Ohhhhh... RC1... Sooo close we can almost taste it... or not?

Anyways, time to head to Microsoft's site and grab that WinFX - .Net 3.0 RC1, however you want to call it, and dive into WPF (Avelon), WCF (Indigo), WF (Almost WWF but really Windows Workflow Foundation) and White.. ehh... Hail.. ehhh.. Pass.. ehh.. CardSpace :)

We're entering a new dawning of development on the net, yet.. will the sky be bright or filled with dark clouds?

Bravely we enter into this new world.

I can't even tell you what i've been doing, or i'd have to kill you... but.. just to get back into the atmosphere.....

WinFX => .Net 3.0

Sure, we're changing the runtime and core .... so, this must be a new version. ;p

Can't wait untill the real .Net 3.0 core is released. Just imagine: "So, you are running .Net 3.0 on the .Net 2.0 core or .Net 3.0 core?".

Now, What should you answer to that?

The wait has been long and difficult, but it is here.... right now!

BizTalk Server 2006 has gone RTM.

For universal subscribers

Now... the waiting for 2008 starts ;)

Dominick Baier has been working hard in the area of ClickOnce. He posted an excellent article on his blog that goes into 'the defaults' of the 2.0 RTM ClickOnce technology.

A must read before use!

I've seen it more and more on the net. Is it that we dare to speak out more? or is there really a change in balance occuring?

(Mis-?)Management being addressed and tech-leads are heard or leave!

Looking at mini-Microsoft, a posts on Joel's blog and finally my own situation (and I'm sure many more out there). It is time for us to get this information into the open and expose the behavior that is currently being promoted in too many (not all) companies. Especially mid and larger companies have this tendency and should therefore take more action to prevent these situation from occuring. Why? Because it will make your stocks worth even more! (Did this work for management types?) ohh, and as side-effect you have motivated people.

This is my story:

It was 1996 and a group of highly intelligent and fun-to-be-with friends asked me to join their newly founded company. Being focussed on the web, SGML and publishing I found it to be the best offer in a long time and happily accepted!

As the years passed, the company merged with another small group and formed a 'internet powerhouse'. Combining technical expertise and business savvy into one company (Ayy! the beginning of the end). More years passed and, next to the many projects, the original product was still very much alive and growing. Abbandoning the project market and forming yet another company, the product was recognized for what is was and became the flagship of the new entity.

Here's where the sadness enters the story. As the product grew and a larger customerbase was realised (which included governmental departments & institution, world-wide renowned banks, etc) so did the need to have more management and middle management (We seemed to have a pretty stable development team for years). In rappid sucsession the CEO's, COO's, CFO's, etc. where hired and then dismissed again. In the mean time spending lots of revenue, earned by the core product, where wasted on 'brilliant management ideas' (read; stupid moneywasting CEO's wet-dreams).

I just have to mention the CEO that thought that 'him ab-sailing from one of the world's known football centers infront of the company personel' would boost morale or be fun somehow! Mr. DxxxHead, if you ever read this; "I still say its a stupid idea and think you're an overrated 2nd hand car salesman".

While the flagship product still reached the upper regions of reports like "Forrester" and "CMWatch" (It's even been labeled 'Best of breed' by Forrester for Europe in WCM twice in 2005), management became more and more lost in the game of politics.

This is the period in which the company culture switched from 'motivated by pride & result' into 'a 9-5 place to stay so I get money'.

Having gone through a number of re-shuffles the company finally reached a state where 'the people that made it happen' where moved into obscurity, left or where ignored.

Politics became the main game. I even saw we needed 'receive notification' turned on as managers started to say "I didn't get that mail from you". Yuck! Those where the kids we'de beat up during school-breaks for lying to the group! They still didn't get the message!

So, where does it leave me? I started looking around as a realist for the first time (always have been an optimist) and saw the shape the company is in, and decided to leave.

"It is a sad day for me, for the core system is my baby. I, together with a limited nr of others, have envisioned - designed - implemented - tested this systen since the 1.0 version (it's now at 5.1 at the time of this writing).

I like to compare it with being a father;

The Core system is my child and I will always love it, however badly it behaves
My child has come home with a group of friends i dispise, and her boyfriend i hate!
My child is an adult now, and has to make her own choices,
    time for me to step out (and make another child?)....

I know, I know... i haven't posted much lately and promise to better my ways as of 1st of Nov.

For now, the good news is that a number of RTM's have arrived in the subscribers section of MSDN.

Visual Studio 2005 Professional & SQL Server 2005 Developers edition.

Ohhhh, the joy...

I already notified you of the upcomming Biztalk 2006 @ Microsoft. I'm happy to announce the European version is now also planned and availalbe for registration.

Schedule date is November 2005 in London!

Hope to see you all there.

I've now come across several issues, like the BizTalk service restarting all the time or not being able to run configureFramework.exe correctly.

After some searching & spelunking(tm) I've found the NT Eventlog to be the culprit!

As we all know Biztalk dumps tremendous amounts of logging information into the NT Eventlog. In certain circumstances (like configuring & un-configuring a number of times) the eventlog might run into its configured limit. When this happens Biztalk kind of chokes.

The error of not being able to write to the eventlog, is being written to the NT eventlog.

Ehhh.. anyone got a problem with that?

Just remember to set up your development system using a 'overwrite when needed' configured NT Eventlog

Windows Vista (codename Longhorn) Beta 1 has become available to MSDN (Subscribers), MVP's , etc. etc.

Go get it now!

Ps: It does run in VMWare 4.5 (using XP as guest OS).