Microsoft - Platorms to go please!

Hear me out: I don't want to install licensed, basic configurations in virtual environments any longer! Think of the productivity gains in a world where... The MSDN premium subscriber downloads one of 10 (20? 50?) ready-to-go virtual images, configured by the pros themselves! Download your image in Hyper-V or VirtualPC format and GO! Trial license keys are used and can be upgraded to valid keys at any time. (Extra benefit that multiple trial configurations are now available.) Example: With the most recent release, I... 1) downloaded 2008 server, 2007 SharePoint, SQL 2008, TFS 2008, 2007 Office, 2007 Visio, 2007 Project, 2008 Visual Studio, and Expression Studio v2. 2) I then boot up a Virtual PC VHD and install and configure Server 2008. 3) Install all patches. 4) backup and compress the image. 5) Install/config SQL 2008 and SharePoint 2007 and repeat steps #3-4. 6) Install/config TFS 2008 and repeat steps #3-4 (because TFS config is painful). 7) Install/activate/config Office, VS2008, Expression Studio and steps #3-4. Now, I can do whatever I want for a while and always fall back to a virtual. I want to try out PerformancePoint? Back to image in step #5. I want to try out just Search 2008 standalone? Back to step #4. ONE ACTIVELY PATCHED Operating System Virtual Image WOULD BE A HUGE TIME SAVER! PLEASE?! *By the pros? :)

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Silverlight Sucks

Just compare the system requirements of Microsoft's Silverlight with Adobe's Flash (Macromedia). Now, Flash has traveled the world and taken in all the sites for years and years. But, you'd think with the importance of playing in this space that Microsoft would compete a little harder... Oh wait... you all are still excited about Silverlight no matter what reality dictates. That's right... Let me know how it goes. I'll stick with the basics for a little while longer. (Don't get me wrong, I get just as excited as you do about Silverlight and an embedded light-weight .NET environment, but I don't let emotions control my actions.) Oh, and let me know how well Microsoft acquired Yahoo! and how they competed in the ad space while you're whistling Silverlight tunes. :) For all their efforts, I continue to applaud the developers at Microsoft. I'm certain you've done better than I could have. BTW: I'm loving what I've seen of WCF so far!

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Key Technologies Announcement

Announcing the Web 2.0 YUI AJAX-enabled, Adobe RIA driven mashup with Silverlight 2.0 WPF XAML tutorials for social, community tagging and clipping supported by a LINQ backend running on top of Astoria from a geospatial aware SQL 2008 and communicating with JSON! All of this using scalable SOA built in the Cloud via REST APIs managed by an ESB and Grid Computing! You won't even recognize this Ruby Gem! :)

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Updating my network of sites...

I'm in the process of updating my network of websites. I've been transitioning to "Enterprise Architecture" along with a lot of other life changes. Busy, busy, busy... I've been using del.icio.us a lot lately, so here's what I've been looking at lately:

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How to be a Failure!

After starting the lengthy-titled book "How to Be a Complete and Utter Failure in Life, Work & Everything: 44 1/2 Steps to Lasting Underachievement", I had to comment...

Steve,

So far, I have failed to finish your book this morning due to pressing interruptions in business that are causing me great succstress.

I had the need to make a suggestion: "Whether neh accepts the advice, is completely up to ner."

The words "neh" and "ner" refer to he/she and him/her respectively. I started the words with the letter "n" to refer to "nobody in particular".

I saw that you Trademarked "self-unimprovement guide". In the same respect of unwillingness to share great ideas, I now trademark "neh" and "ner" and "succstress" and grant you the right to use these words if they refer to me as the author in respective context. ;D

Eric Swanson
http://iseric.com

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Life Really is Good

Today is a really great day (for more reasons than I care to share with the world). I'm writing this entry today simply to share how much gratitude I have for my life.

