Well I started Twittering last night.  (Would that be the proper wording for it?)  Twitter is a site that allows you to setup a page and post short message too it, similar to a blog, but the messages have to be under 140 characters.  You can post from the website, instant messenger, or a text message from your cell phone.  Basically intended to keep friends up to date on where you are or what you are doing.  I'm using it to vent throughout the day about work and life, hence the reason I haven't posted the link to my Twitter account because I just may be venting a short message about you, but feel free to try and find it.  In general it seems like Twitter is a general waste of space and time, but I also see where it could come in handy.  It would be interesting to try Twittering a diet or spending habbits.  It would also be nice to have all you friends on Twitter to know w ...

     On Wednesday night I learned a pretty cool trick at the .NET Usergroup meeting when Jon von Gillern was giving his presentation on RegEx.  When selecting text in some applications like Visual Studio if you hold down the ALT key you can select a vertical column.

     This is one of those things that you would probably never know about unless someone told you, so now you know.

    If you haven't been keeping an eye on Google labs then you have missed the new entry of Google 411.  Simply call 1-800-GOOG-411 and get business directory listing for any city and state.  I have tried it several times and it works fairly well.  It free and doesn't even have any ads so it's hard to complain about it.  It's all based on voice prompts and will even dial the number for you. (This means be careful if you're goofing around and looking up things like the White House.) Currently it just has business listings, but I hope that they will soon add listings for people. As far as I am aware this is Google's first step out of the computer world and into a seperate type of market.  Atleast as far as I know everything else at Google you access with a computer.  The arena makes complete sense for Google though since it is all about data and they have ...

    If you've been watching closely today you saw that Google acquired GrandCentral.com.  This site allows to get a phone number and then have that number routed to any number of other phone numbers you want such as cell, work, or home depending on rules you define.  It has a host of other features as well such as recording the conversation and sending individuals you're trying to dodge directly to voicemail.  I came across GrandCentral a few months ago and have been tempted to try it out, but I haven't had a chance to. If you're using it, let me know what you think about it. 

I decided to repost one of my original blog posts on how to easily build and test your connection strings that was quite popular and somehow lost during the transition to the new site.  This method is fairly simple and I use it all the time when I need to build or test out a new connection string.  The first thing you need to do is create a new empty file and call it Test.udl.  Normally I use Notepad to do this, but you can use anything you want.

Once you have done this your file will display the computer icon associated with .udl files and if you double click on the file it will open up the Data Link Properties window.

Scott Hanselman hit the nail on the head with his recent post.  It gave me quite the laugh, but unfortunately it is so true (Just like when I watch Office Space).  I was told the other day by a coworker that I over engineered a solution because I used an httphandler instead of just making a page.  Anyone with a small understanding of ASP.NET should realize that using an httphandler when no content needs to be display is going to be more efficient.  This “page” was going to be hit about every time someone accessed the portal and from what I have come across using an httphandler will increase performance by 5% ...

Like I said in an earlier post I’m currently working on a side project with a couple former coworkers that I hope with become a success.  This project has turned my dining room table into an ad hoc office several evening each week and caused the need to setup a development infrastructure to support the project with the backbone of that being the source control repository.  I decided to use Subversion for the source control repository for the initial reason that it was free, but also because it seems to be fairly highly regarded in the community.  I’ve used both Visual SourceSafe 6.0 and 2005 in the past and whereas I’ve never had any direct complaints with VSS it did always seem to be ...

Well, I feel it is important to put together a toolkit of controls to use when developing for a client.  One of the controls I have created is the Textbox Filter Extender which will allow you to limit a textbox to numeric, alpha, or alphanumeric characters.  I've post the control for anyone to have access to and use.  Free free to check it out over in the development tools section.   If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions for improvements please post them to the proper forum section.

Well I passed the 70-228 exam which means I am one test away from my MCDBA.  The best part of it is that I am done with the SQL tests so now I get to focus on what I prefer more, which is development.  To study I used the Microsoft Press book: MCSA/MCSE/MCDBA Self Paced Training Kit: Microsoft SQL Server 2000 System Administration.  I selected this book simply because it appeared to be the best of the poor quality of books out there.  It was a rather boring read, and the hands on training involved running a bunch of prewritten scripts that were sometimes not explained very well.  I passed though, which is what matters.

   What ...