Hey All,

    I am starting a new Blog.  ThePatternMan.com . It will be focused solely on Design Patterns. Check it out when you have time.

Well, the first few posts have been about setting up CS but AFTER THAT. Design Patterns.

Doc

It looks like I have a new book out? I didnt even know that I knew anything about political sociology. Hmmmm Go figure.

I have been having difficulties getting Team System to work accross a VPN connection.  The problems occur when I try to create a new Team System Project.  After hanging for about 10 minutes, I get the following errors.(below). I can create it locally so that is what I am doing for now. If anyone knows a fix for this (besides permissions because that road has been traveled) let me know. I will post when I get a fix.

Doc

Error TF30224: Failed to retrieve projects from the report server. Please check that the Yukon Reporting Web and NT services are running and you have sufficient privileges for creating a project.

Explanation The Project Creation Wizard encountered a problem while creating reports on the SQL Reporting Services on http://TeamFoundation:8080. The reason for the failure cannot be determined at this time. Because the operation failed, the wizard was not able to complete creating the SQL Reporting Services site.

User Action Contact the administrator for the SQL Reporting Services on http://TeamFoundation:8080 to confirm that the SQL Reporting Services server is running and you have sufficient privileges to create a project . Your user account on SQL Reporting Services must have Content Manager permission to create a new project. Also, you might find additional helpful information in the project creation log. The log shows each action taken by the wizard at the time of the failure and may include additional details about the error.

So yesterday I was working on a calendaring program for a job I am doing and was trying to integrate Master Pages into the picture. This was started back in VS 2003 so I had to manually add the master pages to the site.

Pretty easy right? 

1.) Add the Page Attribute
2.) Take out the HTML tags (HTML, HEAD, BODY, FORM, etc...)
3.) Add the content section tags

And I should be good to go right? 

Of course not. When I tried to load the page (in designer or browser ) some of the controls would not stay in the container.  I tried to add them many different ways, click in the container, double click on the control in the toolbox, cut the control and paste into the containers, and of course I checked the the HTML to make sure the controls were in between the container tags.

Grrrrrrrrrr.  It was driving me crazy!!!!

So I did what any frustrated programmer would do. I Called my friends. 

But that was no good. They were all at VS Live (Darn them)

So you want to know how I fixed it?
Was it a bug in VS?
Was it user error?

Well kind of both.

A student had asked me how to achive the grid control on a page like in VS2003.  So I showed them how to go to Tools/Options  (HTML CSS Section) and I had set the default behavior of the controls to "Absolute Position"

Duh!!!  I had never set it back so when I tried to add a control to the container it instead used an absolute position.

Man what a pain.

Hopefully this will help someone else who may stumble in it.

Happy programming (Grrrr)

Doc

Well,  I have finally changed servers. I was tired of the price/service I was getting at my old hosting site and decied to move. Luckily, a friend of mine is allowing me to host it on his servers. It really helps out a bunch. 

Now I can start adding more content again!!  Woooo Hoooo.

I have alot coming up in the next few months so stay tuned!!!

Doc

So it is the new year and many things are comming down the road. In the next few months many changes will be happening and I will be bloging about them.

1.) Updated Book
    I will be updating the book to version 4.0 and will share the things that I come accross in the process.

2.) Team System Install. 
     I will be installing and working with Team System with at client and will blog about the trials and tribulations that come along with the process.

3.) ADO.Net
     I will be writing some papers on ADO.Net and will publish some excerpts on the blog so let me know what you think of them.

4.) Code Camp Central
     We are holding our Code Camp at the end of this month. http://www.SoCalNetEvents.org/CodeCamp I will blog both from the Code Camp and about the Code Camp. If you are in the So Cal area then dont miss it.

By the way, I just put back up the webcam!! We will see how that goes.

Doc

OK OK I know this is yet another NON-CODE post but oh well.

So living in Southern California is pretty cool. It's almost December and it is a beautiful 80 degrees. Since it is such a beautiful day, my girlfriend and I decided to go to the LA Farmers Market . Now if you are used to going to farmers markets in your area, this is nothing like it. It has been around since the beginning of time and although it does sell great produce, it is more of a social place. The huts selling food have grown into a mini-mall of cultural diversity. Every type of food you can imagine is served here but it has more of an old coffee shop feel then anything else. 

Being so close to Hollywood, Farmers Market is somewhat of a mecca for the stars to hang out. We are pretty used to this and pretty much ignore most of the stars that we see there ( Except of Wayne Brady, but that is another story ;) ) 

So we found our way to the Farmers Market today and headed straight for the French Crepe place that we always eat at. We usually like to sit at the counter but it was pretty busy today so my girlfriend grabbed a table nearby while I looked to see if there was room at the counter at on the other side of the restaurant. While looping over to the other side I walked right past this blond girl wearing big glasses and carrying a small dog. I thought to myself, hmmmm that girl is trying a bit to hard to look like Paris Hilton. Only in Hollywood right?  When I got to the other side I saw that there were two seats available next to a guy and a girl at the end of the counter and I waived my girlfriend over. When she reached the stools, she said to me, did you see Paris Hilton walk by with her body guard?  

I thought a second and said (pretty loud) that I thought is was someone who was trying a bit to hard to LOOK like Paris. We laughed a bit and my girlfriend commented that her nose looked even bigger in person. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the people next to us kept looking at us and were laughing to themselves. I thought that maybe they got a kick out of our comments. So we sat down and started to look at the menu.

We were about to order when we realized that the same people that were laughing at our comments were smoking at the counter even though it was a non-smoking area. We were a bit annoyed but instead of saying anything, we decided to go back to the table. As we passed them on the way back to the table, they looked at us again and we were about to give the "I am annoyed that you are smoking look" when we realized that it was Paris' sister, Niki Hilton and her friend sitting next to us.  What a hoot!!!  When we got to the table, we just started cracking up. We could not have planned it any better. They sure seemed to get a kick out of it :)

Oh well, we had a great dinner and then headed home. I just thought it was a funny story so I though I would share.

Doc

We have been so busy here lately that my head is starting to spin. But.... we did take some time to host the .Net Rocks RoadShow when they stopped in LA.

DotNetDoc was interviewed As my publishers Press Release states :

Visual Studio 2005 was released last night for MSDN Subscribers. It has been kind of a pain to uninstall all of the beta software before installing the released version but I am on my way now.  There are a ton of events comming up in our area in which I will be a part of. I will start pasting some of the cool 2005 presentations I am doing soon.

Doc