» Deserialization considerations when renaming objects, namespaces, or assemblies
07/11/10 13:53 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
In one of my current projects, we are considering refactoring some legacy code into new assemblies and namespaces. The product is an enterprise backup solution and the objects we\'re moving are serialized to disk during a backup. To restore,..
» PluralSight\'s On-Demand training library
07/01/10 12:13 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
The next phase of the project I\'m on will likely move us from .NET Remoting to WCF services. I wanted to get a quick introduction to WCF beyond the basic user-group sessions I found online. I eventually noticed that that as a BizSpark start..
» “Unhandled Extension Element” in WIX (Windows Installer XML)
06/17/10 00:20 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I’m using WIX to create an MSI for a web application, part of the installer needs to create the IIS settings, so i’m using the WIX IIS extensions. I started off by adding the namespace: xmlns:iis=\'http://schemas.microsoft.com/wix/IIsExtens..
» How to turn on Silverlight Debugging
06/16/10 00:14 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I have a couple of Silverlight projects going on at the moment and for some reason I could not get debugging to work on one but everyone was working just fine on the other. At run-time, my breakpoints would become disabled and it wou..
» VB 2010 – List Initializer
06/14/10 09:39 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I’ve been using VB.NET for about a year now (I was exclusively a C# developer before that) and one thing that always annoyed me was not being able to initialize my lists at the time that I declared them, the way I could in C#. They a..
» Building VS2010 Solutions from TFS 2008
04/30/10 10:15 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
We’ve upgraded our Silverlight solution to 4.0 so we are now using Visual Studio 2010. Unfortunately we have not had the time to upgrade to TFS 2010 yet, so we are still running TeamBuild 2008. So that means that under the cove..
» Orlando Code Camp 2010
04/04/10 20:07 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I started writing this the day after Code Camp and I finally got a chance to finish it. These are my thoughts about Orlando Code Camp 2010 , which was my first major event as an organizer. I had attended all 4 of the previous Orlando Code ..
» Navigation in a MVVM Silverlight 3 application
03/16/10 22:43 from This, That & Technology
I’m currently working on a Silverlight 3 project that uses MVVM. We have been able to isolate most of the code within the view model. We are able to bind our commands to our view models using commanding as supplied by the MVVM Light toolki..
» RIA and DTO associated objects
02/18/10 10:09 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I am currently working on a Silverlight application and we are using RIA and MVVM. We don’t use the default implementation where we consume Entity Framework or Linq2Sql objects, as we already have a DTO object model that we use to mo..
» SQL 2008 SP1: Invoke or BeginInvoke cannot be called on a control until the window handle has been created
02/17/10 16:00 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I’m installing SP1 for SQL Server 2008 64-bit and I kept getting an error message: “Invoke or BeginInvoke cannot be called on a control until the window handle has been created.” The workaround is find the GUID temp folder where the setup ..
» Error when installing SQL 2008 on Windows Server 2008 R2 (64 bit)
02/17/10 14:09 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I’m installing SQL Server 2008 on a Server 2008 machine and I got the following error: “You must user the Role Management Tool to install or configure Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 SP1”. To fix this issue go to Sever Manager –> Fea..
» Copy full file path to clipboard from Windows Explorer
01/04/10 11:16 from This, That & Technology
Update 1/4/2009: In the mean time, I discovered that on Windows 7 you can right click while holding down the shift key and this provides a menu option to copy file as path. Till now, if I wanted to copy the full file path of a file ..
» VS 2008 Database Edition GDR R2 Deployment Scenario
12/10/09 22:44 from This, That & Technology
I have been using the GDR version for quite a few of my projects to date, and it has saved me so much time and work. It provides great source control of all database artifacts and makes it easy to do local database development in a distrib..
» Some CTP changes in “M”
11/25/09 22:15 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I did a couple of “Oslo” (now SQL Modeling) presentations at community events in the area in October and November. My samples used the May CTP, and they broke with the November CTP that came out last week during CTP. These are ..
» PDC09
11/21/09 21:41 from Mark\'s Blog
This past week I was very fortunate to have had the pleasure of attending PDC09 . This was my first PDC and it is my understanding that it is always a great event to attend. This year seemed especially important because of Windows and SQL ..
» SPSite.Exists leaks SPSites
11/13/09 15:04 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
The Sharepoint Object Model is a painful, leak-prone API to work with. Roger Lamb\'s MSDN blog article is a great reference for deciding when you need to dispose of objects and when doing so will break things, but it\'s necessity is pretty po..
» Associating disk partitions with volumes that are not drive mounted.
