Blogus Maximus

There's a lot of good stuff going on this week in user group land.

Monday, 1/11/2010 - 5:30pm
Twin Cities Java User Group (TCJUG)
Please see www.TCJUG.org for more details on monthly meeting topics, and to register as a member.

Tuesday, 1/12/2010 - 6:00pm
Twin Cities Developers Guild (TCDevGuild)
TOPIC: Building Peer-to-Peer Applications with .NET - Jeff Brand
Please see www.twincitiesdevelopersguild.com for more details and to RSVP for this meeting.

Wednesday, 1/13/2010 - 5:30pm
TechMasters North
Please visit www.techmasters-tc.com, for more information.

Thursday, 1/14/2010 - 5:30pm
Twin Cities Languages User Group (TCLUG)
TOPIC: MCSLA - Rocky Lhotka
Please visit www.twincitieslanguagesusergroup.com/TCLUG/Events.aspx for more info.

Immediately following TCLUG:
Twin Cities Pragmatic Beer (Geek Dinner)
For more info, please visit: www.twincitiespragmaticbeer.com

Friday, 1/15/2010 - Sunday, 1/17/2010
Twin Cities Give Camp
twincitiesgivecamp.org

So today, on Twitter, I asked what I thought was a simple and straightforward question.  It went like this:

Poll: For those of you with .NET UGs. If there was never an INETA, would you still have started your group? tag replies #INETA

For the most part, I got some pretty good responses. No real surprises. Most people who started user groups hadn't even heard of INETA prior to starting their group.

There were a few exceptions, of course, a couple of folks said that they might not have started a user group had they not already heard of INETA. This implies (to me) that they perceived INETA as provided them the resources (or at least encouragement) necessary to start.

Lastly, a few folks said they had heard of INETA prior to starting their group, but would have likely started a group whether INETA existed or not. This wasn't really a surprise either, and mostly overlaps with answer #1.

I also got a couple of "interesting" replies. One was from one of the original founding fathers of INETA. He misunderstood the wording of the question, we chatted and all is good. Nice guy. 

The other reply was not so nice, IMO. He too is involved with INETA, and apparently misread the question (or just took it as an opportunity to whip out his soapbox full of self-righteous bullshit) and proceeded to inform me that his user group "was created for our members not INETA." and that  "INETA should exist for it's members not the other way around."

Gee... Captain Obvious, Ya Think??

My initial reaction to his response was perhaps not very diplomatic, so I discarded it and replied with "who the hell ever implied the UGs exist FOR INETA? Not me. I just asked if our existence impacted the decision to start one."

Not content with my reply, he responded by questioning the very motivation for my query. I thought (perhaps incorrectly) that my question was fairly on point, and said as much, while also trying to clarify as much as 140 characters will allow.

We did eventually resolve our differences, but honestly his reply still irked me. Not necessarily with him specifically, but with the smug self-righteous nature of his position. It irritated me most of all because it's not the first time I've heard it.

For the life of me, I can not understand people who think this way. In the history of INETA, not once EVER (to my knowledge) have we imposed any demands on the user groups. We do have a few procedures and policies, mostly revolving around how we reimburse groups for pizza, how much we can spend on speaker travel, and stuff like that, but we have never EVER (to my knowledge) made demands on ANY user group ever for any reason.

We've also never denied membership to a legitimate .NET developer focused user group (yes, we've had some scammers... and people who try to game the system by double registering so they can get more speakers per year... which deprives the rest of you by the way.  We've even had a few that succeeded for a while.)

Over the years, we've seen our funding slashed to ribbons... along with a massive upsurge in new membership, and what I can only categorize as Hostile Takeover attempts from various folks within Microsoft. Buy me a beer and ask me about THAT some time.

For those of you that haven't figured it out yet... NO we're not a part of Microsoft. No we don't have infinitely deep pockets. We are a nonprofit organization, founded on the idea that wouldn't it be great if we could find a way to get speakers out to the various lesser known user groups instead of just the ones in major metropolitan areas? All things considered, we've done a pretty damn good job of it too.

Over the years, times have changed... the economy has shifted, priorities have shifted and INETA isn't quite the same organization it once was. Faced with a budget crisis that would make most of you puke, a mixed bag of volunteers (some of whom are FANTASTIC, and some of whom couldn't be bothered to do anything beyond listing their title on a resume) and of course being faced with having to do WAY MORE with FAR LESS, we're still managing to get speakers out to groups. Maybe not as many, and maybe not everyone... but we're attempting to do it in a fair and impartial manner. I know, because at the moment I'm the guy who has to make those decisions. The last guy quit. No notice, no warning... he walked.

