Hey everybody,
Just a quick note to say that I'm relocating my blog. From now on you can find it over at http://weblogs.asp.net/russnem/
Many thanks to Doug and Donny for their generous hospitality during my stay here on DNJ!
Thanks,
Russ
I had the pleasure of speaking at an event hosted by the San Diego .NET User Group called “
Day of Whidbey” on Saturday. It was a great event with many very excited attendees. I ended up booking a couple of talks and walking away with a free bottle of Patrone. The rest of 2004 is starting to fill up pretty quickly, so check out the “Future Presentations” area on
my home page to see if I'll be in a city near you.
I was moderating some posts on the ASP.NET Forums and found that I just had to speak up on the following thread. I'd be curious to hear how others feel about this. I've posted my response here as well as the thread itself.
http://www.asp.net/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?tabindex=1&PostID=385245#657634
Nobody will ever be able to write an application, platform, or service that is 100% secure. I heard once a couple of years ago that one of the major music companies spent millions and millions of dollars creating this technology that would make it impossible for their CDs to be copied (and possibly even ripped) by a computer.
Within one week after (I think it was Sony, but don't quote me) released their first CDs with this new technology some guy found that if you took a black magic marker and drew a circle near the center of the disk it completely beat their security measures and he copied the CD.
My point is that both sides of this debate can quote statistics but the truth is that in the long run all that companies do is try to make the products as solid as they can and when they find things wrong, they fix them.
These remarks obviously don't help anybody make a decision as to what route to go when selecting operating systems and web servers. But I WILL say that I'm pretty pleased with the speed in which Microsoft plugs the holes that ARE found. They even make the patches and updates pretty fool-proof to install via the Windows Update service. Does that make them better than Apache? I don't know. But it makes ME feel comfortable. Isn't that what it's all about? What we feel most comfortable with, as the people who are responsible for these systems?
I finally put links to my previously-recorded MSDN webcasts on www.nemhauser.com in a new section (creatively titled “Webcasts”). They all include demos as well as slides, and some have downloadable source code. You'll need LiveMeeting in order to view them, but the installation happens very easily when you link to the webcast.
Any comments or questions can be emailed to russnem at hotmail.
In a recent blog entry I talked about an 8 year old computer I had (”Buffy”) working as my ISA server (a firewall, for those who don't know). I said that I had built a newer box from spare parts that I had and planned to install ISA Server 2004 on it because I believed we were getting release-candidate bits for it at Tech-Ed.
Well, we got the bits! But a week ago a good friend of mine gave me an older SonicWALL Internet Firewall Appliance that he had lying around. I was kind of interested in switching to an appliance like the SonicWALL because my office gets pretty warm with 4 computers running 24x7. I've been looking for ways to reduce that number, and a firewall appliance was a good place to start. This morning I finally got everything configured correctly and turned Buffy off (possibly for the last time). Now, instead of having a desktop computer on 24x7 I have this tiny little 6” by 4” by 1.5” blue box that sits next to my switch. It's easy to manage, it does a good job, and I'm pretty happy that I can let Buffy rest in peace.
I am still kind of curious as to what ISA 2004 will offer, but for some reason I kind of doubt that I'm going to find a feature worthy enough to warrant having a whole computer set up and running 24x7 again. Does anyone know if there will be some really worth-while features in this new version?
At 12:30 I got a call from Volkswagen telling me that to fix the problem with the rear-view mirror control it would cost me $120. I told them to do it, and 90 minutes later I got another call telling me my car was ready. I hopped on a bus and was there 30 minutes later.
When I arrived I was directed to the cashier and was kind of happy to find out that it was only going to be $95 instead of $120. I paid the amount and waited outside for my car. When it came around I got in, turned on the engine, and tried to adjust the rear-view mirror. It was still just as broken as when I drove in there this morning.
I was starting to get a tad bit on the extremely frustrated side but managed to keep a fair amount of my cool. I went back in to the service guy and told him that the mirror control was still busted and that I just paid $95 for nothing. He needed to go out to the car to verify that for himself, and after he did he told me it would be taken care of immediately. I waited in the lounge watching General Hospital on their TV (because a housewife was there with her baby, and what's there to do at 2:00 in the afternoon but watch the “edge-of-your-seat” thriller General Hospital?). 40 minutes later my car was ready, and the mirror worked so I drove away. Immediately after I turned on to the main road I noticed that the “check engine” light was on.
