NWA DNUG - Jimmy Bogard (and me!)

Come join the NWA .NET User Group on October 13th at 5:30 PM. We will be taking nominations for the upcoming User Group officer election's and will have dinner catered from Sonny's Barbeque courtesy of GDH Consulting.

Main Presentation
Title: Testing the Last Mile with UI Testing

Description: The ASP.NET MVC framework greatly improved the web testability story in .NET, allowing for testing of the various components of MVC including controllers, filters, binders and more. But testing these components in isolation still doesn't prove that your site works as a whole. Action methods tested by themselves don't prove that the view shown has the correct information on it, or that links work as expected. For these types of tests, an end-to-end, browser-based test is needed. But just as it is difficult to test APIs not designed for testability, views not designed for testability can lead to brittle, difficult to understand tests. In this session, we'll look at the popular UI testing frameworks, and pros and cons of each. We'll also look at design for UI testability in our MVC application, and how we can greatly ease our testing burden with design techniques in our views. Finally, we'll look at UI test design as a whole, and examine how we can develop a complete UI testing strategy that eliminates the difficulty in testing the last mile.

Presenter: Jimmy Bogard is a principal consultant at Headspring Systems. He is an agile software developer with six years of professional development experience. He has delivered solutions from conception to production for many clients. The solutions delivered by Jimmy range from shrink-wrapped products to enterprise e-commerce applications for Fortune 100 customers. He is also a Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD) and is an active member in the .NET community, leading open-source projects, giving technical presentations and facilitating technical book clubs. Currently, Jimmy is the lead developer on the NBehave project, a Behaviour-Driven Development framework for .NET, AutoMapper, a convention-based object-to-object mapper and the facilitator of the Austin Domain-Driven Design Book Club. Jimmy is a member of the ASPInsiders group, and received the "Microsoft Most Valuable Professional" (MVP) award for ASP.NET in 2009.

Lightning Presentation
Title: Mobile Web Development with ASP.NET MVC

Description: Learn how to use a custom view engine in ASP.NET MVC to make developing mobile web pages easier.

Presenter: Tim Tyrrell is a Chicago native relocated to Bentonville, AR, to build websites for Wal-Mart’s recycling and waste reduction initiatives. He is a co-founder of the Wal-Mart .NET User Group and an officer for the NW Arkansas .NET User Group.

Swag:

-Office 2007 Standard
-Wrox - C# 2008 Book
-Wrox - Professional ASP.NET 3.5 SP1 Edition: In C# and VB
-Resharper License
-Nevron Chart for .NET Lite Edition
-Codesmith Tool Personal Pro 5.x License
-Syncfusion Essential Studio ASP.NET MVC Edtion
-Component One Studio for ASP.NET
-Visual SVN Personal License

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lightning Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:40 PM – Main Presentation
7:40 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 226 (Kansas City Room)

NWADNUG: Jay Smith - Exposing Yourself with RSS and ATOM Syndication

Lightning Presentation

Title: 2009 Tech Salary Survey
Description: Discussion about the current trends for 2009 in Tech Salaries.

• Employee Concerns about Career Marketability
• Salary Satisfaction
• Average Salaries by Metro Area & Region
• Average Salaries by Job Title & Industry
• Average Salary of Skills, Years Experience, and Company Size

Presenter: Jeremy Wilson works for GDH Consulting as a recruiter. GDH Consulting provides professional services solutions in Information Technology and Business Management uniquely tailored to the needs of our clients. GDH has earned continuous repeat business from our client partners since 2001, and is recognized by Inc Magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in 2006, 2007, and 2008. I have been with GDH for 4 years as an Account Manager and Recruiter working with small, medium, and large sized clients in the NW Arkansas IT market.

Main Presentation

Title: Exposing Yourself with RSS and ATOM Syndication

Description: In just about every web application today some amount of information is exposed via RSS or ATOM feeds. Many frameworks have been developed to give your applications this functionality. With the release of Windows Communication Framework a new set of classes were added to allow for the creation and consumption of RSS and ATOM feeds right in the framework. This session will take an look at these classes and how they can be used to generate feeds of any kind from your application.

