A Blog by Scott Isaacs

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I Am A Tech Reviewer

Well, it looks like I am officially a tech reviewer now.  About a month ago, I mentioned that I had met a Sr. Editor from O’Reilly while in Orlando.  Well, last week he e-mailed me to ask if I was interested in reviewing a new VB book that they’re putting together.

Of course, I said yes, so he sent me the book (actually, just a few chapters of it so far), and I read it.  I finished reading it a few days ago, but wanted to review one chapter again, so I just sent it back to him today with my notes.

To top it off, apparently, I actually get paid for this stuff.  I might have been willing to do it for free until he mentioned that.  馃檪

Surprisingly, this whole process seems to be pretty informal.  I got a bunch of Word docs (one for each chapter, appendix, etc.), and an 8 question survey.  That was pretty much all I got.  I made my notes using Word’s revision functionality and just sent back the updated files.

Hopefully I’ll get to see the rest of this book before it’s published.  There are a couple chapters that sound interesting.

Upgraded to Community Server 1.1

So I just updgraded to the newest version of Community Server, which is 1.1.  It was a pretty straightforward upgrade.  That is, once I figured out the the first time I “upgraded” it today I was actually upgrading it to the same version that it already was.  I had the new and old ZIP files side by side and extracted the wrong one.

That didn’t break anything, but I couldn’t figure out why nothing was different.

Anyway, I finally noticed the issue and extracted the correct ZIP.  The site was down for a few minutes between the DB upgrade and the corresponding code upgrade, but I doubt anyone even noticed.  馃檪

Anyway, everything should look pretty much the same.  The upgrades seemed to affect the administration more than the public blog functionality.  That said, if anything looks weird or doesn’t work right, please let me know.  Thanks.

馃檪

I Made Some Science

Take the MIT Weblog Survey I’ve seen lots of people with these little images, so I finally decided to go get one of my own. I took the MIT Weblog Survey. You should, too.

I didn’t actually bother to read what it was all about, so don’t bother asking me.  I just wanted a cool little image so I could be part of the “in” crowd.  (Unlike casey, who is completely anti-social.)

That’s My Name — Don’t Wear It Out

So Gerry posted about Sean’s posts about commercials, etc.  Lot’s of interesting stuff there — you should read it (after you’re done reading my post, of course).

For me, the real interesting part was near the end where he’s talking about Cropper, which is a simple tool to help you take screen shots.  (A very cool, simple tool I might add.)  Gerry’s last line was:

The name at the top of the Cropper site is Brian Scott… Is this funny to anyone else in the industry???

As it turns out, the author of Cropper responded to a question of Gerry’s, and was also wondering what was so funny about his name.  Gerry meant no offense to Brian Scott.  That comment directed at me.  For those that don’t know, my real name is Bryan Scott Isaacs.

I spoke with Gerry for about 5 minutes this morning and he mentioned this and we started thinking of all of the people in the industry that we either knew or knew of that were named Bryan/Brian, Scott or Isaacs.  Gerry challenged me to come up with a list of all that I could think of, so here goes, with their number of Bryan/Brian Scott Isaacs (BSI) points.

NameAboutBSI points
Brian ScottCropper developer.2
Brian TinklerOur fearless leader at the WI .NET Users Group.1
Scott Hanselman

Funny-man.  Geek.  .NET Architect.  Famous for his “Ultimate Developer and Power Tools” list.

1
Scott GuthrieHis nickname is ScottGu, but should be ScottGuru.  He is in charge of ASP.NET and IIS7 at Microsoft.1
Brian NantzLocal (MKE) Indigo and .NET expert.  Working on an Indigo book with Scott Seely, so 0.5 bonus points for that.1.5
Scott SeelyMicrosoft’s Indigo Team.  Working on an Indigo book with Brian Nantz, so 0.5 bonus points for that.1.5
Cory Isakson.NET blogger.  Although his name is close, it isn’t an exact match, so he only gets 0.75 points.  馃檪  Hey, they’re my points.  I can do whatever I want with them!

