As I posted here, here and here, I (with James' help) have been raising money for the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.  After some shipping issues kept me from following through at Codestock, I finally received the shirt the Monday before I left for DevLink. 

Instead of wearing it on the bus, I decided to wear it for the first day of DevLink.  As I was getting dressed that morning, I actually realized it was gonna be a bit tougher than I thought.  :-)  The cool thing is that it turned out to be a conversation starter throughout the day and into the evening.  As you can see, it appears to be a picture of the band Ratt.  If you look close, you'll see it's this picture (courtesy of James).

Let me give everyone the background on this particular picture.  A few months ago I mentioned on twitter that I had never been to a concert.  I actually caught a lot of flack from people for that simple comment.  Keep in mind that during this twitter exchange, I NEVER mentioned anything about Ratt or wanting to see them. :-)

James, for whatever reason, decided to fire up Photoshop and add me to a picture of the band.  Even as the above twitter conversation was still going on, James twittered the picture.  It has since become a running joke with my friends and was even used as an icebreaker when I first met Sarah.

It still pops up on twitter and IRC every now and then, but now that I've turned the tables and actually raised some money for charity, I'm ok with it. :-)

Like I said, it was a conversation starter during DevLink and I enjoyed talking about it AND how it was being used to raise money for the museum.

So, finally, in the end, how much did I raise?  More than I expected, but not as much as I hoped.  Including James' donation of $125, I received a grand total of $365.  Not bad for the simple act of wearing a t-shirt. :-)  I'll be heading to Ann Arbor soon to hand them a check.  I hope to get a picture while I'm there.  If I do, I'll update this post.

Personally, I would love to see more of us do things like this to raise money for charities we care about.  It definitely feels good. :-)

As I mentioned in this post, James and I decided to raise some money for what I consider a very worthy charity: The Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.  The plan was for James to bring a custom-made t-shirt to Codestock for me to wear.  The shirt, which was supposed to cause me some embarrassment during my talk, ended up not being delivered to James' house until *after* he left for Codestock.  We were both really disappointed, BUT there's some backstory I can share.

James originally tried to get the shirt made at zazzle.com, but for whatever reason, they rejected his design (copyright issues?).  He eventually got the shirt made at Cafepress, but even though he chose "2-day shipping", it took about 8 days for the shirt to be delivered.  I feel pretty bad about it because I did get quite a few donations and was really looking forward to "earning" them.  I even added a slide to my session deck that talked about it. :-\

We've decided to extend the challenge a bit.  He is sending the shirt to me sometime *before* I leave for DevLink.  My plan is to wear it on the DevLink bus (more on that in another post), although James suggested wearing it during the event.  We'll see how things go. :-)

So, no pictures yet, but I promise there will be. :-)

Oh, I should mention something else.  After the Codestock poker game, Dennis Burton donated his winnings to the "challenge"!  That was an additional $70 I wasn't expecting!  Thanks Dennis!

While I'd prefer everyone click on this donate buttonso I can collect all donations and then write the Museum one big check after DevLink, you may certainly skip that and simply donate directly to the museum using this link.  If you do donate directly to the museum, please leave a comment on this post. :-)  100% of the donations I receive will go directly to the museum.  If you have any questions, please use the contact link on my blog.

Wow.  I can't believe it's August already.  Where did July go?

In a few short days I'll be jumping in a car and making the long drive down to Knoxville to speak at Codestock.  Of course, I'm not crazy enough to make the 9-hour trip by myself, so Friday morning I'll be driving to Toledo to meet up with Jason Follas.  I'm really looking forward to this event for several reasons.  Not only will this be my first trip to Tennessee, but I'll be meeting lots of great people.  It'll be great to finally meet James, Scott, Nathan and several other tweeps in person.  Of course, as I review the speaker list, I start to panic  a bit and wonder if they really meant to select me as a speaker. ;-)

Once again, I'll be doing my "An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD!" talk.  Based on the recently-released schedule, it looks like I'll be speaking in the last timeslot of the day. :-)  That should make for an interesting day.  I'm making a few tweaks to my presentation and hope to record the talk.  The last time I tried to tape a session, it didn't turn out too well, but I'll certainly give it another try.  :-)

A few weeks ago, James approached me with an idea.  He said, "I'll donate 'x' dollars to the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum' IF you wear a t-shirt I'm having made during your presentation at Codestock."  After a little thought, I told him I'd do it. :-)  The t-shirt I'll be wearing will remain a surprise, but I will post pictures after the event.  When I mentioned this to several friends in IRC last week, they chimed in and said they'd be willing to donate some money as well.  Sweet!  In the spirit of helping a fantastic children's museum in Ann Arbor, I'd like to open this up to everyone.

I can say that the t-shirt will be in good taste, but it will be cause me a bit of embarrassment. ;-)  So, if you'd like to a) see me sweat just a little bit more during my presentation and b) help a great organization, please take a minute and donate what you can.  It's a great cause - the museum is an awesome place to take your kids for a few hours!