I don't mind. I actually enjoy the job. BUT... that still doesn't change the fact that some people just don't get it and never will. I've heard folks complain about the swag sent to their user group. (For the record, that's UGSS not INETA) but seriously... Microsoft is trying to give you over $500 worth of free stuff to give away, and instead of saying... "hey that's pretty cool, thanks!" you get your tighty-whities in a bunch and you bitch and whine that you dont like what's in the kit. (I'm looking directly at you Larry Linson.)

Well... guess what Sunshine, there aren't enough kits to go around either... so instead of taking one and then whining about it, how about sitting this one out and letting someone who would benefit from it grab one instead?? That's almost as pathetic as the guy who bitched at Microsoft about the CARBON FOOTPRINT of his MVP Award being shipped overseas to him, but then had the balls to ship back and ask for a replacement because it was broken. (TRUE STORY... I can't make this crap up.)

I've got more questions about INETA, and I'll be asking them over the next few days. I'm genuinely curious about the public perception of INETA, and it's future. I'm also interested in clearing up the various misconceptions and half-formed notions that people have about INETA. My favorite one is that we (the board members) all have dollar sign shaped pools full of Microsoft money (it has Bill Gates face on it) in our back yards.

Disclaimer: I am affiliated with INETA, but my views do not reflect the views of INETA as a whole. In fact, it's a safe bet that I'll be catching hell for this blog post. Such is life.  (Rob... they already knew about the pools, what was I supposed to do?)

Feels like the end of an era. For the last 4 years, I've proudly been a VB MVP.

Today, I found out that I am no longer in that category. I still love VB & VB.NET, but in all honesty, I don't use it nearly as much anymore. Almost all of my professional work is in C# these days.

So, ultimately it makes sense.

I'll miss hanging out with a lot of my VB homies at the MVP Summit though. There are some really good folks, both within Microsoft and in the extended VB community. It's been a real pleasure.

On a brighter note, it's also the beginning of a new era. :) This is my first year as a DirectX/XNA MVP (and my 5th year overall as an MVP.) I'm really very excited about being in this new category, and I'm looking forward to meeting lots of new people and being (even more) a part of the XNA community.

Here's to 2010!

This year went by pretty fast. Actually the whole decade did. I celebrated my 3rd year at Magenic (back in June) and a few months ago decided to get back into the retail game biz.

Reality Check Games was the name I used back in South Carolina, and I sold that store back when I moved to Minnesota a little over two years ago. Sadly, they ended up going out of business (for a variety of reasons I won't go into here) a while back.

I thought and thought for a while on what to call the new store in Minneapolis, and ultimately decided to stick with what worked the first time. So... Reality Check Games is back in business.

My first step was to set up a website and start doing some ecommerce and ebay. I stumbled onto the nopCommerce cart one day when I was poking around in the WebPI from Microsoft. That's a whole other blog post (eventually, I promise) but if you're looking for a good cart solution, it's well worth checking out.

Anyway... I don't currently have a physical store front open, but I'm scouting out places around the west metro of the Twin Cities (that would be Minneapolis / St. Paul) and I've narrowed it down to a couple of locations. I figure to be open with a proper storefront by April or May. We'll see.

The website is up and running, so feel free to check it out at http://www.realitycheckgames.com

As part of this process, I've also been messing around with Google AdWords (so far, other than Twitter and word of mouth, that's been my only advertising) and it's an interesting process... finding the right keywords, creating compelling ads, trying to translate impressions into clicks (and clicks into purchases.) I've been learning a lot as I go. Only time will tell if it's working.  Probably the most important thing I've learned about it so far is the use of negative keywords to eliminate potentially wasted impressions.

For example... If someone Googles for RPG then I would like to display an ad, unless that same person is actually searching for 360 RPG (or PS3 or Wii) since I don't currently sell video games, that would be a waste. Negative keywords help me to filter out searches I don't want. Initially, people searching for dice generated the most impressions for me, but once I realized I should probably block yahtzee, craps, casino and a few other keywords the impressions went down significantly. (Remember, this is a good thing. I only want to show ads to people who might actually be interested in my products.)