Now, it's important to note here that the light wasn't on when I drove the car TO the dealership this morning.
I turned around and went back to the dealership, found the guy AGAIN and told him about the engine light. He said, “Well nothing that we do can make that light come on. What we'll need to do is the $210 diagnostic to find out what's wrong. It just sounds like really bad timing is all.”
<< Complimentary moment to absorb the B.S. >>
I told him that when I drove the car there this morning the engine light was not on and when I picked it up it was, so SOMETHING must have happened while it was there. The guy was just completely unwilling to take any responsibility or care, so rather than make a big scene I just decided it would be best to leave and collect my thoughts (read “ammunition”). I wanted to make sure that when I did deal with all of this I wasn't acting out of emotion.
Needless to say my day was pretty much trashed because of all this crap that went on with the dealership. I'm not going to give the dealership's name, but it is located at:
2440 Santa Monica Blvd
Santa Monica, CA
I would highly recommend that anyone who lives in the LA area and drives a VW does not give this dealership their business. It's (what we used to say on Wall Street) a “chop shop”. Their singular goal is to screw every red cent out of anybody who is either buying or leasing a car or having their car serviced.
Those who read my article a couple of months ago in Pocket PC Magazine know that two years ago my wife and I became a one-car family (and got rid of the more expensive one). That means that ever since then I've been seen on the streets of Los Angeles trying to look cool and hip in a VW Turbo Beetle. Ever since the (whopping) two year bumper-to-bumper warranty ran out (18 months ago) the car has had problems.
This morning I finally brought it in to the dealership to get some of these things fixed. The guy came over to where I parked with his little paper that had my official service number on it and asked me what was wrong. I started to go down the list, and when I got to the 4th item (no more audible alerts, such as when you leave the headlights on when you shut off the engine and open the door) I stopped and said, “Are you gonna write this stuff down?” He gave me a condescending look and said, “Oh, we'll take care of everything. I have a photographic memory.”
Shortly thereafter we were inside at his little cubicle and I swear I literally felt “lubed up” (must have been the environment). After he typed all the stuff into the computer he printed me out a little sheet with a $1 estimate on it. I looked it over and said, “What about that audible alert problem?” He said, “What problem?” I guess his photographic memory was out of film.
“The problem where I can't hear any more audible alerts”, I said.
“Like if you arm the security system it doesn't beep?”
“No. If you arm the security system the horn beeps. But if you get low on gas and the idiot light comes on it doesn't beep anymore like it used to. If you leave the headlights on when you shut off the engine and then open the door, it doesn't give that long beep, either.”
After he added that to the estimate he told me it would cost me $210 for an electronics diagnostic. I was starting to feel a little relieved that I was sufficiently lubed. I grudgingly signed the damn paper and began the 2 mile walk to my client (it was a REALLY gorgeous morning, perfect for a nice walk). About 3 minutes after I left the dealership I got a feeling that I should call the VW place near my home. I did and found out that THEIR electronics diagnostic was only $105. I did an about-face and went back.
I confronted the guy and I said, “I found it very strange that their estimate was precisely half of what yours was. What could be the reason for that?” He attributed it to different hourly wages and how all the VW dealerships are independant. I told him that if he couldn't do the test for $105 then he wasn't to do it at all. I fully expected a new print out but alas - no new paperwork.
The moral of the story (and this is no new moral, believe me) is that I was reminded of how seedy car dealerships are in general - and I'm talking about sales AND service. Granted, they're running a business. But the last time I had the Beetle in for brake work they tried to charge me $100 more than the $260 they had estimated. I made such a fuss that they just charged me the original $260, but it's really true that the automobile industry is one of the only ones I know of that can pretty much charge you whatever they want. They can do that because for the most part, the general public is clueless. I've spent my life learning about baking, then finance, then computers. I didn't have any time to learn about cars and engines and stuff. So I'm the most guilty one.
