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Just as a FYI for all the speakers out there. The CodeMash 2012 Call For Speakers is open. You have from Sep 15th to Sep 30th to get your abstracts submitted. You can submit here: http://codemash.org/Speakers

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PLEASE read the following message and consider being an attendee, a sponsor, a volunteer, or all three:

GLUGnet, the Greater Lansing User Group for .Net, is announcing their third Lansing Day of .Net (LDODN) event on Saturday June 25th at the Okemos MI offices of TechSmith Corporation. The last LDODON event was held two years ago at the MSU Breslin Center and was a huge success.

This FREE event includes lunch, beverages, snacks, prizes, and a BBQ cookout after a full day of educational sessions on software craftsmanship and the newest .Net technologies.

LDODN prides itself on doing something unique at each event. This year we will have an inflatable slide in the parking lot if you want to take a break from the sessions for a little fun. During the BBQ after the event, we will have a dunk tank to raise money for the Lansing Impression 5 Science Museum.

If you wish to attend, registration is limited to 150 attendees. Register soon at http://www.dayofdotnet.org/Lansing/2011/Register.aspx.

If you or your company are able to help sponsor the event, contact Joe Kunk at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address). We are urgently looking for cash sponsorship to help defray the conference expenses as well as prizes and swag for the attendees. A sponsor prospectus and invoice form can be downloaded at http://s3.amazonaws.com/Glugnet/LDODN_2011.zip

If you are able to volunteer to help prepare for the event or for a couple hours during the event, please contact me for a volunteer task list and schedule.

GLUGnet is a 100% volunteer non-profit Michigan corporation dedicated to Microsft .Net oriented education and networking. Anything you can do to help contibute to the success of the Lansing Day of .Net on Saturday June 25th will be GREATLY appreciated.

Hope to hear from you soon!

Regards,
Joe Kunk

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This weekend I participated in the 2011 Columbus Give Camp. Give Camps are weekend long events where developers and designers donate their time to help out worth charities. A good majority of the time projects are to create or update charity websites but it is by no means limited to that.

This year there were 5 charites that were lucky enough to be selected:

• Ohio WildLife Center
• Northwest Plains District Family Church Camp
• Gallery 202: Partners in Art
• Interface Center of Peace
• Pets Without Parents

I was on a team with my co-workers at Quick Solutions, Inc. We were privlidged to get to work for the charity Pets Without Parents. The team updated the current plain static pages to a SiteFinity backed CMS solution. We have some training with the charity so currently the new site isn’t live for the public yet but it will be soon.

It was a wonderful weekend and I had a great time. If you’re in the area please think about helping out next year!

Sometimes I get all philosophical and wonder what is the point of life? Where did we come from, where are we going, what is the point of it all?

I don’t think about these things all the time, just on days like today. The sky is overcast and I’m sitting at home alone. I’ve just finished loading the dishwasher in my townhome, which I’m pretty sure was installing in the early 90’s as it has about as much cleaning power as if i set my dishes outside to be washed by the rain. I hear the rythmic sounds of the washing machine doing a load of work clothes. I smell and taste the baked bbq chips, the bag tells me baked is better for me, I’m eating. I see my adorable black cat Evi curled up sleeping away this late afternoon.

Our sences really are a magnificent thing aren’t they. There is so much to experince in our world. It’s downright astonishing how so much of our lives we take these simple things for granted. Such a shame really.

And I contemplate…

Be it fate or devine intervention two people were brought together and as a result of their meeting I was created, you were create, we were all created. Stop every once in a while and think about that simple point. You exist! There was a point in time at which you didn’t. You were in the most literal of terms, nothing. However, now you are here and you will always be here. Even after we die, we will have placed our mark on this world and it will forever be changed becuase of us.

I’m not trying to inspire you to greatness or convince you that you need to “change the world for the better” I meerly am pointing out that whether you cure cancer or just manage to raise 2 kids by yourself by working at a dinner for 10 hours every night, the very fact that you exist means you are making changes to this world. Just becuase one won’t be written about in the history books doesn’t make that person any less important. They are both important, it’s just the perspective you or I take.

Fame, money, sucess, importance, beauty, strength, winner… these are all just words, yet we attach significance to them, we convince ourself that these are things that we much attach to ourselves, to strive for. It’s all phony bullshit people, yet even myself I live for these things. You can’t help but do it. Society teaches us these things from the moment we are created. I’m not saying it’s good, I’m not saying its bad, it just is what it is. And that’s my just my take on the situation that is life.