11/12/09 10:00 from This, That & Technology
I am busy building a tool for a client and part of the requirement is to show all volumes associated with a disk. Generally this is easy since a disk is divided into one or more partitions and each partition has one volume which is drive m..
» Tampa Code Camp Oslo Presentation
11/09/09 22:11 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I gave another Oslo presentation at Tampa Code Camp over the weekend. It was a really well-attended event and I had about 40 people at my talk. I had some really good questions and it seemed like people are starting to understa..
» How to override the TFS Build number and force TFS to include files changed during the build
11/05/09 19:08 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I had an interesting problem today. My current client uses a custom file to store build numbers in their application and that file gets used to show the number in a couple of places in the app. TFS defaults its build numbers to..
» TFS: “Assigned To” Dropdown
10/20/09 17:17 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
Both the MSF Agile and Scrum for Team System templates define the “Assigned To” list (\"System.AssignedTo\") as: < FIELD reportable = \" dimension \" type = \" String \" name = \" Assigned To \" refname = \" System.AssignedTo \" > ..
» Scrum for Team System – Bug with Sprint Burndown Chart
10/16/09 17:40 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
We are using the Scrum for Team System template, and we found that the trend line was not showing up. At first I thought that we just didn’t have enough data and the report couldn’t generate a trend, but halfway through the sprint, i..
» ONETUG Oslo Presentation
10/16/09 10:45 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I presented an intro-level presentation on “Oslo” last night at ONETUG . The presentation went pretty well and it seemed that people left the meeting with a pretty good understanding about the technology and what it can do and what i..
» VSS to TFS Migration without SQL Express
10/16/09 06:11 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I am finishing up a new TFS implementation at my current client. They are migrating their code from VSS. VSSConverter.exe needs a SQL Server database to perform some of the intermediate steps before getting the data over to TFS, the proble..
» Copy full file path to clipboard from Windows Explorer
09/18/09 10:21 from This, That & Technology
Till now, if I wanted to copy the full file path of a file to the clipboard, I would open the “run” window, drag the file from windows explorer to the “run” window, highlight the path in the “run” window and copy. It works but gets frustra..
» SMTP service on Windows 7
09/02/09 11:20 from This, That & Technology
I recently installed Windows 7 on my notebook and so far am very impressed. However, as a developer that at times works in an offline mode, one of the features I miss is a local SMTP service. A SMTP service used to ship with IIS 6.0. Howev..
» Don\'t use generic domain names
08/23/09 09:38 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
Ever since I started on my newest client\'s project over a year ago, I\'ve had problems with their VPN. When connected, I could no longer authenticate to remote Sharepoint or SQL servers on my local network (rending my VMs useless), name reso..
» Windows 7 Homegroup issue finding the homegroup
05/25/09 07:01 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
Windows 7 Homegroup does not play nice with bridged adapters. If you are bridging your wired NIC to a wireless NIC (in our case, for the Xbox to talk to our wireless network), you can start a Homegroup and others will be able to see it but ..
» Manipulate PDF documents from .Net
04/24/09 08:50 from This, That & Technology
If you ever want to manipulate PDF documents from within .Net, take a look at iTextSharp . It’s a managed .Net library ported from the familiar iText Java library. I provides very rich functionality including but not limited to: Construct ..
» Reading and saving BLOB data in SQL Server
04/24/09 08:43 from This, That & Technology
Ever look for a quick way to read and store BLOB data in SQL Server. I needed something quick and did not want to write a quick c# console application that would do this for me. So, asking a few knowledgeable folks I know (thank you Mikey ..
» Oslo Installation - Windows Installer
04/19/09 10:46 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I was installing the Oslo CTP on my XP laptop (I\'ve had it on my Vista PC for over a month now), but during the installation I got an error telling me that I needed a newer Windows Installer, with no additional information. I downloa..
» Windows 7 and Win2k8 power management issues
04/13/09 06:59 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
More recent builds of Windows 7 have resolved the sleep issue on Lappy. We\'ve also thrown 7 on the Media PC downstairs. The eye candy looks very crisp on a nice large TV. Bundled codecs meant we did not need to download K-Lite to watch any ..
» Building dynamic where logic in LINQ
04/09/09 11:14 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
If you need to dynamically build and/or logic in your LINQ query, you can use predicates and the PredicateBuilder pattern described here . My current client uses VB.NET so there really couldn\'t use the source that is provided in that..
