Siqing (my fiance) and I just returned from another trip to the Puerto Rician islands. We were there for 5 days–one night on the big island and four on the island of Vieques. While on the big island we just walked a lot around Old San Juan (pic 1, pic 2, pic 3) and around Fort San Felipe del Morro (pic), and toured another fort we didn’t see the last time we were there–Fort San Cristóbal.

To get to the island of Vieques we chartered a small propeller plane from Vieques Air Link. Once there we stayed at the Casa de Amistad hotel in the town of Isabel Segunda, which is one or only two “major” towns in Vieques (located on the Northern shore). Almost eveyday we went snorkeling at one of the many secluded beaches (at least when we were there). Several of the beaches are named after colors (i.e. Green Beach, Blue Beach, etc…). To get to the beaches and around the island, we rented a scooter from Extreme Scooters. The highlight of our trip was at Green Beach while snorkeling, we saw a ray of some sort (I like to think it was a Manta Ray), which scared the bejesus out of me since it was so big and came from behind us, a huge puffer fish, and beautiful huge gardens of sea fans that swayed in the current.

Another note worthy thing we did on Vieques, would include the attending the opening of an art exhibit at El Fortin Conde de Mirasol (pic) (one of the last Spanish forts built in the New World), of works done by the two Puerto Rician political prisoners: Oscar Lopez Rivera & Carlos Alberto Torres. In attendance was the governor of Vieques (pic), what appeared to be wives and/or relatives of Oscar and Carlos, and ex-political prisoners.

For all the pics click here!

If you ever want to see a list of keys in your current database or see some of their properties (e.g. the encryption alogorithm used), just use the two statements below to list your symmetric and asymmetric keys from the system catalog views:

SELECT * FROM sys.symmetric_keys;
SELECT * FROM sys.asymmetric_keys;

I’ve recently re-discovered the awsome awsome site to get t-shirts Threadless.com. You can buy t-shirts that people in the Threadless community have designed themselves! Meaning not many people have them, they are unique, and most importantly not advertisments for large retail shops!

This brings up something I’ve had on my mind for a while now, and I wanted to just express it if you guys don’t mind indulging me. Has anyone noticed how many people are wearing shirts with the retailers name on it? Not a day goes by that I don’t see 3-4 people wearing shirts that say “Holister” or “Abercrombie and Fitch”. I used to not pay any mind to it, but I recently realized why exactly people wear this stuff. The only reason I can come up with, at least when it comes to clothing that came from a semi-expensive store, is that they want everyone to know they can afford to buy from that store.

Actually I never knew, up until a few weeks ago, what exactly “Holister” sold. If you ever go in to their store, you will see exactly what they sell. When I went in, it was hard to find an item of clothing which didn’t have “Holister” written across it. It seems people are willing to pay the store back for its advertising.

Sorry about the rant, I promise I’ll have some ASP .Net and/or SQL Server 2005 stuff soon. Most likely on the subject of encryption, so stay tuned….

I’ve received several questions concerning my article on 4GuysFromRolla on “Customizing the CreateUserWizard Control“, which center around the same problem. So, I thought I would just put my solution here, in case anyone else was confused about the same thing as well.

The question concerns, the way in which my example asks for the user information in the last step. Some people (and they are right) say that usually the username, password, etc… are asked for in the first step of a web application, and then after that the user is usually asked for more information. Several people have asked, “Is is possible to ask for the user info in the first step of the CreateUserWizard?” Someone tell me if I am wrong, but I don’t think it is possible, at least using the CreateUserWizard. I believe you will have to programmatically add the user using the Membership.CreateUser method.

Of course, you could still make the login process a multi-stepped process using the Wizard control.

I was traveling north on a somewhat hilly and rural north-bound highway in Arkansas. It was the edge of an autumn morning, when there is still a hint of coolness in the air and the dew barely clings to the slightly overgrown grass. Deep in anxious thought of what the day might bring, I came around a bend in the road.

It was the first dog that caught my eye first, the one lying in the grass on the opposite side of the road. Still. Lifeless. The dog seemed to be a medium-sized and dark colored breed, no doubt the victim of a fast moving vehicle. Seeing such things are rare but yet are just frequent enough that on seeing them, one tends to feel a sense of sadness, but soon the moment has past and not another thought is given to it. It was the second image that I saw that mid-morning day, that has been permanently fixed into my mind. It was a second dog. This one approximately the same size as his departed friend. It had a red colored coat, which was dull and worn, just what you expect to see on a road-weary wondering dog. It sat on its side next to his friend. Its eyes were alert and its neck was erect, with a look of sheer confusion written on its face.

