Fair warning, I’m combining several blog posts into one.

As a father, there’s nothing that makes you more proud than to see your son take his first steps, say daddy for the first time, or catch his first ball.  In my professional career I’m extremely proud of the accomplishments my peers have been making.  These are the people I’ve been working with and helping their professional community efforts, and while I like to think I helped them in some way, truth be told, they entirely did the work on their own and wholeheartedly earned their award.

Most recently, the following people have been recognized for their efforts:

Julie Yack – Microsoft MVP Award & INETA Community Champions Award

Becky Isserman – INETA Community Champions Award

Tim Tyrrell – INETA Community Champions Award

Brandon King – INETA Community Champions Award

This weekend, April 25th 2009, will be the first Northwest Arkansas Code Camp, organized by Jason Vogel and the NWA .Net User Group.  If I haven’t met you, please come by and say hi.  I’ll be manning the registration desk all day and I will be giving away a Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) software package valued at over $10,000, which includes almost all of Microsoft’s software.  Be sure and get there early, I hear the iPhone session will be well attended.  More information can be found at http://codecamp.nwadnug.org/

I’m currently on my first INETA Board of Directors Conference Call and I thought I’d keep people updated on what’s going on, as there’s some really good stuff being discussed.  I know one of the perception problems, is that INETA is a black hole, which is on the top of my list to help change, and hopefully by doing this, that perception will change.

If you’d like to write content for the various code magazines, there are opportunities for you!

Community Night (aka Birds of a Feather) at TechEd is going to be a huge component of the event, with lots of free food and drink.  Supposedly it might replace the Attendee Party.  We’ll be looking for hosts (to help out with the logistics), and who knows, you may get a few perks for being a host.  TechEd attendance numbers are down, which is to be expected in this economy.

There is a Board of Director’s meeting in Raleigh Durham, NC (we’ll be on campus during tournament time, which is where our hotel is).  Please be sure to post / e-mail the topics that you’d like covered.

Overall, the call went well and the only concerns I had is with some legal documents, which will be discussed during the Board meeting.

Having done some thorough research with code signing certifications and SSL certs, am I wrong in thinking that FedEx has royally screwed up?  I had to double and triple check that the link provided wasn’t a phishing attack of some sort, and it all looks valid.  Forcing your customers to install a cert that doesn’t have a root already installed in Windows is major trouble!  Why would VeriSign sell FedEx such a crappy product?

I have a cheap Comodo SSL cert for my Exchange server, and it wreaks all sorts of havok when connecting my Windows Mobile device to it.  Someone has made a very poor decision, or perhaps I’m missing something.

Dear Valued FedEx Customer:

Please ensure that your appropriate team members (e.g., Application Server Administrators) are aware of the following FedEx planned update:

Chained Secure Socket Layer (SSL) Test Certificate Update

In order to maintain customer confidence in our Web connections, FedEx is renewing our SSL certificate with VeriSign, a trusted certificate holding authority.  FedEx moved to a chained SSL certificate type for our test environment on Mar. 19, 2009, and will move for our production environment on Aug. 1, 2009.  This transition is due to the FedEx certificate holding authority transitioning from non-chained to chained Web server SSL certificates.

Customers using custom interfacing applications will need to verify that their systems support chained certificates.  For web servers that do not support chained certificates, administrators should contact their server software provider for technical assistance.  If you are unsure whether your application works with chained certificates, it is recommended that you test your application in the FedEx test environment.  Applications should be redirected to gatewaybeta.fedex.com for testing. 

Customers needing a local copy of the FedEx test certificate installed on their system can download the updated certificate here or by typing the link http://fedex.com/us/developer/downloads/dev_cert.zip into your browser.  A separate certificate will need to be installed for production.  We will notify you when the production certificate is available for download.  FedEx supplied API clients (e.g., ATOM) are not affected by these changes.

If you have any questions or need technical assistance, please contact the FedEx Help Desk at 1.877.339.2774 or send an e-mail to websupport@fedex.com.

Thank you for choosing FedEx.

The FedEx Web Integration Solutions Team

INETA has a great gimmick.  Give someone a award and then recruit them to do volunteer work!  While I am completely joking, I was recently appointed to INETA’s Board of Directors.  Congratulations go out to my fellow Board Members.