Now let's take an area I DO know about - computers. My new Dell laptop arrived yesterday (the Toshiba that I bought 2 months ago was so terrible that I returned it 30 days after I got it for a full refund). Within 2 hours of its arrival the extra memory and the new hard drive arrived too. I was like a little boy on Christmas morning.
I chose the Latitude D600 because of its relatively light weight and killer screen. But the best hard drive Dell would offer with that machine was a 5400 RPM 40 gig unit. That disappointed me, because I wanted the faster speed with a 60 or 80 gig drive. They only offered THAT size in 4200 RPM drives. Then my good pal Ken Getz told me that for the most part, laptop hard drives are a standard 2.5 inch drive that will pretty much fit into any chassis. I took Ken at his word, and BOY am I glad I did.
I ordered a 7200 RPM 60 gig drive online and within 15 minutes of its arrival I had it in my laptop and it worked perfectly. Because I knew I wanted a better drive, I ordered the laptop with the cheapest possible drive - the 20 gig 4200 RPM unit. I also ordered the laptop with the least amount of memory (128 megs) because crucial.com was offering the same memory for half the price Dell was. I popped the 512 MB DIMM in the laptop to take it to 640 megs and it works like a charm. Once I am 100% sure I am satisfied with the laptop I will buy their 1 GB DIMM and take it to 1.5 gigs, which is necessary when you do demos in Virtual PCs and need a couple of them running at the same time to demonstrate networked applications.
So far the Dell has been a dream - VERY fast, VERY sleek, and the built-in wireless is great. The thing is twice as fast as my old Compaq (which now only seems to stay on for about 25 minutes before shutting itself off) and almost 2 pounds lighter. I'll give y'all more updates as I have it longer.
My wife and I got TiVo in August of 2003. Long story short, 3 weeks ago I got a second TiVo machine for the television in my home office. This is a room I'm only in 10 to 15 hours a week. That should tell you how much TiVo changed our lives.
My friend Ken and I realized recently that those who do not have TiVo (and have never had it) fail to see the appeal of it. Those who DO have TiVo will no longer, under any circumstances, find themselves without it in the future. This tells me two things.
First, TiVo needs a new marketing firm because whoever they have now isn't doing the company justice. They're not making it easy for the American public to see why TiVo is (put simply) the only way anyone would ever want to watch television.
Second, TiVo is a great product that should be enjoyed by everyone. Period.
For those that aren't familiar with it, TiVo is a digital recording device. Of course, anyone can record television shows on a VCR and play them back. They can even fast-forward through commercials. But TiVo is simply in a different league. You can tell your TiVo that you like "The West Wing" and it will automatically record all of the upcoming West Wing episodes for you, without you having to do anything. If you are sitting watching live TV and you see a funny moment you can instantly go back in intervals of 8 seconds to watch it again and not have to worry that your TiVo is still remembering where you are in your show (and you can catch up at your leisure). You can even pause live television if you have to take a potty break or get a fresh drink.
Within the first two weeks after we got our first TiVo, we realized that there was no longer a need to stick to set TV schedules. You don't have to make sure you're home on a Wednesday night at 9:00 to watch the West Wing. TiVo will record it for you. And when you DO choose to watch it, you can skip past each commercial break in 4 to 5 seconds.
Once you get used to not having to sit through commercials, you start to have more patience. For example, I loved the West Wing (at least up until Aaron Sorkin left). But I never watched the show live. I would always tune in 30 minutes into the show and start from the beginning. My TiVo would let me watch the episode from the beginning while it was still recording the rest of it. I started to have a real distaste for commercials. I never wanted to watch any of them if I could help it.
Over the past two months Roseanne and I have watched the first season of 24 and the first season-and-a-half of Alias. It's not because we TiVo'd them, but rather because we Netflix'd the DVDs when they were released. For those who aren't familiar with Netflix, it is perhaps the greatest thing to happen to the movie rental market since it was invented.
Netflix is a company to whom you pay as little at $15 or as much as $50 every month. In exhange, you get to have anywhere from two to eight DVDs out at once. We pay $21.99 per month (and are therefore entitled to have 3 DVDs at the same time) and we probably have a turnover of 10 DVDs a month. When you compare that to Blockbuster (who if I'm not mistaken charges about $3 per rental), you're talking about $30. That's not TOO much of a difference in monthly expenditures, but here's where Netflix clearly sets itself apart from everyone else: There are no late fees. Ever. Period.
