Geek Post Monthly Newsletter Volume 2 Issue 8

Geek Post

Volume 2 Issue 8 August 2010

Hippolite Musings	Tena Koutou Katoa, In August, I: Discussed Team Foundation Server option for my Telecom team with Microsoft Consulting; Failed (twice) to install my sister’s wireless modem; Went skiing with Tane (son) and Duncan & Jamie Cowan at Whakapapa Ski Field; Assisted (successfully) two friends with their home PC issues (no, I’m not taking bookings); Received Fire Warden training; Participated with Hamish (son) at Vex Robotics Scrimmage; and Was recognized at work for my excellent attitude. Blessings, James
Community Development	Grenada Village Online I’ve made a decision to go on Sabbatical next year; This means a rest; This means resigning from several committees at the end of this year; Therefore, I have nothing further to report about this topic at this time. Align Church Online Implemented a new paradigm (not a major paradigm shift, just implementation of one which works for me): A page has: a DropDownList which lets the user move from record to record; a FormView to edit existing and/or insert new master records; Several buttons to choose from various child tables; An UpdatePanel which is aware of the above buttons; A ContentTemplate which consists of a MultiView; Several Views, one for each child table; Each View consists of an HTML table; Each table consists of: a header row; an insert row consisting of: a DropDownList of all possible related records; a button for adding the selected value to the child table (the UpdatePanel is also aware of these buttons); a display row consisting of: a GridView consisting of: No header row (because already displayed in the HTML table); The child record; and A delete button The nice thing is the add button and delete button work together to give sufficient functionality (with AJAX niceness) that the page responds like a Windows app instead of a Web app. Nicely sized so the HTML table and GridView look like they belong together; Both the Add and Delete buttons are LinkButtons so they look like they belong together; The Show Child buttons are not LinkButtons, so they are nicely differentiated. The Child ObjectDataSource is linked (via ControlParameters) to the insert row DropDownList and Master DropDownList to auto-populate the Insert method.  No code behind required, other than the Add button invoking the Insert method. The Show Child buttons must not only show the relevant View, but also rebind the relevant GridView.  If you don’t, when you change Master record, the hidden Child tables are not refreshed! Wellington Home Education Network Nothing new to report at this time. Wellington SQL Server Users Group We had Brent McCracken from KiwiBank come and tell us about Erwin and PowerDesigner data modelling tools. Wellington Dot Net Users Group Kevin Daly came and told us about Windows Phone 7 Development with Silverlight. Dave Fellows (www.greenbutton.net) came and told us Advanced Azure Techniques.
Developer News	Top Stories Creating Effective Semantic Mark-up How can you make your HTML easier to update, get higher SEO rankings, and offer better accessibility? Integrating WPF in Windows Forms in Visual Studio 2010 How can you take advantage of new technologies in existing apps? SQL Server Performance Tuning Suddenly, you have to find out what the server's doing, how it was set up, and whether things are working correctly.
Study News	Again, not much has changed from last month. Still working my way through MCTS Exam 70-503 – Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5 – Windows Communication Foundation. Up to chapter 11. A funny thing happened.  This book is taking me so long to get through, that my VM Windows Activation period expired and I had to reset it all back to zero.
Telecom News	Have you got TiVo yet?
Situations Vacant	Senior Technology Consultant Description You're the expert It's a great feeling to be valued for your expert knowledge and advice. Customers and colleagues alike look to you to show them the way. Join our Consulting and Design team and get the recognition you deserve.  Your customers look to you to match high quality technical knowledge to their business drivers to create valuable technology solutions.  Be the most trusted of advisors as you consult on the issues that matter to them. Work at a variety of levels, from presenting whitepapers to the nitty gritty of technical designing. Significant experience in an ICT vendor environment is a given. Your knowledge of Microsoft networking, virtualization, thin client and storage technologies and ideally Citrix is robust.  Equally important as your superior technical design and delivery skills, is your ability to relate technical solutions to business outcomes. You have excellent communication and written skills plus a strong customer focus. Your experience with infrastructure strategic planning and technical evaluation is impressive. Providing a breadth of services unparalleled in the New Zealand market, Gen-i is NZ's ICT market leader.  This Wellington-based role sits within our high-performing Consulting and Design team.  We help organisations generate greater value from their IT spend by offering innovative solutions for the issues important to them. Be valued for your expertise.  Apply today.