Presenter: Jay Smith works for Tyson Foods, Inc. where he is a PMO Architect and Evangelist, and is a former President of the Northwest Arkansas .Net User’s Group. Jay currently serves on the INETA Speakers Committee and works diligently with others on test bed projects to learn new concepts and designs. You can read more about Jay on his blog http://www.jaysmith.us or follow his tweets at http://twitter.com/jaysmith.
Jay regularly presents to user groups on various topic including Design Patterns, Visual Studio 2008, Enterprise Library, WPF, and Unit Testing. He is a registered speaker on Codezone, you can make speaker request through there or contact him directly.

Swag:

Resharper 4.5 License
Microsoft T-Shirt
Inside Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Book
Restful .Net Book
Inside Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Web Services Book
Build a Program Now Visual Basic 2008 Book

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 226 (Kansas City Room)

NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/ha6du

jQuery Intellisense with VS 2008 SP1 Tips

If you are a poor schlub stuck working on a ASP.NET Webforms project and not an ASP.NET MVC project, you may run into a few hiccups getting the jQuery Intellisense working along the way. Scott Guthrie has a great tutorial, but a couple of important steps are missing. I would like to mention that this is less of an issue with ASP.NET MVC because all of the required files are included in the default project template.

How Did I Get Into This Mess?

You would first go to jquery.com to download the “min” file which is (currently) titled “jquery-1.3.2.min.js”. Following ScottGu’s instructions, you would get the Visual Studio Documentation file linked from his page here and would end up with a documentation file named “jquery-1.3.2-vsdoc2.js”. There are two confusing aspects to this file name:

1. It has the number “2” at the end of vsdoc
2. It does not have the “min” section

Does this really matter? No, because all you need to do is match the original jQuery file name and add the text “–vsdoc” before the “.js”, but it adds to a rookies confusion.

The Big Finish

Since you are a pragmatic developer and wish to write unobtrusive javascript, you would create a separate js file and prefix it with this line:

/// <reference path="~/Scripts/jquery-1.3.2.min.js" />

Our new javascript file, the original “jquery-1.3.2.min.js” file, and our newly renamed “jquery-1.3.2.min-vsdoc.js” all reside in a “Scripts” folder. Now we can use jQuery Intellisense to chain the heck out of some methods.

$("#test").addClass('hidden').click();

NWA Code Camp

Join us at the NWA Code Camp this SATURDAY at NWACC!

WHAT IS Northwest Arkansas Code Camp 2009?
CodeCamp events are designed for the software developer community at large. These events are put on by developers for developers all across the county. They are a place for developers to come and learn from their peers about topics that are always based on community interest. Code Camps are always free for attendees.

WHAT TOPICS will be presented?
A wide variety of topics of interest to the developer community including:

.NET
Unit Testing
LINQ
SharePoint
Design Patterns
SQL Server
WCF
Entity Framework
iPhone Dev

WHEN AND WHERE is the event?
Saturday, April 25th, from 8:30am to 5:30pm.
Shewmaker Center at Northwest Arkansas Community College

HOW can I learn more and register?
Visit the Code Camp website at http://codecamp.nwadnug.org/

April NWADNUG Meeting – Chris Koenig

Come join the NWA .NET User Group on April 7th at 5:30 PM and learn the benefits of Windows Live and Mesh Frameworks!

Lightning Presentation

Title: Continuing Education in Information Technology

Description: In the IT field, you have to keep learning. Whether you keep learning because you want to, or because you have to (if you don’t, someone else will), many options exist for IT professionals to expand the breadth and depth of their skill sets. This presentation will explore several different options for continuing education in the IT field, including self-learning, traditional training, conferences, and a couple of interesting part-time graduate school programs.

Presenter: Jeff Mullins is a faculty member and Associate Director of the Master of Information Systems program for the Information Systems department in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas. Prior to his move into academics, Jeff spent more than 10 years playing various roles in the IT department at Tyson Foods, including .NET and Java application development, business analysis, and project management. Jeff also recently founded Windsong Solutions, a small IT consulting, development, and training firm.