This is the image that has been permanently fixed into my mind. An innocent minded friend, wondering why his playful companion won’t wake up.

Here are some “…strongly opinionated but very smart people giving advice” to NASA, that were asked to resign their positions under pressure:

Click Listen to hear the whole story.

More evidence for my Temple Secret article…

Thanks for all of you who came out to the show! I had the time of my life…

The south is an interesting, backwards, delightful, and eccentric place. I had occasion to ponder such things, chopping into my fish sandwich at my local McDonalds. For sometime now McDonalds all around the south have been going though a renaissance or a sophistication transformation of sorts. Many now seem to be trading in their older, brightly colored, cheap plastic benches and décor, for newer, more elegant, cheap plastic benches and décor.

I first noticed it while visiting a friend in the Dallas/Fort Worth area a few years ago. Texas always seems gets things a few years earlier than elsewhere and makes all of us a bit further north a tad jealous. I stepped in thinking, this must be wrong place. The walls where lined with green colored wall paper with a gold symbols, giving the walls an embroidered look. Trim was finished in dark walnut, the ceilings were recessed, and the flooring was titled. There were mirrors and timeless looking paintings, and by god believe me when I say, there was even a chandelier. All the employees wore button-down shirts with ties and black slacks. I looked at the menu expecting to see Chicken Puttanesca, Roast Duck, or maybe Ragout of Chicken Chasseur; but, instead saw the menu I had seen since practically a boy. The food wasn’t any better than it is at any other McDonalds but that didn’t matter—I was impressed.

Back at my local McDonalds, they have recently done the same…well not quite. It didn’t get a chandelier, but it did get the more peaceful colors and better dressed employees. Now this McDonalds, instead of having those timeless looking paintings on the walls, touted a French poster theme. These are the ones you most often see at the local arts and crafts or home décor retail chains, adorn with the fed up French cats, dancing ballerinas, and some sort of slogan written in French. Now in this type of atmosphere, you would think the choice of music would somehow mimic or compliment the décor, something like smooth jazz or piano standards maybe. Instead they seemed to be playing the entire 1950s Motown and bebop catalogue.

That’s the thing with the south, we try so hard to be more sophisticated sometimes, but somehow we always fall a little short. Anyways, where else could it be considered fashionable to wear cowboy boots with a three piece suit?

I’m obviously shamelessly stealing the title from one of my favorite software related articles, “The Iceberg Secret, Revealed” by Joel Spolsky. In a nutshell, Joel explains how important a good UI is, how nonprogrammers view them, and ultimately he hands out some advice on how to deal with that.

In this article, I wanted to let everyone in on what I call the “Temple Secret”. Well to get started, let me introduce Mike. Mike works as a junior software developer for a small to medium sized company. When I say “junior”, I mean he is not a team leader or anything like that; he simply has no influence in the company’s direction. What I mean by that, is that if he does a lousy job, the company might not sell as many units or get the client to renew their contract, but nothing catastrophic will happen to the company.

Mike is unhappy with some things at work. He sees some processes at his company, which are just leading the development team in the wrong direction. Moreover, because he minored in psychology while in college, he thinks it is going to hurt the company if they continue to hire so many people who are related. A few other small things bother him as well.

After a year of working for the company, it was time for Mike to have his 1-year review with his supervisor. By the way, this supervisor is a co-founder of the company he is working for. Going over some of the ratings his project managers have given him, it turns out he’s doing a pretty good job. He likes most of the PMs, most of them like him. They feel he is doing a good job and everything seems right in the world. Until, Mike’s supervisor says the ill-fated question: “So is there anything you are unhappy about?”.

What should Mike do? Should he say: “Everything is great!”? Or, should he voice some of his concerns and talk about some of the things he is unhappy about? Well, Mike feels his supervisor is a pretty cool guy and he knows he prides himself on being “one-of-the-guys”. Mike decides to just bear it all. Afterwards, the supervisor seems extremely stunned and tells Mike he thinks he is really paranoid, emotional, angry, and is just poisoning the company with his thoughts and opinions.

Mike is then told to pack up his desk and leave (he is fired).

So what is the “Temple Secret”? The secret is that most company founders or those who have a large stake in the company and/or its direction–view their company as a temple. As such, their temple cannot contain those individuals (especially lower ranking) who have any types of negative opinions or disagreements with the direction of the company. Therefore, any individuals not found to be pure of heart, must be purged.

The conclusion or lesson to be learned is that, if you have no stake in the direction of the company and you disagree with the direction in which the company is going or in its processes or practices, keep the opinions to yourself. If Mike doesn’t like the way things are being done, he should keep quite and/or look for another job.