Finally, if you're a regular reader of my blog (or even if this is your first time here) I'd like to offer you a discount code for use on the site. If you see something you like, maybe a sweet discount will make it even more appealing. Just use the code: GEEKSWITHBLOGS for a 20% discount on your entire order (not including shipping.)

Happy Holidays!

I'm sure most of you reading this have heard of, seen or actively used Stack Overflow. If you're like me, you probably thought to yourself... this would be such a great resource for other stuff... like games.

Fortunately, that's exactly what www.SmarterGamer.com is. Quite literally, it's StackOverflow for gamers. It doesn't matter if you're into board games, video games, card games, minis games or those weird games you used to play with your older cousin when your mom wasn't home (ok, maybe not THOSE games...)

Whatever your game, SmarterGamer is the place for you to ask questions and get answers.

Much like StackOverflow, there is a system of point rewards, badges, reputation, etc. It's good stuff. After all, why mess with a system that works?

There's a new NINE Questions posted, over at http://www.NINEQuestions.net featuring Robin Edwards... God's gift to the .NET User Group scene in Southwest Virginia.

Enjoy.

Between work, life and umm... more work, I haven't really had much time for blogging *lately.

(*for varying definitions of lately, the most accepted being "several months.")

It hasn't helped that 99% of the random crap I usually spew onto this blog could apparently be summarized in 140 characters or less. Looking back, I guess Twitter damn near killed this blog. That and being **extremely sick over the last few weeks didn't help much either.

(**Diabetes sucks, whether you ignore it or not. I've tried both and seems like the end results are about the same either way... you're screwed. I've spent the last few weeks dealing with complications from Diabetes, and it's something I recommend avoiding if at all possible. Take it seriously kids.)

So it's ironic that Twitter was responsible for imparting a piece of wisdom unto me that just might breathe some life into this old blog. I saw a tweet from my good friend Alan Stevens that said, essentially, "blog to reflect, tweet to connect." As I recall, he was quoting (or retweeting) someone else, though I don't remember who so Alan gets the credit for now.

Blog to reflect...

It's all too easy to take the path of least resistance by just dumping a couple sentences on Twitter instead of thinking out a fully realized blog post. During this time, I relinquished my crown of "wordiest bastard on geekswithblogs" to D'Arcy Lussier who now has a substantial, but not insurmountable lead on me in terms of post count.  (Strictly a measure of quantity over quality, but I digress...)

I started this year halfway through a 6 month slog in South Dakota. Braving road conditions that would make the Ice Road Truckers wet their pants and cry like little girls, I bent the elements to my will on a weekly basis and came out the other end, victorious.

It was around this same time period that I was elected to the INETA Board of Directors. The board has seen some changes and challenges since then and I think we're really coming together as a team.

Finishing that gig dovetailed into a couple weeks of collaborating with Casper the friendly consultant on a prototype using the Unified Communications API. What a steaming pile of crap that was... compunded by the fact that the "expert" I was supposed to be working with was 5 timezones away and NEVER available to answer questions.

I did a lot of speaking gigs in a fairly short time period... including my first trip to Hawaii, a user group in Nashville, my 2nd trip to Portland Code Camp and Codestock (one of my favorite events each year!!) in Knoxville, TN

This was followed by a month of coding and mentoring with a brand new client who ended up becoming a great friend (and zombie killin' buddy!!) This gig was a huge success and gave me the push over the top I needed to get promoted to Principal Consultant with Magenic.

Next up, I spent 5 weeks in Seattle, WA. Decent gig, although the weather and my allergies didn't really get along all that well. Shame really, as I've always liked that part of the country... but 5 weeks convinced me that I might not want to live there permanently. Oh well... at least I got some quality hang out time with my NW friends that I usually only see once a year.  I also got to meet the elusive CookieCups, who is even cooler in person than on the internet (and that's saying a lot.)

In between that and my next gig, I spent more time doing events... some user groups, a couple of code camps (including Richmond and Twin Cities) and my 3rd trip to HDC in Omaha. HDC is a GREAT conference, lots of awesome speakers and a fun time. Definitely not one to miss. The Richmond Code Camp was my first time with that bunch, though I knew most of them already. It also gave me an opportunity to reconnect with one of my best friends from high school who I hadn't hung out with in nearly 20 years.

