Category: technology

Ahhh Microsoft…

I’m working on a few client projects that are dragging me back into the wonderful world of ASP.Net. One is a project that was originally written in VB. It was a total disaster, the previous consultant disappeared, and I’ve been hired to create a new site from scratch. For that one, I’m using PHP/MySQL, but need to dig up stuff from the old DB and code base.

For my other, more exciting project, we’ll be using C#/ASP.Net because that’s what the rest of the company uses. No problem – I have Parallels running on my MacBook Pro (4G ram). I installed VS2008 Express, and things are moving along fairly smoothly. I’ve even done some successful SOAP calls out to an external web service.

WELL, today, I realized that for some reason, when VS2008 Express installs SQL Server, it doesn’t include SQL Server Management Studio – a fairly critical tool for working with SQL Server! Well, that should be easy to add, right?? Well, NO, this is Microsoft after all. I searched around on the web, found that I needed to install a version “with Tools”. OK, well, why wasn’t that the default? No matter – I download it, run the installer and pick the item that looks something like “upgrade existing installation”. Great, just what I want to do! Well, everything is disabled, and there is no sign of the Management Studio in the list of things to add. Grr. So, I kill another hour searching on the web and FINALLY find someone who has the answer. Apparently you need to FIRST run something called an “Edition Upgrade” and THEN you can re-run the installer and add the new tools/features. So, I did that and finally got the tool I needed.

This is such classic Microsoft product behavior – confusing and opaque – there was NO clue about what was wrong or how to proceed when I hit the roadblock. Clearly, there’s a rule in the code that describes what needs to happen, but that never makes it out to the UI.

Aside from all of this, VS2008 looks pretty nice. Stay tuned for more updates as they happen!

Moving

Well, after a few years of sporadic postings, I’ve turned off my TypePad blog and imported it into WordPress 2.7, which I have included as part of my website on Site5. I certainly don’t post enough to make it worth paying extra for my blog, and this will also motivate me to finally dive into WordPress and possibly use it for some other sites. So, stay tuned as I play with themes, add widgets, and slowly turn WP into ericgottesman.com!

Happy Holidays!

Sanibel
Island Florida

I’m
on vacation in Sanibel with my family, Rebecca’s mom, her brother and
his family. We’ve been coming here for 14 years, ever since Rosie and Aviva
were babies. It’s truly a special place, and we are always thrilled to be back
here. As Vermont braces for a Christmas ice storm, we’ve been enjoying sunny
70’s weather on the beach, walking, biking, and playing tennis. It’s truly a
time for us all to really really relax and catch up with each other. The only
thing missing is a broadband connection :-). Actually, I could get that at the
Sanibel Bean Café, were I go for my fix of Café con Leche.

I’ve
(obviously) not posted anything in quite a long time, so a bit of catching up
is called for. The biggest change has been my departure from Microsoft. After 2
1/2 years, the Lebanon, NH office of Microsoft/MapPoint has been closed. The
most concrete reason for the closing is that most of the software engineers had
fled the office and found other jobs, mostly at TeleAtlas. Since it was obvious
that the office would no longer be sustainable, management decided to pull the
plug. You could get a wide variety of opinions about why people left, but I
suspect you’d find that many of the folks in the NH office would have agreed
with much of the discussion at Mini Microsoft.

Although
I was tempted to join my friends and apply at TeleAtlas, when I started looking
around for jobs, I realized that I have been growing increasingly tired of the
corporate world over the last 10 years. Generally it’s not an environment that
I enjoy, and as a result, it’s not an environment where I do my best work.
While Microsoft was the perfect example of everything I didn’t like about large
companies, I had been feeling this way towards the end of Vicinity, as
executive teams came and went, taking their huge paychecks, and getting less
and less accomplished. I had been working as a solo software consultant back
before my time at Vicinity, and as I saw the writing on the wall for the NH
office, I decided I wanted to return to the consulting world. Fortunately, I
was able to land a position with Art & Logic – a fantastic consulting
company that has been operating as a “virtual company” for about 15
years. There are about 50 people in the company, scattered all over the US and
Canada (and even one in China for a while!). They have done many amazing
projects, and the breadth of their collective skills is very impressive. So, I
am able to use the C#/ASP.NET stuff that I learned at Microsoft for my first
project at A&L. And, as I’ve remarked to a few friends, I’ve done more
programming in the last few months than I did in my last year at Microsoft.
Hopefully, I’ll be able to move on to some other fun stuff like PHP, Ruby, and
heck, maybe even get back to Mac programming, where I started.

Our
time in Sanibel is always a time to look back at the year that has passed, and
to look forward to what is coming. Rebecca and I take long walks on the beach,
talking about plans, dreams and wishes. I sometimes wish I could play back our
conversations over the years…so much has happened since we started these walks,
and the twists and turns of our lives have brought us to where we are today.

From
little babies, our girls have grown into smart, beautiful, wonderful young
women. Rosetta has just been accepted to Oberlin College, and she is looking
forward to it so much. We will be sad to see her moving out of the nest, but
that is how it should be. And Aviva continues to amaze us – whether in the
hockey goal or the straight A report card.

Rebecca’s
mom brought “The World Is Flat” by Thomas Friedman for me to read. It
had been on my list, so I’m thrilled to finally dive into it. I haven’t gotten
too far yet, but he does a great job of looking back over the last 10 years and
explaining things like outsourcing, global connections, open source/free
software, and all that. It’s a world I know from the inside out, but I love
hearing the stories and quotes from people who have been in the middle of it
all. It certainly gets me psyched to think about what I have been doing and
what I might be doing going forward.

I
also have an audiobook of Neal Stephenson’s “Quicksilver” on my iPod.
That has been a lot of fun to listen to, and I’ve just started that as well. I
think it’s over 21 hours worth, and it’s even abridged I think!

So,
I hope to get back into regular posts, and I hope family, old friends and new
friends will tune in to see what I’m finding out there on the web.

Wishing
you all a happy holiday season and a wonderful new year.