Rob Zelt, President
Mike Vincent, Vice President
Scott Spradlin, Secretary
Morgan Baker, Treasurer
Steve Andrews, Director
Lori McKinney, Director
Randy Walker, Director
Shawn Weisfeld, Director
Chris Williams, Director

Our first order of business will be a Board Meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina from April 3rd to April 5th.  I have long recognized many of the problems INETA has had, and I hope to participate and help resolve them.  A majority of the issue revolves around the perception INETA has.  Things such as speaker requests becoming a black hole, requests come in, but no one knows what’s going on.  Many of the older established user groups don’t recognize value in INETA, something which I hope to help remedy.  Lastly, one of my goals is to provide more value to the user groups, such as a free website portal for all user groups.  If we can provide a free website portal/template with hosting and email, I think this will bring tremendous value to all user groups.

If you have ideas on how INETA can be improved, please shoot me an email or leave feedback.  We all want to see INETA improve, and that can only happen with your participation.

I wanted to make sure and draw attention to the effort that Brandon King in Harrison, Arkansas has given towards promoting this event.  There are some major giveaways, and we will be arranging a carpool from Springdale to drive the 1:30 to give a good showing from the NWA DNUG crew.

Details:

Who:                CLAUDIO LASSALA
What:               Details at http://odnug.org
When:              April 2^nd 5:30 PM – 8:30 PM
Where:             North Arkansas College (Center Campus - Durand Center - Old Regions Bank Building), Harrison, AR

Grand Prize

Inspiron 15 (1545) Laptop

• Intel Pentium Dual Core T3400
• (2.16GHz/667Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
• Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium
• 160 GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
• 3 GB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz (2 DIMMs)

Software Prizes

Infragistics NetAdvantage

• NetAdvantage® for .NET is a comprehensive suite of ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight controls, components, and tools for the .NET platform.  NetAdvantage for .NET has what you need to add no-touch AJAX to your Web site, awesome power and performance to your Windows Forms application, compelling user experiences leveraging Windows Presentation Foundation, and professionally polished user interfaces (UI).

Nevron Chart for .NET Lite

• Nevron Chart for .NET has been designed from the ground up to be extensible, efficient and feature rich. This allows it to wrap a vast amount of features in an intuitive and straightforward programming model. The component can display virtually any 2D or 3D chart including: Bar, Line, Step Line, Area, Pie, Point, Bubble, Stock, Floating Bar, Radar, Polar, High Low, Mesh Surface, Grid Surface, Shape, Smooth Line, Float Bar, Venn and Error with many variations (like Scatter XY and XYZ Line, Stacked Bars etc.).

ReSharper 4.1 Personal License

• JetBrains ReSharper for Visual Studio redefines the notions of developer productivity and code editing usability as applied to .NET. It provides efficient navigation and search features, industry-leading refactorings, smart code completion, and much more. With customizable live templates and extensive support for ASP.NET, unit tests and build script files, ReSharper maximizes your coding convenience.

dotTrace 3.1 Personal License

• A complete profiling solution for profiling the performance and memory use of your .NET applications.

CodeSmith Standard Edition

• CodeSmith is a software development tool to help you get your job done faster. Technically speaking it is a template driven source code generator that automates the creation of common application source code for any language (C#, Java, VB, PHP, ASP.NET, SQL, etc.).

Book Prizes

O’Reilly Books

· Programming ASP.NET 3.5
· Ajax: The Definitive Guide
· Building a Web 2.0 Portal with ASP.NET 3.5
· Programming WCF Services
· Data-Driven Services with Silverlight 2
· RESTful .NET
· iPhone Open Application Development
· Learning C# 3.0
· Head First C#
· Head First Ajax
· Head First Design Patterns
· Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML
· Head First Object-Oriented Analysis & Design

Manning Books

• WPF in Action with Visual Studio 2008
• Silverlight 2 in Action
• LINQ in Action
• ASP.NET AJAX in Action
• NHibernate in Action
• C# in Depth

Murach Books

• Murach's C# 2008
• Murach's ASP.NET 3.5 Web Programming with C# 2008
• Murach's SQL Server 2008 for Developers

This is an open invitation to join us in helping form the Northwest Arkansas Technology Council.  The discussion for the inaugural meeting will center on who and what we are and the beginning phases of our purpose.  If you feel you have something to contribute to our pioneering efforts, or know of someone who can, please consider joining us, or forward the following information on.

Thanks,
Randy Walker

You are invited to participate in the formation meeting of the Northwest Arkansas Technology Council (NWA Tech Council), set for March 10th, 2009 from 6-8pm at the Arkansas World Trade Center (3300 Market Street, Suite 400, Rogers Arkansas 72758).  The NWA Tech Council’s purpose is to encourage business growth of the technology sector in Northwest Arkansas.

