About a year and a half ago, I needed a new cell provider. I was not happy with MTS as my provider, as I was travelling out of Manitoba for work and conferences, and MTS is not a national provider and therefore charged me extra in roaming charges. For those of us who want a national plan, our choices (of a major provider) are Rogers and Telus. Having used Rogers at work, and heard some horror stories there, I chose Telus. It had its bonuses (cheaper plans) and negatives (no SIM card to just move to a new device), but I chose it anyway.

When I signed up, I picked up the HTC Diamond Touch. I originally wanted a BlackBerry Curve, but they had none, and without something I would have had no phone. So I went for the Diamond, for a few reasons:

1) It looked kinda cool. To go along with that, it had a lot of the applications and features I wanted built in.

2) It was a Windows Mobile technology. I use BB at work all the time, so having a Windows-based platform to play around on and program with was kinda cool.

3) The touchscreen capability. I actually do prefer a touchscreen to actual keyboard, but that’s just preference not a make-or-break.

In that year and a half, I have replaced the battery twice (the battery life sucks), had major problems with the touchscreen becoming unresponsive, and basically the Windows Mobile equivalent to BSOD on virtually every application (including the phone, which I really don’t see how that is even possible).

So today, I ventured back to my Telus store and bought a new phone: the BB Curve 8330 which is what I wanted to get a year and a bit ago. I am still setting up and configuring (doing the OS updates now) and will get the BB App Store installed soon (Step 10 of 11 in the update process is up to 30 mins long), and will then be back on my way to smartphone goodness.

One thing i was not expecting was to have to create the link to my email account on my PC; I couldn’t do it on the BB. The manual said I could (Internet Email or Exchange) but the BB only gave me the option for Exchange or skip. I chose skip, but that’s ok; I still got it working. Kinda frsutrating though. At any rate… here goes the BB venture.

I’m writing this post because of something that happened at work. Nothing bad, but a funny little event. But the results of that event give me pause: the response to said event was a “politically” correct one but not necessarily one that answered the support question, nor did it even broach the subject that perhaps someone was playing a prank on him. No, it glossed over keywords and provided what appears to be a form email in response.

The Issue

When working at a company with computer people, one thing you should learn: Never leave your computer unlocked. Your coworkers will inevitably prank you – either by emailing another coworker from your account, sending them love messages over messenger, or having your background changed. (All 3 of the above have happened to me.)

Recently, and individual got “Hoffed”, which is having your desktop background changed to one of many pictures of David Hasselhoff – see attached. This is the image in question.

The recipient of the “Hoffing” decided to contact Windows Support and request assistance to remove the Hoff from his machine. (This individual was able to remove it, but a strange occurrence happened as per his email which prompted the support email.

The Email

What follows is this person’s email with all names and contact information removed, but the exact contents being enclosed:

Dear Microsoft,

Recently, my wallpaper was changed to a tiled picture of a shirtless David Hasselhoff. After changing my desktop picture, I have noticed that my lockscreen still displays the Hoff, and he’s still shirtless.  How did it get stuck there?

Did windows recognize the Hoff and decide that it liked it so much that it should remain my lockscreen background forever? Is this some undocumented feature of Windows Server 2003?

Any information on the subject would be greatly appreciated.

As you can tell, some obvious sarcasm there. One could acknowledge that the email was sent because the individual was bored, or just wanted to pass along some hilarity.

Now, I don’t know if Microsoft’s policy is to reply to every support email or if they get personalized attention versus form letter responses, but this email did receive a response.

The Response

Here is the response, again with all names and contact information removed:

Hello XXXXXXXX,

Thank you for contacting Microsoft Customer Service.

I understand from your e-mail that you are unable to change the wallpaper on your Windows Server 2003 computer.

There are several ways to obtain support:

You may search for self-help articles to resolve your issue:

http://support.microsoft.com/ph/3198

You may also post your issue in the Microsoft newsgroups:

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/bb430837.aspx

If the Microsoft Windows Server 2003 came from your computer manufacturer, they are your primary option for support:

http://www.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?pr=oemphone

XXXXXXXX, you may also work with a Microsoft Support Professional via e-mail, telephone, and for some products, chat to resolve your issue. Please select the appropriate edition of Windows Server 2003 from the below link to contact the Support Professional. Depending on how you obtained your software, there may be fees to use the Assisted Support option: https://support.microsoft.com/oas/default.aspx?ln=en-us&x=14&y=13&c1=508&gprid=3198&&st=1

I hope the issue is resolved soon and appreciate your patience.

Thank you,

I see 2 issues here: One, this is most obviously a form letter, and 2, it did not address the issue requested. If it was, indeed, an auto-scan, it picked up on the keywords “wallpaper” and “Windows Server 2003” and focused on that. The individual mentioned that he removed it as a wallpaper already, but it was still there on the lock screen. None of the above links addressed that issue.