0.75

Scott Mitchell4 Guys from Rolla founder/editor, author, blogger.1
Scott GallowayUK .NET blogger.1
Scott WatermasyskAKA, Scott Water.  Creator of .Text blogging system.  Now works for Telligent, working on Community Server (the software I use for my blog).1
Scott McCullochDotNetNuke Core Team and module developer.1
“The Other” Scott Isaacs

An author that works for MSN.  I’ve posted about him before.  I don’t know him personally, but we’ve traded e-mails and he mentioned me in his blog once.

2
Bryan Scott Isaacs

Yours truly…

3

I know there are undoubtedly hundreds, or even thousands, more geeks named Bryan, Scott or Isaacs (or some variation/combination).  We have at least 6 or 8 Scotts in our WI .NET Users Group alone.  If I’ve missed you, don’t take it personally.  It’s not like I’m the “Keeper of the Scotts” or anything.  I just thought it’d be interesting to list as many as I could come up with in a few minutes.

I Bet You Thought I Forgot

Yeah, it’s been a while since I’ve posted.  Even longer if you’re one of those that doesn’t think my “Congrats to Brian and Belinda” post counts.  I was about to say that nothing really interesting has happened since Tech路Ed, but I guess that wouldn’t be entirely correct.

As you may know, about halfway through Tech路Ed, I stopped blogging.  It wasn’t because of lack of desire or things to say.  It was more that it was a pain to get online and do it.  The wireless connectivity basically sucked at the convention center.  They had plenty of workstations available to get online, but they weren’t always convenient, and by the time I got around to them I didn’t feel like writing a whole lot.  So I didn’t.  You’ll just have to deal with that, won’t you?  馃檪  Anyway, so now I’ll do my best to recap what has happened since then.

As I mentioned, Kelly flew down on Thursday night and we spent a long weekend together in Orlando.  It started out with her flight arriving late, so by the time we got over to the attendee party at Universal Studios, we only had about 2 hours left.  That was fun, though, and we got to do about 4 or 5 different things.

I had arranged to rent a car for the time when Kelly was going to be around.  I had originally rented a mid-sized car (“Toyota Corolla or similar”), but when I got to the airport to pick up the car and Kelly, I got a good deal to upgrade to a convertible.  So for about $22 per day, we had a Mitsubishi Elcipse Spyder.  That was fun.

So after a short day at Tech路Ed on Friday, Kelly and I met Gerry, Jeanne and their kids for some lunch and a short tour of one of the outrageously priced malls in Orlando.  After Gerry and his family left to do their thing for the night, Kelly and I went and spent an undisclosed number of dollars at the premium outlet stores and we had dinner at some Cuban restaurant at the Downtown Disney area (wan’t too impressed with the food really).

Saturday, we spent the whole day at Epcot.  It rained off and on all day, but we did just about everything there is to do there.  We skipped a couple shows in the “countries”, but did almost everything else, including riding the new Mission Space simulator ride.  It was a blast, but according to the queasiness that came after, it’s obvious that I’m not 16 anymore.  Fortunately, after about 5 minutes I felt a lot better.

Sunday we slept in a bit, then went to Cocoa Beach.  It was a fairly nice day, so we drove with the top down.

That’s where the mistakes began.

We were at the beach for less than an hour, but tack on an hour each way in the car, and we were basically in the sun for about three hours.  It didn’t dawn on me that riding in a car with the top down and the wind blowing in your face to keep you cool should count as time spent in the sun.

I fried.

It was bad.  That day it wasn’t so bad, and even Monday wasn’t that bad.  But Tuesday and Wednesday were so bad that I didn’t come into the office.  It was gross … and painful.  Really gross.  Really painful.  I could finally start to move my left arm somewhat again by Friday — just in time to move my in-laws on Saturday.

Which leads me to the next update — for the next several weeks my in-laws are going to be living with me and Kelly.  They sold their house and have bought another, but the closings are out of synch by about 6 or 7 weeks.  So we moved the majority of their stuff into storage, and the rest into our house.  Our tiny house is pretty full now with five adults and three dogs, but we’re making it.  Parking is the most confusing since street parking requires permits (which we don’t have).

