One of my team members posted this video of myself and our Product Owner: http://tinyurl.com/5qubst

At least they didn't make me the woman!

Yes - I tried telling my friends at the MVP Summit that Twitter is "just a fad" (disclaimer: I was only half-serious - my real complaint is how much of a time waster it is) - the ensuing laughter and ribbing from everyone was pretty good.

So I gave up and finally created a Twitter account: www.twitter.com/sswienton 

Here's hoping I stick to my guns and never get a Mac Book Pro :)

As many of my close friends and family already know, I have been wanting to transition out of the full-time software developer position.  Although I still love working with all of the new Microsoft Developer Technologies, the reality is that it is really hard to keep up with everything - especially when having to juggle new learning with a healthy family life.  Thankfully, my employer approached me in helping them transition to the Agile process framework called Scrum.  Although it has been a challenge to fully implement - it has been a refreshing change and I've thoroughly enjoyed it.

Along the way I have become an official Certified ScrumMaster (http://www.scrumalliance.org/profiles/25767-stephen-swienton) and have been "pushing" the Scrum concept to friends and colleagues.  The guys (Jason and Scott) at the North Dallas .NET User Group even invited me to present on Scrum for their April meeting.  I presented an "Intro to Scrum" and managed to talk for a good 2 hours plus.  Attendance was good @ ~90 people (especially for a big "draw" like myself - heh) and lots of good questions and interactions with the audience.  There were only about 5 people in the audience that were actively using Scrum - so the level of my presentation (101) was appropriate for the crowd.

You can find my slide deck here: http://swienton.com/files/folders/presentations/entry229.aspx. I've posted some of the links to resources of interest from the presentation for quick reference:

Websites:

• www.agilemanifesto.org
• www.scrumalliance.org
• www.implementingscrum.com (I love the cartoons here!!!!)
• www.agilealliance.com
• www.apln.org
• www.planningpoker.com

Tools:

• ScrumWorks - www.scrumworks.com
• TargetProcess - www.targetprocess.com

Books:

• Agile Project Management with Scrum (Microsoft Professional)
• Agile Software Development with SCRUM
• Agile Estimating and Planning
• The Enterprise and Scrum
• Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit
• User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development

Microsoft officially announced today that it will release Visual Studio 2008 and .NET 3.5 by the end of November 2007.

More details: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2007/nov07/11-05TechEdDevelopersPR.mspx
 

Silverlight is still in its infancy, but its user experience needs to be top notch for it to gain traction and compete effectively against Flash.  From my minimal exposure to Silverlight so far - my biggest complaint has to do with the installation experience.  To be fair, part of my frustration stems from the two different versions currently floating around (.NET version vs JavaScript version).  Ex. I go to a site running a .NET Silverlight app and I see the "You must install Silverlight to run this application" message.  Clicking on this takes me to the official Microsoft Silverlight site where it is installed.  However, when I attempt to reload the original site - I still get the "You need Silverlight" message - grrr.  Nothing on the original site says anything about needing a different version - and if I click on the message again it takes me to the Silverlight site and tells me it's already installed.  For an ordinary user, this experience would be extremely frustrating and they would probably just think "Silverlight sux".  However, I do a little digging and find out that the site I was visiting requires the .NET version of Silverlight, which is still in Beta.  The version that the Silverlight site installed was the most recent version - the JavaScript version.  I had to manually dig into the Silverlight site and find the link to install the beta version to run the .NET Silverlight app properly.  To cut this story short - the install experience should have been MUCh simpler:  I should not have to leave the existing site to install Silverlight; and the calling application should have been smart enough to know which Silverlight version needed to be installed.

As usual, Scott Guthrie to the rescue!  Here is an excerpt from an email by Scott outlining how to best support the install experience for your Silverlight apps:

"Silverlight supports two modes of installation:

Indirect install – where you link off to a page where the user downloads Silverlight and then navigates back to your site.

Direct install – where you can launch the installer directly from your page, and automatically refresh the browser when the installation is finished to immediately show the live content.

Earlier today we published a whitepaper with sample code that demonstrates how to implement the direct install option, along with recommended user experience that helps guide a user to click the install link.  You can download it here: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=F487DF43-1AFB-4F76-82C8-BB5ACBFFBA1B&displaylang=en

Tim Sneath also just blogged about it here: http://blogs.msdn.com/tims/archive/2007/10/29/optimizing-the-silverlight-install-experience.aspx"

Scott also posted a nice article about it on his blog: http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2007/10/30/optimizing-the-silverlight-install-experience.aspx 

BillG: All I want for Christmas is FREE Advertising on the one of the largest viral social networks on the Internet to promote Windows Vista and Office 2007.

Night in Shining Armor (Google): Your Wish is our Command.