Following are some highlights of my day (by the end of the day):

• Talked with my wife throughout the day while she is helping my mom on a catering job
• Reflected in my daily journal
• Completed security integration of a Windows Forms CMS tool for the unreleased re-write of www.AzBlue.com
• Helped my security director solve an urgent issue related to a bug in Internet Explorer
• Created an Excel-VBA macro for a friend to find text in a column and select the entire row for every match
• Rehearsed the dance "Tradition" for an upcoming Fiddler on the Roof production (September) by Starlight Community Theatre
• Continued to practice my song for my Arizona Idol audition on July 30
• Attended a daily meeting with friends
• Spent a moment talking to both of my parents
• Spent some time playing with my dogs
• Woke up and went to bed with a personal prayer
• Was so excited by the little things in my day that I felt compelled to write about it on a website for the whole world to see

I am truly grateful and I love the good times and I respect the bad times.

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Obtaining Response.OutputStream.Length...

In ASP.NET, the Response.OutputStream is write-only. As a result, if you attempt to read the length of the response output at any point in stage in the page events, you get the "NotSupportedException". Taking a page from the book of guys who wrote compression filters that compress the response output on-the-fly, I discovered that I could access the length of the response as it is written...

Basically, I wrote a custom class that inherits "Stream" and overrides all of the appropriate stream's methods/properties. The default constructor accepts a Stream object and stores it in a private variable, so the overridden methods/properties all expose the underlying stream's methods/properties. Example: override public bool CanRead { get { return this._stream.CanRead; } }. I declared a "private long _length = 0;" variable and set the value in my stream's "SetLength" method and update it in the "Write" method using the "count" parameter, ensuring the length always reflects the data length. In the "Close" method, I use "base.Close();" and then I can do whatever I want with my private "_length" variable, which contains the length of the response's output stream.

Once I had the class above, I used the following code in the page's "OnLoad" event:
this.Response.Filter = new ObserveResponseLengthStream(this.Response.Filter);

---

Per Jorge Pereyra's request, here is the code for "write, setLength, flush and seek":

class ObserveResponseLengthStream : Stream
{
   private Stream _stream = null;
   private long _length = 0;
   public ObserveResponseLengthStream(Guid urlKey, 
      Stream stream)
   {
      this._stream = stream;
   }

   public override long Seek(long offset, 
      SeekOrigin origin)
   {
      return this._stream.Seek(offset, origin);
   }

   public override void Flush()
   {
      this._stream.Flush();
   }

   public override void SetLength(long value)
   {
      this._stream.SetLength(value);
      this._length = value;
   }

   public override void Write(byte[] buffer, 
      int offset, 
      int count)
   {
      this._stream.Write(buffer, offset, count);
      this._length += (long)count;
   }

   public override void Close()
   {
      try
      {
         this._stream.Close();
      }
      catch { }

      base.Close();

      try
      {
         /*now you know the actual length 
           of the response in this._length,
           so do whatever you want with it*/
      }
      catch (Exception ex)
      {
         //make sure your exceptions are handled!
      }
   }

   /*...all the other code simply exposes the 
     _stream's properties and methods...*/
}

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Configuration a Machine for Microsoft Software

I recently received a new laptop that needed a new operating system and developer software. I've setup machines countless times, so I might as well make a list that others can learn from...

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Raymond Chen's "The Old New Thing"

Raymond Chen's book titled "The Old New Thing" is the realization of a web blog in print. Parts of the book can be enjoyed by anyone who has dealt with the evolution of the Microsoft Windows operating system and inevitably asked the question "Why?" Why does Windows look like it does? Why are those seemingly quirky things about Windows the way they are?

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Books on CD

I finished three books on CD in January; Good to Great, Managing the Dynamics of Change, and Built to Change. I listened to the "Change" CDs first only to hear the author in "Good to Great" scold companies for focusing so much on change management. It was a refreshing reminder how we all get caught up in a single method of management and fail to swim upstream or even question why we're swimming in the stream we're in. However, dealing with change effectively in a business is vital to success. Quite honestly, the books all cover common sense topics, but most of us don't take the time to sit and actually think through some common sense. So, once again, I am recommending that at least read "Good to Great" to take some personal time and get some thinking in the realm of "back to basics".

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