While I'd prefer everyone click on this donate buttonso I can collect all donations and then write the Museum one big check after Codestock, you may certainly skip that and simply donate directly to the museum using this link.  If you do donate directly to the museum, please leave a comment on this post. :-)  100% of the donations I receive will go directly to the museum.  If you have any questions, please use the contact link on my blog.

Wow, so Josh called me out in his "Inspired by" post.  :-) 

When I first read his post and realized I needed to write about someone that inspires me, my first thought wasn't anyone in the technology field.  As I read further I realized he asked that we talk about someone from the community that inspires us.  So, I'm going to go above and beyond in this post and talk about two people that inspire me.

Inspiration #1

The first person I thought of when I read Josh's post is my long-time friend Wil (Wil doesn't blog anymore which is a real shame).  I've known Wil close to 20 years; we were friends in high school, he was the best man at my wedding and he continues to be there for me when times are tough.  I can only hope I'm as good a friend to him as he is to me.

Right after high school graduation (1991) Wil fulfilled his lifelong dream of becoming an infantryman in the United States Marine Corp.  While I was hanging out with my friends, going to college and having a good time, Wil was serving his country.  He was there when the United States closed our naval base in the Philippines.  He was in Somalia in 1993 (if I recall correctly, it was a few months before this) and Rwanda in 1994 to help evacuate American citizens.  When he returned home from active duty, he jumped straight into life as a student at MSU (James Madison College) and double majored in International Relations and Political Theory all while working some crappy jobs (management in restaurants, security, etc.)  Not only did he fulfill his dream of becoming a Marine, he came home and focused on his next goal and didn't let the small things get in the way.  He also continued to serve as a Marine in a Reserve unit.  The discipline he displays has always been an inspiration to me.

In 2003, Wil's Marine Corp Reserve unit was called up for duty in the Global War on Terrorism.  He put his life on hold and spent several months in the Horn of Africa performing counter-terrorist operations before coming home and resuming his life.  Honestly, when he was gone in the early 90's, I never worried.  When he was gone in 2003, I never worried.  Wil is, was and always will be a good Marine.  In 2006, now a Gunnery Sergeant, Wil was once again called up to serve, although this time his destination was a bit scarier: Iraq.  Wil was the first person I know to serve in Iraq and I have to say it scared the hell out of me.  I know people who did everything they could to get out of serving after September 11.  I still get angry when I think about the lengths some people went to avoid having to go (close family relations actually), but Wil didn't.  He knew he had an obligation to his country and to himself and he did his duty.  After 7 months in Iraq, Wil arrived safely back home in May 2007.  He takes his duty seriously and I am inspired by that.

After all that, I can add this: his loyalty to his Marines and to his friends inspires me.

What have they inspired you to do?

Wil has inspired me to stop worrying about the stuff that's out of my control.  He has inspired me to focus on the things that are important and not complain when things get tough. 

Who else have they inspired?

Inspiration #2

The second person I thought of is part of our software development community: James Avery.  While I've never met James in person (soon to be remedied at Codestock), James is an inspiration to me because he is a doer.  He not only talks the talk, he walks the walk.  I can look at sites like 22books.com and The Lounge or one of his two books on my bookshelf and see it. 

James has the focus required to bring products to market and that definitely inspires me.  He has told me many times that in the amount of time I've spent playing WoW, I could have easily knocked out some cool stuff. :-)  In fact, James inspired me to treat my side-projects more like real jobs and because of that, I have made more progress on my side projects in the first 6 months of this year than I ever have.

What have they inspired you to do?

James has inspired me to stop over-analyzing things.  He has inspired me to just "get things done" and to stop looking for excuses.

Who else have they inspired?

That's tough to say, but I would hope other developers are inspired by his talks, his books and the sites he's created. 

Call to action

To repeat Josh: I'm going to call out 5 people because I want to know who inspires them.

I'm calling out the following people:

Sarah D.

Dan Hounshell 

Mike Wood 

Jason Follas

Jim Holmes

My pics

My original plan was to blog throughout the event, but due to lack of sleep, the days blended together and when I sat down Saturday night to write my post, I was in a daze and had no idea where to start. :-)

Now that the event is behind us and I've had some sleep, I'm struggling to put into words the amazing experience I had over the weekend.  I woke up today feeling energized and inspired.

This event was truly the event of the year.  I met so many awesome developers that gave up an entire weekend to help some really great charities.  They came together as small teams (who, for the most part had never worked together), figured out what had to be done and they did it.  They did it with NO complaining.  They did it with very little sleep.  They did it better than most teams I've seen in almost 15 years of software development experience.

A few weeks ago I was asked by Jennifer to help out with the "requirements" gathering / vetting of projects stage.  I jumped at the chance and enjoyed the chance to talk to four of the charities about their wants and needs.  Of those four, two were selected (the Ann Arbor Hands On Museum and the Washtenaw Chapter of the American Red Cross).  Shortly before the event, I was assigned to the Hands On Museum project.  My assignment was based on my strong feelings about that particular organization so Jennifer made sure that's the team I was on.  My wife and kids have spent a lot of time at the Hands On Museum and unfortunately, places like that are pretty tough to come by so I really wanted to see this project be successful.