As long as you keep paying your membership fee every month (at whatever level you choose), you are never charged a late fee. Furthermore, postage is always paid by Netflix. That means that you get your DVDs in the mail and you return them in a handy-dandy envelope that they had created with postage paid. If you're away on vacation for ten days and you have 3 movies (or DVDs from television shows) at home, you don't have to worry about late fees accruing as you're sitting on the deck of a cruise ship.
When you think about TiVo and Netflix in the same thought, one has to wonder what is going to happen to the future of commercial television. I saw a special recently that said the cast of Friends made something like $80 million during their show's run. They stand to make (according to the same special) $50 million each in reruns over the next "x" years.
This kind of money might just come to a stop when you think about the possibility of advertisers coming to the realization that their 30-second spot is only being watched by half the people that once used to sit through it. That $1 million is suddenly half as valuable (as would be the case with TiVo). When you consider the DVD option (and those like me who are willing to wait for shows to be released), then commercials aren't even a part of your viewing pleasure at all. If you're willing to be patient, you can order the DVDs from Netflix when they come out and watch a whole season of just about every reasonably popular show as fast as you want. Again - you're no longer a slave to network television's schedules.
It's entirely possible that those $80 million paydays might be in serious jeopardy in the next five to ten years. I don't think it will ever get to the point where television stars are poor, but I do think an adjustment might be forthcoming. As TiVo (and other devices like it) become more and more popular commercials will become less and less popular, at least in their current form. This will be fueled by more and more people subscribing to services like Netflix. In addition, as Broadband becomes more and more readily available, the pay-as-you-go option will most likely become popular too.
The end result here is that people will end up watching the shows they want whenever they want to watch them. And they'll be watching them without commercials. If no one is watching commercials, why would advertisers advertise? Even if a fraction of the American public still DOES watch these shows when the network broadcasts them, how could the advertisers possibly pay as much as they do today (i.e. $2 million for a 30-second spot on Friends)?
I believe that we're destined for a world in which we as consumers pay for each show, channel, or group of channels that we receive. That promotes competition. People pay for HBO because, in part, of the original programming they offer (such as Six Feet Under, The Sopranos, Normal, etc.). The same could very easily hold true for NBC, ABC, and CBS. If NBC charged me $2.95 per month I would happily pay the fee because I like the West Wing and I'm interested in seeing how their new show Joey starts out. I'd pay the same thing to the WB because I want to give Smallville 3 more shows to see if it will at least TRY to redeem itself in the next season (don't get me started on what an unfortunately rediculous blunder they have made out of that show in the last two seasons). I wouldn't pay for CBS or ABC at this point because they're not airing anything that I watch. And that would be my choice as a consumer. If we think about paying by show instead of channel, I might fork over $1.95 per month to subscribe to the West Wing.
I also believe that because of a system like this we might eventually arrive at a point of broadcasting freedom that Europe and other countries have enjoyed for (what seems like) forever. I believe that censorship could easily begin to fade away as we move toward a "paid" business model. In my limited exposure to foreign television markets I have come to realize that the United States of America is one of the most paranoid countries when it comes to broadcast television and radio.
I'd be curious to hear any feedback on this issue from anyone who cares to provide it.
On Wednesday I went to the season premier of Six Feet Under at the Mann Chinese Theater in Hollywood. All of the major stars from the show were in attendance except for Peter Krause who was on the east coast rehearsing for a play. The episode was absolutely fantastic and is set to air on HBO June 13th.
After the premier (which was amazing to watch on the big screen) we all went to the premier party at Hollywood & Highland (a relatively new complex adjacent to the Kodak Theater, where they now hold the Academy Awards). The food and drink was top-notch and it was great to meet so many cast members and crew members. Every one of them is such a nice person. I didn't feel any of the classic “Hollywood Attitude” the whole night, and that was very refreshing.