» LINQ to XML and Namespaces
04/08/09 22:40 from Mark\'s Blog
Today I was using a LINQ query to extract some data from an XML document but was not getting the expected results. I had used the same query pattern in the past and was puzzled to why it was not working. I had the following XML. 1: < So..
» Scrum session at CodeCamp
03/28/09 13:47 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I spoke about Scrum at the Orlando .NET Code Camp today, it went really well. You can download the presentation file here .
» VSTS Unit Test “Type is not resolved” exception
03/25/09 18:59 from This, That & Technology
When running VS unit tests, VSTestHost is the process that initializes and runs the test. A new AppDomain gets created and the base directory for the AppDomain gets set to the unit test “Out” directory that contains all the assemblies and ..
» Linq-to-Xml vs. Regular Expression
03/17/09 14:48 from This, That & Technology
I came across some code that was using a regular expression to extract a value from a HTML page (another way to do screen scraping). I was curious what the performance difference between a regular expression and a Linq-to-Xml query would b..
» TFS GUI tool
03/12/09 23:10 from This, That & Technology
While reading Team Foundation Server 2008 in Action , I came across a tool that I found very helpful in providing a set of rich GUI based tools for TFS administrators and advanced users providing for administration and advanced version con..
» Getting build notifications from TFS
03/04/09 23:00 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
TFS ships with an event subscription tool that you can access through command line and it\'s located at \"C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Team Foundation Server\TF Setup\". You can use it to subscribe to a variety of TFS e..
» MVC Image button
02/27/09 22:21 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I am helping out with the Orlando .NET Code Camp website and they needed to add an image button, which is something that is not supported out of the box by the current release of MVC. So after looking around I found BuildUrlFromExpre..
» DataReader vs. Dataset vs. Linq
02/20/09 18:45 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I\'m currently working with a client that supports an application originally built around 2003 so it was targeting the 1.1 Framework. Last summer they upgraded to the 3.5 Framework, but they have not yet taken advantage of the new fea..
» Variable access performance in a loop
02/13/09 22:52 from This, That & Technology
In an attempt to try and get code as optimized as possible, a friend (Brett) and I ran through various scenarios to see what the performance impact of each would be. We wanted to test accessing and incrementing a variable in a small loop. ..
» Mark of the Web
02/10/09 16:06 from This, That & Technology
Working through a Silverlight 2.0 book and samples I came across an entry in the startup page that Visual Studio generates for you when compiling a Silverlight application. 1: <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//E..
» Prevent Team Explorer from connecting to TFS at Visual Studio startup
02/09/09 09:53 from This, That & Technology
I got frustrated waiting for Visual Studio every time I start it up while it tried to connect to the last known TFS server. We have a VPN connection to our TFS server. The VPN is not always connected because I may be at a client or just qui..
» What does it mean to be Agile?
02/03/09 22:49 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
I started working on a contract with a local software company where I am helping them adopt Scrum. I\'ve been \"Scrumming\" for over 2 years (yes, I am a ScrumMaster) and I really enjoy this type of work. I\'m not doing any coding ..
» Windows 7 Wake From Sleep issue and workaround
01/20/09 17:20 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
Playing with Windows 7 the last few weeks, I\'ve found that my laptop refused to wake from sleep. The display alternated between not even powering back on and powering on but remaining black with a non-responsive mouse cursor. The only way t..
» Silverlight and Oslo - My goals for this year
01/07/09 22:46 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
So as the new year starts, I\'m going to take a better look at two technologies in particular: Silverlight and \"Oslo\". Silverlight has so much potential, forget about all of its flashy features, and think about it from a line-of-busin..
» Zoom lever on Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 4000 scrolls in Firefox
12/13/08 12:09 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
I got a new Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard 4000 today and found that the little zoom lever to the left of the qwerty keys caused Firefox to scroll (and backwards, even). There are plenty of articles out there on switching the lever to ..
» Registering a User-defined type in SQL Server
12/05/08 16:10 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
This is not new, it\'s been around since SQL 2005, but I had never had to do it before. If you installed the SQL server samples as part of your SQL client installation, you can find a CLR folder with all sorts of goodies, it will usua..
» LINQ Contains
11/11/08 16:47 from Esteban Garcia - Random .NET stuff
If you have 2 collections and you need to figure out what values are in one collection and not in the other, you can do this: using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace ConsoleApp..
» Trying out ANTS Profiler 4
09/07/08 19:38 from Mikey Cooper: The Nerdy Stuff
I got an email that ANTS Profile 4 was released, so I downloaded my upgrade and poked around with it this weekend. I haven\'t given a good look at the new features list, but the performance improvements are very apparent when profiling. Ther..