What I'm reading: expert c# business objects

This is your only warning, all non-geeks are likely to pass out due to boredom reading this post. Please move on or make sure you are properly seated before attempting to read on.

Did we get rid of them?
Good.

That being said, I made two purchases at Barnes & Noble's a week ago. I haven't gotten to the second book yet, but this one's a real winner. It's called Expert C# Business Objects by Rockford Lhotka.

If you work or play in Microsoft .NET (there's a really goofy pair of guys on the page when I visited it - here's the cache), I highly recommend it. This book starts at an advanced level and doesn't pander to novice wanna-be's. It attempts to cover the gap between small-time business applications and medium scale software development for businesses. I don't think this book would solve a software house's dev problems, but it would certainly handle many less involved situations.

This book has already been helpful to me and I'm only 100 pages in (out of 800). It quickly explains and shows with code included how to implement universal features of solid biz projects. It handles Remoting, n-Level Undo, Enterprise Services to name a few. Beyond discussions in each topic, Lhotka includes the source code for his Component-Based, Scalable, Logical Architecture (CSLA) which is ready to build upon with business specific logic.

I'm never very good at writing reviews or synopses so this isn't the best account of the book, but if you're in that niche and looking for a coherent place to bridge the gap that I found myself facing this is your book.

Notes:

• Thanks to Kyle for some css support from his own blog (w/o his permission :-)
• Check the sidebar links for a new addition: an old pal of mine, Ryan is now on the list.
  

shoestring budget foosball table

(Sorry for the absence. I'm sure many of you were waiting in anticipation... very quietly)

Anne and I came down from Utica (or Yucktica as Anne's friend Joe would say it) for Memorial Day weekend for a variety of reasons. On Friday, we signed our lease for our new apartment in Goshen. Yay! Today Anne and I are attending the wedding of a neighbor of hers. It's actually being held at the same church where we are getting married next April. It'll be good to see how another wedding looks in the same space. And we'll probably have a good time too :-) And finally tomorrow my family is throwing a small Memorial Day party with family and local friends. So yay to that too.

But all of this is irrelevant and has nothing to do with my post. One thing not on the agenda that happened this weekend however is the entire point of this post.

This month, the town offers one of those spring clean-up programs. You put your junk out on the curb and the town comes and takes it (and then probably eBays it for a profit). Well my brother treats this time like a free yard sale. He's out like a vulture in the night scouring for some random coolness on someone's driveway. Wednesday night before I came down Steve came across the top to a foosball table! All the players and goals were intact! It was just missing legs. Steve threw (he probably did not throw, but place) it into his new Scion xA and sped off (he probably did speed off).

Thursday night we went and got 1 1/2" x 1 1/2" beams at Lowes and some hardware at Wal-Mart. Steve went to try and find a ball for the foosball table. (Is that called a foos? Or foose maybe? Anyway...) He started at Dick's Sporting Goods. They told him that they didn't have any right now because "they were out of season." Out of season?! I didn't know there was a right and wrong time to play foosball! It seems to me that foosball is always in season. When it's nice out, you put it on the back patio (or deck) so that you can enjoy the sun. When it's crappy out (or all the time in Rochester) you keep it in the den where you can stay warm and dry. Bam! In season! No "out of season." Steve went to Modell's where they didn't have them either.

Then Steve went back to Wal-Mart. He walked in and asked someone where he could find foosballs. The guy paused at first. Steve elaborated. The guy, who now claimed to know what Steve was talking about, brought him back to sporting goods (a good start) and proceeded to hand him a canister of tennis balls. Steve was no longer amused. He didn't find any there, although I'd speculate that they may indeed be at Wal-Mart. He even went back to the house where he found the foosball table in hopes that there might be a ball on the ground.

Regardless, we went to work on our foos-less foosball table. We attached the legs using some wood screws and L-brackets as needed. After testing the height, I told him it was too tall by quite a bit. He didn't want it too low so we only cut off a few inches. We then attached small floor coasters that we hope will be able to raise and lower to level the table as desired. Finally we applied a coat of textured green spray paint so the legs would sort of match the table top.

Once dry, we leveled the table, which is actually quite level on it's own. We want to seal the paint with some sort of sealant because it's water soluable, but aside from that it's finished. We were quite proud of our work at 4:30 am on Friday morning. Mom wasn't too pleased that we were banging and drilling till then in the garage. But oh well. All totalled $25 in parts plus our labor.

Not bad for a $25 foosball-less foosball table. I'll post pictures when available.

linux pvr

So I'm not sure this PVR experiment is going to happen any time soon. I've got the plan in theory, but not the funds. I've been doing some reading and I don't think I can pull this off with the parts I have from my previous computers. This article in particular (thanks tom) indicates that I'll need a few new components. So... until I get some parts, this project is on hold. :-(

vote for the worst

Now I haven't been a big fan of American Idol in the past. I guess I'm still not, but this season Anne got me hooked on watching it. I still don't like the "results" shows on Wednesday so I usually skip them (I'm skipping one right now while writing this).

I guess I was most hooked because I "picked my horse" early to win. Just like any other reality-based competition show, I hoped that my guy/gal/team would win. For American Idol, I picked Anwar (with Constantine second).

If you follow the show, you'd know that Anwar's journey ended a while back. It's unfortunate. If you also follow the news around the show, you'd have learned that pretty-crappy-and-white-trashy-lookin Scott was charged with felony assault on his fiancee a while back. Scott is clearly (CLEARLY) less talented than Anwar, and yet Scott outlasted him. With Anwar out, I rooted for Constantine. And last week, yet again my "horse" had fallen. Constantine was out before Scott, who has now made it into the top 5. So I felt justified and glad that I wasn't emotionally attached to the show. I walked away from it last week calling it "Farce Idol." TM

However I've come across some pretty interesting information. I was doing a search on the internet because of the Paula Abdul scandal about to hit the air waves (clearly another reason AI is absurd). .... Quick side note: that story is going to be hell-a-funny. I'll have to write again once I watch it. Anyway, I came across some interesting information. It turns out there has been an underground (so underground, I've never heard of it) movement for the past two seasons to put forth their choice as the worst Idol (Google Cache - It's not as pretty, but you can read the text even though the site is down) and try to get them to win. Their horse: Mikalah. And once she got bumped? Scott. They're mighty proud of themselves. I won't go into their explanation, but I'll point you to their site and you can see what they're up to.

I think it's funny that they do this to mess with the show which drives most people crazy (trust me I know. I checked the forums). However I've got a renewed interest in the show to see if they can actually pull it off. My new horse: the underground movement "Vote for the Worst." Now I'm not low enough to vote for Scott. He's sleeze in a cheap suit. However, who doesn't like a good controversy every ... week.