Today was a half day for me. I went to Rocky Lhotka’s session about security in .NET and then to Ken Getz’s session about Windows Forms controls tips and tricks. Both were great sessions full of information and entertainment. I highly recommend the forthcoming DVD to anyone who will be able to afford it (I heard an unconfirmed rumor that it will cost something like $200). The DVD is, as far as I know, supposed to have just about every session on it. I’m sure looking forward to receiving mine.
After Ken’s session I gave an MSDN web cast that went quite well. Now I’m on a train heading back to LA. I plan to do no work whatsoever this evening.
I found out today that I have 2 sessions at VSLive! Orlando in September. This marks my entrance into the conference circuit and I’m really excited about it. I will be doing a new version of my Themes & Skins talk as well as a talk about creating highly-available online commerce sites with ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. It is my hope that I’ll have some bits for Visual Studio Team System long before my talk so I can demonstrate the unit testing, stress testing, and other useful aspects of the product in this talk.
I have Doug Seven to thank for this – he is the one who hooked me up with Chris in the first place and gave me a great recommendation (while I was up in Seattle for the MVP Summit). Thank you Doug!
It was a pretty light day today. I attended a few sessions (by Rocky Lhotka, Rob Howard, and others) and was pleased to see how robust the Visual Studio Team System product is. The enterprise-level source control system will support (among a great many other things) branching. This means that you can have different versions of your project in source control if you need to do something like fix a bug that is preventing your business from running while still in the middle of a development cycle. Another exciting part of the project is the testing functionality. When developing a web project you can record (or manually enter) unit tests so you can make changes and then run the entire unit test script that you already have saved to make sure nothing broke along the way. I can't wait to learn more about this whole product.
I unfortunately did not win the 42” plasma screen TV that they were giving away. It would have been hell getting that bad boy home on the train anyway ;-) I also didn't win the Mini Cooper or a Pocket PC. My thinking was that I could just win the Mini Cooper and then put the plasma screen TV in THAT to get it back up to LA but luck was definitely NOT a lady tonight.
I had a really nice dinner at SeaWorld with several great people and got to hear how amazingly cool Brian Randell's BMW M5 is. That is one guy who knows a LOT about cars (and a tad bit about technology, too :-) ). I have been thinking a lot lately about getting a used M5 (because, after all, no man should be forced to live with less than 300 horse power at a minimum). I may just go test drive one when I get back. After living as a one-car family for the past 18 months (my wife's VW Beetle being the one car) I'm ready for a car that leaks testosterone.
I did purchase a really great gift for my wife on Tuesday. I think she's really going to enjoy it. I can't tell everyone what it is on the off chance that my wife will read this blog entry before I get home, but she's going to love it. As my mother used to say, “I'm not going to tell you what your present is, but MAN are they gonna look great on your feet!” No, honey, it's NOT shoes.
I do my “Applied ASP.NET Custom Server Controls” webcast tomorrow from the convention center. This is a beginner-level talk and is the first in a series that I hope to do in the future. Shortly after the talk I catch my train home. It's been a long week and I'm looking forward to seeing my wife and getting back to my routine.
After being out until 3:00am with Donny Mack, Rob Howard, and company I slept in a little this morning. I got to the expo hall to help Scott Cate hand out his thousand kbalertz.com t-shirts but could not find him anywhere. I entered to win the Mini Cooper and a Pocket PC, and then had lunch with Ken Getz in the dining hall. The chicken was extremely dry. I guess that's to be expected when you feed something like 10,000 people (or more) at the same time. I still struggle to imagine the logistics of how these people can pull that off (complete with dessert).
After lunch I headed up for my duty at the Office Developer Tools & Technologies table in the Office cabana. I got some great questions regarding deployment, changes from previous versions of office, and conversions of code from VB6 to VB.NET and was happy to help out.
Doug Seven and I had a meeting with Kevin Briody about helping out with the next Imagine Cup. This is a competition where students from Universities around the world design and develop software that is judged over the course of several months until a final winner is chosen. I am looking forward to giving a webcast or two and (hopefully) helping out as a judge in the L.A. area.
I attended Scott Guthrie's 2 talks on ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005. Scott used to do this in one talk, but now there is so much complete that he's able to dive a great deal further into each area of functionality. There is a new product coming out along side VS 2005 that I think will put a lot of smiles on peoples' faces.