WARNING: Embedded link to 3rd party, viral social networking, "I just lost 3 hours of my day I will never get back" website.

For those lazy folks - go Here for your FREE Copy of Windows Vista and Office 2007.  Restrictions Apply.

Why are you still here?  Go Now, Free Vista and Office!

In other news, Google's stock inexplicitly soars another $175 on this information...

Got your attention yet? :)

Rob Howard will be presenting on CodeSmith at the Tuesday ,June 20th Meeting at the Fort Worth .NET UG.  Everyone who attends the meeting will receive a FREE copy of CodeSmith!  You *must* be present at the meeting to attend.

Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn about the benefits of code generation from a great speaker!

It's funny how things have an odd way or working out sometimes.  As my close friends and family already know, I'm a lifelong White Sox fan, and I had the pleasure of experiencing the joy of the White Sox winning a World Series Title in my lifetime (the Chicago World Series drought was once a shared pain between the Cubbies and us Southsiders).  However, the timing of the White Sox first world series apperance in 90+ years wasn't so good.  I had a wedding to go to in Phoenix in October of '05, and I was also scheduled to stay a little longer and give a presentation to the Arizona .NET Users Group.  I was a little bummed at first, thinking I would miss out on some of the games, but it turned out great.  A majority of my family was in Phoenix for the wedding, so we were all able to watch Game 1 at my cousin's house (yes, some of the family are Cubs fans, but most of them were genuinely rooting for the Sox to win).  Additionally, I thought I would surprise my Dad, so I ordered some shirts and caps from Chicago (the whole city was almost out of all Sox merchandise at the time) and had them rush delivered just in time for the Series.  I already had Sox outfits for Alex and Thomas - so we were able to get this great family picture of the 3 Generations of Sox fans:

Game 2 I got to watch at the hotel sports bar with some more family members - it was fun talking trash with the drunk out-of-town  Houston Astros fans - especially when the Sox came back to win after trailing early on!  The 3rd game was during my User Group presentation.  I had to keep apologizing to the audience as I would flip back and forth between my presentation material and espn.com to check out the score.  I was getting worried when the Sox were down 4-0 after 4 innings and couldn't have been more suprirsed when the next time I checked out the score and the Sox had put up a 5 spot in the 5th inning!  Game 3 went so long, that I was actually able to make it back to the hotel after my presentation and watch Geoff Blum hit the game winning HR in extra innings - awesome!  I then got to watch the Sox finish off the Astros in Game 4 back at home in Fort Worth!

Fast forward 7 months and I get a call from my Dad.  He asks me if I can get off work for a day for something special, but won't tell me why until I agree to commit.  He then reminds me of a story he had told me a month or two earlier.  One of my Dad's friends (or co-workers?) happens to know Jerry Reinsdorf, and his friend knew that we were big White Sox fans and had seen the family picture of all us boys in Sox gear.  He asked if my Dad would mind if he sent the picture to Jerry.  Of course, says me Dad - proud of his White Sox Grandsons!  Well, it turns out that Jerry, er Mr. Reinsdorf, loved the picture and got in touch with my Dad via email.  Mr. Reinsdorf then invited my Dad to meet with him and catch a game if he was in Chicago.  So, I'm flying up to Chicago on Friday to meet my dad there and the plan is we're meeting Mr. Reinsdorf an hour before the game to have dinner with him - Wow!!  I'm not 100% on all the details, but I believe we'll then get to watch the game from Mr. Reinsdorf's personal Sky Box!  I'm excited as it is to watch the Sox, in Chicago, at home against their rival the Indians, but to: meet Mr. Reinsdorf, have dinner with him, and watch the game from his Sky Box is an experience I know I will never forget!!  My Dad and I are also going to the game again on Saturday, but we'll have to "slum" it and sit with all the regular Joes - hehe.

To prepare for my visit - Angela and I got the boys dressed up in their White Sox finest and took some great shots that you can view here.  I'm hoping Mr. Reinsdorf will sign a couple of them for us as a momento and something that will ensure Thomas and Alex continue to grow up White Sox fans.  I've got to start them early on the White Sox path - it's hard enough not living in Chicago and having to compete with the Texas Rangers. And my "funny" brother-in-laws all think it is funny to teach Thomas to say things like "The Cubs Rule" or "The Cowboys are better than 'Da Bears".  I had to work with Thomas so that he now knows to properly say "The White Sox, Bulls, Bears are my favorite baseball, basketball, and football teams"!

The funny thing about all of this, is how I was originally all mad about having to go to Arizona during the World Series. In the end - it turned out being so much better!

I hope to have a recap of this trip, along with pictures, beginning of next week - Go White Sox!

