The last 2 days I had a lovely time upgrading a major project we work on at BrightMix over to Visual Studio 2008. Actually, the code upgrade was totally automated by VS2008 so that was easy. The hard part was getting VS2008 Team Foundation Build Client to play nice with our Team Foundation 2005 Build Server (abbreviated as TFBS from now on).

Oh, the Trials And Tribulations...

The first thing you find out is TFBS can't figure out how to build 2008 solutions. You'll see something like this in your build log file:

Build FAILED.
C:\Builds\TFSNow\TfsNow-PublicWebsite-Continuous\Sources\PublicWebsite.sln(2): Solution file error MSB5014: File format version is not recognized.  MSBuild can only read solution files between versions 7.0 and 9.0, inclusive.

Fortunately, Mitch Denny has a great post detailing out how to fix this issue. Following Mitch's post, I upgraded the build server from .NET 2.0 to 3.5 and replaced the .NET 2.0's MSBuild.exe with a dumby MSBuild.exe that redirects to .NET 3.5's MSbuild.exe. Fun times. For your convience, here's the dumby .NET 3.5 MSBuild executable that I used (note: mine is hardcoded to redirect to C:\WINDOWS\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v3.5\MSBuild.exe - you'll have to compile your own if you need it to go someplace else).

Next Problem: Deploying Web Applications

After I got the dumby MSBuild.exe in place, I fired off a test build and another error showed up in the log:

error MSB4019: The imported project "C:\Program Files\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v9.0 \WebApplications\Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" was not found. Confirm that the path in the <Import> declaration is correct, and that the file exists on disk.

The problem is with an <import> declaration in the Web Application Project's .csproj file. Basically, the "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file doesn't exist on the build server because it only has TFS 2005 installed.

I ran across a couple of helpful blog posts for this problem: Steve Harmen demonstrates a fix to the Web Application Project's .csproj file that involves adding another <import> declaration and some conditional logic. So, I added that in and, sure enough, the test build was now successful.

Surprise! Another Problem!

However, I quickly discovered that the Web Application Project's files (.aspx, .html, binaries, etc.) were not getting deployed to the test server's drop location. Some further digging revealed that some other people have had this problem, but no one had come up with a solution.

My Final Solution

What I ended up doing to get this working was leaving the <import> declaration in my Web Application Project's .csproj to point at the VS2008 directory (the one with "v9.0" in it). Then, I simply created that directory on the build server, since it didn't exist, and I copied the v8.0 "Microsoft.WebApplication.targets" file into the newly created "v9.0" directory. This probably isn't the best solution for this problem, but it seems to work.

If anyone has feedback on this, please leave a comment!

This is part 3, the last post in my Rails VS ASP.NET series. Please see Post #1 and Post #2 if you missed them.

In my previous post, I mentioned that I have a glimmer of hope for ASP.NET. This post is about the current state of ASP.NET, what it's doing right and, moreover, what direction I want to see it go.

The Alt.Net Movement

A community, dubbed Alt.Net, formed around providing solutions to a number of programming concepts that the .NET framework lacks. Particularly pressing is the lack of an MVC framework for ASP.NET. Fortunately, some smart developers out there cranked out a solution to the MVC problem: Monorail, a replacement for ASP.NET's out-of-the-box Webform architecture. Monorails gained a lot of popularity, but , as a 3rd party product, its adoption has been limited. I mean, most ASP.NET devs out there that I've talked to have never heard of it.

As a side note, I think it's worth pointing out here that if a ASP.NET has disgruntled enough programmers out there to the point where they've band together and created their own framework to fix/extend the current architecture, it seems like a good indicator that something is horribly, terribly wrong.

Most recently, Scott Gu announced Microsoft's solution to ASP.NET's MVC conundrum: the aptly named ASP.NET MVC, which is being bundled into the ASP.NET 3.5 Extensions library.

Yoink! We got MVC Now!

How does this play into Rails? Well, one could claim that Microsoft's implementation of the MVC pattern and associated URL routing structures are freakishly similar to that of Rails. Like really, really similar. It doesn't really bother me that Microsoft is making ASP.NET MVC mimic Rails. In fact, it's a great indicator that Rails is on the right track (pardon the pun). I just wish they'd go a bit further and implement the concept of Rails Partials and also extend the Microsoft Ajax Javascript Extension library to be more like Prototype.