The Influencer party was my next stop, where I had a great time with Rocky Lhotka, Ken Getz, Paul D. Sheriff (and his wife, who is a complete delight), Doug Seven, Donny Mack, and a surprise appearance by Susan Warren (who I hadn't seen in at least two years). She looked very happy and it was great to catch up with her. I also chatted with Scott Robertson who is the President of the Los Angeles .NET Developers Group. Scott is a great guy who is having a great time here at Tech-Ed. I gave two talks at his group and it is refreshing to see people like Scott who love .NET and who are so eager to contribute to the community.
This morning I gave a round-table type cabana session with Doug Seven to academic faculty members and it was very interesting. I learned a lot about the difficulties that teachers encounter when it comes time for 40 or 60 database students to work on their assignments when the college or university only has 1 or 2 database servers. It was really great to hear that SQL Server licensing has never been a problem - I feel it is very important for students to have access to the software they need to learn and that Microsoft seems to be doing a great job at providing it.
After lunch Ken Getz and I had a meeting with John Durant about an office developer project we're working on together. He was pleased with the engine we have developed and gave us some really outstanding feedback. I'm looking forward to working more on the project.
Tonight was the MSDN party at a place called The Bottom Line in the gaslamp district and I really enjoyed visiting and chatting with Ari Bixhorn, Rocky Lhotka, Brian Randall, Rob Howard, and so many other great people that we have in this industry. One thing I've found out over the past year is that these people who write the books and do the talks and are outstanding developers and IT professionals are also outstanding guys.
Last night I was out with Doug Seven, Donny Mack, Rob Howard, and friends until close to 2:00. Then I had to get up at 6:30 for Ask the Experts duty in the cabanas. Needless to say I had a tad bit of a headache.
I attended Ken Getz and Paul Sheriff's session about 10 tricks to build a killer web app. They did great (and actually gave my ASP.NET 1.1 themes and skins engine a plug) and the room was packed with what I can only estimate to be about 1000 people.
Doug and I found ourselves with nothing to do at about 4:30 so he made the suggestion that we go take one of those certification exams to see who gets the highest score (I'd never taken one before and had no idea what to expect). Long story short, I'm now a Microsoft Certified Professional. And to give Doug his due, he did score 3 points higher than me (out of a possible 1000 points, if I'm not mistaken). I'll get him on the next one...
I had a nice dinner with Ken Getz, Brian Randall, and Matt Nunn at a half-way decent steak house near the convention center. It was great to eat a real meal after the continental breakfast and continental lunch.
We ended the evening at the W where we attended the MS Press party. Open bar is a wonderful, wonderful invention.
I am on the train heading down to San Diego for Tech-Ed 2004. It’s not quite as smooth a ride as I had expected; I haven’t been on a train in quite some time. One of the annoying things is this ridiculous “ding-dong” that is heard immediately before any announcement (made by the automated system or a live person). For example, not 5 seconds ago the thing went off three times and the recording said “closing doors”. Funny thing about that: we were moving.
I have decided that this would be a decent time to try out the MSN Messenger capability of my LG VX6000 phone. I have been pretty happy with the Verizon service so far since I switched away from AT&T a few months ago.
I have started a new article that will appear in Access-VB-SQL Advisor magazine in the not-too-distant future. Ever since we received the preview Visual Studio 2005 bits at the PDC last year I’ve had a hankering to revamp my Dynamic Themes & Skins engine so that it had native support for the concept of Master Pages. I’ve completed the code for the new engine and am very pleased that it mimics the VS 2005 stuff pretty well, right down to the names I used for the controls (i.e. ContentPlaceHolder, Content, etc.). I never wrote an article that walked through my original engine, but I did do it as a talk at several user groups up and down the west coast. I figured this time I could reach a broader audience if I wrote a guided tour.
UPDATE: My mobile MSN Messenger has timed out trying to sign in for the past 7 minutes.
It’s almost 3:00 in the afternoon and I haven’t had anything to eat yet, so I went down to the dining car with high hopes that I’d find something decent to tide me over until dinner. When I got down there I found a case full of those already-prepared hot dogs, hamburgers, and veggie burgers that a