The next gig should have been the easiest job I ever had, doing some simple updates to a VB.NET 1.1 Web Forms app (stuff like... add a button here, a dropdown there, maybe a textbox...) Unfortunately, there were some "complications" that made things rather "interesting." Stuff like not having access to the network, and therefore the database, meaning I couldn't actually run any of the apps I was working on. Not having access to source control (and not even having the entire solution) meant I couldn't actually BUILD the app I was working on either. So my day typically went like this: 

1. study the app, stepping through by hand... using pen & paper to "debug" the code.
2. figure out where to put my code
3. write my code (relying on intellisense for error checking)
4. cut and paste my code into notepad and save it to a thumbdrive (no network access meant no shared drive or email)
5. take the thumbdrive to another developer
6. explain to the other developer where to put the code
7. wait for the other developer to insert, build and deploy the code.
8. verify it works
9. move to next task.

As you can imagine, this made EVERY individual task take about 10 times as long as it should. I spent about a week there before moving on to my next assignment.

Around this time, I took a brief detour to hang out with my buddy Rod Paddock and his family at their new digs in Austin, TX. Rod was cool enough to haul me around and show me the local scene, including the local game store and the Alamo Cinema Drafthouse (some place I've always wanted to go, and the home of Harry Knowle's Butt-Numb-A-Thon.) We caught the Inglorious Basterds premiere (with the man QT!!) and 5 more movies, going from 8pm until nearly 11am the next morning. I had a blast but wow I was completely exhausted. Inglorious Basterds was good, but the hit of the night for me was seeing Ip Man... one of my new favorite movies.

My most recent gig this year was interesting for a whole different set of reasons. The work wasn't bad... pretty standard ASP.NET MVC stuff, without anything especially fancy. Mostly data collection and wizard style forms. What made this gig interesting was the complete lack of direction on the part of the project sponsors. It was so bad, so very bad. We all make jokes or read about projects with scope creep, lack of clear requirements, and an obvious lack of understanding of the software development process, but this one was unbelievable. We powered through it, and got it done, but wow... I have a newfound appreciation for the value of a strong PM.

So, with the exception of the last couple weeks, including Thanksgiving, that's pretty much my year to date. I've spent the last couple weeks pretty much bedridden, due to the previously mentioned sickness.

After a lengthy break, the user group support kits from Microsoft have resumed.  FedEx dropped off a big white box this morning, so if you are still awaiting yours... it should be there when you get home from work (or maybe in the next couple days.)

User Group leaders didn't have the option of picking and choosing the contents for this cycle (or any future cycles, I would assume...) but don't fret, the contents are quite good. Assuming all the "Dev Group" kits are identical, this is what you can expect:

• 5 copies of Windows 7 Ultimate
• 3 copies of Office 2007 Standard
• 1 (180 day trial) of Windows Server 2008 R2
• 3 Arc Mouses (mice? meese? mooses?)
• 3 Silverlight 3 books
• 3 Developing Service Oriented AJAX Apps books
• 1 Microsoft Online Services offering
• 1 Free Camtasia License (couldn't actually find this in the box)
• 1 BI Resource Kit
• 1 Microsoft Directions book
• 1 Word of Mouth Marketing book (which I am REALLY excited to read)
• 1 Building Technical User Communities Book
• miscellaneous buttons and pins

So, like I said... some good stuff!! I look forward to hearing your thoughts about it.

Hello VB Folks,

CRineta.org, Iowa .NET and CVIneta.org are hosting the fourth code camp to Iowa on November 7, 2009 at DMACC in West Des Moines.

These are always great events, and you can't beat the price: FREE!  This event gets bigger and better every time they do it, and this time is no exception. SEVEN concurrent tracks, with FIVE time slots at 75 minutes each.

These aren't just Microsoft Lovefests either, you'll also find talks on jQuery, Ruby, WebOS, Lisp, Software Craftsmanship, Load Testing, Mobile Device applications and a whole lot more.

See you there!

Wanted: Killer apps!  Reward: $12,000 prize!

Spread the word—there’s a contest for developers blazing trails with the .NET Framework and Visual Studio, Windows, Windows Server, Windows Azure, SQL Server, or SharePoint.
 
We’re looking for interesting, powerful and unique solutions based on the latest Microsoft technologies.
And the winners get their choice of a 15 day Galapagos Islands Adventure or a new Smart Car!
 
Two ways to win!

Judges Choice: Impress the panel of technology industry leaders and Microsoft gurus for the trip, the car, a home entertainment system or an internet tablet PC.
 