Hmmm... Why Use ASP.NET?

If you've done much Rails development, you'll quickly discover that the majority of Rails developers out there use a Mac as their development platform and TextMate as their preferred IDE. I recently joined this bandwagon, and I will admit that it's a pretty sweet set up. Damn you, Apple, for making your MacBook Pro's so attractive!

Anyway, so one thing that sucks about Rails development, especially if you're just learning, is you don't have access to the all-knowing Intellisense to help you along. The latest versions of Visual Studio, and by that I mean 2005 and up, have some very kick ass, easy-to-use Intellisense that helps out not only with .NET code but with CSS and Javascript. Of course, TextMate has the concept of Bundles, which are very powerful, but basically require memorization of Hotkeys to be useful. There's also the NetBeans IDE for Rails, which has some decent Intellisense, but nothing on par with Visual Studio's.

Another thing .NET has going for it is its immediate availability of "Enterprisey" level things, such as message queuing and transaction scopes. It's also great for working with old Com Objects and the like (*shudder*) This comparison post has more details on the subject.

Another situation in which Rails would be a weak choice: say you need to create a new web app that talks to an old legacy database. The Rails ORM, ActiveRecord, is built around the assumption that your database will be created in parallel with the Rails application and follow a strict set of naming conventions. You're going to run into some major setbacks if you try to use Rails for this scenario. However, with ASP.NET, you can easily use ADO.NET to handle this problem much more quickly and efficiently.

I certainly won't claim to know every situation in which one framework might is better suited than the other. Leave a comment if you can point one out!

Rails Vs. ASP.NET Wrap Up!

I could keep going on this subject, but I'm going to stop myself here. I've talked a lot about the problems I've experienced with ASP.NET and a number of the reasons why I believe Rails is currently a far superior web framework. If I had to slim it down to 3 reasons why Rails is better, they would be:

• Integrated ORM
• Convention over Configuration
• Integrated Javascript Library

If you're currently a hardcore ASP.NET dev, like I used to be, I greatly encourage you to take a look at Rails and play around with it a bit - I guarantee it will be an eye-opening experience. Actually, you might not want to; once you get a taste of Rails, you'll likely not want to go back!

If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my Rails VS ASP.NET series.

At first, I didn't understand what that phrase meant. Convention over Configuration? I guess I'm a little dense sometimes. At some point, it finally clicked. Suffice to say, ASP.NET has a whole lot of configuration, but not a lot of convention.

Before I go any further, here are the components I see as being integral to Web 2.0 development.

• An ORM tool
• Unit testing framework
• Ajax library/Interface
• Javascript Extension Framework

Rails has all of the above components integrated into its framework. Each component is very well constructed and integrate seamlessly with each other, making for a very slick, easy, and, most importantly, productive developer experience.

ASP.NET, on the other hand, currently only bolsters the ajax and javascript components. which I have issue with. It's not bundled with an ORM or unit testing framework.

Side Note:
Far too many of the ASP.NET developers I've run into don't know what an ORM tool is or what a unit testing framework does. If you're one of these developers, please, please, please!, For the good of your fellow programmers and your profession, educate yourself on ORM's and Unit Testing technologies, ASAP. No one will laugh at you, I promise. We all used to be "that guy."

Yo, What Does This Have to Do With Convention?

Patience, I'm getting there! So, there are plenty of 3rd party frameworks out there to overcome the ORM/Unit Testing deficits in ASP.NET. For unit testing, we have MBunit, NUnit/NUnitAsp, et al. and for ORM's we have LLBLGEN pro, Castle ActiveRecord, NHibernate, et al. The list goes on and on. The result of all this diversity is a very separated and divided developer community. Some developers like to use LLBLGEN, others prefer Nhibernate, and more often than not, the Nhibernate guys hate the LLBLGEN guys (I don't get it!). While all of this diversification is neat because it gives us developers a lot of options, it sucks bad because it introduces a huge amount of configuration complexities.

A Confession...

We're entirely guilty of this at BrightMix. Example: for our ASP.NET projects, we typically use LLBLGEN for our ORM, MBunit as our Unit testing framework, a mix of 3rd party controls (fckeditor, obout controls, nvelocity, et. al.), and an MVC-esque framework that we rolled ourselves.

