October 2006 - Posts
I'm currently planning on doing some site seeing pre- and post- the MVP Summit (12-15 Mar 2007). The initial plans are:
2 Mar 2007 - Arrive LA 10:00AM (crossing International Date Line - Leave work after work Friday). Fly to Flagstaff by 2pm (or drive). Grand Canyon by 4pm. Camp first night near start of hike
3,4,5,6 Mar Grand Canyon Trekking
7 Mar Travel to Yosemite via Zion National Park, Page (Antelope Canyons)
8,9,10 Mar Yosemite Trekking
11 Mar Travel to Seattle. Drop car off at San Fran - fly
15, 16 Mar Olympic National Park
Drop me a line if you're going to the summit and planning something similar or would like to come along. More details on hikes coming soon.
After a bit of a lay-off, I'm attempting to go through the last few weeks of 2005's six month adventure around Australia before the end of this year. Thinking back to home many shots I took in Tassie, that could be a stuggle.
The Scenario
I'm supporting a VSTO application that does a pretty typical Office style thing. CAS policy updates to let the particular .NET assembly run are added to the end-users machine at install time, and the application works fine when the document is on the local machine.
The Nightmare
When the Office document is on a network share, a CAS error is raised. The solution is to add the server share to the OfficeDocumentMembershipCondition, and based on the code group membership condition, it can be granted full trust.
For some reason, the Office 2003 DLL (Msosec.dll) isn't installed in the GAC when Office is installed, so it is left to the poor VSTO developer to try to get the assembly into the GAC to do all the necessary CAS work. This
MSDN document describes how to do it, and what a mess. You can tell your user "Umm, I hope your an admin. Let crack open the .NET Framework configuration tool and manually add an assembly to something called the GAC". That's a great experience. Alternatively, you can hope that the .NET Framework SDK is installed and batch out to GACUtil during your install (which will be running under the context of a local admin).
Obviously, this is a total mess. It creates a vulnerability (users need at least a temporary promotion to admin to add Msosec to the GAC), and it seriously error-prone. It is crazy installation experiences like this that really hinder the uptake of smart clients.
As my previous post announced, Linda and I are the proud parents of a healthy new son called Alex. Alex is coming up to two weeks on Thursday, which marks a third of the way through the first six weeks. Six weeks in the real first milestone where the newborn becomes a baby, and is one of the more interesting phases because of the complete lack of predictability in sleep patterns. Its a real paradox that a newborn can spend something like 60 - 75% of their time asleep yet keep you up all-night. We've been a fair bit more organised this time around, and have found the process smoother.
One of the mistakes we made when Jess came along was to plan a number of family get-togethers, BBQs and events to celebrate the new baby and to show here off. This time around we haven't made anywhere near as many plans, and have get the weekends for resting and spending time together. At a personal level, I haven't planned any leisure activities at all. I have activities that I can do if the opportunity arises, things like going for a surf-ski, but have no definite plan when I am going to do them. When an opportunity arises, I go for a surf-ski, but if Alex decides that he is going to be unsettled all day, I am not upset at having missed out on a planned activity. Also, I've organised a number of books and magazines I can read while cradling Alex in my arm - I spent way too much time with Jess watching crappy Foxtel programs because I didn't have a secondary activity organised when Jess was sleeping in my arms.
The other thing that Linda and I have done pretty well this time around is being clear who is on-watch and who can get some rest. One of the big mistakes with an unsettled newborn is for both parents to mill around for hours, and both end up fatigued. Newborns are guaranteed to have some unsettled periods where they are impossible to calm down to sleep, but that doesn't mean you both need to be missing sleep because of it.