The project needed a team that was strong in PHP/mySQL.  I, on the other hand, have absolutely no skills with either of those technologies, so after the opening ceremony when the teams were talking to the non-profit representatives, I paid close attention to the three other developers who were assigned to the team.  I very quickly realized that they had exactly what was needed for the project to be successful and I wouldn't bring much to the table.  After a quick team meeting to make sure everyone else was cool with me stepping away, I let them get to work and found Jennifer and Josh.

For the week or so prior to the event, I had decided that I really wanted to be free from a single-team assignment and play the role of "roamer".  I wanted to be free to roam around, talk to the other teams and offer my assistance where it was needed.  Luckily, Jennifer and Josh both gave me the green light to do just that.  Not too long after that meeting, Josh snagged me to do some video interviews with the charity representatives.  I was a bit nervous at first, but it was awesome talking to the charities and getting my first look at all the teams.

While I was walking around interviewing the charities, I ran into one team that looked...well...they looked like deer in the headlights.  That's no criticism of them at all, because once I found out which project they were on, I understood immediately why they looked the way they did.  *sigh*  This is the short version: they were assigned to the Red Cross project.  As luck would have it, I helped gather the requirements for this project so I already knew what the issues were.  Unfortunately, they didn't know any of the backstory on the project so they were left wondering what they had gotten themselves into. :-)

They were actually packing up to leave for the night because they realized they couldn't do anything without the Red Cross reps being there and they weren't scheduled to be back until the next day.  After talking to them for a few minutes, I told them to get some rest and that we would have a meeting first thing in the morning to get things straightened out. 

At 9am, the Red Cross team had a meeting where it was decided that the team would push on with the code while I called the Red Cross to discuss options.  Before I called, one of the reps showed up (Jason - AWESOME guy) and we talked about the issues.  He hooked me up with a couple people to talk to.  Long story short, we ended up stopping the project early due to issues beyond our control, but the Red Cross reps that I talked to (Sherri and Julie) were amazing.  Julie (communications director) was super cool and even stopped by Saturday afternoon to talk and get a tour of the event (she also came to the closing ceremony and gave great praise to Give Camp)!  The team was a bit disappointed when the project ended, but I did what I could to let them know how important their participation was and we did find teams for most of them.

What I found myself doing during the weekend was hitting each and every team multiple times to see how they were doing.  I offered my assistance to everyone.  Most were good-to-go, but some took me up on my offer.  Granted, it wasn't to write code, but I did offer guidance where I could (mostly on DotNetNuke) and provided my input on some issues that cropped up.  I was also the guy that went around to each room and took hundreds of pictures and a lot of video.  Hopefully the teams didn't find me too annoying. :-)

During the day, I found out about the Knoxville team and how they had nothing to do. :-)  I knew other people were busy and since Nate Blevins and I had been following each other on twitter for quite some time, I volunteered to call him and try to get them hooked up with a project.  I have never talked to Nate on the phone, but I'll tell you...it was like talking to an old friend.  He is an amazing guy.  We talked briefly, and since it was late, agreed to talk again Saturday morning.  As luck would have it, we found plenty of work for them to do and I can't say enough good things about them (Josh did a great job praising them in his post).  I can't wait to meet Nate and the rest of the devs when I head to Knoxville next month for Codestock.  We also had a great team working from Columbus!

During a good portion of the event, if you saw Josh, you saw me close by.  Over the past few months he has not only been a mentor, he has become a good friend as well.  I enjoyed working with him and being his "go to" guy during the event.  At one point during a 1am status meeting with Josh and Jennifer, Josh looked at me and said, "you and Jennifer are the foreman tonight".  Of course, as he was leaving to get some sleep, he also said, "I want you to get some good video around 4:30am". ;-)  Good times.

I didn't sleep at all Friday night or all day Saturday.  In fact, it wasn't until midnight on Saturday that my friend Chris and I headed to a nearby hotel to grab some Z's.  I probably could have stayed up, but damn...as soon as my head hit that pillow, I was OUT.  It felt really good to get some sleep, but Chris and I were up and out the door headed back to the event by 8am.

Sunday was spent doing more of the same stuff: walking around talking to the teams, seeing if they needed anything, etc.  I took some more pics and some video.  To be perfectly honest, I was getting pretty down on myself because I realized I hadn't written a line of code...that all I had done was take some pictures and talk.  I'm still struggling with it, but after talking to a lot of people including Josh, Jennifer and some of the other organizers (as well as Sarah and Chris), I'm slowly coming to the realization that I *did* help.

The closing ceremony was actually pretty emotional, but that's probably due to the lack of sleep. :-)  The results of the weekend were shown to the other devs as well as all the charities!  It's all on tape, so hopefully it gets posted soon.

Overall, I had a great time and I think the organizers of the event did an absolutely amazing job at putting this thing together.  Huge thanks to John, Jennifer, Patrick, Greg and Todd.  Wow. 

I also want to thank all the great sponsors we had -- especially Verio!  Anyone that was there knows that the Verio rep (Matt) was super cool.  I think he definitely went above and beyond.

I made some new friends over the weekend and got to hang with some old friends. 