This setup is cool because:

• it's highly configured for us
• we can crap out a new ASP.NET web application pretty damn quickly.

This set up is crappy because:

• 3rd party stuff usually costs money, at least most good 3rd party stuff
• configuration and integration of 3rd party stuff requires a lot of time and understanding
• pretty much no convention

I wonder... of all the ASP.NET developers out there, what percent of them are using a configured set up similar to ours? My guess is probably not very many.

So, Why is Convention Good?

Imagine you're in charge of hiring some ASP.NET developers. Your team uses one of the many ORM and unit testing frameworks out there, a custom MVC framework, and some other miscellaneous add-ons. What you'll find is that most ASP.NET developers have never even heard of your 3rd party stuff, let alone used it. No, the reality is you will have to teach a newly hired ASP.NET developer the in's and out's of your configuration, which is probably going to take a long, long time. The more configuration, the longer it will take.

With RoR, this conundrum is practically eliminated. 99% of Rails developers will know how to use the standard issue ORM, unit testing, and javascript / ajax libraries with which rails is bundled. Talk about a time saver.

I just read through this post after writing it, and it appears as though I have a lot of bad things to say about ASP.NET, and I, inadvertently, have a lot of good things to say about Rails. Blarg! Maybe I'm just bitter after working with ASP.NET for so long and seeing (and writing) so much terrible, crappy code.

Well, my next post in this series will talk about the future of ASP.NET, which gives me a glimmer of hope for ol' Microsoft.

Microsoft Ajax is Microsoft's free ASP.NET ajax/javascript extension library which is composed of Microsoft Ajax and the extension library, Ajax Control Toolkit. It came out sometime in 2005 - I don't remember exactly when, but it's not until recently that I actually used it extensively.

At first, I was excited about Microsoft Ajax's release; my once bland ASP.NET apps were going to become alive with ajax and javascript! However, after working with Microsoft Ajax for a while now, I'm mostly just frustrated and disappointed. It's dumbed down too much... to the point where a savvy developer will limited and restricted. Sorry Microsoft, wrapping my entire page in an <UpdatePanel> is far from efficient and Ajaxy, even if it does eliminate the "postback flicker."

Also irritating is the name of the Ajax Control Toolkit, which is about the biggest misnomer ever. Most of the controls in this library, albeit useful, have absolutely no Ajax functionality whatsoever. I'm going to make a stab in the dark here and guess that Microsoft's marketing department decided that this title would catch the attention of non-developer people who don't know anything about Ajax... other than that they want it in their application. Boo!

The Sadly Drag and Drop Mentality Re-visted

A while ago, I wrote an article in which I bag on Microsoft for making it possible for developers to drag-and-drop together a web app using ASP.NET and Visual Studio. Well, they tailored towards this style of development with the Microsoft Ajax library, too, and what they ended up creating is a framework that's really only fit for usage in very basic web apps or web apps in which flexibility and performance are entirely unimportant. Unfortunately for us, these are exactly the types of web apps that Average Joe ASP.NET developer seems to create. *Sigh*

Not enough Documentation!

My final grievance is with the documentation for Microsoft Ajax. There's no meaty API that details out all of the javascript behind the Ajax and Ajax Toolkit controls, and this is what I need to know 99% of the time. What I end up doing is painstakingly digging through Microsoft Ajax's complex javascript libraries by hand in firebug... or googling for a solution, hoping that someone else who speaks English has figured it out. Both, obviously, are less than optimal solutions.

Example: I've wanted to trigger the refresh of an <UpdatePanel> control from javascript. This seems like a fairly easy but important feature. You won't find any official documentation on how to do this. If you google for it, you'll find that it can be done using a few methods, all of which are basically hacks that circumvent/trick the normal Ajax framework's behavior. Fantastically not awesome!

I recently started using Ruby on Rails and the Prototype javascript library. The two frameworks are built closely together, similarly to ASP.NET and Microsoft Ajax. However, the documentation for Rails and Prototype is nothing short of awesome.

I'm hopeful that future releases of Microsoft Ajax, if there are any, will address some of these shortcomings that I've repeatedly run into. We shall see, I suppose.

