April 2008 Entries

How do we define community?

During lunch on Tuesday of this past week, ScottHa raised an interesting discussion point by saying that he rarely sees MVPs that are enterprisie ... by that, MVPs that actually work for (day to day) for an enterprise).  Granted, he used to be one himself back when he worked for Corillian.  But as we looked around the group you could see that we were all trying to recollect if we knew of any other MVPs that are enterprisie.  Sadly, we didn't. Now, the point of that discussion was not say that people in the enterprise cannot be MVPs, it...

posted @ Monday, April 21, 2008 7:28 PM | Feedback (612)

MVP Summit Highlights

Well, I had a great time meeting old friends and making new ones at this year's summit.  There were so many things going on and so many people to see and talk to, that it's next to impossible to consume everything at once!  So, to keep things simple, here are of the highlights per day: Sunday Although, I was not there until late (way late), it was a lot fun hanging around the Westin's lobby and talk about how a chicken takes a dookie.  Yeah, that's right.  Keith Elder had the great intentions of recording a podcast that...

posted @ Sunday, April 20, 2008 11:08 AM | Feedback (741)

Laptop Skin

I've been looking into getting a laptop skin for my Macbook Pro for some time now.  I've been searching on Google trying to find something I like and have tossed the idea of creating my own with the lozanotek logo (I still might do this one!).  The one to me that seemed the coolest (and the one that people might know more) is an art piece called The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Hokusai.  Here's what the art work looks like: While returning a movie over at InMotion at Seatac, I bumped into the Gelaskins version...

posted @ Friday, April 18, 2008 10:24 PM | Feedback (613)

twitter: Human Service Bus

twitter is a funny thing.  Not only is it a web application but also a way interacting with people both on/off-line.  The thing that I find most interesting about it is how people tend to user it as a verb (have you twittered?) and a noun (my tweeps)...like another thing that's just part of their things to do.  Another interesting thing is how people here in Des Moines have managed to organize a monthly physical meeting where other fellow DSM tweeps can meet.  Definitely something I really need to check out next month. Not sure how many of you...

posted @ Thursday, April 10, 2008 11:07 PM | Feedback (611)

Currently Reading List

I haven't done this in a while, so I apologize.  Here's my current reading list for technical/non-technical books: The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb Thus far is a pretty good book.  When I picked it up, it sounded like a great book since it tries to answer the "how" of the unexpected.  For some reason, I'm always a sucker for these type of books. Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson I love biographies because they provide a different insight on a person's life.  I've only managed to...

posted @ Tuesday, April 8, 2008 10:20 PM | Feedback (616)

Twin Cities Code Camp: Silverlight Presentation

For those of you that attended my Silverlight presentation yesterday at the Twin Cities Code Camp, I just want to say, "Thanks for coming! I hope you enjoyed it!" As promised, you can download the presentation slides and source code from Google code using TortoiseSVN. Again, thanks for coming to my presentation and thanks to Jason Bock for allowing me to come up and be part of a great event!

posted @ Sunday, April 6, 2008 4:35 PM | Feedback (612)

Ask An Expert Live Chat: May 1st, 2008

That's right!  We're having another ASP.NET Expert Live Chat on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 6 PM PST.  Here's more info on the event: Get your tough development questions answered by Microsoft MVPs, Regional Directors, and other industry experts. Community experts will be on hand to answer your .NET- and Visual Studio-related questions. No off topic questions please. Please note that questions regarding upcoming products and future product specs might not be answered. Would you like to participate as an expert? Contact Ryan Olshan at Ryan[dot]Olshan[at]strongtypes[dot]com. MSDN Online Chats - http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/chats/default.aspx Chat Room...

posted @ Saturday, April 5, 2008 12:47 AM | Feedback (643)

IADNUG Meeting: Intro to ASP.NET MVC

That's right, we're having another IADNUG meeting this evening with Chris Sutton from the CR Ineta user group talking about ASP.NE MVC!  If you're free this evening, come check us out! Intro to the ASP.NET MVC Framework Chris Sutton, CRIneta.org The ASP.Net MVC Framework is a new project that the ASP.Net team is working on to give developers an alternate and potentially better way to do web development in the ASP.Net environment. Model View Controller(MVC) is a well known presentation pattern that has been used in many environments with a variety of different...

posted @ Wednesday, April 2, 2008 2:04 PM | Feedback (611)

MVP'ed for 2008

That's right, the nice people over a Microsoft decided to award me with the ASP.NET MVP award for 2008!  Just wanted to use this blog post as a Thank You! for those people involved in the program! I'm really looking forward to the MVP Summit next week and the year to come!

posted @ Wednesday, April 2, 2008 1:56 PM | Feedback (611)