Main Presentation

Title: Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services

Description: Learn about the Live Framework, our latest offering for developers programming against our Live Services from any device, platform, runtime, or programming language. See new and future services (such as Mesh Services), protocols, APIs, and tools which enable your web, service, or client applications to access, store, and synchronize user data with Live Services, obtain audience analytics data, and more

Presenter: Chris Koenig is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft, based in Dallas, TX. Prior to joining Microsoft, Chris worked as a Senior Architect on the Architecture Strategy Team for The Capital Group in San Antonio, and as an Architect, Developer and Development Team Lead for the global solution provider Avanade. As a consultant, Chris worked with a variety of clients from many vertical markets, ISVs and other solution providers on enterprise-class Windows and web-based applications. Today, Chris focuses on building, growing, and enhancing the developer communities in Texas, Oklahoma, Louisiana and Arkansas. Chris is a devoted husband and father of four awesome children who keep him very busy. In his spare time, Chris serves as Scoutmaster for his oldest son's Troop, and Committee Chair for his youngest sons' Pack. Chris also enjoys traveling, cooking, camping and playing guitar.

You can contact Chris through his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/chkoenig, via email at chris.koenig@microsoft.com, or via Windows Live Messenger at chris@koenigweb.com.

Swag:
JetBrains ReSharper License
Infragistics Resource DVD
Infragistics NetAdvantage
Microsoft Windows Workflow Foundation
Application = Code + Markup A Guide to the Microsoft Windows
Presentation Foundation
Microsoft 6 Office Business Application for Office SharePoint Server 2007
Programming Microsoft Office Business Application

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 130 (Generations Room)

NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/epmzx

ASP.NET MVC 1.0 Released!

Well, it looks like I do not have anymore excuses for delaying some personal projects that I have intending to work on for quite sometime. ASP.NET MVC 1.0 has been released this morning! Remove your old version and give it an install. Download it here.

My Personal Mission Statement

I want to be the master of my craft.

I want to earn the love and respect of my family and friends through mutual love and respect.

I want to inspire passion in my peers through shared knowledge and experiences.

I want to have as much fun as possible with my family, friends, and peers while achieving these goals.

NWA DNUG Meeting – Tuesday, March 10th John Teague – A Path to Automated Testing

Main Presentation
Title: A Path to Automated Testing

Description: In this session we will discuss different ways of testing applications and the benefits of having an automated suite of tests.  We'll show you how to start unit testing your applications and techniques and strategies you can use in your application and your test cases to make them both easier to maintain.

Presenter: John Teague is a Co-Founder and Principal Consultant for Next Level Technology, focusing on Agile Software development, coaching and training. He is very active in the .Net community as an organizer of the Austin .Net Users Group CodeCamp conference, Los Techies Day of Test Driven Development and presenting at several .Net user groups.

Lighting Presentation
Title: How To Build A Resume

Description: Megan is going to show how to write a technology resume in a way that is clean and easy for potential employers to read in order to put your best foot forward and be able to get an interview.  This will involve a clean, easy to read format, bullet points with active words, and an eye catching objective that caters to each job opportunity.

Presenter: Megan Coger has 4 years of experience as an IT Recruiter in Northwest Arkansas with TEKsystems, the largest IT staffing company in the nation.  She specializes in helping IT Professionals with their careers; this involves helping with career pathing, career opportunities, and coaching with resumes and interviews.

When:
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 130 (Generations)
NetMeeting URL: http://snipr.com/nwadnug
Link RSVP URL: http://snipr.com/clkm7

NWA SQL Server Users Group – Feb Meeting

The only thing better than one user group meetings is two!  Therefore, I will be attending this bad boy, as well.

NWA SQL User Group (http://nwasql.org)

Jason Pluenneke will present Power of the SQL GUI from 11:30-1:00 PM on February 11th at Connolly Consulting: (2703 SE Otis Corley Drive, Bentonville, AR).  Jason is a founding member of NWASQL and a recognized expert of anything GUI.

NWA .NET User Group Meeting - Feb. 10th

Come join the NWA .NET User Group on February 10 at 5:30 PM and learn about Advanced LINQ and Agile Development!

Lightning Presentation

Title: Advanced LINQ

Description: Since its arrival, LINQ has proved its power to me over and over. I find that it speeds up development and leaves behind code that is more maintainable than ever. The goal of this presentation is to show you how even the most complicated algorithms can be left dead simple with a little LINQ to help shine some clarity.

