Want to use this short post as sort of planning slate for some things I want to do, loosely defined as goals, for the current month of May 2010 in the realm of training (in diverse formats) and some posts I want to write which in themselves would imply some training and thought organization exercise.

I recently completed the process of deploying TFS 2010.  Used mainly as a production SCM but also leveraging some basic ALM features.  This included conversion from Visual Source Safe, bug & issue item tracking and sprint tasks planning & reporting.  I want to “document” that process and highlight some of the gotchas that I went through, and the dos and don’t that I gathered from my experience. I think they’d add value to anyone else looking to do just that: Deploy TFS 2010 as a source control repository, migrate projects and get the groove going to plan and track your development projects.  I think a critical part of this process is indeed the planning phase, as the execution is pretty straight forward once you have a good solid base plan.

Sometime in the next 2 weeks, i will be rebuilding my ESXi box, because the PS took a crapper and I was just waiting for an excuse to upgrade the iron anyways.  As it was this is 3.5 environment because the proc was an oldie but goodie 32bit.  Looking to migrate to ESXi 4.  I am running 2 instances of Server 2003, 2 of Server 2008 and I will now look to add 2008 R2.  Here I ran my labs, and most recently had my TFS environment.  Great excuse to do it all over again if I wanted to, but for now it is just a host box swap keeping the VMs as they are.

Videos, podcasts, screencasts, MIX10 content I haven’t assimilated, and hopefully get suckered into it enough to justify a yearly subscription to tekpub.

I will attend the 2 day WebCamp event in Chicago over June 11th and 12th.  Suffice it to say, this is a great chance to learn from others including industry and technology leaders at Microsoft.  Topics include ASP.NET MVC, EF, JQuery, IIS, etc.  Great stuff.

Somewhere in the middle of all that I am considering, and haven’t yet decided, working on a worthy submission to Thomson Reuter’s mobile app contest, which they named The StreepApps Challenge .  I think I can convince my buddy Benny to go in with me on this project and if so, we are half way there.

All of this while I embrace the search and quest for a new full time role.  This time I am not looking for a job, I am looking for a home amongst those that are “my peeps”, those that appreciate what I bring to the table, people whom I can actually learn from… an environment that generates “good” stress.

On the path to my new “8 to 6” home, I am hoping to get my hands filthy dirty with some good code, good problems to solve, great challenges that push my limits and all nighters that leave you with a smile on your face.

So ok, slight inaccuracy in the post tile, because May…be some of the things that are listed here I’ll be doing in June.

apparently, that is what I am going through.  In the classiest way anyone could have described it, Ted tells us that what we are experiencing is constipation.

quite a way to anchor a post, and I am allowing myself the same eloquence but I’ll do so in the form of a quote

Don't write just because you want to spend some time on the pot.  Do it because you really have to go.

Even before I started even thinking about actually "blogging", one of the elements that quickly came up as important to consider was hosting.  Now, I've always hosted my own, and for the most part it has faired pretty well.  I don't (and lets be honest, most likely never will) have the traffic to even put a blip on anyone's bandwidth use radar, and that was one of my initial (unproven and unjustified) concerns.

Since we are putting an addition on the house, and redoing (read ripping it all out) the 70s looking basement, my hand was forced and I had to take down all of my infrastructure, including server and incoming Internet connection. 

I will get a new, decent, nice looking, office out of all this, and it will not be cold and an eye sore like it used to be.

I've been managing by having to relocate the physical infrastructure required to provide me with outbound access (mainly my router, modem and a power strip) which come into my basement, almost on a day to day basis, although its been stable since Wednesday or so and over the weekend because there was nothing going on down there as far as construction goes.

This has created too much downtime for me, and although I have little to no audience, it is clear that it doesn't help.

I have been evaluating options from different hosting solutions, and thus far in 1 week of on and off (15 minutes at a time) dealing with several, I have come across 2 disappointments and no true clear winner.  Of course, a huge contributing factor is that this is merely a hobby and as such justifying too much of an expense (more than say $10 a month) is a hard thing to do.  The search continues, but regardless of my convictions I should be moving this blog to a new site within a couple of days.

In the meantime, read this as somewhat of an explanation for the lack of posts, and my sincere apologies to go with it. 

I am well aware downtime and lack of constant posts are big no-nos in the list of things not to do when one is without an audience and trying to gain the trust of anyone who would listen. 

Again I apologize and my commitment continue despite some of the minor obstacles and workable setbacks.

Woohoooo!

I won the raffle for 2 great software products, that Max Pool @ {codesqueeze} put out in honor of the blog's 1 year anniversary.

As entries to the contest one could twitter, blog or post videos... I twitted a couple of times and wrote a blog post here.  That was enough to make me a winner.

So freakin' cool... I can't wait to start using Bamboo CI.

Just now, about an hour ago or so, I noticed my blog was down... i.e. ugly nasty ASP.NET yellow screen.  So I set out to quickly investigate and determine the root cause of the problem, and that I did.

Suddenly, for now reason at all.. literally.. I was getting a "Input string was not in a correct format." error

Nothing changed, nothing, nothing... unless my system was somewhat compromised... so WTF??