People’s Choice: Get friends, family and colleagues to vote for your solution. Receive the most votes and win one of three ARCHOS 320 GB Media Internet Tablet PCs.
 
Our current campaign site ‘Expect the Unexpected’ features some unique developers and their amazing solutions. Check them out at www.DotNETstories.com.
 
But we’re looking for more great solutions!!! Have you used .NET Framework to create an amazing app?  Are you doing remarkable work in the market with a solution built with Microsoft dev tools?  Give us the details and you could win a prize worth US$12,000. The contest launches Wednesday, November 4th so submit your story at www.myDotNETstory.com and spread the word!

TCCC7 is just around the corner (this weekend!!) and it looks like this one will be the biggest ever (again.) 

We have a terrific lineup, featuring intro talks on CSS, Ruby, XAML, Silverlight 3 & Robotics Studio. For the more seasoned developers Donn Felker has a great talk on the Spark View Engine and you definitely don't want to miss Adam Grocholski's talk on Code Generation. The architects among you may also enjoy Jordan Terrell's Domain Driven Design talk.

Just like last year, we're holding this event at the U of M, so be sure to show up early since parking fills up quickly.

Also, there's no free lunch this time, but there are LOTS of great places to go eat in the area, and we will be putting together a cash-only Jimmy Johns order for anyone interested. Exact change is appreciated and anything extra will be used as a tip, so break those $20s at Starbucks before you get to Code Camp.

We'll also have a community table this year, so if you're interested in the local user group scene, or maybe already a part of it, stop on by and see what's going on. 

Tonight in User Group land:

The Twin Cities Developers Guild meets on the second Tuesday of each month, and tonight's meeting features Donn Felker of Agilevent.  http://www.TwinCitiesDevelopersGuild.com

Topic: Testing with Mocks: Test this, test that, no problem. But what about when we need to start building full object graphs into our test in order to test an interaction or state? Yeah, Houston, we have a problem. With mocks we can streamline development by mocking out dependencies. Mocks will allow us to not only mock our dependencies but to also test our interactions and state very easily. In this session learn how to use mocks in your day to day testing.

Speaker Bio: Donn Felker is a Principal for Agilevent, a Microsoft Partner in Minneapolis, Minnesota. His experience is in Software Architecture/Development with over 9 years of professional experience in various markets that include – entertainment, health, retail, insurance, financial, and real estate. He is an ASP Insider, MCTS & MCP Certified, Certified Scrum Master and certified in ITIL Foundation v2. He's the current leader of the Twin Cities Give Camp, Twin Cities Developers Guild and Twin Cities Pragmatic Beer.

As a VB MVP and someone who really loves VB in general, this kind of news really makes me smile…

Microsoft has heard your feedback that VB/C# content parity is a top priority for the VB community. Given that, this issue has become a top priority for the languages team.

The Approach
We’ve gone about a prioritized approach, in order to fill holes for the most important technologies and content types first. Here are some general guidelines we’ve used… Technologies are prioritized by the number of current VB.NET users, as well as how “hot” the area is (i.e. Windows Azure or Windows 7). Content types are prioritized by how “core” they are to the official product. For example, first the product needs to support VB.NET, then the official MSDN Help documentation needs to be available in VB.NET, and then the Microsoft samples and training kits (including videos, tutorials and hands on labs) need to be available in VB.NET.

The Content So Far…
Below is the list of projects that are being done as partnerships between VSL and partner teams. Many teams have stepped up in the past year to improve their VB.NET support, and other teams have been doing this all along. In the coming year, we still have a lot more work to do.

·         MSDN Magazine Code Downloads
·         Entity Framework Samples
·         Visual Studio Express Samples
·         WPF “Prism” Quickstarts, Samples, Hands On Labs
·         WPF MSDN Help Documentation (Started)
·         WPF Hands On Labs (Started)
·         WindowsClient.NET WPF Video Code Downloads
·         WindowsClient.NET WPF Video Code Downloads
·         Windows7 API Code Pack Samples
·         Silverlight MSDN Help Documentation (Started)
·         Silverlight Toolkit Samples
·         Silverlight Hands On Labs (Started)
·         Silverlight.NET Full Tutorials
·         Silverlight.NET Video Code Downloads
·         ASP.NET Tutorials
·         ASP.NET Video Code Downloads
·         VS2010 / .NET Framework 4.0 Training Kit- Hands On Labs & PowerPoints (Started)
·         Windows Azure Training Kit- Hands On Labs (Started)
·         Windows Azure Video Code Downloads
·         .NET Services SDK Samples
·         .NET Services Video Code Downloads
·         DotNet-U Presentation Materials
·         RampUp courses
·         MEF & VS Extensibility Hands On Lab

Over the years, I have met many user group leaders (and been one myself a few times) and I often hear this question, or a variation of it... "I'm in a pinch, I can't find a speaker, I've got a new guy who wants to try speaking...  Where can I get already prepared presentation materials to use at code camps and user group meetings?"