My Roots

My initial plunge into the world of web development started with classic ASP about 3 years ago. I'm sure most developers out there would agree that Classic ASP is not so awesome anymore. Imagine putting VBScript, HTML, and SQL code in a blender, hitting liquefy, and pouring the contents into a ".asp" file. That's, in a nutshell, how most of the classic ASP that I worked with looked. (Obviously, not all classic ASP is this terrible.)

Shortly after doing ASP work for a few months, I was introduced to ASP.NET. I quickly discovered that ASP.NET totally kicked classic ASP's ass; it provided all sorts of cool server-side controls and the power of the .NET framework. Couple that with some tight integration into Visual Studio, and here's what you have:

	AND
ASP.NET (BMW Z4)		Classic ASP (Rusted Junk Box)

A year later, Visual Studio 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 came out and made things even sweeter. A number of outstanding issues in Visual Studio 2003 and ASP.NET 1.1 were addresses and plenty of cool new enhancements were added. How could things get any better? I had become a stanch ASP.NET supporter.

Along comes Rails

Chad Fowler suggests that we developers should try to learn at least one new programming language per year. Not because we may be using a new programming language at your day job, but because it will broaden our minds and give us new perspective and insight into solving problems.

This is exactly what happened to me. I used Ruby on Rails (RoR) to create a web-based IRC-like chatting app. After learning the in's and out's of RoR, I've since returned to writing ASP.NET, frequently finding myself working on a piece of code and thinking, "how would I do this in rails?" More often than not, I end up perturbed and unsatisfied, knowing that rails would allow for a simpler and cleaner solution. Blarg!

Without going into all of the technical details, I've concluded that RoR's is superior to ASP.NET in that it:

• has a true model/view/controller (MVC) implementation
• is way better at handling Ajax requests
• can cleanly handle URL rewriting
• has as a sweet ORM tool, ActiveRecord, baked right into the framework
• requires little-to-no initial configuration
• built-in testability
• makes it more difficult for the developer to write crappy, inelegant code (note: it does not eliminate the possibility.)

I'll talk be talking about the Convention over Configuration in my next post in this series

I've been meaning to make some alterations to Zinknation's layout and I've finally gotten around to it.

The change list:

• New logo (I hacked it together myself!)
• Fancy Zigzag background
• Center/fixed-width layout

Liquid layouts + blogs = boo!

The biggest change was moving the site from a liquid/elastic width layout to a more simplified fixed-width site that is centered on the page. Deep down inside, I like to use liquid layouts because they're a bit more difficult to create and, generally, much cooler. However, I've come to the conclusion that liquid layouts are pretty lame for article-based sites, like blogs. If you have a really big monitor and you maximize the browser, you can end up having an entire paragraph spanned across one really long line. To me, it's just hard to read and looks bad.

Of course, the debate between fixed/liquid layouts has raged on amongst the web design community for a number of years.

In the business world, my experience has taught me that clients generally do not care that a web site has a liquid layout, they just care that it looks good and doesn't take forever to design. So, for general purpose web sites, I recommend a simple fixed-width layout. However...

When liquid layouts rock...

For the most part, any sort of web-based application will probably look and function better with a liquid layout. Google maps, Google Docs,  and Campfire are all prime examples. They actually increase the amount of content that can be display in the browser--they don't just make the existing content s-t-r-e-t-c-h across the screen.

            
Google Maps: 1024 x 768 versus 1650 x 1050

 

But, I digress, let me know what you think about the new layout!

After a lot of deliberating, debating, planning, perusing, and pontificating, my buddy DustyD and I have decided to start software development company named BrightMix.

Dusty's last day working for Aureus will be this Friday, and I've informed my employer of my intent to sometime in the mid-August.

It's with a heavy heart that I plan to leave my friends and colleagues at Securities America. But, alas, my aching to get out on my own, plus a handful of hot, time-sensitive opportunities, has convinced me (and Dusty) to move forward. I'm making every effort I can to see that my departure from Securities America is as painless as possible--easier sad than done.

 

Words from the Wise

Pretty much everything I've read from the multitude of startup authors out there indicates that our venture will:

• Be more work than we are anticipating
• Provide us with a freakish amount of experience
• Make us feel alive!