I was gonna do a "shout out" section but I realized I'd forget someone, so just know this: my respect has increased for every single developer that showed up this past weekend.  They kicked ass and I hope to see them at future events.

Wow!  We have had a great turnout for the first night of the Ann Arbor Give Camp!

My friend Chris and I got to Ann Arbor around 3:30 this afternoon and stopped by one of the non-profits: the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum.  I took the point on this project a couple weeks ago and really looked forward to checking the museum on in person.  My wife and kids have been there numerous times, but this was my first time.  The museum rocks!

After 30 minutes touring the museum and playing with a lot of the exhibits, Chris and I headed for Washtenaw Community College.  Upon arrival, we helped Josh and a couple others put together the name tags and then made our way to the break room to hang out before the event started at 6.

It's pretty much been a blur since then.  I've been "floating" around the event, offering help and doing some video interviews with some of the non-profits (a job given to me by Josh after I said I didn't have much to do). :-) 

I'm blown away by the number of great developers that made it to the event.  If it wasn't so late right now, I'd actually list them. :-)

More tomorrow!

A few weeks ago, I wrote a post that was aimed at my "tweeps" asking them how they got started in software development.  A bunch of people answered and you can see a list of those answers here, unfortunately only those people that linked back to the original post will be listed.  This Google search lists a lot of them as well.

I'm totally blown away by how this simple post has spread across the net.  I mean, c'mon....Charles Petzold answered it after being tagged by Julia Lerman! :-)  How cool is that?  Joe Stagner from Microsoft answered it and his post showed up on the front page of http://asp.net (screenshot)!

Thanks to everyone that answered!  If you have a blog and haven't been tagged yet...well, consider yourself tagged!  Answer the questions and link back here!  If you don't have a blog, feel free to answer them in the comments for this post.

A few months ago I made the move *back* to FeedDemon after giving Google Reader a try.  I liked Google Reader mainly because I could view my feeds from any computer that had a net connection.  Unfortunately, I think the performance sucked, so I decided to switch back to my desktop feed reader.  For those keeping score, yes I am still working on LightReader (my Silverlight-based feed reader) and an update will be coming soon. :-)

When I moved back to FeedDemon, I decided to do a better job of organizing my feeds.  Prior to the reorganization, I had one big folder with a few hundred feeds in in.  After the reorganization (and removal of a few dozen feeds), I ended up with 5 folders (individual OPML files are linked for each folder).  I thought I'd share the OPML files for anyone that's interested.  I'll try to keep them updated as things change.

Dead feeds contains feeds that have either given me errors or that have had no activity for a long-ass time.

Link Blogs currently contains only three feeds: Alvin Ashcraft's Morning Dew, Arjan's World and Christopher Steen's Link Listings.  While there is some obvious overlap, these three link blogs give me a great summary of what's going on in the tech area and they've also introduced me to some great blogs.

Non-Tech contains mostly business-related blogs such as Web Worker Daily, Zen Habits, Freelance Switch, LifeHacker and Get Rich Slowly.  It also contains the feed for Arlo and Janis - I love this comic because author Jimmy Johnson really nails what married life is like (here's one of my favorite strips). :-)  The other non-business feeds are Kevin Smiths' "My Boring Ass Life" and the "News Askew" feed.  If you're a fan of Kevin Smith (Clerks, Clerks 2, Dogma, etc.), both of these feeds are required reading.

People I Know contains feeds for my friends with blogs.  I have met almost every one of the people in this folder and these are the feeds I pay the most attention to.

The Tech folder contains all the rest.  It includes the likes of Hanselman, Haack, ScottGu and many other great bloggers.

Enjoy!

A few days ago Dan Hounshell released his latest project: the ASP.NET MVC Information Portal.  This is a great resource for anyone wanting more information about this new framework from Microsoft.

"The ASP.NET MVC (Model View Controller) framework is one of the most talked about and long awaited additions to the Microsoft world of web development. Find and follow all the news, announcements, blog posts, tutorials, tips, and other resources on AspDotNetMVC.com"

This is definitely a site I'll be using as I dive into the MVC.NET Framework in the very near future.  I really like the "In Action" section of the website (notice The Lounge in that list?).  It's cool to see live sites that are using the framework and hopefully we'll see more and more sites being added to that section in the coming months.

Great work Dan!

On June 21st, I attended the first Lansing Day of .NET.

After picking up a presenter mouse from Target Saturday morning, my friend Chris and I arrived at the event around 8:30 (just as the first session was starting).  As I was walking in, I ran in Patrick Foley, Alan Stevens (along with is wife) and Dan Rigsby (along with his wife).  After a quick registration, I hit the speaker room to catch up with people and to try and put some last minute changes into my slide deck and verify my VM was working.

I was in the second time slot of the day which was good because it meant the attendees would be somewhat awake. :-)  I was happy to see several of my tweeps/friends in the audience (including Chris, Dave Redding, Alan Stevens, Mike Wood and Alan Barber - I'm sure there were more, so I apologize if you're not in this list).  I forgot my notes at home, so my talk (Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD!) was pretty much from memory and I know for sure I missed a couple of points I wanted to make.  The session was only an hour, so I felt a bit constrained by the time (most events I've been to have had 70-75 minute sessions).  Other than that, I think it went pretty well.  I need to do a better job of not leaning against the wall (that was one thing my tweeps commented on).  I've got a few weeks before I give this talk at Codestock, so I'm going to be re-working it a bit.

