I love my HTC Titan, but sadly… yet another smartphone that’s can’t make phone calls.  Well, this one is hit or miss, but it’s enough of an issue where my wife is demand that I replace it.  There are wide spread reports of defective microphones on the Titan:

AT&T Wireless Forums: HTC Titan – Microphone Problem?

WPCentral.com Forums: HTC > Titan > Call Voice quality issues

HTC Forums: Terrible Call Quality

To be clear, Windows Phone is AMAZING.  After two iPhones and three Android devices, I can say with confidence Windows Phone is the best mobile OS I’ve ever used.  And it’s getting raving press:  The Critics Rave ... for Microsoft?I love it, I just have issues with this device.  Other than this mic problem, I would say this is the best device I’ve had as well.  I wish I didn’t have to return it, but this is a deal breaker.

I’ve decided I’m going to take a break from my HTC loyal for a while.  This is my 5th HTC device in the last 9 years… and the last two have had significant manufacturing issues.  I’m going with the Samsung Focus S.  I’m on the phone ordering it from AT&T as I type.

I can never remember the exact args for XCOPY and I use this in VS POST-BUILD events more than you would think.  Here’s my reminder so I never have to Google for this or read the XCOPY usage again.

    <PostBuildEvent>XCOPY "$(ProjectDir)\Foo\Bar.config" "$(ProjectDir)..\..\Bin\$(ConfigurationName)" /Y</PostBuildEvent>

Forgive me, but this is my cheesy new year post.

I’m jazzed up about a number of cool things ahead.  Below is a few of the one I’m most pumped about.

Hello Baby Girl #2

My wife and I had our second girl on December 4th, 2011.  Having two in diapers is a challenge, but she’s an angel and I can’t imagine life before her.  Watching our first daughter go from zero to one year old was fascinating.  I’m looking forward to doing that again with another special little gal.

Return to Chicago (kinda)

A reorganization by my employer and end of year promotion will mean I’ll be traveling to Chicago mostly in 2012 instead of Omaha.  I’ll still be working primarily from home in Michigan, but I should be able to regularly return to the great city of Chicago and spend time with some great friends and coworkers in our Chicago office.

No diss to Omaha, but it’s just too hard for me to get there and Chicago will always be home to me.  Thanks for a fun 2011.

Fresh Material

This year appears to have many new technical challenges ahead.  With my new role I’ll be in a position to evangelize to a wider and more interested audience.  I’m hoping to share a lot of the lessons I’ve learned in 2010 and 2011 in terms of architecture and design to help teams delivery more with less.  I’ll be preaching a lot of NHibernate and test automation.

2012 looks like it will be saturated with JavaScript development.  I spent 2010 neck deep in Silverlight, and 2012 looks like it will be a return to the traditional web.  I’ve been reading JavaScript The Good Parts, JavaScript Patterns, and REST in Practice.  I’m looking forward to working heavily with JQuery, KnockoutJS, BackboneJS, Wijmo, KendoUI, ASP.NET MVC, and Web API.

Interesting Year for the Mothership

I think 2012 is going to be a interesting and pivotal year for Microsoft.

Windows Phone

I received the HTC Titan for Christmas and LOVE it.  I was skeptical, but am no more.  This is a phenomenal OS and I think the rest of the world is going to realize it in 2012.  I think it’s well positioned to have a big year.  It will be interesting to see how that plays out, but I think a Jobs’less Apple and Android in version hell as well as the Android Developer Community fed up with building apps they can’t charge money for will make room for strong growth by WP7.  The Windows Phone Marketplace is growing steadily, and if Microsoft knows how to do something well it’s make a comfy developer ecosystem.

BTW, If you happen to be one of those turd throwing I-hate-everything-Microsoft monkeys and feel like leaving some bile on my comments… I’d rather you not.  If you haven’t used a WP device for at least an entire day as your primary phone, I’m probably not interested in your opinions.

Windows 8

Windows 7 was great.  I think they finally get it in terms of what users want from the OS.  I expect Windows 8 will be very successful and will firmly establish MetroUI.  Having it on tablet form factors should come in 2012.

HTML5/JavaScript Tooling vNext

If you look and what Microsoft has done in support for the HTML5/JavaScript movement in WinRT, it feels like something big is brewing on this front.  They seem to have unofficial ties CoffeeScript and Script#.  I’m hoping to see a Google Web Toolkit (GWT) like offering from Microsoft this year.

Learn, Learn, Learn

With two kids in diapers I have less personal time than I’ve ever had in my life, but I have renewed vigor to make this another year of learning.  I intend to be a JavaScript guru by this time new year.  I have an annual subscription of TekPub and I intend to watch at least half of the productions available in their catalog.  At a minimum:  GitHub, Mastering Mercurial, Linux for Softies, Mastering JQuery, Mastering LINQ, and Mastering Windows Phone 7.

A friend gave me a copy of this book and I took the test…

The Clifton StrengthsFinder

As you may know, the Clifton StrengthsFinder measures the presence of talent in 34 categories called "themes." These themes were determined by Gallup as those that most consistently predict outstanding performance. The greater the presence of a theme of talent within a person, the more likely that person is to spontaneously exhibit those talents in day-to-day behaviors.Focusing on naturally powerful talents helps people use them as the foundation of strengths and enjoy personal, academic, and career success through consistent, near-perfect performance.

