I had the good fortune to have a discussion with an associate a few weeks back who was touting the great benefits of stored proecedures... yata yata....
I remember arguing this debate a couple years back. I found a good blog that actually discusses why stored procedures are bad. For the record... I think stored procedures have their place but not to the exemption of dynamic SQL or even coded SQL in certain cases. Anyway heres the blog:
Now that I have been using my tablet PC for about a semester I am luke warm on tablets in general. I can type faster than I can write so my hoped for use of this to improve my writing time is "meh." Overall the lack of applications really is a problem, not many are tablet enabled. I do use the table view ALOT in class. Allows me to work on other things and appear to be taking notes. 
Overall I think there needs to be more ink apps, but it seems MS has turned the other cheek (MCE) regarding tabletpc.
I use WordPress, after using bMachine previously. I find WordPress to meet most of my needs. However I post alot of code and I have not found a blogging tool that makes it easy to paste without the tool itself messing with the layout (not handling backslashes, getting rid of carriage returns, adding carriage returns, formatting, etc.).
I found a good review of many of the free blogging tools here: http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm Check it out for yourself
The maintainers of Cywin pulled out the PHP4 modules from the distribution some time ago. When I got my new tablet I am now without an pc baed unix environment. Thought about using a virtual machine... but the thought of managing a 3G file was not that appealing. I have space but... meh
Either way trying to find out how to compile the PHP4 stuff for cygwin. Whew hard to find and I am not happy about it... I have wasted several hours trying to geth this to work. The problem is converting the shared libraries to dll's. No fun... but I found a fix...
I am working on a project that requires some fancy DTS (Data Transformation Services) stuff in MS SQL Server. Found a really good site for DTS info. Also found a great reference for DTS in .Net Environment.
I am using WordPress now as my blogging software. It is much nicer than the previous stuff I was using. It even has a bbcode plugin that can be found here:
http://www.procata.com/software/wordpress-bbcode/
Unfortunately this code did not handle the [ code ] bbcode block properly. It simply replaced it with a < code > block.
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I recently had a need to screen scrape a web application (yuck -- ummm can you say web services, rss, or xml). This was not because I just had to but it was because one of my clients had two departments who ABSOLUTELY refused to play nicely with each other (they are supposed to be on the same team right???).
So the department I was working with asked if "I" could find a way around them.... consultants always get the good jobs...
So screen scrapes. I had done a fair amount of this a while back and have some spidering code hanging around. I ran across a problem however dealing VS.Net's view state (the scraped application was written in dot net).
Found this URL with a great example of how to do this in C#!
I havent written here for a while, but I told some associates about having a blog yesterday so I better put something in here.
I found an interesting way to make a datagrid spit out sub headings and other custom rows in the middle of your data. This could be done with a custome datagrid control too... but this was easier and faster. -- Credit for the tip goes out the the 4guysfromRollaSite.
Here is the link to the real 4guysfromRolla: http://aspnet.4guysfromrolla.com/articles/072603-1.aspx
Microsoft is stepping it up a notch with their SQL Server reporting tools. Here are a couple of videos that show just how easy it is:
http://www.microsoft.com/sql/reporting/productinfo/RS_AuthoringDemo.asp
http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdntv/episode.aspx?xml=episodes/en/20040506SQLServerLP/manifest.xml
Spent the past couple of days getting Windows XP Tablet PC working on my old IBM Transnote. I bought it a few years back for about $600 and have sorta kinda used it on and off as a second notebook. Having recently started my Ph.D. Studies I wondered if it could be used as a good tool for school. I am just getting started and I found something on the MS site that looked great: Why a Soccer Mom Needs a Tablet PC
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/tabletpc/getstarted/oneal_03december08.mspx
I know the title sounds silly but it filled with great tips on using this OS. I cant wait to try this stuff. I am teaching an Entrprenuership class this semester and I may try this stuff for grading! Combine this with a pdf writer and theoretically you can do complete electronic grading ... even papers. I have the Verizon EVDO card and just picked up a Samsung SCH i600 Smartphone... I am connected all the time. Between that and the transnote... it is looking to be a well connected semester... if the battery would just last more than 2 hrs.... *sigh* I will write more on the success of this project. For info on the transnote check out http://www.transnote.us
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