Originally several of us set out to put on an event called the Northwest Arkansas Technology Summit, a broad based event connecting all aspects of technology that appeal to the larger firms in this area including Wal-Mart, JB Hunt, Tyson, small and medium businesses, and vendor communities. The event was originally scheduled for June 2009 at the John Q. Hammons Center. After further review, it was decided that in order to put on an event of the quality and magnitude that was envisioned, more time and planning would be needed.

The vision for the Northwest Arkansas Information Technology Summit includes the following aspects:
•    To be a nationally recognized event that pulls not only a regional, but national attendance. Goal: 1400+ attendees
•    To be sponsored by national recognized manufacturers (i.e. HP, Oracle, SAP, Microsoft, Dell, etc.)
•    To focus on new technologies and trends within the IT Community (i.e. Virtualization, Sustainability, etc.) and encourage vendors/manufacturers to showcase their latest and greatest
•    To have breakout sessions with 12 unique tracks. Some of the suggested tracks include: Retail Link, Project Management, Database Management, Software Development, Web Development, Infrastructure, Small Business, Digital Graphics, and Marketing
•    To have keynote speakers that can speak to how technology not only effects but empowers all business, from local small business to large worldwide enterprises

There is an open invitation for the first NWA Tech Council’s meeting March 10th, 2009 from 6-8pm. The purpose of the meeting will be to discuss the overall scope of the Technology Summit and start the process for creating a steering committee.  As you consider coming and joining the Council, please think about how you can help achieve the Council’s goals.  Below are areas of experience we are looking for in Council members.  Please send a confirmation email to nwatechcouncil@gmail.com where we can send you details of the meeting.

Chamber of Commerce
Executive Level Leadership
Civic Committees & Organizations
Convention and Event Planning
Marketing & Advertising
Technology Consulting
Corporate Technology Leadership
Accounting
Leaders within Walmart, Tyson, & JBHunt
Technology Based Businesses
Small Business Leaders

Scott Spradlin, one of most influential people I know in the world of Microsoft programming, has gone way too long without being recognized.  I remember having talked with Scott on many occasions about user groups and Ineta.  He’s been one of those long time influentials, mostly behind the scenes, serving in various roles with INETA and being the glue that helped connect St. Louis developers together.  Scott served as the Regional Mentor for INETA for many years, helping several user groups get started.

It’s with my heartfelt thanks to Scott Spradlin that I award him with an MSDN subscription, in recognition of his contributions to the Microsoft Developer Community.

Scott Spradlin Facebook
Scott Spradlin LinkedIn
Scott Spradlin Twitter

I was a bit shocked when I received the email announcing that I am one of ten Community Champions awarded.  A huge thank you to those that nominated me.  It’s always a good feeling of accomplishment when you’re recognized for your efforts.

While they haven’t posted the announcement on the website yet, you can read more about the award at http://www.ineta.org/Champions/CommunityChampionInfo.aspx

Below is the Newsletter announcement.

Jan 29 – Holiday Party @ Fast Lanes, Lowell, Arkansas
Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group

Feb 7 – Kansas City Office Geeks (SharePoint Saturday)
Daniel Larson

Feb 12 – Little Rock .Net Users Group
Keith Elder of Deep Fried Bytes

Mar 1-4 – Microsoft MVP Summit

Mar 18-20 – Mix ‘09

April 2 – Ozarks .Net User Group
Claudio Lassala

May 11-15 – TechEd 2009

I have yet to take the time to blog about my trip to Korea.  Hopefully within the next few weeks I’ll share some of the events of what occurred, but I’m only just beginning to be able to talk about some of the most private pieces of my life.

KBS (Korean Broadcast Station) is the largest TV network in Korea and is broadcast all over the world.  KBS followed all 42 participants with 11 different camera crews to film a documentary about our journey.  The documentary is broken up into 6 pieces and while the narrator is speaking in Korean, you can hear all of the adoptees in English.

While viewing the video, be sure to watch it in high quality by clicking the link below the video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0F2T-AerNI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whVb8sP9xLM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PygiwCTR7Ew
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AszthKQ1t-I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdHj1-gvEsc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w-bMZ3ja9LY

A big thanks to the producer Mr. Lee and my cameragirl “Ariel” for being a part of my journey back home.

