My Mighty Blog

Listen to me and label every single thing I say as a 'fact'. You do it for the news networks, why not me??? These are my views on current events, family, news, government, technology, internet, programming, and whatever else pops into my head.
I Met President Bill Clinton Today!
Thursday, March 29, 2007 | 0 Comments
I was at the CTIA Wireless Convention this week in Orlando. There are very prominent business people who were giving keynote speeches each morning. Today, we instead had the Former President George H. W. Bush and Former President Bill Clinton. It was awesome to hear them both speak! It was even cooler to meet President Clinton and shake his hand! (A HUGE thank you to my current employer that is to remain nameless at this time.) I will post pictures later. However, has anyone seen the beaded bracelet that Bill Clinton is wearing? It looks like brown string or leather with red and blue beads. I was curious as to what this represents (if anything).

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Orlando .Net CodeCamp by ONETUG
Sunday, March 25, 2007 | 0 Comments
The 2nd annual Orlando .Net CodeCamp event completed yesterday as an overall success. I thought it was once again very ell put together and managed. Thank you to the members of ONETUG and especially Shawn Weisfeld, Jessica Sterner, and Ken Tucker. You are all very valuable to the local .Net developer community. Also, a huge thank you goes to Seminole Community College for letting us use their facilities for this important event. We couldn't have had this without you.

Highlight of the event: I brought in children's books for extra raffle tickets and won 4 times. I ended up bringing home 3 nice books and a thermos mug for my hot tea. I guess this makes up for the thousands of raffles that I participated in and didn't win... :)

Low of the event: I locked my keys in my truck and missed some of Shawn's opening comments. :(

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"FrontPage Killer"
Tuesday, March 20, 2007 | 0 Comments
You can easily tell from a simple search on Google (or your favorite search engine) that the term "FrontPage killer" gets used a lot in reference to many different web site creation programs. This terms has been used by supporters of products like Macromedia (whooops! Adobe) Dreamweaver, Adobe GoLive, and so on.

In my most recent search using this term, I came across a free application called NVU (pronounced "n-view" and stands for "new view"). Although I have not used this application yet, it has been touted by many bloggers as the standard "FrontPage killer". (Just from reviewing their web site, it appeared to be pretty exciting.)

However, I must confess that the first time I heard the term "FrontPage killer", it was by a Microsoft Employee in reference to an upcoming replacement for Microsoft FrontPage. (However, it was made clear that they were not allowed to really call it that.)

When I was getting a new download of MS SQL Server Books Online today, I noticed an ad on the MS web site for something called "Microsoft Expression Web". This immediately raised a red flag with me, reminding me of the statement above. So, I clicked on it like a drone and saw the supposed "FrontPage killer". Here is a link to it. Let me know how you like/dislike it.

http://www.microsoft.com/products/expression/en/expression-web/default.mspx

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How to Implement the Client-Side DotNetNuke Calendar
Monday, March 19, 2007 | 1 Comments

There is a handy-dandy little calendar control that DotNetNuke (DNN) uses to insert a date value into a textbox control. However, it is not obvious in its usage. If you look at the source of any of the core modules or admin modules that use the control, you will see the following code in the HTML.





If you look in the code-behind for this, you will notice that there are no events assigned to this control. In order for this control to be used like the core modules do, you need to "invoke" the calendar in the Page_Load event. This "InvokePopupCal" method must be fired every time the module reloads. So, do not put it within a Postback If statement.



'this needs to always execute so the client script code is registered using InvokePopupCal


The code above actually handles all of the client-side code that will be needed for the calendar to insert the date like you expect it to. Be sure to pay attention to the control that you pass into the "Field" argument (txtPickUpDate above). This is the control that the script will attempt to insert the date into. Although I have not tested this out, I believe that the only control this should work with is a textbox control.

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What do you look for in a travel web site?
Friday, March 16, 2007 | 0 Comments
I am curious about something... When you go to travel web sites like Expedia, Kayak and Travelocity, what are you looking for?

  1. Are you loyal to one?
  2. Do you search at more than one of them?
  3. What makes you choose one over the other?
  4. Which one is your favorite?
  5. What features do you really like?
  6. What features do you wish they had?

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2nd Annual Orlando .Net Codecamp
Tuesday, March 06, 2007 | 0 Comments
This is the second time they are putting on this FREE event. Last year was great!!! There were freebies for everyone (tech books, shirts, and more), including lunch. It appears that lunch is probably paid for again, but they make no mention of the other freebies this time. Last year it was held at UCF, but they moved it to SCC this year. If you are at all interested in .Net, this is a great event for learning, sharing, and networking.

Orlando .Net Codecamp
http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/

Their Flyer
http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/images/codecampflyer.pdf

Location:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=100+Weldon+Blvd+32773&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=38.22949,71.015625&layer=&ie=UTF8&z=16&ll=28.744709,-81.30548&spn=0.010347,0.024376&om=1&iwloc=addr

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Simple, Quick AJAX Thoughts
Sunday, March 04, 2007 | 3 Comments
I have been using AJAX for some time now, though I do not code AJAX as you might think. I have been using the AJAX tools provided from Telerik to do so. Their tools have been straight-forward and easy to use much like any other web control. However, right now I am evaluating whether I should continue to use these tools with my most current project or move on to using Microsoft's AJAX tools. I have been looking through the "How To" videos at the following URL and I must say that this is a very interesting take on providing AJAX tools to developers. However, I believe that there is still too much for the developer to do upfront to always use these tools for your .Net AJAX needs.

http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/default.aspx?tabid=63

As you can see from the following link to the Telerik web site, they are embracing the AJAX tools offered by Microsoft, but those tools do not completely replace the ease of use offered by the Telerik suite of AJAX tools.

http://www.telerik.com/products/ajax/overview.aspx

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