Umm, let’s see… what else…

Oh, we had another “geek lunch” last week.  On Thursday a group of us got together at Fuddrucker’s in Brookfield.  It was a small group (6 total), but the burger was still yummy.  Thanks to Gerry for being the unofficial “official geek lunch organizer planner guy” — I think we need a website for that.

Aside from that, not a whole lot has happened.  I’ve been starting to experiment with the newest version of DotNetNuke, which we plan to use for the WI .NET Users Group, as well as for my own (non-blog) site.

That’s about it.  Consider yourselves updated.

Congratulations Brian and Belinda

Well, about a week late, Brock Brian Tinkler was finally born on the 14th to Brian and Belinda.  I’m very excited for them.  Brian posted a few pics here.  He’s such a MS geek that he’s wearing an Imagine Cup t-shirt (see the 10th or 11th picture).

Congratulations, Brian and Belinda!  I’m anxious to meet him.

TechEd Day 3

Tech路Ed is pretty cool.  Something unexpected happened tonight at dinner.  Gerry and I were at some restaurant at the hotel (we are both staying at the Westgate Lakes Resort).

We walked in and were second in line to put our name on the list.  Then a man walked in behind us.  He was still wearing his Tech路Ed name badge so we all made a little small talk.  Turns out that he was alone, so Gerry invited him to join us.  It was about a 10 minute wait for the table so we sat a bar table and started talking.

As it happens, this guy is an Executive Editor for O’Reilly.  He’s only been there for a short time (four months I think), but has been in the industry for several years.  We come to find out later that he is the most published editor of technology books.

I probably have books with his name on them.  Now I have to look and see.

We had really good conversation for quite a while, ranging from the use of humor in technology books to the effect of online reading and writing on book sales.  (O’Reilly has their own online book subscription service called Safari; it works kind of like Netflix.)  We also found out that there is a committee responsible for choosing the animals that go on the cover of each of their books.

It was all really interesting.  I learned a lot about the process.  Plus I might even get to be a technical reviewer on some books in the future.

On a separate note, Kelly is flying down tomorrow just in time to go with me to the attendee party at Universal Studios.  I can hardly wait!

MSN’s Scott Isaacs and the Secret TechEd

Wow.聽 So a lot of stuff has happened since last night.

For starters, when I was checking my blogs this morning, I saw that Scott Isaacs from Microsoft聽(a different Scott聽Isaacs)聽has mentioned me in his blog.聽 I’m honored.聽 (I wonder what the odds of him being at Tech路Ed are?)聽 Apparently he does some of the same geeky things that I do: Googling yourself.聽 I would say “MSNing yourself” but it doesn’t have the same ring to it.聽 It’s funny that, while he outranks me in the Google results, I rank higher than him in the MSN results — and he works for MSN!聽 馃檪

Anyway, thanks, Scott.聽 I appreciate the link!

So, back to Tech路Ed…

I was told that Gerry and I needed to find the “developer party” and make sure we went to it.聽 Ummm, OK.聽 We had a couple leads of who to ask, but no one seemed to know what we were talking about.聽 I ran into Jason Beres yesterday and was asking him about it and other things.聽 He didn’t have any idea either (so he said).聽 So, we had pretty much given up on that.

Later in the day, someone mentioned to us that there was some midwest region “something or other” happening that night and we should go.聽 We just needed to find the organizer to let him know.聽 Well, we couldn’t really find him either.聽 As it turns out, though, we happened to bump into him right before the bus left to take the group over there, and he told us to come along.

We ended up going to some Nascar thing at Universal City Walk.聽 They had a buffet, drinks and all of the arcade games were open and unlimited.聽 It was pretty sweet.

So anyway, as we’re in the bus on the way over there, I happened to notice that Rob Howard was on the bus.聽 So was James Avery.聽 As it turns out the event was actually a Central region event, not just the Midwest.

I thought that was pretty cool.聽 When we got to the Nascar place, we grabbed some food and ended up sitting at the same table as Rob Howard.聽 I know he’s just a person, but I thought it was nice to be able to hang out with him and the others.聽 I didn’t know until last night that Rob drives a Porsche and it costs him a few hundred bucks everytime he wants to change the oil.聽 Poor guy.