After my session, I bounced between Jay's IoC talk and the speaker room.  While it sounds silly, some of the *best* conversations at events like this happen during the sessions - whether they're in the speaker room or the common areas. 

Lunch, of course, was boxed lunches. :-\ I sat and talked with Jason Follas, Chris and a few others.  At one point, I caught up with a couple guys I worked with years ago (Pradeep and Fritz).

After lunch, I bounced between Patrick Steele's Monorail talk and the speaker room.  The next session I attended was Jennifer's "Intro to WPF", but I bailed pretty quickly.  The pace of Jennifer's talk was faster than my brain wanted to keep up with, and there wasn't much I hadn't heard from talks at other events.

For the last session, a bunch of us decided to hit Len Smith's NHibernate session.  As he is quick to point out, the talk didn't go so well.  I'm not sure what happened, but he struggled through most of the talk.  I can tell you from experience that once something goes wrong, it can be very difficult to recover.  I also know that NHibernate is a big subject and you can really only scratch the surface in an hour.  If he gives the talk again, I'll make sure I check it out because I do think it's good information.

The absolute *worst* part of the day was having to listen to the Mayor of Lansing talk.  It would be one thing if the guy had an IT background, but he was there for the photo-op and that was it. :-\  He had no clue who we were, what we were doing or why we were doing it.  Please...if you're organizing an event, try to keep the politicians away.

During the giveaway's, I won a copy of Snag-it from TechSmith.  I was really hoping for Camtasia, but no such luck. ;-)

After the event, about 20 of us headed to the after-party at Jeff's house.  I'm not sure I can do it justice other than to say it was the event of the year. :-)  It's always cool to see friends in a completely relaxed atmosphere.  There was great food, music and lots of good conversations.  Jeff and his wife did an amazing job of putting this party together!  I was introduced to Keith's "The Elder" drink which consisted of vodka, cranberry juice, orange juice and Sprite.  It was good enough that I eventually had a second. :-)  While she couldn't make the event, Sarah and her husband showed up at the party! 

Chris and I started the 90 minute drive back home around midnight.  It was a great time, but we really had to get going.  As in Cleveland, I was a bit sad having to leave all my friends, but I know it won't be long before another event rolls around and we'll see each other again. :-)

Pictures from the event: Jeff's album, Ryan Doom's album

I got the notification today that I'll be speaking at Codestock in Knoxville, TN on August 9th!  I'll be doing my "Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD!" talk.  I'm really looking forward to this event because this will be my first trip to Tennessee!

Here's the description of the conference from the website:

"CodeStock's mission is to bring the best and brightest code experts to East Tennessee for a one day conference open to all developers. This is not a trade show with slick salesman giving prepared demos - this is a gathering of real programmers learning about the latest in technology from each other."

Check out the website, register and hopefully I'll see you on August 9th!

These are the events I'm attending over the summer months:

Lansing Day of .NET, Lansing, MI - June 21st (speaking)

Ann Arbor Give Camp, Ann Arbor, MI - July 11, 12 and 13th

Codestock, Knoxville, TN - August 9th (possibly speaking, don't know for sure yet)

Devlink, Murfreesboro, TN - August 22, 23rd

The two trips to TN are gonna be killer, but I'm still looking forward to them!

Looking to September, there are a couple events that are up-in-the-air for me: The Chicago Day of .NET and the Agile Summer Camp.  I'm leaning toward the Agile Summer Camp (partially because I've been asked to help with some of the organization), but I've also submitted a talk for the Chicago Day of .NET.  We'll see what happens as September gets a bit closer.  There's talk of another Ann Arbor Day of .NET in October, so I'll be blogging about that as it gets closer.

Update: June 5, 2008, June 6 and again on June 7, 8, 10 - Here are my tweeps that have answered so far.

I realized recently that while I know my tweeps (twitter friends), I don't really "know" them. ;-)  I know most of them were band dorks (I love my tweeps, so hopefully they realize I'm just yanking their chains <g>) in school and some still play some kind of musical instrument.  I know some like to smoke cigars, some are vegetarians and some I know some have served in the armed forces.  I know one majored in drama and communications and some most like to drink beer.  What I don't know is how most of them got started in software development.

Ok, so here are the questions. :-)  My answers are included.  Like I said, this is mainly directed at my tweeps, but if you're a non-tweep and still feel like answering, cool. :-)  If you answer on your own blog, please link back and/or leave a comment so I know!

How old were you when you started programming?  Believe it or not, I was probably 20 (1992) before I first started programming.  Prior to that, my only experience with computers was an "exposure" class in 6th grade!  To go totally against the grain of most of my friends, I was 19 or 20 when I got my first computer (a rockin' 386sx-25 with 2mb of RAM and a 130mb drive -- yes, that's megabytes).