Presenter: Rob Tennyson works for Tyson Foods in Springdale, AR where he is a Lead Programmer Analyst. He has been programming professionally since 2001 and loves all things a good architecture astronaut would love! Sometimes he actually gets real work done too. For more information, see http://robtennyson.us.

Main Presentation

Title: Introduction to Agile Software Development

Description: In this presentation we will learn about what Agile Software Development. We will also take a quick look at the Manifesto for Agile Software Development which guides many of the agile practices. Will wrap up with looking at how an agile team gathers and plans, and accomplishes the work.

Presenter: Jay Smith works for Tyson Foods, Inc. where he is a PMO Architect and Evangelist, and is a former President of the Northwest Arkansas .Net User’s Group. Jay currently serves on the INETA Speakers Committee and works diligently with others on test bed projects to learn new concepts and designs. You can read more about Jay on his blog http://www.jaysmith.us or follow his tweets at http://twitter.com/jaysmith.
Jay regularly presents to user groups on various topic including Design Patterns, Visual Studio 2008, Enterprise Library, WPF, and Unit Testing. He is a registered speaker on Codezone, you can make speaker request through there or contact him directly.

Swag:

Programming Ling

Programming Robotics Studio

Introduction Silverlight 2

Windows Vista Ultimate

Infragistics NetAdvantage

Infragistics Resource DVD

When:
Date: Feb 10th
5:30 PM - 5:45 PM - Welcome and News, Sign-in and Food
5:45 PM - 6:00 PM - Lighting Presentation
6:00 PM - 6:10 PM - Intermission – Presenter switch over
6:10 PM – 7:30 PM – Main Presentation
7:30 PM – 8:00 PM – Closing and Prize give-a-ways

Where:
The Jones Center
922 East Emma Avenue
Springdale, AR 72764
Room 228 (Memphis Room)

NetMeeting URL: http://sn.im/b70ve

Link RSVP URL: http://sn.im/b71fh

Social Networks

Join the NWA .NET User Group groups on the following social networking sites:

• LinkedIn
• Facebook

Ditching Dish (How I stopped paying for TV)

Goal #8 of my 2009 Goal List was ditching paid TV and using the internet to resolve those needs. Yesterday I placed the order to cancel my Dish Network subscription and plan to utilize a Gateway M-1624 laptop that my father-in-law dropped. As my luck would have it, he broke the screen but the rest is still intact, including the HDMI out which I am using on my HDTV in the living room.

I started out with a Mythbuntu install and added Boxee, but I could never get the HDMI audio working. I aborted that install and opted for Ubuntu because of the better GUI audio tools (and I not going to using any DVR functionality, anyway). Yes, there is a Boxee Windows version but it is a closed Alpha stage right now (although I did see it on mininova.org). I am going to go from memory here, I got this working a couple of days ago, but it should be close.

1. Install Ubuntu (mine was version 8.10)

2. Update Ubuntu (I had 245 items to install) & Reboot

3. Enable the proprietary drivers (Mine is ATI X1200) & Reboot

4. Install Boxee, per their website

5. Disable the desktop effects (Compiz bad for Boxee)

6. Remove pulseaudio, Install esound

sudo rm /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70pulseaudio
killall pulseaudio
sudo apt-get remove pulseaudio
sudo apt-get install esound

7. Update Sound Settings

Entire Section Ripped from this website:

http://www.mandladventures.com/2008/11/03/ubuntu-810-hdmi-sound-configuration/

For your system to play sounds through your graphics card’s HDMI port, you need to tell Ubuntu to use the graphics card sound system VS your motherboard’s. This is the intuitive change. Go to System > Preferences > Sound. On the Devices tab, change all of the options excluding sound capture (e.g., Sound Events, Music and Movies, Audio Conferencing, and Default Mixer Tracks) to HDA ATI HDMI ATI HDMI (ALSA).

The next sound change is less intuitive; it requires you to double click on the speaker icon in your top panel to bring up the Volume Control menu. On this menu, change the Device drop down list option to “HDA ATI HDMI (Alsa mixer) and then select the Preferences button near the bottom right. On the preferences menu, check the IEC958 Switches track to be visible and then close the preferences screen. Back on the Volume Control screen, you should now have an IEC958 option on a Switches tab. Check this option and close the Volume Control menu.

