June 2006 - Posts

• The IT Staffing / Body Shop Scam

  In the IT world, there are these businesses that are called body shops, also called staffing companies.  They are a mechanism for companies to use people without having to about several factors: Managing individual contracts. Insurance. The problem with these types of organizations is that the people that work for them are typically are in and out looking for the quick buck Today, Infoworld had one of the few editorials that I mostly agree with.  The fact that I find Infoworld terribly wrong on many things is a different discussion.  The editorial cast a fairly bad light on these body shops. Some of the quotes are rather interesting: An ugly truth about the IT job market is that opportunists too often dominate it. Honest employers and job candidates suffer because they’re forced to compete with cutthroats. Black hat employers see workers through the lens of the recession -- as property to be loaded, spent, and replaced like rounds in a Gatling gun. An employer who uses boiler-room agencies to look for help misses out on prime prospects, and can end up with the agency’s dregs: joyless workers who came your way only after being run once too often through the agency’s soak cycle. But then, if you use contract-to-hire, you get what you deserve. I remember back when I first got interested in writing my first book.  This girl from this body shop asked me to go to breakfast.  During breakfast, she made the deragotry comment "Why would you ever want to right a book?  At the end of the day, just go home."  The discussion pretty much ended at that point.  I recieved a call from a body shop guy just a few weeks ago.  The only reason he got my info is because of a violation of a contract we have with another company, but thats a different story.  He gave out the old and tired shtick of how great I was (Obviously, he hadn't bothered to Google for me because he didn't know that I had written one book, let alone three.  He didn't know what a podcast or a blog where, geez what a loser.).  Since he had not done his homework, I also had to explain to him rates and what intellectual property is.  You can imagine how that discussion went. I don't trust them and I don't like them.  They're in and out for the quick buck.  Me, I believe in the long term. Posted Jun 29 2006, 05:30 PM by wallym with 2 comment(s)

• WinFS standalone died, So what

  As everyone and their brother in the development community knows, Microsoft has killed off the standalone version of WinFS for Windows.  Instead, they are going to integrate WinFS with Sql Server or something else and come out with a better product that will.........blah, blah, blah. I honestly have to say, so what.  Personally, I am glad that they have pulled.  Have you ever used Lookout to do full-text searching in Outlook?  It is painful to see the processor on my laptop spike to 100% for hours as it tries to reindex my email.  Ever had a system run a full text index in sql server.  Thats another situation where the processor spikes to 100% for a long time (even when its setup up correctly).  Thanks, but I think I'll keep my processor.  WinFS on the desktop is probably just too much to handle for today's processors. Posted Jun 29 2006, 03:32 PM by wallym with 2 comment(s)

• Get more Wally @ TechEd

  Well, you could have gotten more Wally @ TechEd. http://morewally.com/cs/files/4/presentations/entry100.aspx Wally Posted Jun 28 2006, 04:44 PM by wallym with no comments

• Macs don't get no love.

  Posted Jun 28 2006, 03:39 PM by wallym with no comments

• CodeCamp Videos

  I just ran across these the other day and I have to post about.  It looks like Russ Fustino (mostly Russ) and Joe Healy are producing videos of some of the Code Camps that they are involved with.  Wow, are they into community or what?!?  I love the music that Russ puts with them. http://www.devfish.net/FullBlogItemView.aspx?BlogId=198 http://www.jaxdug.com/codecamp/JacksonvilleCodeCampPubClubs.wmv http://www.netpubclub.net/Portals/0/Tampa/CodecampTampa2005.wmv http://www.fladotnet.com/codecamp/codecamp_2005/codecamp.wmv Posted Jun 28 2006, 03:26 PM by wallym with no comments

• Larry Ellison backs out

  Here, I'm giving you $115 million.  Now you see it, now you don't. http://news.com.com/Ellison+reverses+115+million+Harvard+donation/2100-1014_3-6088845.html?tag=nefd.top Posted Jun 28 2006, 10:22 AM by wallym with no comments

• Doug Turnure's sample code and presentation files from Multi-threading in .NET

  Doug came to Knoxville and did a really good talk on Multi-threading in .NET.  I have uploaded his sample code and presentation to my site, if you are interested in reading it. Zip file with the presentation and source code: http://morewally.com/cs/files/4/presentations/entry90.aspx Posted Jun 28 2006, 09:14 AM by wallym with 1 comment(s)

• Doug Turnure

  Doug Turnure, a Microsoft Developer Evangelist in Atlanta, came to Knoxville and did a talk on Multithreading in .NET.  I've always enjoyed Doug's talks and this was no exception.  In March in Atlanta, I listened to Doug talk about interfaces and really enjoyed it.  Doug takes these complicated concepts and breaks them down into really simple items.  I didn't know this, but Doug had previously worked at Developmentor.  I guess that's why he is pretty good at explaining these concepts, he has worked as an instructor doing that.  To go one step further, I think that Atlanta, which is where Doug is based, is outside of his georgraphic area as a MS DE. Anyway, thanks to Doug for coming to Knoxville and presenting. Posted Jun 28 2006, 09:13 AM by wallym with no comments