Well... I am thrilled to announce that Doug Turnure from the Microsoft Marketing team has been leading an effort to compile these materials. He’s made about 40 presentations available across Visual Studio, the .NET Framework and other Microsoft technologies. You can download these materials from the following location:

http://dotnet-u.com/Courses.aspx

The presentation materials include powerpoint slides, video recordings, demo code and demo script available in VB.NET & C#.

Check it out!!

Remember the good old days, when we all thought we’d be cruising around in our own spaceships by the year 2002? Trading fuel, organics and technology at every StarPort we managed to find? Dodging the Federation and blowing up aliens (and each other) while trying to save up enough credits for a bigger ship… hauling human cargo to our home world so we could increase production and begin our mission of universal conquest?

Well… those days are back my friends.

Thanks to a miracle of not-so-modern technology, I’ve set up a TradeWars 2002 server. Now you too can experience the joys of ascii based space gaming. Take a look at these stellar graphics, depicting the transportation of human resources to your home planet:

I know, right? You can’t wait to play… same here. The good news is, I’ve got the server set up, and I’m doing some connectivity testing now. If you have a TradeWars 2002 client (or a telnet client that supports ANSI) you can hit it now at RCG.GAME-HOST.ORG

If you don’t have a dedicated TradeWars 2002 client (which I highly recommend) you can get one at http://www.swath.net (it’s a 30 day trial, but worth registering.)

Marvel at the super realistic rendition of interstellar space travel:

Galactic Commerce has never felt SO REAL:

Upgrade and outfit your own spaceship!!

I know… you’re asking yourself how can a game THIS AWESOME be free to play?? I assure you it is! I do this because I love the game and want to play with all my friends. I’ve set up a 5000 sector universe as a test run, and you can connect to it now.

Sometime around midnight Sunday night, I’ll be wiping it all out and doing a Big Bang on the universe, so don’t get too attached to your ship this weekend. The game will officially start at that point.  Good luck!

One more time, in case you weren’t paying attention:

Telnet to:  RCG.GAME-HOST.ORG (port 23)

Use a client that supports ANSI
    –or-
Use a dedicated TW2002 client like SWATH (http://www.swath.net)

The current (test) universe ends midnight on Sunday 9/13/09, The Big Bang will wipe EVERYTHING out.

The universe will have 5000 sectors. There will be bad aliens in it.

ASP.NET AJAX Preview 5 is now released at CodePlex:
 
http://aspnet.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=32770

This new version of ASP.NET AJAX contains bug fixes and feature enhancements including:
 
* Dynamic and recursive templates
* Binding Converters
* Compatibility with the UpdatePanel
 
The download includes a Visual Studio project that contains sample code that demonstrates many of the features of ASP.NET AJAX Preview 5. For example, the project includes sample code for creating master/detail forms with the client DataView control and client templates, sample code for creating recursive templates, and sample code for creating pages that use JSONP. The download also includes the client reference documentation.

Enjoy!

If you're a .NET User Group leader, you probably already receive the INETA newsletter (and if you haven't been getting it, contact your mentor to update your contact info!!)

On the other hand, if you aren't a .NET User Group leader, you might not realize that you're missing out on some valuable community info that isn't just for UG leaders.

If you want to see what's going on with INETA, and the greater .NET Developer Community by extension, hit this link: (http://www.ineta.org/ContactEmail.aspx?MailTo=NL) and send us your name and preferred email address. We'll get you added right away.

If you're interested in seeing what you missed so far, be sure to check out the Newsletter Archive, which can be found here: http://www.ineta.org/newsletters/

Next week in User Group Land...

The Twin Cities Languages User Group presents:

Comparing Objective-C to Java/.NET (Sept. 10th, 2009)

Objective-C, a fossil of a language from the '80s is resurgent: the language of choice for Mac development and, currently, the only language for iPhone development. In this talk, I'll cover some of the history of Objective-C & Cocoa (the Apple standard library for Mac/iPhone), how it differs to languages like Java or C# that you may be familiar with and show you some interesting techniques that can't be easily accomplished in other languages.