Microsoft and Bungie just released the trailer for the highly anticipated Halo 3 at E3.  All I can say is - WOW!  Halo 3 in HD is simply amazing!  I wouldn't want to be in Sony's shoes, if the speculation is true that Halo 3 will be released on the same day as the PS3 launch.  Sony has enough problems with the PS3 as it is, to not have to deal with the game that, I think it's safe to say, single-handedly put the XBOX on the map.

Interested in learning more about the Compact Framework 2.0 and Windows Mobile 5.0?  Then head over to the Ft. Worth .NET UG tonight and hear Dan Fergus discuss the new features of both and introduce you to the new Patterns and Practices for Mobile devices.  Time, location, etc... can be found at the FWDNUG website.

Our old standard definition TV crapped out earlier this year and it was our chance to finally upgrade to HDTV.  We got a great deal on a plasma at Costco and I "had to" upgrade my satellite box to the HD Tivo DirectTV unit so we could enjoy as much HD content as possible.  It has been great so far. Early on, I even found myself recording shows that I wouldn't normally watch just to see it in HD.  Sports, in particular, have been my favorite.  Watching the Super Bowl in HD for the first time was pure bliss!

Today, I watched my first golf event in HD - The Masters tournament.  WOW!  August National golf course has always been known for it's vibrant velvety green coloring, towering pines, and colorful April flowers.  But, I was not prepared for how beautiful this course truly was until watching it in HD today.  It was one of the best HD feeds I had seen yet.  This definitively got my juices flowing in anticpation of playing some golf!

Oh yeah, even though the scorebard doesn't tell the story, Phil Mickelson easily cruised along in winning his 2nd green jacket.  That makes it 3 out of the last 9 majors for Phil.  With the way he and Tiger have been playing of late - I eagerly look forward to them in a final pairing in one or more of the remaining 3 "Majors" this year.

While at the Visual Studio 2005 Launch Event, an attendee asked me a question while I was manning the Ask the Experts booth.  Basically, he was having problems wiring up the built-in ASP.NET 2.0 providers when not using SQL Server 2005 Express.  I knew how to help him configure the db connection, which he also knew, but what about setting up all the default db tables and sprocs?  I didn't know off-hand, outside of manualy creating and running the scripts auto-gen'd by ASP.NET, and promised to spend a few minutes finding the answer for him.  I don't remember the guys name, and he hasn't emailed me about it yet.  Hopefully, he'll find his way here and see this blog entry from Paul Litwin.

If you're like me - you most likely have several email accounts setup within Microsoft Outlook, with one of those accounts being listed as the default.  Recently, the responses I was getting to my email were in response to an account that was not my default account.  I didn't make much light of this, as emails to my wife were still being replied to my default account.  But, after a couple of days of this error I was getting annoyed.  I checked my settings, and the right account was listed as my default.  I even did some tests emails and explicitly clicked on the option to send the email from my default account, and the emails still showed up as being sent from another account.  I started doing a search on Google and quickly came across this article describing the same problem that I had.  Basically, if for any reason, your default "send to" account encounters any problems sending out the email - it won't tell you about the problem, but will just send the email from one of the other accounts you have setup - doh!  Why it is designed this way I have no idea - you'd *think* it would at least tell you "Problem sending from account x, would you like us to send from a different account instead?".

Turns out that my problem had to do with my outgoing email server.  I had recently visited my parents in Miami over Thanksgiving and I had to switch my outgoing email server - due to restrictions from their DSL provider.  When I cam back home I switched back my outgoing email server to the correct one, but forget to set the authentication properly.

A feature I would *really* love to see in an upcoming version of Outlook is someway to specify an overriding outgoing email server for all your email accounts.  Ex. Outlook would retain your default outgoing email server for all your email accounts, but would override them with a specificied server if you flip a setting.  This would be extremely usefuly for those of us that travel to different networks.  Changing my outgoing email server, for every of my accounts, each time I visit my parents, in-laws, or am at a hotel, is a PITA.

Not happy with the new project model introduced as part of VS.NET 2005?  Well, you'll be excited to hear that the Web Platform team listened to your feedback and has announced a new project model that more closely resembles the project experience in VS.NET 2003.  ScottGu blogs about it here.

Not yet familiar with the new project options in VS.NET 2005?  Then you'll want to read ScottGu's overview of VS 2005 Web Project Systems.

I just got back from checking in at the Dallas convention center in preperation for tomorrow's Microsoft Launch Tour 2005.  The convention center looks great and registered attendance is at 3,850!  This should be an awesome event loaded with great speakers and all attendees will walk away with a FREE copy of Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005 Standard Editions!  I'll be manning the "Ask the Experts" from 1:45 - 5:45 - please stop in and introduce yourself if you are attending the event.

p.s. I forgot to add in my initial post that I'll be manning the ATE booth with Dock