Training News	The MCT Community Portal is Live—Make the Most of It! Matthew Roche, Senior Program Manager For years, Microsoft Certified Trainers have been asking for a wiki—an online repository of living documents where MCTs can share and maintain information about the MCT program, Microsoft Official Courseware (MOC), and other topics of interest to themselves and their fellow trainers. Now Microsoft Learning has delivered the MCT Community Portal, with forums, file libraries, and wikis to take MCT collaboration to the next level. On August 2, 2010, Microsoft Learning rolled out the MCT Community Portal website, which includes: Discussion and Q&A forums to replace the private MCT newsgroups, which retire on September 1. Discussion and Q&A forums for each MOC course, so it’s easy to find information about the courses you’re teaching. File and media libraries for uploading videos and documents to share with your fellow MCTs. Wikis for sharing tips and tricks, personal error logs, etc., about MOC courses, Microsoft products and technologies, and more. Site-wide tags and search, so finding what you’re looking for is easier than ever. Now the tools you’ve been asking for are in your hands. What will you do with them?
INETA News	A summary of Significant Dot Net User Group Chatter Business/Work/Visitor Visa? (14 replies) JavaScript magic for combining and compressing and more (14 replies) Anyone here using MonoTouch? (21 replies) ASP.NET Video Hosting Providers (34 replies) ASP.NET MVC > HandleErrorAttribute will not return ViewResult (7 replies)
PASS News	A summary of  Significant SQL Server User Group Chatter DateTime2 (6 replies) Standby database 2005 to 2008 (3 replies) CodeCamp 2010 How to increase font size in SSMS (12 replies)
Events Schedule	In this section, I highlight dates, times and venues of events either I am presenting at, or of interest to Geeks.  I’m available for bookings. Date Event Venue Speaker 6-Sep-2010 WHEN Committee Meeting Hippolite Residence Fiona 13-Sep-2010 Grenada Village Committee Association Meeting Grenada Village Community Hall Bruce Patterson 16-Sep-2010 Trainer Readiness Sessions Online Dunno 22-Sep-2010 Windows Phone 7 Workshop Microsoft Wellington Ryan Tarak 22-Sep-2010 Tech-Ed Express Roadshow Microsoft Wellington Ryan Tarak 23-Sep-2010 Final-Year Project Demonstrations VUW Engineering & Computer Science Depts Lots 8-11 Nov 2010 PASS Summit 2010 Seattle, Washington, USA Lots April 2011 ALM Conference Wellington Various
Humour	THE BLONDE MORTICIAN A man who'd just died is delivered to a local mortuary wearing an expensive, expertly tailored black suit.The female blonde mortician asks the deceased's wife how she would like the body dressed. She points out that the man does look good in the black suit he is already wearing.The widow, however, says that she always thought her husband looked his best in blue, and that she wants him in a blue suit. She gives the Blonde mortician a blank check and says, 'I don't care what it costs, but please have my husband in a blue suit for the viewing.' The woman returns the next day for the wake. To her delight, she finds her husband dressed in a gorgeous blue suit with a subtle chalk stripe; the suit fits him perfectly... She says to the mortician, 'Whatever this cost, I'm very satisfied.. You did an excellent job and I'm very grateful. How much did you spend?'To her astonishment, the blonde mortician presents her with the blank check.'There's no charge,' she says. 'No, really, I must compensate you for the cost of that exquisite blue suit!' she says. 'Honestly, ma'am,' the blonde says, 'it cost nothing. You see, a deceased gentleman of about your husband's size was brought in shortly after you left yesterday, and he was wearing an attractive blue suit. I asked his wife if she minded him going to his grave wearing a black suit instead, and she said it made no difference as long as he looked nice.' 'So I just switched the heads.'