Just received an e-mail that as of Nov 23, 2008 (below), Microsoft will no longer be marketing Windows Live OneCare.  It’s unknown what that means, other than them closing the affiliate program (where marketers get paid if you install it).  It is unreasonable that they will discontinue the product, since they have just launched Small Business Server 2008 and Windows Live OneCare Server.  I’m wondering if the marketing department that was contracted, was fired.

Windows Live OneCare to Close November 23, 2008

Thank you for your participation in the Windows Live OneCare affiliate program. Unfortunately, Microsoft will no longer be marketing the Windows Live OneCare product, and therefore must close this offer as of November 23, 2008.

Any banner or text ads that you currently have in place and receiving traffic will still be eligible for payout through 12:00am EST November 23, 2008. However, any traffic after this date will no longer be eligible for the coupon or commission payout.
Final commission payout for all approved activity through the end of day tomorrow, November 22, 2008, will be processed and paid in the month of December. This payment will also include any delayed October payment you are expecting. Be sure to turn in your W8 or W9 tax forms before November 23 to receive payment, as you will no be eligible for payment if it is not in hand at that time.
Please be sure to remove all marketing materials associated with this offer from placement as of November 23, as you will no longer receive credit for this activity.

We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank you for your participation in the Microsoft Affiliate Network.

Melissa Witt
Affiliate Manager
Microsoft Affiliate Network

I love it when someone else writes up my blog postings for me!

Having only told a handful of people, I applied to the OKF (Overseas Korean Foundation) for the “First Trip Home” program the week of the deadline in late October.  I found out about the program late and rushed to get my application in, which included gathering documents and writing an essay.  It’s been over 36 hours since I found out I was selected to participate, and I’m still a bit shell shocked.  Please note that this event in my life is extremely personal and something I have not fully explored.

OKF and the First Trip Home program was designed for “… inviting Korean adoptees to their motherland to experience and learn Korean culture by creating an outlet for their desire for searching for their identity, assistance with searching for their biological family …”  http://www.okf.or.kr/

I’m very fortunate to have been one of the 44 selected.  Both the flight and hotel accommodations are being paid through the Foundation which was setup by the Korean government.  I’m still waiting on the itinerary, as they are scheduling several events for us.  Tentatively the dates I’ll be in Korea is from Dec 8th – Dec 14th, which will require a day of travel to arrive and a day to return.  It’ll be a long and difficult journey, one of some self exploration and discovery.  Please pray for me.

I’ll be posting more about this journey on my personal site and Facebook, however will be exclude the geekswithblogs.net community.  Feel free to keep track of the postings on http://mysoftwarestartup.com

Yes, I too wish I were in L.A. with all our geek friends.  But thanks to fellow VB MVP, Julia Lerman, she has helped point out how we can view all the content at PDC without spending the thousands of dollars and travel time.

http://blogs.eweek.com/devlife/content/net_general/not_at_pdc_live_meetings_just_for_you_and_recorded_pdc_content.html

Being the Type A personality I am, one of the hardest things for me to do is to “Let Go”.  Why is letting go such an important thing?

For the small business owner, if you don’t let go, you’ll never grow your business.  For the parent, if you don’t let go, your child will never learn, grow, mature, or be independent.  For the software developer, if you don’t let go, you’ll never finish your product.  But most importantly, if you don’t let go, you’ll never move on, stuck in the same spot.

The following quote was written by an unknown author and was given to me by a friend.  I think it’s an extremely important lesson and I hope it helps you in your life.

Let Go and Let God
To "let go" does not mean to stop caring, it means I can't do it for someone else.
To "let go" is not to cut myself off, it's the realization I can't control another.
To "let go" is not to enable, but to allow learning from natural consequences.
To "let go" is to admit powerlessness, which means the outcome is not in my hands.
To "let go" is not to try to change or blame another; it's to make the most of myself.
To "let go" is not to care for, but to care about.

To "let go" is not to fix, but to be supportive.
To "let go" is not to judge, but to allow another to be a human being.
To "let go" is not to be in the middle arranging the outcomes but to allow others to affect their own destinies.
To "let go" is not to be protective; it's to permit another to face reality.
To "let go" is not to deny, but to accept.
To "let go" it not to nag, scold or argue, but instead to search out my own shortcomings, and correct them.
To "let go" is not to adjust everything to my desires but to take each day as it comes, and cherish myself in it.
To "let go" is not to criticize and regulate anybody but to try to become what I dream I can be.
To "let go" is not to regret the past, but to grow and live for the future.
To "let go" is to fear less, and love more.