 

Business Strategy

For our first 6-12 months, we will be primarily doing consulting/contract programming work. This will be an effort to stockpile cash. After that, we want to focus on developing a web-based product and/or service that will generate recurring income for us. Our plan here is to quickly implement a number of small projects, study how they do, and then focus on developing the projects that seem to have the best future.

 

We want to avoid the lure of Consulting

Contract/Consulting work can be highly lucrative with high dollar-per-hour rates, but we do not want to focus on this type of work; it just doesn't scale well. Plus, if the work dries up, you got no monies--Boo that! I think it's really easy to get sucked into the contract/consulting game because it really is easy money. However, will only go so far.

 

On the To-Do List:

• Talk with an accountant and/or lawyer to determine some of the inner financial workings and get the company officially declared.
• Update the company Web site and blog to actually contain some relevant stuff.
• Get a stellar logo.
• Set up an "office" (most likely candidate --> my sweet living room).
• Get some initial work contracts hammered out so we can begin working.
• Have a BrightMix Begins party.
• Give everyone at party high fives!

 

Exciting times, indeed!

I just finished one of the Pragmatic Programmer's endorsed books: My JOB Went To India (and all I got was this lousy book). My good friend Andrew recommended it to me. I'm going to give you, my loving audience, a quick book review.

Some Background Info

The author, Chad Fowler, is a veteran software engineer and manager who was sent to Bangalore, India to help build the foundation of an offshore development center for his company. I won't go into all of the details, but he interviews a whole bunch of Indian programmers and makes a lot of interesting observations about the software development industry in India. Then, based on those observations (among other insights), he provides 52 ways us dudes/dudettes here in the U.S. can attain leverage over our offshore competitors.

My Overall Opinion

You can pretty much flip to any page in this book, start reading, and get sucked right in. The focus of the book strays away from the whole overseas competition thing at about halfway and Fowler just details out a bunch of really insightful tips that any software developer can utilize. Although, if you want to learn some ways to keep your current job (especially if you work at a larger company), make it more satisfying, and perhaps move up in the ranks, then his advice will apply directly to you.

Favored Chapter: On Maintenance Programming!

The chapter I enjoyed most was about learning to love maintenance programming. Fowler claims that maintenance work is a blessing in disguise because, often times, maintenance programmers have the ability to show off their talents in a variety of ways. For instance, you can: slip in cool UI enhancements, clean up/remove old code, upgrade the project's code platform to the latest version, and improve performance. On the other hand, if you're working on a brand-spanking-new project, management will probably be much more scrupulous with the time and money they invest into the new project--and they'll probably keep a very watchful eye on you, the developer. A passage from the chapter...

"If I give you $1,000 and ask you to go get me a cup of coffee, I'm going to be very unhappy if you return with 1,000 less dollars and no cup of coffee. I'm going to be unhappy if you bring me plenty of really nice coffee, but it takes you two hours. If I give you $0 and ask you to go get me a cup of coffee, I'll be extremely appreciative if you actually return with the coffee, and I'll be understanding if you don't. Project work is like the first scenario. Maintenance is like the second."

Maintenance work is tantamount to my current job, where I've taken on the maintenaning/enhancing of 3 large applications. At first I didn't like it, but I've really grown to enjoy it. For my applications, I've been able to clean up their codebases significantly , upgrade them to the latest versions of their programming platforms (one is asp.net and the other java), and make the average user experience far, far better; it's a pretty satisfying deal for everyone.

I could go about what a good read this book was, but I'm going to cut myself off. If you want to hear more, go read it yourself!

Mads Kristensen over at Traceworks posted a very insightful article on ASP.NET. He's pretty much dead on here about Visual Studio / ASP.NET, with its damnable drag-and-drop designer and various wizards, being very "easy" to pickup and run with if you're a new developer. This is both good and bad, I suppose.

The Good.

Using the Visual Studio web designer is probably fine if you're just dabbling in ASP.NET. Or, if you just want to make a quick-and-dirty application. You can really churn out some crappy code very quickly. So it's got that going for it. 

The Bad.

However, if you're using the designer for anything serious, it's just a recipe for disaster. Without a good understanding of the behind-the-scenes stuff that's going on in ASP.NET, as a developer, you're really limited. To boot, try maintaining some shoddy web app that was thrown together with the designer--I'd rather eat nails.