How did you get started in programming?  I actually got started in programming after getting completely obsessed with that rockin' 386. ;-)  I spent every waking moment learning everything I could about DOS and Windows 3.1.  I was totally into things like Stacker, Desqview and QEMM and wringing every last bit of performance out of that 386.  I spent hours and hours on local BBS's, downloading all sorts of programs and games (at the blazing speed of 2400 bit/s).  There came a point that I finally asked the sysop of one of the boards about programming because I felt the need to make the computer bend to my will.  He referred me to one of the BBS members.  I contacted him and 15+ years later, we're still really good friends. :-)  

What was your first language?  Believe it or not, my first language was probably the batch language (batch files)...if that doesn't count, then it'd definitely be qbasic.  QBasic (think edit.com from back in the day) was a trimmed down version of QuickBasic, but it was enough to get me hooked.

What was the first real program you wrote? Honestly, that was so long ago, I don't really remember.  I think my first DOS program might have been a front-end for the format command.  I know for sure my first Windows app was a replacement for progman.exe. ;-)

What languages have you used since you started programming?  qbasic, QuickBasic, Visual Basic for DOS, Borland Turbo Pascal (for DOS and Windows), Borland Delphi, perl, a tiny bit of Powerbuilder, some C, pascal (in college), a tiny bit of COBOL (in college), C# and VB.NET.  I suppose you could throw SQL in there as well.  I might have missed one or two languages, but if I did, they were probably worth forgetting.

What was your first professional programming gig?  My first paying gig was writing a small, silly utility for the local gas/utility company.  I don't recall what it did, I just know I got paid $200 for doing it. :-)  The cool thing is that this was probably only a few months into my programming career. ;-)  After that small contract, I scored my first actual programming job after reading a posting in some CompuServe forum (probably VB related).  Someone was looking for a developer to create some Crystal Reports for a commercial app they were developing.  I remember being soooooo nervous driving up to the interview (Northville, MI), but being so happy when I landed the job!  Of course, I ended up having a hellish time because we were working on Chicago, running beta VB4 along with beta Crystal Reports.  Yuck.

If you knew then what you know now, would you have started programming?  I'm not sure.  I've had some good times and made a lot of great friends, but damn, sometimes the pace of change makes me want to pursue my dream of playing in a rock band. :-D

If there is one thing you learned along the way that you would tell new developers, what would it be?  Don't get stuck in a cube farm. :-)  Actually, to be serious, I'd tell them to focus on communications and interacting with other people.  Programming is easy.  Working with others is a bitch. ;-)

Ok, and finally, I'll steal the question Sarah asked recently:

What's the most fun you've ever had ... programming?  I'll simply copy the comment I left on Sarah's blog - "I don't know that there's one particular moment. I find those times when I'm in the zone to be the most fun. You know...when the code flows from your fingers and you lose track of time...yea, those are the times when I have the most fun. :-)"

Tweeps that have answered so far: Sarah, John, Jeff, Josh, Rick, Nathan, Marty, Joel, Nate, Matt, Mike, Bruce, Chris, JeffH, Rob, Jennifer, Objo, Corey, Scott, Jason, Maggie, Tim.

Here are some great posts on setting up continuous integration, specifically with CruiseControl.net:

CruiseControl.Net Tutorial  - Part 1
Setting up Continuous Integration

I know several people that have been looking at Team City as a good alternative to CC.  There's also a decent article on doing CI with Team Foundation Server.

Let me know if there are any links / resources I should add to this list and I'll update this post. :-)

I will be speaking at the Lansing Day of .NET on June 21st.  I'm looking forward to giving my "An Introduction to Castle ActiveRecord, or Stop Writing CRUD!" talk (which I'll be re-working a bit), seeing all my friends from Michigan, Indiana and Ohio, meeting new people and having a great time.

There is still time to register, so head over to the event site, check things out and hopefully I'll see you on June 21st!

Again, I'll repeat what I've said in previous posts:

"These are not your typical vendor-sponsored conferences with lots of marketing fluff.  Code Camps and the Days of .NET are jam-packed with technical content from top to bottom.  The talks are almost always given by local developers that have no agenda other than to help make the world of software development a better place. :-)"

This is a follow-up to this post.

The official website is up: http://www.annarborgivecamp.org/default.aspx

I'm registered and definitely plan on being there. :-)

I had the opportunity to sit down with a good friend a few weeks ago (yea, I'm slow on blogging this) and catch up on work and life.  He's a busy guy so at most I might talk to him once every couple weeks on his drive home from work or we'll chat briefly via IM (or using the in-game WoW chat), but that's about it.  We must have sat and talked for almost 4 hours, covering a wide range of topics including outsourcing/offshoring, training, the community, product development along with a few other things.  One item we discussed is the idea of using virtual machines for every day work.  He and I are both surprised when we talk to developers who have either never heard of using virtual machines for development, or those who have heard of it but for whatever reason, choose not to take advantage of it.