My temporary solution was to disable that extension (by moving the .cs file out of the extensions folder in the App_code directory, out to another folder).

I will need to further dig into this, unless it is something so evident that I am missing and that my currently fried brain is not processing correctly.

Anyone not like free?  Those of you who raised your hands… GET THE HECK OUT OF MY BLOG.. :)  In all seriousness, this is your chance to enter a drawing for some cool swag! generously hosted by Max Pool at his blog {Codesqueeze}.

He was able to get vendors to pony up some nice (and pricey) software that would make an excellent addition to any developer’s toolbox.

Me myself I am hoping, going for Bamboo 2.0 CI Server.  No I will not resell it on eBay, I have actual plans for it.  Coincidentally I am in the middle of (call it, what you will) a project to setup a CI solution using CruiseControl.net & SVN at home.  The SlickEdit tools would be a nice to have, and believe me, there is nothing like a good editor to make you productive above and beyond the powers of Notepad.

On Deck: Guillermo, get you ass in gear and evaluate "the Bamboo"!

Yesterday I set up a tumblr account.  You can find me here. 

Don't ask me why I did it, specifically, because I still haven't figured that one entirely myself.  As it is, "keeping up" with one forum, if you will, is something I am still trying to sort out and manage.  I guess initially I feel like I can more easily and with less scrutiny (self that is), post to and leverage the tumblr canvas, letting me try out a larger number of ideas and approach without the need to think too much about structure or content.  Lets see how this goes.

My first take is that this community is like a beginner's blog tool meets del.icio.us meets twitter (grant me some slack for the analogy) meets facebook...???  In other words, you can easily create your "typical" post but then post links and videos and audio files, etc, all from within the provided interface.  It is very nice and clean and practical.

Let me know if you join so that I can "follow" you (see, there's your twitter reach).

I know I have mentioned it before that one of my passions and (at one time at least, for sure) addictions are books. 

Yes, sometimes I read them!

Right now I am going through Working Effectively with Legacy Code and the less technical yet incredibly relevant but certainly more entertaining Dreaming in Code.  I'm trying to get through the former while at work, 30 minutes a day of reading when I can, the latter I am reading at home after the ripples of the hustle and bustle of what is my day to day at home come to rest.  At this point I'm at about the half way mark on both, but doing more reading at home than I am at work.

Michael Feather's book has been recommended so many times in so many different posts that I had to see for myself why this book was in those reader's opinion such a must read.  Jeff Atwood has it as part of his recommended reading list, Steven Smith posted a short review and recommendation after reading it as a recommendation from Jeffrey Palermo. For the fear you may have at this point that I post more references, I am pretty confident you get my point and trust my word!  Its been read and deemed a worthy resource.

At home I am also reading Ship It for a second time and just recently went over Practices of an Agile Developer for a third time as well.  To me both of these seemed [now] to be elementary, but yet so relevant, giving me a sense of "yeah, we are doing this the right way" and not because the books say so (hey, don't jump to conclusions), but because much of what is common sense extracted from the content of these compilations of ideas, past experience and the analysis of the results of their implementations, can be easily projected and extrapolated to the work we do, the way we do it and most importantly the way the people I work with have "learned" to relate, work, communicate with each other. 

I don't want to digress too much, but there is value in mentioning all this because most of these practices are part science, part common sense, part keeping your head above the smoke someone or some group in the industry is blowing at some point in time and at every turn.  It takes determination, self awareness and more importantly it takes focus to be able to weed through so much jargon and so much hype to extract what is really of value and what yield results.  On that last point, what yield results is always a combination of some elements from "all of the above" with what works for the group, for its dynamic for its internal makeup of skills, personality, culture & traditions.  Dare I  forget to mention keeping the business needs as a primary focus at all times.

Ok, so I did veer off a little bit too far, but what is done is done!

In summary, the message I wanted to convey with this post is that one should read not only to learn the "technology du juor", which of course is a perfectly valid reason to do so, but also and most importantly after reading so many opinions and different points of view one is able to apply these to a practical everyday life as a professional developer (in this particular case), how one then may use the same books one used to learn to now assess our level of assimilation of all this information, to gauge, to extrapolate, to connect one's own dots.

I have configured my del.icio.us account to post daily summaries of the links I bookmark to my blog.

Since it is precisely that, a daily summary, this blog may start to show increased posting activity.

Summaries will be posted only on days on which I actually tag a URL with del.icio.us.  I find myself doing so about 2 or 3 times a week.  

I will try to keep the links relevant, the noise down and the comments appropriate and descriptive.  As usual, any feedback is certainly appreciated and encouraged.

At this point and according to Clemens Vasters classification of bloggers, I will grade myself at the lowest level... "I want to blog".

I intend on doing something about that as I make my way through this maze, without pushing the envelope. I'll do my best to keep track of my progress against this "chart" of his.  Hey, maybe if I get to be "collaborator" he'll even add me to his blogroll.  I am going to seed the good faith relationship by adding him to mine!.

P.S. I truly dissagree with the concept of "link blogs", althought I sporadically check up on them, the 3 or 4 who I've come ccross.