• AS400 / iSeries and .NET (ADO.NET)

  I have been working with writing an interpretor for converting AS400 graphics to create images in .NET.  There is an RPG program out on the AS400 / iSeries that generates the necessary files.  There are a couple of things that I have found out. You can use named parameters to call a stored procedure using V5R3 of the IBM Client Access Software. If you get an error like: "The stored procedure cannot be found in SYSPROCS.  Unable to derive parameters."  This most likely means that the necessary stored procedure to map the RPG program to an iSeries DB2 stored procedure is not there.  Basically, if you can't see it in the IBM Operations Navigator, it doesn't exist.  You will need to set that up.  This may also be the case if you don't have the proper security to get at the stored procedure. Another common error that we got that was similar to the error above is: SQL0204 OER4016A in DIST4000C type *N not found. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: IBM.Data.DB2.iSeries.iDB2SQLErrorException: SQL0204 OER4016A in DIST4000C type *N not found. The iSeries uses a different set of terminology than Sql Server, Oracle, and other traditional client server databases.  This is due to its legacy of being around before the widespread use of the sql language.  As a result, the terminology is different.  There are several items of interest to not.  A "file" is a table.  A "library" is a database.  And on and on. Remember that you are going through the database subsystem when you use the iSeries .NET Data Provider.  As a result, if you can't see things there or do things, you can't do anything. Link to the IBM ADO.NET document for their driver. Posted Jun 27 2006, 08:57 AM by wallym with 2 comment(s) Filed under: .NET General, ADO.NET

• East Tennessee .NET User Group - Doug Turnure - "Multithreading in .NET"

  June 27, 2006 - http://www.865got.net/ The .NET Framework introduces four new and easy ways to write asynchronous code, including asynchronous delegates, thread pool queueing, timers, and creating new OS threads. It is very easy to write multithreaded code with the .NET Framework. It is not so easy, however, to write correctly behaving multithreaded code. Without understanding synchronization, data inconsistency is sure to appear over time, so it is critical to understand how to use monitors, reader/writer locks, and other synchronization techniques. Knowing when to use multiple threads is just as important as knowing how. And knowing how to properly synchronize your data is even more critical. This talk will introduce the concept of threads, and particularly how to do it safely when it is the appropriate solution.Doug Turnure is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation, focusing on .NET technologies. He serves numerous enterprise clients as a developer, author, trainer, and occasional conference speaker. His specialties include .NET internals, memory management, and distributed communication, although he enjoys anything pertaining to .NET. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent five years as an instructor and course author with DevelopMentor and Aggelos, Inc. His primary topics of instruction include VB.NET, C#, and ASP.NET. Doug is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. Doug Turnure is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft Corporation, focusing on .NET technologies. He serves numerous enterprise clients as a developer, author, trainer, and occasional conference speaker. His specialties include .NET internals, memory management, and distributed communication, although he enjoys anything pertaining to .NET. Prior to joining Microsoft, he spent five years as an instructor and course author with DevelopMentor and Aggelos, Inc. His primary topics of instruction include VB.NET, C#, and ASP.NET. Doug is currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. Posted Jun 26 2006, 09:15 AM by wallym with no comments

• Does your back hurt.............

  So, today is my birthday.  I went to play golf.  My back has started hurting me.  I was warming up and it started to twinge.  I had scraped it around for two holes.  I knocked my drive out of bounds on the third hole..........and told my partners that I quit because of my back. One question I always wonder about.  Do you play poorly because of your back or does your back hurt because you play poorly? Posted Jun 24 2006, 05:50 PM by wallym with 1 comment(s)

• The crystal turns darker on June 24th

  Its that time of year again............. Posted Jun 23 2006, 11:30 PM by wallym with no comments

• Writing a book? Too much time and effort. Taking over the Java Section? Priceless

  Posted from David Yack's Blog. Posted Jun 23 2006, 11:00 PM by wallym with no comments

• WebCast on Atlas

  I did a webcast on Atlas for my publisher Wiley / Wrox earlier this week.  It has just been posted at: http://www.wrox.com/WileyCDA/Section/id-292013.html You will be able to get a copy of our book at amazon. Posted Jun 22 2006, 03:12 PM by wallym with 1 comment(s)

• COM+ is a problem

  Apparently, there are some major bugs in COM+ in Windows 2003.  Not only does the application that I support and maintain (somebody else wrote it), but another application that I was involved with writing has problems.  Both apps ran on Windows 2000, but under Windows 2003, they both seem to have problems.  In talking to Microsoft Support, I am thinking the problem is COM+. Posted Jun 21 2006, 09:15 AM by wallym with 1 comment(s)