Reasons why

Anyone that's ever built up their own development machine knows that it takes forever (or at least feels like it).  Between installing and configuring the OS, Office, developer tools and all the little utilities that make our lives easier, it can easily take a day or more to get a new computer to a point at which we can be productive.  As a consultant, I deal with a variety of clients, each with their own environment. Some are still on .NET 1.1, some are on 2.0, some don’t care (which means whatever is newest), one even has me doing some maintenance work on an old VB6 application and I had a client last year that wanted me to work with a 3^rd party CMS product that I'd never heard of.  Since I also like to keep up with some of the cool betas coming out of Microsoft, trying to keep a stable development environment would be next to impossible without the heavy use of virtual machines.

For the last couple of years, instead of cluttering up my primary development machine (my laptop) with various versions of my dev tools, I’ve been using virtual machines to do all of my software development work. When my laptop died in January, I was able to continue working from my desktop machine without having to do anything other than fire up a remote desktop session to connect to one of my many VMs and I was good-to-go.

How I do it

While I know some people love VMWare, I’ve been a big fan of Microsoft Virtual PC and Virtual Server for a few years. Virtual PC is nice for those times when I need to take a VM with me such as speaking at an event or user group, but for the most part, I have a nice beefy server that runs Virtual Server. I currently have seven virtual machines on my server with four running at any given time. My laptop is nothing more than a tool to run Office 2007, my IM client, my twitter client, connect to my VMs using remote desktop and of course, play World of Warcraft. ;-) 

In the whole scheme of things, my server isn't anything special.  In fact, it's a home-built AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ with 4GB of RAM running Windows 2003 server.  It's currently got something like 500GB of drive space.  Not only do I run Virtual Server on that system, but I also run Sharepoint, my internal subversion repositories and it's where all our mp3s and pictures live.  To be honest though, up until recently, the mp3s all lived on an old Shuttle box I had laying around.  Even with all of that running on the server, the performance of my VMs isn't bad at all.  In fact, my biggest complaint about working this way is that sometimes the display can suck - for example, if I'm working on a Silverlight app, but that's easy enough to get around.

When I made the decision to start using VMs, I started out with a single Windows XP/sp2 installation that I created using Virtual PC. Before backing that VM up, I made sure all my common utilities were installed including BGInfo from sysinternals, a decent zip utility, FileZilla, GViM and Reflector.  Once I had that base image working, I backed it up. Using a copy of that base VM, I created my first "working" VM.  I installed Visual Studio, SQL Express and tortoisesvn.  Once I had the specific version of those tools I needed installed, I backed that VM up as well.  Keep in mind, going this route requires a lot of disk space, but hey, disk space is cheap, right?  Most virtualization software allows you to reduce the amount of disk space by using "differencing" disks.  This means you start with a base image and new VMs based on that image are only the differences between the base.  I've heard good and bad things about this approach.  The bad includes breaking all your images IF you happen to make a change to the base image *after* you've created new images based on it.

When a new client comes on-board, it's easy enough to copy one of my "base" VMs, rename it and fire it up.  I love being able to work on a client project without affecting any other work I'm doing.  I can easily copy a VM to my laptop if I need to go onsite and I can easily blow away a VM if it becomes unstable.

I know of a few other developers who have gone the virtual route and are from what I've heard, they love it.  What do you think?  Do you have experience developing in VMs?  Do you love it or hate it?  Let me know!

Here are some photos I took

Pre-Event

After a pretty uneventful 3.5 hour drive to Cleveland, I arrived at the hotel around 6pm.  As I was getting my stuff out of the car, I met up with John Stockton.  John and I have followed each other on twitter for a few months, so it was great to finally meet him in person (common theme at tech events these days). ;-)

Walking into the hotel we immediately ran into Dan Hounshell, Joe Wirtley, Justin Kohnen, Leon Gersing, Alan Stevens and Joe O'Brien.  After a quick check-in, we dropped stuff off in our rooms and headed to the hotel bar where we spent some time folding the PocketMod schedules for the event.  Some of us started a mini assembly line to make things a bit easier.  By the time we left the hotel bar to get some food, we must have had 20 (me, Dan, Justin, Leon, John, Mike Slade, Joe O'Brien, Joe Wirtley, Maggie Longshore, Joe Fiorini, Alan, Corey Haines, Michael Letterle, James Bender, Amanda Laucher, Dave Redding, Dan Hibbits and I'm sure a few more that I didn't catch in my pictures)  people folding the schedules.  Sarah bailed on us due to some swag-related issues - LAME!

BTW, I'm not sure what's up lately, but between Grand Rapids and Cleveland, I have had exactly ONE decently mixed Jack and Coke. :-\  The hotel bartender did a horrible job, and at $7 per drink, I wasn't about to waste money on a second.  Instead of eating at the hotel, we all decided it'd be cheaper to go somewhere else, so dinner on Friday night was at a Red Robin.  The service kinda sucked and the food was good enough, but I can honestly say the conversation rocked. :-)  At some point, Chris Woodruff called to let me know he was at the hotel, but by that time, we were all heading back.