The sound tests available on the System > Preferences > Sound should now play

End Ripped Section

(Also make sure to un-mute the device)

8. Find your HDMI soundcard name

sudo asoundconf list

9. Set HDMI as your default

sudo asoundconf set-default-card HDMI

10. Run Boxee as admin

sudo /opt/boxee/run-boxee-desktop

11. Manually change Boxee’s “Audio Output Device” from “default” to “hdmi” (yes, mine is lowercase here, but was uppercase on #9)

References:

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=538

http://forum.boxee.tv/showthread.php?t=4853

http://www.mandladventures.com/2008/11/03/ubuntu-810-hdmi-sound-configuration/

2009 Goal List

I wrote this list up a couple of weeks ago during a VERY LONG customer meeting.  I have been debating whether to post this list or not, or whether to use the complete list that I compiled (I am), hence the delay…well, here goes.  I wanted to list some high aspirations of mine and/or future goals, interpret them as you will.

1. Learn to type better (and use the mouse less) – The MUD typing skills that I attained in college are wearing off.  This is becoming more obvious as I begin to give more technical presentations
2. Blog once (or more) a week – I have a backlog of posts I need to finish, and I will try to do it!
3. Be more involved in the .NET community – I did go to the Dallas Charity Coding Challenge, and have been on most VAN calls
4. Be more involved in the NWADNUG – I was elected to the board as the groups “Secretary” for 2009
5. Start the Wal-Mart .NET User Group – Robby Gregory and I have launched it (and blogs to finish on these meetings)
6. Work on personal programming projects – I have a couple of decent ideas, tough to start/finish
7. Work on TDD, DDD, BDD – Obviously kind of a BS goal, but it is true that I want to learn them better
8. Ditch my paid TV for free (internet) TV – If I can only get HDMI audio from my Mythbuntu + Boxee machine I got it!
9. Move to Austin, TX – Good tech job market, good tech community, liberal mentality, affordable housing, warmer weather, bigger airport, city life…
10. Get promoted or apply for a new job/team – Pretty obvious
11. Something with the kids and wife? – Sad that I cannot think of a goal that I want to accomplish with my wife or kids…
12. Stay healthy – I play tennis a couple times a week, trying to eat better (no more pop!)
13. Organize time better – I really need to accomplish tasks first and relax as a reward, but old habits are hard to break.

Well, that was not super-exciting, but now I have it publicized to the world; meaning that I have to accomplish all of the listed goals within the next year, which will be nice.

Opening a VS 2008 SP1 Web Application in VS 2008 without SP1

At my employer, we have Visual Studio 2008 rolled out to the general populace. Unfortunately, we do not have VS 2008 SP1 installed with it. I know it should be coming in the next month but I want to mention a little trick that I have been using for a few months now just in case someone needs it. In this example, I am trying to open a VSLiveBlog project that Ben Scheirman has posted here.

When I first open the solution I get this message:

I hit the ‘OK’ button and am left with all the projects open except the web application:

Right-clicking in the unavailable project with give me the following menu:

Selecting the “Edit VSLiveBlog.Web.csproj” will open up the project file XML. I see the following:

<Project ToolsVersion="3.5" DefaultTargets="Build" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/developer/msbuild/2003">
<PropertyGroup>
  <Configuration Condition=" '$(Configuration)' == '' ">Debug</Configuration>
  <Platform Condition=" '$(Platform)' == '' ">AnyCPU</Platform>
  <ProductVersion>9.0.21022</ProductVersion>
  <SchemaVersion>2.0</SchemaVersion>
  <ProjectGuid>{766F7651-6588-4B2D-A79D-CA0195A1B6DD}</ProjectGuid>
  <ProjectTypeGuids>{603c0e0b-db56-11dc-be95-000d561079b0};{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>

I then switch the <ProjectTypeGuids> section to a functioning one from another project on my machine:

<ProjectTypeGuids>{349c5851-65df-11da-9384-00065b846f21};{fae04ec0-301f-11d3-bf4b-00c04f79efbc}</ProjectTypeGuids>

Save and close the csproj file and right click on the unavailable project again, this time selecting “Reload Project”:

Time to get to work: