So on December 28th, I ordered 3 iTunes gift cards from Amazon with my $40 gift card bonus from work, and it has finally shipped. What really sucks is that the first round of ship dates came and gone, and so they bumped it out a week. Yesterday, I shot an email to them saying how unfortunate it is that they cannot fulfill thier orders in a timely fashion. They, however, gave me a sob story that the iTunes gift cards were backordered and they didn’t know when they were getting some in…okay, they’re gift cards – geezus, its not like I’m buying 3 42” plasma tvs or something! So, they finally responded and told me they were upgrading my shipping to 2 day priority from my free shipping that would take 3–5 days. Well, my items finally got shipped…late today (Friday). Which means, it won’t actually go out until Monday – why? Well, 2 day shipping doesn’t get picked up on weekends, so my 2 day shipping is going to take 4–5 days, and so we’re back at the beginning of this vicious cycle except for the fact that I know my gift cards are on their way.

So today I decided it was going to be a beta day, well really, I was just going to work in VS.NET 2005’s Nov. CTP distro that was just launched, more on this later. However, prior to lunch I got an email notifying me that I’ve been accepted into the FogBugz 4.0 beta program. Ohh yeah! Now, I’m going to keep Joel’s “Mouth Wide Shut” policy by not discussing anyting about the 4.0 beta, but I do have to say this – its stable, more powerful, and a bunch of new awesome features have been added.

With that said, its time to move onto VS.NET 2005. Wow, this thing gets better and better with each new CTP or beta that is released. I’ve spent some time just working with web apps right now, you know the basics. The one feature that was lacking in the current versions of VS.NET that I now LOVE in VS.NET 2005 is the fact that you have intellisense for custom controls – and without doing anything! By simply adding your Register directive or using the new global Registration for controls, you’ll immediately start seeing intellisense for your custom controls. You don’t realize how many times I as a web control author, have been asked “how come this doesn’t have any intellisense?” I’m also still getting used to the idea of no precompilation of web apps anymore, however I did see that you can “publish” precompiled apps to a location that will allow you to deploy those handy-dandy assemblies instead of source code.

I did notice one bug, and I’ve not read the release notes yet, but the ASP.NET configuration manager doesn’t work – at least not logged on as an admin (still haven’t tried as an admin yet). Also, I’m finally glad that binding data using the ObjectDataSource finally works…thats going to make binding to business objects soooo much easier. Wow, I’m still amazed, now – back to more playing / testing!

My company, Integrity Technology Solutions, is looking to take on a software development intern. If you attend a local college in Bloomington / Normal / Peoria, I’d sugest you check out and apply! Just as a FYI, our entire development team went to Illinois State University, and all started as interns here!

I have this nasty habit of always wanting to run the latest and greatest of any software. Sometimes this causes problems with my system, however I don’t think upgrading to Windows Messenger 5.1 will hinder my work. Supposedly, there’s enhancements in this version…whatever, I got the newest version.

Update: I just installed MSN Messenger 7.0 BETA, I wonder when my computer’s going to puke. BTW, this beta is just crazy…so many annoying things in it like “Nudge”

Update 2: And MSN Messenger 7.0 BETA is gone. Just too flashy and childish. I like the simplicity that Windows Messenger gives.

If you missed it yesterday, BlogJet 1.2 BETA 31 was released yesterday:

(via BlogJet weblog)

FEATURES

• Added caption to Generate Excerpt button.

BUG FIXES

• Fixed keyboard shortcuts bug.
• Fixed: BlogJet uploads only first picture of post.
• Fixed: pictures inserted from the Web (http://) have zero sizes.
• Fixed: errors with converting local file names of pictures.
• Fixed: BlogJet fails to delete and edit LiveJournal posts.
• Fixed: Generate Excerpt button is enabled for services, which don’t support excerpts.
• Fixed: spell checker doesn’t treat typographic apostrophe (’) as apostrophe.
• Minor fixes.

 Download BlogJet 1.2.0.31 beta from Download section (second link).

Well, its Friday night at about 10:30 PM and what am I doing? Sitting on my leather fold-out couch writing a blog entry on dial-up because I didn’t want to pay $9.95 for high-speed internet.

No matter what, its been a great trip, conference, networking experience. I got the pleasure of meeting a rockstar, nay, legend…Sam Gentile, and of course his counterpart & former co-worker Robert Hurlbut. We three (well, Adam was around for dinner & our trip to Barnes & Noble, but dissapeared when we got the hotel to drive us to Starbucks – which Sam, working his thang, got us the ride – yeah Sam!) got to hang out, chill, drink some coffee, and shoot the s***. If you’ve never met Sam, he’s one of those guys that you expect to be super smart, but not that funny, and he’s quite the contrary (now, I’m not saying he’s not smart, I’m saying he’s super funny AND smart). BTW, I got the pleasure (if you can call it a pleasure) to listen to Rocky & Sam have their nice discussion last night for about an hour or so, and let me tell you…I was lost half the time – both of these guys know their s***. Maybe thats why they speak all over the US and are published.