I learned my lesson last week at the West Michigan Day of .NET (so did Dan), so instead of taking off for a night of partying and karaoke with everyone else, we hung out in the hotel room, watched the Cleveland/Boston game and talked (BTW, what the hell was up with Boston taking it to game 7?).  At one point, we did join Jennifer Griffin and Maggie Longshore at the hotel bar for a few minutes.  I can say for sure that I was back in the room and asleep by 12:30. :-)

The Event

I was up, showered and out the door by 7am to see if I could help Sarah and crew setup for the event.  I ran into John and Mike Slade and got a quick tour of where the event would be held.  It wasn't too long before Sarah and her husband arrived with all the swag, so John, Mike and I helped bring in box after box of swag.  After unloading the swag, I headed back up to my room to see how Justin, Dan and Leon were doing.  Since we were all speaking at the event, we made a beeline to the speakers room - Nate Kohari was already there, so we introduced ourselves and then settled in for the day.  I'm pretty sure that sometime during that first session Jason Follas showed up along with Brian Prince, Brian Gorbett, Rich Broida and a few other speakers.

I wanted to make it to objo's "Why Ruby?" session, but got caught up with the goings-on in the speakers room and didn't make it.  During the second session, I wandered between rooms and snapped some pictures.  The simple fact of the matter is I couldn't decide which one to go to...3 friends speaking at the same time made it tough to decide even though I've already seen 2 of the sessions at previous events (Dan's SEO talk and Alan's TDD/MVC talk).  For the third session, almost all of us packed into Nate Kohari's talk on dependency injection.  Almost all of us have been following Nate on twitter, but this was our first time seeing him speak and it was on a topic we were all interested in!  He did a fantastic job during his talk and definitely has me interested in taking a look at his DI framework (Ninject).

Unfortunately lunch wasn't provided for the attendees -- turns out the hotel catering was just too expensive for the organizers to deal with. :-\  That was a bummer and I'm sure it pissed off a few of the attendees.  The organizers were nice enough to provide lunch for the speakers though.  I couldn't help but feel a bit guilty, but at the same time, I sat at a table with Alan, Chris and Jason Follas. :-)

My Session

My "Lessons Learned" session was immediately after lunch.  I was worried about being in the "big" room, but I ended up having a packed house.  I think I counted 35.  This is the second time I've done this particular presentation and to be perfectly honest, I think I'm gonna pull it from the rotation and re-work it.  I've gotten a lot of great feedback from people about the session and I love to hear people tell me how much they enjoyed it, but I'm not happy with it yet.  I feel like I ramble on too much.  I also need to re-work the abstract a bit.  Of course, I'm probably the biggest critic of my work whether it's code, writing or speaking, so we'll see how it goes.  I did end up blasting through the slide deck in about 40 minutes, so the final 20 minutes was spent taking questions from the audience.  After my session, I went back to the speakers room to decompress a bit.

The Final Sessions

I skipped the 5th session, but a bunch of us ended up in Sarah's "IronPython" talk at the end of the day.  In fact, a few of us sat in the front row and tried to heckle her.  I snagged a few "photoshoppable" pictures during the 30 minutes she talked.  Overall, it was a good talk, but since I'm not a big Monty Python fan, I didn't get some of the jokes. :-)

Dinner

The event organizers treated all the speakers to dinner at P.F. Changs!  Mmmmmm.....good stuff.  We had some great conversations at my table - I was sitting next to Nate Kohari, Alan Stevens and Brian Prince.  Once again: good food and great conversation!

I ended up heading home around 8:30.  To be totally honest, I was really emotional when I left.  I've been hanging out with the same group of people (for the most part) every weekend for the past couple of months and it was sad to say goodbye again.  These are the people I *want* to hang out with.  Almost all of them (in fact...I'm pretty sure it is all of them) are on twitter, so we're always in contact, but still...it was hard to say goodbye. 

I'm not sure I can say it much better than Alan....

"Beyond all the productivity, entertainment and publicity benefits of twitter lies this fact: I love the people in my Twitter Tribe. If you're uncomfortable with the "L Word", then please accept that I feel emotionally connected to them, even if I've never met them. When I do meet people after following them on Twitter, I have an urge to hug them like a reunited friend."

Overall

Overall, the event was pretty cool.  As a speaker, I did feel a bit disconnected from the attendees, mainly because there was no common area to hang out in.  The rooms were all down a single, narrow hallway in the hotel and everytime a group started to talk, some hotel staffer would come rolling down the hall with a cart and break things up.  Also, it didn't help that there was some kind of freakish doll-related meeting across from one of the rooms.  I don't know that I'd have it at that hotel again, but I'm pretty sure the organizers feel the same way. 

Beyond the venue-related complaints, I'm glad I made the trip and I'll definitely go next year if they do it again! 

Thanks!

Huge thanks go out to Sarah, MikeL, MikeS, Corey, Sam, JoeF and John for putting on such a great event!  Thanks to the sponsors (Microsoft, Bennett Adelson, 4TechWork, Hyland Software, Lazorpoint, Exential, Beacon Hill Staffing Group, TEKSystems, Sogeti, Robert Half Technology, PreEmptive Solutions, RedGate, JetBrains, Wrox/Wiley, and InformIT.com/Pearson Education) for helping make this event a reality!