As Mads indicates:

"I have never seen a professional web developer use the designer for other than personal hobby projects and there is a reason for that."

True Story. I've never worked with or even known a professional developer who uses Visual Studio's drag-and-drop web designer. My good friend, DustyD, set me straight a few years back when I first started professionally coding by telling me to avoid the web designer as much as possible. (Of course, the old Visual Studio 2003 designer also mangled the hell out of your HTML markup.) 

The Worst!

But, I was really shocked after attending the HDC06, here in Omaha, a few months back. One of the speakers, I think it was Steve Loethen from Microsoft, asked the audience in one of his presentations if they've never written JavaScript in an ASP.NET application. An overwhelming number of "developers" raised their hands; it had to have been at least 50% of the room. Sadly, Steve said it was pretty typical for the average Joe developer to never really delve into the behind-the-scenes stuff that takes place in ASP.NET (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Etc.).

There's some really good comments on Mads's post. This one pretty much had me rolling on the floor laughing (and crying):

"... ASP.NET's target market is not the developer of the next DIGG or FLICKR, it's the corporate enterprise development team that has to crap out some poorly conceived web app dreamed up by a pointy-haired boss. This is, unfortunately, at least 80% of the IT market and ASP.NET covers at least 80% of their needs in its current state, thus its "good enough" for them." 

Needless to say, incompetent and ignorant ASP.NET developers make me a Sad Panda.

Cool Panda Art from Heather Sumpter

It's real easy to retrieve Embedded Resources in ASP.NET 2.0, as it has this functionality built in. However, there is nothing in place to do this in ASP.NET 1.1. It's a problem if you're, like me, maintaining old ASP.NET 1.1 apps that can't be converted to 2.0 (for whatever reason).

Here's the solution I came up with (I think dustyd probably helped). I wanted something that would closely mimic the WebResource.axd of ASP.NET 2.0.

For Starters...

I created an HttpHandler to handle the file request. This is pretty much the meat of the project:

EmbeddedResourceHandler.cs

The Solution Layout...

Create a new project in your solution and put the code above in a new class. Also, in this new project, you'll add your extraneous files. Here's what it should look like:

Be sure to edit the properties on your extraneous files and mark them as "Embedded Resource."

Next, the Web.Config entry...

Now, under the <HttpHandler> tag add in this entry. "CustomControls" is the name name of the project/assembly that contains the EmbeddedResourceHandler class that's listed above.

<add verb="*" path="Fetch.ashx" validate="false"
type="Zinknation.EmbeddedResourceProvider.EmbeddedResourceHandler, CustomControls" />

Presumably, if your project builds now, you should be able to check to see if it it's working by going to: http://yourhost/fetch.ashx

If you don't pass it any parameters, it gives you a Manifest of all the Embedded Resources in the project. You can use the links it provides to get the direct URL for the file you want. For instance, if I wanted to attain JScript1.js in the above example, I would use the link http://<SiteName>/fetch.ashx?a=EmbeddedResources.JScript1.js

That's about it!

If you attempt to use this code and have any questions or problems, feel free to Email me or post a comment; I'll try to help out. Also, feel free to modify the source code as you see fit. There is some stuff in there, such as the caching, that may or may not work well for you.

Lately, I've been thinking a lot about the whole concept of being an employee vs. being a freelancer/entrepreneur/dude who does what he wants. This mindset, perception, whatever you want to call it it, is new to me.

I mean, there are plenty of books out there on the subject of entrepreneurship, and I've read a few. But, I always felt this sneaking suspicion that the authors are just trying to make some phat ca$h. After I'd finish reading them, I'd be all, "man, I'm so pumped to go start my own business." But then I'd realize that I didn't even know where to begin!

The big thing with entrepreneurial blogs is...

Blog authors aren't selling their stuff. Their material is entirely out in the open, free for anyone to gaze upon. Maybe that's what makes them so powerful. In fact, it wasn't until I started browsing around the entrepreneurial blogosphere that I truly began to consider this as an option for my own career. 

Blogs like Steve Pavlina, Matt Inglot, Seth Godin, and the amazing Trizle.com have impacted me big time. I really admire these people. But, then again, how can I not? They're doing what they love to do (at least most of the time, I'm guessing), they're in control of their career, and they're probably making some good cash in the process. Although, I'm sure if you asked them if it was about the money, they would tell you no; it's just sweet side effect. Other obvious perks you have as your own "boss": setting your own schedules, deadlines, vacation time, etc.