Anyway, I guess I should mention the conference some…It was great. Joe (does he have a blog, and if not, dude should start one up!) did an awesome job with his team to put on a great conference. The venue wasn’t that great, as we were all crammed in conference rooms big enough for 50 (even though they said it seats 75 or something). However, I would expect that future HDC conferences will be 100 times bigger and better. Great work Joe & your team! It was great meeting you all as well, I hope to frag you many (many, many, many) times in Halo 2. Maybe we’ll get Sam to play (ha!).

Okay, here’s what 330 miles, 3 CDs, a tank of gas, 10 homebaked cookies, and 4.5 hours driving taught me about Iowa:

• There’s some truck driving around with the license plate “BUDDY” that has tail lites that make it look like he’s driving in reverse. I chalk this one up to poor design by Toyota (or whatever company made the car, it was dark and I was going fast).
• Weigh stations for trucks in Iowa state that you have to stop if your truck is over 6000 pounds. In Illinois, you have to stop if your truck is over 8 tons. Now, I don’t know what the conversion is (and I don’t want to find it on dialup right now), but those darn truckers sure have know know how much their truck weighs.
• 3 guys dressed in black hooded sweatshirts standing on a weigh station roof are definately not weighing themselves, or a truck for that matter. My guess is they we’re drinking beer and got stuck up there, or they’re fixing some problem with the roof…you decide.
• The gas station “Kum & Go” is just a bad name (this actually got me to call my girlfriend to share and get a chuckle)
• Driving at 80 MPh 300 some odd miles is boring, but the slight hills and lots of turns make it fun in Iowa. Illinois is flat…I mean, really flat. Ask Kent, he came for a visit, and that was one of the things he mentioned.
• There are a lot of Dodge Neons out there that like to drive 65 MPh in the left lane. Staring at them when you pass them on the right only enrages them to go slower (which is odd since I’m not following them anymore!)
• Cars that like to follow you on your tail going 80 MPh that look like they want to pass you, will only slow down to 65 MPh once you move to the right lane so they can get by. Seriously, this confused me on multiple occasions.
• The Iowa car dealer plates are way cooler than Illinois’ tan pieces of crap that just have “DL” written down the left side.
• Plastering Christmas lights all over your 3 sheds, house, trees and bushes on your farm makes you just an awesome person that my girlfriend would like to meet. Seriously, this one farm looks like it took 2 full days to get Christmas lights all over.

Seriously, all the above statements came from my trip over. It kept me amused, but I mean, come on Iowans (is this the actual term for Iowa people?), use some common sense!

As an aside: You probably realized that I’m now at the Holiday Inn. This place is pretty fricking cool, but my room smells like that “New Rubber Smell” that we all so love. Our Microsoft sponsored get together is starting at 8 PM, and its now 7 PM, so I think I’m going to head down to Damons to grab some chow. If you’re in the building reading this (and didn’t pay the $9.95 fee for high-speed internet until 12 AM Friday morning) come down and eat with me. I’ll be dressed in a gray t-shirt and will probably have a beer in my hand.

Like several others have mentioned, I’ll be taking off later today heading to Iowa for the Heartland Developers Conference. I, however, won’t be presenting but enjoying those that are. If you’re attending, make sure you look for me. I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag, hmm…thats not descriptive enough…I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag and wearing a Microsoft .NET T-Shirt, hmm….nope, still not enough…I’ll be the geek carrying the laptop bag, wearing a Microsoft .NET T-Shirt, and …. well heck, here’s a picture of me…that will be easier.

BTW, if you’re attending the “get-together” tonight, make sure you look for me. I figure I’ll be arriving between 6–7 PM to the hotel. Otherwise, shoot me an email so we can meet up. I’d like to meet anyone and everyone!

So I decided to bite the bullet this afternoon and purchase 2 gold support licenses from SourceGear to obtain Vault 3.0. The upgrade went really, really smooth (I still have doubts that its properly working, but it looks and acts like v2.0.6 (close)), surprisingly. I always fret major updates to programs I use daily that could corrupt the integrity of my well being, code. I do have to say, it seems to be a loooot faster, and I loooove the new add files dialog.

The only gripe I had, was when upgrading my 1.x and 2.x licenses to 3.x licenses: it upgraded but didn’t send them to me via email! And because I figured they would, I closed my browser. Upon realizing this, I tried resubmitting my licenses and it told me that they’ve already been upgraded. So, after a support email (using my Gold status!) & a few hours, I had my licenses. SourceGear: take my subtle hint and send those bad boy’s out via email, otherwise you’re going to get a flood of support requests just like mine.

I found this article (via Larkware News) on how to run a beta test. Very insightful, and I’ll definately take some pointers based on the results. I’ve also been taking part in another beta test for a piece of software that follows some of the same pointers that I was going to implement myself. All-in-all, its a good read if you ever need to do a beta test.