Becky's Blog

I found this article linked through Digg: http://www.engadget.com/2007/11/29/atandt-ceo-outs-3g-iphone-youll-have-it-next-year/.  I am definetely waiting at least until June of 08 to get my Iphone to see if this is true.  If I buy now that means my net will suck and I will have 8 gb less than I would really like.

Here is a link to the event: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032360727&Culture=en-US.
The KC .Net User Group is meeting at the MS Campus in Overland Park to play the newest XBox 360 Games and install VS 2008 (if you install it on your computer that night, then you will get a free copy after the release date sent to you in the mail).  This event is going to rock, especially if they have Guitar Hero III or Rock Band.  I have never touched Halo, so I am hoping that there will be a variety of games.  I am going to practice on my wiitar in the online matching contests just in case. 
 

I saw this on Slashdot: http://www.informationweek.com/management/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=203103232.  They are taxing stuff like "computer support services, data center support, custom programming, consulting, and disaster recovery services."  I live in the Midwest, so this doesn't really affect me all that much (unless Kansas or Missouri decides they want to follow suit).  What do you guys up east think?  I know a lot of people on the blog circuit live up east and I'm betting consult around Baltimore/D.C. area.  Personally I would prefer we get rid of this tax and if they really want to stop outsourcing tax the people who are outsourcing.  Don't tax the people trying not to outsource.  Btw, I am neither confirming nor denying any type of feelings for or against outsourcing.  All feelings welcome in a good clean healthy debate.

Here is the post link that I would like to reference from Paul Galvin's Blog: http://paulgalvin.spaces.live.com/Blog/cns!1CC1EDB3DAA9B8AA!385.entry?action=post&wa=wsignin1.0.  Unfortunately, I am blocked from commenting on this post, so I figured I would reference it in a blog post, because I know that I will forget this later on in the day when I pick up my turkey and fixings for Thanksgiving.  What I wanted to mention is that if you are linking to a list item, form, or document what you can do is copy the first part of the url before the title and put it in the html tags like so:

<a href="url before form/"></a>

Then if you want to link to the actual list item do something like this:
<a href="url before form/[Title]">[Title]</a>

 To get that [Title] field what you want to do is click on Add Lookup to the Body and then choose Current Item for the Source and for the Field you can choose Title or whatever field you would like to reference.  If you want you can add a bit of html maybe in table form and reference an entire list item's data.  It is a pretty neat little trick that you can do in SPD e-mails.  I was working on a couple workflows last week and I found these neat little tricks.  Thanks Mr. Galvin for your post.
 

We had a consultant leave recently to go to another client site.  He wrote a ton of web parts before he left for this one major site that we are demoing today.  A couple of us noticed that there was an Oracle error for this site redirect/creation web part.  It told us that there was some kind of username error.  We had thought that he changed all of the web parts to point to the production environment.  It turns out that the app.config file for this specific webpart was pointing towards development and not production, where the username and password were no longer effective.  Unfortunately, you can not change the app.config files without compiling retracting and removing the entire solution from Sharepoint.  Basically, remember to change your app.config file before you deploy your solution out on your production Sharepoint Site.  Otherwise, you will have to change the code, rebuild, and then redeploy the solution if you do not have VS 2005 sitting on your production box.

I went back and re-revising this was a testing scenario…This is why the app .config changes were important, however when the webpart was published it was also not changed.
 

Does anyone have some good blog entry topics that you may be looking for but can not find anywhere else.  I am willing to research some topics and post my findings in upcoming blog entries.  I dabble in just about everything, so I'm up for anything Sharepoint related.  Just drop a comment with an idea and I will consider it for upcoming entries. 

This article looks interesting: http://msmvps.com/blogs/shareblog/archive/2007/11/16/how-to-become-a-mvp.aspx.
I just moved to a new city and know a total of maybe 3 people that I can hang out with in the outside world.  So I am trying to focus most of my extra energies on becoming an expert in Sharepoint, because at least it gets me out and meeting people.  I also enjoy helping people and at one point in my life wanted to become a doctor or a teacher just to further my interests.  As you can see I am in IT, so at least going and writing articles, keeping a blog, and becoming more involved in the community furthers these goals.  I may not become an MVP at any point in time, but at least he gives some ideas on how to help people out in more ways than one.  I would say this is not just for people wanting to become MVPs, but also people who want to further help others int he community.  I agree with Bob Fox's comment at the bottom that just becoming an MVP to further your career is not the idea surrounding the MVP Award.  You should at least want to help others within the community by contributing your knowledge.  Isn't the entire purpose of Sharepoint collaboration?
 

I got an e-mail a couple of days ago from Charles River Media asking if I would be willing to help write a Disaster Recovery Book.  I was very tempted, so I wrote an e-mail back to this person.  So now I have to find some people to help me and come up with a proposal and read more about there process model.  I know nothing about writing books.  The most I write is technical white papers and how to guides for documentation and end users.  I don't really know a ton of people in the Sharepoint Community aside from reading other people's blogs.  If anyone is interested in helping out with a book on this topic I would be willing to discuss the matter in further detail if you post a comment.  I've written some scripts and batch files off of stsadm and I know a little bit about Sql Server Backup.  They said that it could be a book about anything, however they would prefer a book on disaster recovery.  So any takers?:D 

I saw this on the Office Developer's Group for Kansas City: "She has been
working with SharePoint since October 2003, when she attended the Portal University
through Levi, Ray, and Shoup.".  I wanted to make it clear that I have not worked with Sharepoint since 2003, because I was a junior in college in 2003.  I started working with Sharepoint and LRS as a full time employee in October 2005 about 5 months after graduating from the University of Missouri Kansas City.  I probably wrote this completely wrong, because I sent the paragraph to Jeff and he posted what I wrote.  Technically we started in July 2005 and graduated in October 2005 with the Portal University.  There were 12 of us on the first day and 11 of us on the last day.  There was another girl and 10 guys in my class.  When she left I was the only girl.  So I wanted to make myself an honest person in the event that anyone checks this is the truth and kcoffice.org is wrong.

This has been irritating me for a couple months.  For some reason some of the Sharepoint Sites at work will show up with the proper page title on the menu bar, but for other pages it will not.  I have included an attachment in the post to show an example of what I mean.  For example, in the picture it has a URL and not the actual site name at the top.  I know in html you had a header and title tag, but Sharepoint is a bit more complex.  If anyone knows a fix or a workaround please let me know.