Ah. Wouldn't that be sweet.

As for me, I don't know what to do right now. I enjoy my job for corporate America fairly well. My coworkers are fun and awesome, and most days I look forward to going to work. Which is definitely a step up from getting up the morning and absolutely dreading going to work (been there and done that). But, I have a yearning to be more than just a dude who works for Corporate America.

It's a classic story. It's hard to just be happy where you're at; as they say, the grass is always greener on the other side, or in another field, or however the saying goes. I feel the only way I'm going to progress quickly and be truly satisfied with my "job" is by starting up my own gig.

If you're a coworker of mine...

Do not freak out. I'm not planning to walk in and quit tomorrow or anything sudden!

I'll be making more posts along these lines in the near future...

I just recently discovered the power of client-server API's for blogging. Three of the popular standards are Metaweblog, Blogger, and MovableType.

Sweet applications like Windows Live Writer utulize these API's to interface with your blog software. It seriously makes posting blog entries easy peasy like lemon squeezy.

Screenshot of me composing this post right now!

I can't agree with my friend DustyD more about web-based text editors like the FCKEditor and the FreeTextBox for composing blog entries:

I know I'm constantly making excuses for not posting that often,  but I think that one of the major issues was my absolute HATRED for web-based WYSIWYG editors (FTB, TinyMCE, FCKEditor, etc). They're clunky, and slow and I just generally don't like them.

Word and 'nuff said!

I recently broke down a bought another Dell 24" widescreen LCD the other week. I've had a single 24" widescreen for over a year now and it's been awesome. But, I was ready to move up. Dual monitor set ups just kick ass, on principle, for games, movies, work... really pretty much everything.

As far as job performence is concerned, dual monitor set ups kick ass because they increase productivity by helping you organize your work better and lessening the need to swap between applications. Simply put, if your job requires you to spend an absorbant amount of time at a computer, a multi-monitor set up can seriously help you rock the casba.

But, don't take my word for it:

Others concur!

• Coding Horror
• LifeHacker
• Microsoft Research
• Various other studies...

I first used a dual monitor set up on the job a few years back. I had to fight to attain a second monitor and video card for my machine. Then, I sneakily installed the thing myself without anyone's permission. I got hardcore yelled at by my boss, but it was so worth it. Now, it would be painful for me to go back to using a single monitor on the job.

To make Dual Monitors even Better:

Get an App like UltraMon to get a taskbar going on each of your monitors. This will further help you partition and organize your work!

Tonight I threw together a trite "About Me" page. I hooked it into my MySpace.com profile, so hopefully it'll suck some of my MySpace audience into this crazy Blogosphere.

Check it out!

Also, I altered my site's layout a bit. Nothing major.

 

Finally...

After much toiling, trouble, blood, sweat, and a few tears, I've launched the best blog, perhaps, of all time. This blog is host to my own Nation - the Zink Nation. I'm the president, CEO, CFO, chairman of the board, and VIP of this Nation and my name, if you haven't figured it out, is Zink...

I've organized the site into a couple of categories for your reading convenience. I expect to post content across a multitude of subjects. Some will be job and/or programming-related, some will be related to my various house projects, some will be funny, but they will all, most definitely, be awesome.

Note: For those of you who saw my blog in its pre-official-release state, please note that the RSS aggregator is working now, so you can be uber-up-to-date with all the latest happenings around here.

I decided, after months of consideration, to make a Myspace.com account. Mainly to plug myself into the happenin' online social community.

Here's the link: Kevzink!

I've tinkered with my "About Me" section quite a bit now - let me know what you think of the layout.

I decided to use this "box'ish" design after reading through so many "About Me" pages and being completely bored.

My design is relying on the idea that your eyes will automatically hone in on the racy, weird, outrageous, and/or scandalist statements I've put in there. Then, once I've got you good and offended, confused, or angered, you'll be interested enough to read the entire "About Me" section. I mean, I took the time to write it - I might as well try to make people read it!

Also, as I found out, you can hack the hell out of the CSS in MySpace. I managed to entirely remove the "blog" and "extended network" items on my profile page simply through CSS.