January 2006 - Posts
I have been slacking lately on keeping up with posts. A lot has been going on at both work and home. Yesterday, it was officially confirmed that my wife and I are expecting our first child. I don't post a lot of personal stuff on this particular blog, but I couldn't resist briefly mentioning the news. A separate blog has already been setup for baby related information that will be updated during the course of the pregnancy. You can view it here: http://www.jeffbarnes.net/portal/blogs/barnes_baby_journal/default.aspx
I know that I have been promising to post a series of articles concerning TDD over the last couple of months. However, I have decided to hold off on those. There is a high probability that I will wait and do a presentation or two at the next Alabama Code Camp concerning TDD or Agile methodologies in general. In addition, I am going to require using most of my free time to prepare for the MCPD beta exams that I have scheduled in February and March. I would certainly hate to blow an opportunity to upgrade my certifications for free. So, I will most likely start posting .NET 2.0 tidbits that I come across while studying some areas that I haven't used much.
Currently, I am playing with DotNetNuke version 4.0.2 for a project at work. Until just recently, I didn't really have much exposure to the platform. However, I am rather impressed with its capabilities as I dig into deeper detail. There is certainly a lot you can do with it and it provides an enormous amount of functionality out of the box. This is another topic that I may potentially post about in the near future.
In the meantime, bear with me while I try to get caught up on things and come to terms with the fact that I am going to be a dad in less than a year!
Late last week, I received an invitation from Microsoft to take the beta exams 71-553 and 71-554. These tests are part one and two of the upgrade path from MCSD to the new MCPD: EAD equivalent, which is my abbreviation for Microsoft Certified Professional Developer: Enterprise Application Developer. Quite a mouthful, eh?
Even though I hate exams, it is hard to turn them down when it is free. So, I have one scheduled for mid-February and the other for mid-March. It should give me some time to finish brushing up on some areas of .NET 2.0 prior to exam time. The NDA prohibits me from giving specific information about the exams, but I will post some "general" thoughts and let you know how it goes.
Last night, the Birmingham .NET User Group had their January meeting at EBSCO. Despite the location being somewhat out of the way for some people, we still had a good showing of approximately 40 people. Considering that the user group is still very new, I think the attendance is progressing well. I would like to throw out a special thanks to ComFrame for providing pizza and drinks as well as EBSCO for providing a location for the meeting.
The speaker for the evening was my co-worker, Todd Miranda. He delivered a well-rounded presentation regarding AJAX by covering the essentials of the technology with an emphasis on degradation. I believe the code examples will be available on his blog within the next day or two. You can locate it at: http://blog.nxtdimension.com
It is encouraging to see the involvement of the local .NET community beginning to grow. I look forward to seeing where things go with the user group. Be sure to tell your co-workers and other geek buddies about it. And, be sure to register on the user group website to receive emails about upcoming events: http://www.bugdotnet.com.
So, I decided to completely walk away from all things work-related over the holidays. It was a nice break. However, it has been tough transitioning back into work mode. Alas, all good things must come to an end.
In the spirit of getting back to blogging, here is a link to a cool article that covers the basics of replacing BinaryFormatter with a Raw Serializer:
http://www.codeproject.com/useritems/RawSerializer.asp
Disclaimer:The opinions and views expressed within this blog are solely my own and do not represent those of my employer or anyone else.