Below are my top five themes of talent, ranked in the order revealed by my responses to the Clifton StrengthsFinder.

How well do you think these themes describe me?

Achiever

People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

Focus

People who are especially talented in the Focus theme can take a direction, follow through, and make the corrections necessary to stay on track. They prioritize, then act.

Context

People who are especially talented in the Context theme enjoy thinking about the past. They understand the present by researching its history.

Learner

People who are especially talented in the Learner theme have a great desire to learn and want to continuously improve. In particular, the process of learning, rather than the outcome, excites them.

Discipline

People who are especially talented in the Discipline theme enjoy routine and structure. Their world is best described by the order they create.

To learn more about the Clifton StrengthsFinder and how you can discover your top five themes, visit http://strengths.gallup.com

In VS2008, it would common to put a System.Diagnostic.Debugger.Break() statement in your T4 template file and have the debugger prompt pop up and let you attach to your code.  In VS2010 on Windows 7, it crashes the IDE.  I think it’s specific to Windows 7, but I’m not sure about that.  The issue report is here:  http://connect.microsoft.com/VisualStudio/feedback/details/535479/vs2010-crashes-debugging-t4-templates

From reading the issue, it seems to be a policy difference in Windows 7.  I’ve heard of hack to the registry to change the default, but a cleaner solution is provided in the work-around’s tab.

Simply call Debugger.Launch() before calling Debugger.Break().  Like so:

<#@ template debug="true" hostspecific="true" language="C#" #>
<#@ output extension=".cs" #>
<#@ assembly name="System.Xml.dll" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Xml" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Text" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Collections" #>
<#@ import namespace="System.Collections.Generic" #>
<# 
    Model model = null;

    try
    {
        XmlDocument document = new XmlDocument();
        document.Load(this.Host.ResolvePath("Model.xml"));

        XmlNode modelNode = document.SelectSingleNode("//model");

        if ( modelNode != null )
        {
            model = new Model(modelNode);
            
            System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Launch();
            System.Diagnostics.Debugger.Break();
            
            model.Load();
        }
    }
    catch ( Exception ex )
    {
        #>
        // ******************** UNHANDLED EXCEPTION DURING MODEL GENERATION **********************
        // Message: <#= ex.Message#>
        // Exception Type: <#= ex.GetType().FullName#>
        // ***************************************************************************************
        <#
    }
#>

Hopefully this helps someone else out there – this has been killing me for almost a year and I never thought to look for a workaround.

I was trying to get a web application we’re building using a commercial CMS system up and running on my localhost today.  I checked the ASP.NET source code out of our source control repository, and configured my local IIS instance to host the site.  The site started up successfully, but I noticed it wasn’t loading any of the CSS files.  After viewing the page source, the URL’s to the CSS files looked correct, but when I attempted to browse them I received the dreaded 401.3:

I poured over the file system security of that local directory – everything had read rights.  Then I noticed some of the directories were green (look closely):

I’m running Windows 7, and it turns out these directories were files I unzipped (using Windows unzip utility) from an email attachment.  I noticed they were great, but didn’t give it much thought (if they were red, I probably would have stopped and figured it out then).  It turns out that this is another (odd) Windows security feature.  The directory was set to “Encrypt contents to secure data”:

This is what was causing the 401.3 exception from IIS.  Clearing this put me back in business.

Hopefully this helps someone else out there.

I’m not a security expert.  I’m not a hacker.  I’m just a guy that spends a crazy amount of time online .  Maybe the story I’m about to tell is a well known thing… maybe it’s not.  All I know is I’m convinced it happened to me last year, and I see it frequently happening to people I know.  This is good general advice for everyone.  So I’m going to lay it out here for everyone I know to read.  If you were sent a link to this post by me, then you’re one of the people I’m worried about… so please read on.

How many web site accounts do you possess (i.e. facebook.com, myspace.com, ebay.com, google.com, yahoo.com, etc. etc.)?  Most sites ask for two main things:  your email address and a password.  Once registered, you use that information to gain access to that site’s online service.  How many times have you registered for a site that you don’t quite trust or recognize?  How often do you register with a password that matches that of your email address?  If you’re like most people, the answer to that last question is “frequently”.

Think about it….  What if some malicious person out there had access to your personal email address.  By that I mean, he/she could physically log in to your account and read and send email as you.  How easily could that person access something else (like an online back account) from there?  Oh… and, does that online bank account use that same password????

If that information you provided was ever compromised (intentionally or unintentional), you’re in big trouble.  Hackers know tech un-savvy and even tech savvy people hate to remember multiple passwords.  They also know that most people use the same password for every account they own.  So, if they can find a way to get your to provide them with your email address, and that precious password, then the odds are good that they have all they need to access your email account as you.

Don’t ever… EVER… reuse the password for your email account.  Pick a password for your email address, and never use that password for any other online service.  Make it a habit to change that password at least once a year.  If you have any reason to believe someone or something is accessing your email account (for instance, do you see Sent Items in your email account that you don’t remember sending), change your password immediately.

I’ve found the Path.Combine() function cannot be fully trusted and can cause some sneaky bugs in your systems.

I’ll use SnippetCompiler to demo the scenario I’m talking about.

If the right term is prefixed with a slash, the right term is dropped.  I’m sure it behaves this way for some good reason, but I don’t know what it is.  I always write a utility method to wrap and check the strings prior to calling Combine.