I’m just here philosophizing on existance. I just can’t help but find it so amazing and mind boggling that I exist. Every day i will interact with probabbly hundres of people. I will talk to them, I will see them walking on the sidewalks, I will drive with them on the asphault roads and highways. Right now I’m sitting on my couch in my living room writing this, in all probability 20 feet away in the mirrored townhome connected behind me, someone sitting on their couch too. I have no idea what that person is doing, we will probabbly never meet but we are now connected for all time. Our connection is as simple as the fact that we both exist.

Life is complex, life is simple. Life is confusing, life is clear. It’s all dependent on your persepective at the moment you are in. I’m not here to give you advice so don’t try to read to deep into this… hold on a minute here… seriously pandora, I love your music service but the constant ads suck and are distracting. Sorry what was I saying… or right! Don’t try to read too deep into this post. I’m just feeling very fluid today and without even thinking I started writting this thought stream down for whatever silly reason.

Then like a puff of smoke all that philosophical daydreaming passes away, stupid ads breaking my daydream! The washer has stopped so it’s time to do another load of laundry.

And that’s alright by me.

I recently moved to a VM (Virtual Machine) based development work environment and wanted to share my experience with others and provide some tips for getting started.

I’m sure you’re probably asking yourself, what is a VM based development environment? Well simply put the idea is to do use VM software such as; VMWare Workstation, Oracle VirtualBox, Microsoft Virtual PC to create one or more virtual computers in which you install and use your development tools.

There are many reasons you might want to move to a VM based development environment. 

Experimentation

My primary development environment is setup using Windows 7 Ultimate (x64)  with Visual Studio 2010 Pro and SQL Server 2008 R2 (x64).  What if I decide I want to try doing some development using the free and open source MySQL database? Well I guess I could install all that on my machine and hope it doesn’t have any compatibility issues or screws up my computer. However with VMs I can easily clone my development environment and install MySQL safely in this copy. I can verify that it causes no issues and develop within that new system for whatever projects I want to use MySQL for. If I get bored or decide I don’t want to use MySQL it won’t hurt one bit to just delete the entire VM.

Portability

Do you use many different computers? I know I sure do! I have my work PC, my home desktop and my laptop. If I’m using VMs to host my development environment I can keep the VM on an external USB drive and as long as I can install the VM software on the computer I’m at I can start up and use my development environment any ware, any time.

Testing

Besides just installing your development tools in a VM you can setup separate environments to test your software in different platforms. Want to see how your app works on Windows 2000, XP, Vista, Linux? Not a problem when you can setup multiple installs inside separate VMs. Plus most VM software allows you to setup what are called snapshots. Snapshots allow you to save the state of a VM and rollback changes at will. I won’t go into details about all the power that provides but it’s something you should look into because it is a great feature!

Security & Privacy

Are you a consultant that works for many different clients? I’m sure at some point you will end up working with a client that goes overboard with security. You know the type, they require you use a special VPN client and it won’t let you log into the VPN if you don’t have a specific required anti-virus software. The power of virtual machines allows you to make a complete copy of your development VM and then you can install whatever required software you need for that client.

Plus as an added benefit you can tell your clients that the code you work on will be secure and private in a dedicated development environment that no one but you has access to and will not be shared with any of your other clients.  Most software a company has is private and very valuable. I’m willing to bet letting a client know that the all their code, documents and files will be kept in secure and private environment will go a long way to showing you are very professional.

Freedom

This one I admit probably isn’t exactly the most upstanding of reasons but I’m not going to lie and say it’s not a valid one I think about.

Are you stuck at work using Windows XP and Visual Studio 2005?  Well there’s a good chance your work PC is probably also a horribly slow hunk of junk too. If however you have some decent hardware you could setup a VM at work so you can run your favorite OS and dev tools. No one has to know, we’ll keep it just between you and me. I promise!
Of course, unless you are a one man dev shop, you need to be good and make sure the work you do is still compatible with other developers using old tools. Some might call it job security but I call it being an inconsiderate ass if you develop software that can only be recreated with your toolset.

Hopefully this short post has brought some new ideas about Virtual Machines and their benefits for developers. Take a look at one of the free VM offerings, install and start playing around.

Best of luck!

Sure is nice to finally see some scruff on my face. Starting to feel like my old self again. Give it another 2 weeks or so and no one will be the wiser that I shaved my beard off.