starts.  That is, you press F5, the browser pops up and displays the website and Visual Studio stops debugging and drops back into its standard development mode and the browser continues on running.  Your breakpoints are no longer active and you essentially can't utilize your development environment to troubleshoot issues with the site.

This has been happening to me of late.  I don't usually use the debugger in that sense to 'walk through' my code for a variety of reasons, but tonight I needed to.  Sure, I could attach to the process (WebDev.WebServer.exe), but that's a pain and I get tired of constantly attaching and detaching.

The culprit in my case was that http://localhost was in my Local Intranet zone in IE and, using IE 7 and Vista, I'm not authorized to debug intranet sites.  The solution is an easy one: move http://localhost to the Trusted Sites list in Internet Explorer.  Now the debugger attaches and remains attached, greatly simplifying the debugging process.

Thanks to everyone that came out to the Utah .NET User Group lunch today at Olive Garden.  We had a great turnout and a great time.  I think in the future we'll be holding the lunch around I-15 and I-215 as it's a major intersection and a great place to gather.  Any time we've attempted to hold the lunch elsewhere has resulted in just a small handful of people (3-4) whereas all of our lunches in the Fashion Place area have resulted in 10+ (today we had 14 if I recall).

Anyway, it was great to see everyone and we'll be doing it again in the future - maybe at the new Cheesecake Factory that opens next month...we'll keep everyone posted.

Later tonight (as it is now officially tomorrow being 3:26 AM) I have the opportunity to present on the topic of Design Patterns at the Utah County .NET User Group in Provo, UT.  This will largely be an adaptation of my Sept 2007 talk to the Utah .NET User Group, but I might throw in some new stuff.  I'm looking forward to it as I always am.  Come join us and see you there!

Time: 6:00 PM
Date: Oct 17th, 2007
Place: NuSkin building (1175 S 350 E, Provo)

Back when I was a trainer (years ago now), we had a little inside joke; it's pretty industry-wide in fact, but it was fun nonetheless.  You've heard of the ID10T (pronounced Eye-Dee-Ten-Tee), of course.  We had another known as the PBKACH (pronounced Peeb-Cache).  Essentially it stood for “Problem Between Keyboard and Chair”.  Well, today I experienced this first hand - literally.

Apparently, this particular server went down on Friday.  That is, no users could connect to it via VPN, all web services were down, the virtual servers were down.  No matter what the users tried a connection could not be established.  Any attempts to connect to or contact the server would fail.

Attempting to reboot the server remotely via the DRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller) interface would freeze at the following screen:

Any attempt to gain physical access to the server over the weekend was denied, but today when we got into the server room the problem was immediately obvious.  It wasn't a hardware failure as suspected and feared.  It was a literal PBKACH error.  In setting up the server rack, apparently the keyboard was placed on top of the server.  Additionally, a folding chair (poised on a small box) was also placed in the rack, precariously positioned above the keyboard:

Well, one thing led to another and the chair had slid off of the box and landed squarely on the ESC key of the keyboard, holding it down.  In and of itself this wasn't much of an issue except when the server rebooted (through an Automatic Update in Windows) the depressed ESC key was aborting the reboot and stalling it out.

No amount of remote access would have been able to remedy the issue - unless, of course, we were to install a 'rumble pack' in the server - I'll have to look into that one.

So after a good laugh, we chalked this one up as a good ol' traditional (and literal) “Problem Between Keyboard and Chair” and moved on.

I had the opportunity this past Friday (Oct 12th, 2007) to go to Seattle to represent Experlogix in the CRM 4.0 Partner Readiness Event.  We (Experlogix) and Scribe Software are the two sponsors that are participating in this event as it occurs across the United States over the next several weeks, so it's very exciting to be participating in this exclusive event.

As Experlogix is a sponsor of the event, I had the opportunity during the lunch break provide a 20 minute presentation on Experlogix and the web-based product Configurator.  I was very pleased with how smoothly everything went; it was great!  We got excellent feedback for the demonstration and a lot of interest.

It was a bit of a whirlwind trip for me as I flew in in the morning, talked to some MS partners, shared my demonstration/presentation, and flew out in the afternoon.  I have the opportunity again to represent Experlogix on Nov 1st in Denver for a similar event.  I'm really looking forward to it.