Well, after the food I started walking around and meeting some of the other people and I started to notice some of the other people that were there.聽 I saw Betsy Akoi, Angela Baxley (who works with Scott Guthrie at MS), Doug Seven (of dotnetjunkies), Jeff Julian, and others.聽 By this time I was realizing that this wasn’t just a midwest, or even a central region party.聽 This was a little bigger than that.

I also saw Jason Beres there.

Actually he saw me first.聽 He came up to me and, with a big smile on his face, said, “I see you made it.”

“Yeah, but I didn’t realize I was making it until I got here.”

Then he smiled again and said, “Oh, yeah, you made it.”

I wasn’t sure to be pissed that he didn’t just tell me when I asked him earlier, or if I should feel honored that I ended up there in the first place.

I decided to go with the honored feeling.

So after lots of food, soda, water, video games, talking with Betsy Akoi about GDN Workspaces, talking with Angela Baxley about Visual Web Developer and about the low number of females in technology, Rob Howard about his Porsche and the time the fire alarms went off at his apartment (he ran out of the building with a computers under each arm — a true geek), and a host of other user group leaders, we finally caught the last bus back.聽 We ended up getting to bed about 1 or 1:30.

But it was definitely worth it.

Women In Technology

Down here at Tech路Ed this year they are having a Women In Technology lunch one day.聽 I think the reason that they are doing this is because they want to celebrate and encourage the number of women in our field.聽 To be honest, there are hardly any in comparison to the number of men — at least from what I’ve seen over the last few years.

Well, today I had an epiphany and realized exactly why the numbers are so skewed.

I was sitting in a classroom waiting for a session to start.聽 I was in the same row as a young woman.聽 While the place was beginning to fill up, there were open seats all around.聽 In our row, everyone pretty much was following the “leave a seat between each of us” rule that is common for large gatherings of people that don’t know each other.聽 Well, an older man, probably 60-ish, came and sat down in the chair right next to this woman.聽 Then he proceeded to talk to her for the next ten minutes until the session started.

Now, I should make a few points here.聽聽I am 100% in favor of being friendly, and trying to meet new people.聽 However, when it is obvious that the person you are talking to is just giving you the shortest possible answers to each of your questions, then it’s time to stop.

Anyway, it’s my opinion that experiences like this can only hinder the advancement of women in tech.聽 The fewer women there are, the more likely each is to be the “target” of some extra-friendly (creepy) guy.

Just a thought…

TechEd – Day One

Well, day one has come to a close — at least as far as technical sessions.  We started out the day with Steve Ballmer’s keynote.  I guess it was interesting enough, but it wasn’t really what I was expecting.  Maybe it’s because I’ve heard a lot of these ideas before (integration, ease of use, mobility, etc.).  I was just expecting to hear something new and exciting.  I did get a pic of Steve Ballmer from about 2 miles 1000 feet away, though  There were also lots of vendor booths to browse.  I got a bag full of crap schwag that I will need to filter through.  There’s no sense taking most of it home, but some of it could be interesting.

I pretty much skipped lunch in favor of the snacks that Microsoft has provided all day.  There were Krispy Kremes and fruit in the morning, and various kinds of sugary goodness throughout the day.  I still have an unopened bag of Cracker Jacks in my bag.

My first afternoon session was pretty interesting.  I went to a T-SQL Tips & Tricks session.  I learned a couple things, although I am sure I will forget them.  Fortunately, I should be receiving a DVD with all of the sessions slides and audio in a few weeks.  I also went to a session on the new VS Team System.  It would ahve been a good session except the presenters weren’t all so great.  It was obviously very scripted — even the “surprise” that one of them had when another showed them a feature.  Of course, we all know that they already know all this stuff, but trying to be actors and play surprised is unnecessary.  馃檪 

I ended up leaving that one about 15 minutes early.  Then I headed down to the first floor where all the vendors are setup.  They had food everywhere, and it was actually pretty good, so no need to grab any dinner.

I’m not yet sure what’s happening tonight, but a couple things have been mentioned.  Last night Gerry and I ended up having dinner with Andrew Flick from Infragistics (and INETA).  That was good, and pretty low key.

Anyway, I guess that’s about it for now.  I’m just going to hang out for a while and see what’s happening.

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