I’m listening to .NET Rocks! live in Austin right now (you can download it here)

I enjoyed listening to Jeffrey Palermo and Scott Bellware, as I read their blogs often.

I’d just like to vent about this moron:

.. who said “C# Sucks!” live on the air.  His name is Leeman Schmitt.  Obviously this guy is incredibly narrow-minded, and cannot easily understand (let alone take advantage of) the differences and superiorities of another language.  VB.NET, while a great language, is not the panacea of development.  I get completely annoyed when someone is tied so tightly to ONE particular viewpoint on a problem.

I believe it was Scott Hanselman who said, “C# and VB.NET are just different flavors of IL” –  I couldn’t agree with this more.

Given the choice, I will choose C# because that’s what I prefer.  I don’t push it on anyone else, I don’t claim that it’s the best, or that everything else sucks.  I am perfectly happy to work on a project in VB.NET because I am versatile.  I would be happy to use PHP or Ruby, or JSP for that matter, since I believe being multi-faceted benefits my work in ALL languages.

I have been hearing a lot of this whiny attitude toward C# lately.  I wouldn’t hire anyone if they couldn’t program comfortably in VB.NET and C#.  I would also frown upon anyone who would just JUMP to using a particular technology for every problem they come across.

Anyway, I cast my blogvote to C#, thought I still respect any language or tool that will help me work productively. 

Ok, I’m done ranting…  flame on

Ed: Ok, so I was a little harsh.  Apparently there was more to this story.  So Leeman, no offense…  I just get really worked up about this topic

I just finished reading Extreme Programming Explained, 2nd Edition, by Kent Beck.

The book is a very easy read, weighing in at 160 pages.  I was able to easily finish it in the spare minutes I have during the day.

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and will be applying a few of the principles immediately at my job.  I enjoyed taking a break from purely technical book and focusing on values and principles.  There is also an extensive annotated bibliography in the back which will probably serve as my new-books-to-read source.

Next up is the Pragmatic Programmer, which I probably should’ve read a LONG time ago, but always put it off.  I’ll write a short review when I finish it.

I just realized It’s been a while since my last technical post, so I thought I’d share my latest frustration. (Don’t you just love those?)

Today’s frustration comes from the behavior of ToolTips in windows.  By default, if a control has it’s enabled property set to false (that’s disabled for you boolean challenged out there) then it will not receive the required mouse events for tool tips to function properly.

So for my “Save” button on a form, if it’s disabled, I’d sure like to tell the user WHY it’s disabled.  To me this seems like one of the more common uses of the tooltip.

An image will definitely help:

To accomplish this I had to put something invisible behind the button, but it still didn’t work properly, so you can see I shrunk the button just to get it to work.

I could display a status bar or something along those lines, but I don’t want to complain to the user until they actually try to click “Save Changes.”

I read in MFC you can use PreTranslateMessage to allow WM_MOUSEMOVE to be passed to a disabled button, but I don’t really have the time or the energy to do this in .NET. (unless someone else wants to give me some pointers…)

Sadly, a google search led me to only 1 possible quick-fix (putting a label or something behind the button and set the tooltip to that) ….  but it didn’t work.

I’d just like to say… ahem:   “GO ASTROS!”

That is all…

Now playing: Weezer - Tired Of Sex - Winamp *** 1639. Weezer - Tired Of Sex

I’ve been down in the dumps about my mom recently.  I know it’s to be expected, but it’s strange how it hits me now, even more than at her funeral.

I think part of it is because I was very close to the situation, almost jaded by it, and now that things have had a chance to settle it’s more real.  We rarely even walk into her room anymore, so 1/3 of our house is completely unused.  This will change sometime soon, but I’m not sure when.

This week I hope to bring her ashes home (my aunt has been hogging them ).  I hope that may help me feel a little better.

I came into work today and saw this on my desktop:

It’s totally understandable why someone would spell it like that, but it’s funny nonetheless!  I got a kick out of it today.

Now playing: Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs

While writing an email in Outlook today, I was a little purturbed (sp? —wait how Ironic, since this post is about spelling) to find this:

 Now I have come to find out that judgment is an actual spelling (however goofy it looks — it is THE spelling) but the ever more common judgement IS in the dictionary, but not in Outlook’s.

Obviously I could just add it, but I wanted to vent.

Now playing: Fleetwood Mac - Silver Springs

Ok, with that out of the way, I would like to tell you about my “ticket buying experience” :

/begin ticketmaster rant

I click on “Buy Tickets” on the Blue October website, and it takes me to Ticket Master.   I see that the tickets are priced at $15 each.  Sweet!  I’ll take 2.  I select ‘2’ from the dropdown list and hit continue.

The next page shows up with a ‘shopping cart’ of sorts with my 2 tickets listed, each with an additional convenience fee attached ($5.25).  Retarded.  They might as well just make the tickets cost 20 bucks, I’d still buy them.  Oh well, so Ticketmaster is gay.  I click next.

The next page shows my ticket aquisition options.  I can pick them up at Will Call for $2.50.  Why would I ever PAY to go pick up my own tickets?  The whole reason I am ordering online is to avoid having to wait in line at the show.  So I look at the options for shipping.  Let’s see, UPS Next Day Air ($30), UPS 2nd Day ($22), UPS 3–day ($15), and that’s it.  Holy crap, they can’t just stick 2 thick pieces of paper in an envelope and MAIL them to me for about 50 cents?!?  FINE, I’ll take UPS 3–Day.  I’m starting to get VERY annoyed and plan on complaining.  I click Next.

I don’t think I have an account, so I fill in all of my information, credit card info and everything and hit next.  It says “You already have an account.  Click login to login.”  Well, why the fuck didn’t you log me in then?  So I login.  I have to enter my credit card info AGAIN.  I click next.

The next page shows my final order summary, looking like this:

OMFG!  Order Processing Fee?!?  This sounds like a banking commercial.  65 dollars for 2 $15 tickets.  That’s IT!  I close the window.  I have now wasted 30 minutes of my life and I WANT IT BACK.

I have a suggestion to the folks at TicketMaster.com :

LET ME KNOW YOU’RE GOING TO RAPE ME WITH CHARGES BEFORE I WASTE MY TIME ON YOUR SITE.  Why don’t you just charge $30 per TICKET?  In that case I would have bought them.

I’ll now be driving my ass to the local Fiesta to purchase tickets in person.

/end ticketmaster rant

Ok.  I feel better now.

Now playing: Pink Floyd - Ibiza Bar - Winamp *** 1036. Pink Floyd - Ibiza Bar

Am I the only one in the world who despises Outlook?  Just about every developer I know of uses it, and I hate it.

The only other viable option that I saw was Thunderbird, and I liked it for the most part.  Sure, it doesn’t have a calendar or task list, but most people don’t use those features anyway.

I am going to have to put away Thunderbird for good, as it likes to randomly reject my SMTP settings for no reason.  It will work fine one day, and refuse to send mail the next.  Outlook hasn’t ever complained about the settings so… 

Anyone else share my sentiments about outlook?  What other solid email clients are out there that are worth looking at?

Now playing: Pink Floyd - Run Like Hell

I’ve been struggling with some windows forms development in .NET 2.0 beta 2, and would really benefit from a good book, but there are none out!  (Chris Sells’s book is waiting on the final release, as are others…)

Anyone know of some good online resources or beta 2 books that I could pick up?