Speaker

Dan Bennett is Senior Director, New Product Technology for Thomson Reuters based in Eagan, Minnesota, responsible for a team building the next generation of web applications for West. Dan hates to manage things he doesn't understand, so keeps his hand in with a variety of development projects, including leading the development of the first iPhone application for Thomson Reuters.

I was looking over the Dragon*Con website this evening to see what kind of craziness will be going on this year, and who the guests are...

William Shatner... cool, Leonard Nimoy... cool, never actually seen those two in the same place at the same time.

various other Star Trek, BSG and Stargate people... cool (no Robert Picardo though... bummer)

Looks like most of the Firefly cast have other plans (although Shephard Book will be there)

various comic book artists and writers, including Michael Golden who I really like.

Chewbacca, C3PO, etc...

Julie Benz (awesome!!)

that dude who played Spike on Buffy/Angel

and... OMG... do my eyes deceive me??  Gil Gerard (aka Buck Rogers) has apparently come out of his self-imposed exile and will be making an appearance this year, along with (no surprise here) Erin Gray. Gil -freakin- Gerard... yes!

Ohhhh yeah, this is gonna be a good year.

wow, just wow...

http://www.newsarama.com/comics/090831-disney-acquire-marvel.html

Not sure how I feel about this. I don't know that it will be "the death of Marvel" as some have predicted. Everyone cried when Hasbro bought WOTC, and that seems to have turned out fine. (For the record, NOBODY cried when WOTC bought TSR, but that's another story.)

Now if we could just get Quentin Tarantino to start doing DC/JLA movies... the final seal will be broken.

This pretty much sums it up for who I am... so who are you?

Tuesday night, the INETA Speakers Bureau Director (Randy Walker) chose to step down for undisclosed reasons. I wish him well and respect his decision. Unfortunately, there's never really a GOOD time for something like this to happen, so as with all departures, a void was created that needed to be filled immediately.

As a result, I am stepping in to fill this position. I have served on the INETA Speakers Bureau committee for several years as well as being an actual Speakers Bureau speaker and user group leader, so I am already familiar with the system and the processes that need to be managed and fixed from a variety of angles.

I have been working with the INETA Vice President, Mike Vincent on the budget for some time, as well as identifying ways to improve the existing process and ensure that the .NET community gets the greatest possible value from INETA.

Since I am transitioning out of my role as INETA Membership Director, I am also happy to announce that Julie Yack will be serving as acting Director of the Membership division. I know Julie will do an outstanding job in this role.

I just received word today that I have been invited to become an ASP Insider.

What's an ASP Insider? Well, their website explains it best:

"The ASPInsiders is a select group of international professionals who have a demonstrated expertise in ASP.NET technologies and who provide valuable, early feedback on related developing technologies and publications to their peers, the Microsoft ASP.NET team and others."

So, IMHO it's quite an honor to be a part of this distinguished bunch.  I'm looking forward to it.

In an earlier post I mentioned that I was making some health related dietary changes.

Well, I'm coming up on the end of my 8th week as a *mostly* vegetarian... (by *mostly, I mean that I have been eating some seafood, but no beef, pork, chicken or turkey) ...and it's been going pretty well. I've had the occasional craving for a burger or whatever, usually when at a cookout, but nothing I couldn't handle.

So, on the plus side... I've lost some weight as part of this, about 9 pounds so far. I also feel better overall, although the last couple weeks have been rough because I've been sick (I think I'm allergic to Seattle) but overall good. Definitely good.

The not so plus side, is that eating out mostly SUCKS when you're trying to stay vegetarian. I can only imagine how much more it sucks for diehard true vegetarians and vegans. Eating out when traveling is even more of a pain in the ass, because you don't really know where any of the veggie friendly places are.  By contrast, staying veggie at home is pretty damn easy.

The plan at this point is to continue sticking with it. I eat fish a couple times a week (mostly tuna) and a little shrimp here and there (usually in stir fry or spring rolls.)  I'm almost done with this travel gig, so I'll have a while back at home to get into a regular routine again.

Lastly, I have to say that my vegetarian friends and coworkers have been a big help and I appreciate the encouragement,  input and advice they have offered along the way. Especially my buddy Alan Stevens and his charming wife Michele, who gave me a very helpful book when I first got started.