General Comments

Come on, Microsoft. If you are going to provide support, provide support; this is either an auto-scan with an automatic response from support individuals, or it is being responses by someone whose English language skills are not up to par. The question is not addressed herein; the initial “problem” that the individual quoted is being solved even after it was already done.

Lately, Microsoft has been great with how it approaches the developer sphere: open forum discussions, best practice sessions, opening up future developer products to beta far in advance to garner real feedback, stronger support for OSS. That’s a great leap in the right direction! But if the support team for your operating system environment cannot handle such a ridiculous comment as this one, and even maintain to resolve the wrong issue than was requested, then MS you got a ways to go… but at least one section of your company is on the right path.

I have now played around with ASP.NET MVC Framework 1.0 over the last few months in great detail. I first was introduced to this framework at DevTeachthrough a presentation from the gift to software developers, Justice Gray. A new web framework that was not control-based (and no ViewState) sounded good, as many of the projects I have worked on are not necessarily web applications but public-facing, information-providing web sites and some of the elements and controls in WebForms is a tad overkill and performance draining at times.

I recently read and commented on the book “Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0” in my blog. In that post, I indicated that what I thought was missing from the book: reasons and justifications of when to use one over the other. The book was technical in nature (as it should be), but my experience is that developers want to use newer things and they need to be able to justify a newer technology to their boss instead of just “because it’s there”. So, what follows are my opinions on when to use WebForms and when to use ASP.NET MVC (I’ll just call it MVC for the purpose of this post – I won’t be referring to any other MVC frameworks at this time). These are just opinions and are based upon where I see the strengths of each of the systems.

WebForm Strengths

I think the main strength of the WebForm framework is its ability to run as an true application environment. It’s initial design was to make the transition from a desktop environment to the web, otherwise there would be no such thing as ViewState. Why would you need state for a standard website? You wouldn’t. Maybe for a shopping cart system, but a secured website and cookies fit the bill there.

There are enough third party controls out there with cool things that they do that WebForms will not go away, nor should it. For the longest time it was the only player on the block; having competition, even if from the same parent, can only make it better. As well, many organizations have a lot of time and effort invested into WebForms applications so why should it go away? It shouldn’t; it has its purposes and it works great for those.

MVC Strengths

A strength of MVC is its ability to deliver content through URL routing. Yes, I know that the routing engine is available to use through WebForms too, but I think it’s ability as an inherent part of the MVC system is a major strength. I mean, compare these potential URLs:

http://www.blah.com/DoSomething.aspx?action=blog&id=MVCPost

http://www.blah.com/Blog/MVCPost

Of those 2 URLs, which one is easier to read (from an end user POV)? Which one is easier to understand where you are? Definitely the second, which takes full advantage of the routing engine in MVC. As well, MVC focuses on strong separation of the view from the logic; WebForms… not so much (it can, but with many developers focusing on a technology instead of a best practice, you don’t see this as much).

Where Could They Be Used Together?

I could see both technologies being used to create a full deliverable solution:

• A WebForms application being used to create the support interface for a content management system
• MVC being used to deliver the public-facing result of the CMS

Why would I see it this way?

• The CMS needs to be able to set content on multiple templates. Only authenticated users should be able to do this, not everyone who has access to the site. Being able to manipulate content (images, text content, page templates, activation and expiration dates of content) is inherent to application-style functionality. The ability to manipulate content seems much more in-place with the purpose of the WebForms infrastructure.
• The public-facing site (content delivery) would be much more suited to MVC. MVC merely has to extract the information it needs and provide it through the controller and model to the view, which handles all UI elements. For the most part, modules within a CMS are (should be) reusable and as such just need a mechanism to display them, and MVC provides that quite easily.

Now, I am not saying that you cannot or should not use one technology for the infrastructure or public delivery over the other; it’s personal preference. However, I think MVC gives a few extra bonuses for a public site that needs value to be applied to it:

• Native routing engine that gives more user-friendly URLs, which makes metrics gathering that much more simpler to do (if done client-side)
• Page settings are easier to control (page title, etc.)
• No worries about third-party WebForms controls displaying strange raw HTML (it has been known to happen)
• Adding a new visual piece of functionality does not inherently mean changing every element of the application, whereas with WebForms you may have to do so (not always)
• Full control over the UI means the potential for enhanced search metrics

I am focused greatly on metrics, usability, and enhancing a website with work these days so thinking of how I can enhance an application… well, MVC seems to have these things more “out of the box” which means faster turnaround, which means more value, which also leads to more work to make things better. WebForms has its place, but public-facing content delivery sites (IMO) is not one of them.

There is a mantra out there in software these days: “The right tool for the job.” It really takes an understanding of the technologies out there to make this call, and knowing its capabilities really seems to help. Having only a one-sided view limits the potential for enhancement and value; you really need to understand what is going on and go in with the mindset of delivering something quality, but also with a system that can help make things better.

Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0 (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)
by Rob Conery, Scott Hanselman, Phil Haack and Scott Guthrie
Published by Wrox Books
ISBN: 978-0-470-38461-9

I finally had the chance to complete this book. This has been a very long summer, and my hope was to finish this by the end of June. No such luck. I only just finished it this September long weekend after trying to find some time to do it, but that was not to be. I am happy to say that I have now completed it, and it was worth its time to actually take some time.

The Good

This is definitely a good book for someone already familiar with coding in C#. You don’t have to be a C# guru (thank God for that), but you have to understand the nuances of the language. Understanding the ins and outs of ASP.NET helps too so that you can truly understand the difference between the MVC framework and WebForms.

The book has 420 pages made up of 12 chapters. This should not seem daunting, though; the first chapter alone takes up the first 164 pages of the book, but is a complete step-by-step walkthrough of an ASP.NET MVC application called Nerd Dinner. It gives and intro to virtually every concept that the MVC Framework 1.0 covers without delving into too much detail; the detail follows in the other 11 chapters.

Each subsequent chapter contains a singular topic that allows the reader to focus and they actually flow well into one another: Routing to Controllers and Views to TDD. This book covers a lot of the main topics that a developer who delves into MVC will need (I especially like the TDD chapter – definitely a boon for someone who never saw the value in TDD until recently, but that was simply because I never truly understood the value).

I do like the fact that this book did not jump into jQuery. The authors mention at the start of Chapter 7 that jQuery will be supported within ASP.NET MVC but do not delve into it. Why not? Because there are many books on jQuery out there that can cover the topic there. jQuery is also not native to just MVC so it makes sense not to cover it here, but I am glad that they did make mention of the technology.

They also mention that WebForms and MVC can exist in the same project. What? Touting the fact that the technology being used is not the only solution out there?? Inconceivable! And yet, it’s great to see a compare and contrast view, and then a “But we can work together by…” methodology being demonstrated.

I also enjoyed the “Product Team Aside” sections. What is nice about this book is that it is written by 4 individuals who actually worked on the product team within Microsoft. That means that they truly have an inside track as to what is going on with the technology and give a birds-eye view of it. There are far too many books that are used by experts in the technology, but with only personal experience and no knowledge of where it is going. (Although they don’t outright say where MVC is going in the book, a logical assumption is that they aren’t going to focus on a feature that they know is going to be dumped – the primary advantage of the product team writing it is that it is not someone making an assumption and posing in a book “Why is this not there?”.)

The Bad (AKA What I Think Would Be Better in the 2nd Edition)

What I mean to say here is not necessarily bad, but just something I think could have been better.

Being one of the few books that gives you a full tutorial from beginning to end, one thing I found disappointing was the fact that some of the code presented in the book just simply wouldn’t compile. I followed every step-by-step instruction and it worked for the most part, but once I hit a certain threshold it just wouldn’t work. (Thankfully, the authors provided the application online for download. By downloading that you could get the application to compile, but it was the final version so you really had to jump around and grasp a lot of things at once.)

I think it would have been better had Chapter 2 actually been Chapter 1 – a comparison of MVC frameworks, a high-level discussion of what it does (not in-depth) and then dive into the tutorial as a second chapter. (Don’t get me wrong – I love the idea of the full application tutorial, not enough books give this kind of in-depth summary from beginning to end; I just don’t necessarily agree with it as the first chapter.)

This is something I am putting under bad, but it’s not bad; I hope that by putting it here that if the authors read this post that they will consider it for a future edition, and that it also sparks some discussion/debate: Put more emphasis on the testing. There were 2 chapters in the book which covered TDD and testing patterns, but I don’t think that was enough. The MVC framework is such that this is the perfect technology to truly expand upon the testability of software applications and bring a higher level of quality to the applications. With proper tests, confidence in the quality of the application goes up and value of the application (and the development team) also goes up. Far too often, testing comes as an afterthought if at all; partly because many frameworks do not truly support how it can function. This framework endorses the testing platform from day one, and I think not enough attention was granted to it. (I know it may have made the book bigger, but considering the size of some other technical books an extra 2-3 chapters on testing your MVC application would not kill anyone.)

The Nitpicky

I am pretty nitpicky a lot of the time. Although well written, you could tell that this book had 4 authors. You could tell frequently when one person wrote one section or chapter and then another took over; their personalities (especially if you read their blogs) stood out as did their writing style. I am pretty sure that much of the identification was taken out during the editing phase, but you can’t get it all. (You also can’t please all of the people, which is why this is not a bad thing, but merely a nitpicky thing.)

What I Would Have Liked To See

The book really does cover the advantages of MVC over WebForms, but also talks about the advantage at times of WebForms over MVC. What it does not cover, in my opinion, is when you would want to use MVC over WebForms. The book is (and intentionally so) technical, but my experience is that an organization wants their people to make recommendations and relate it back to the business element and why they should choose a current technology. Many companies may not even want to look at MVC 1.0 because:

1. It’s a version 1.0 product
2. This framework may not yet be “proven” to an organization that has a deliverable arrangement necessary
3. It’s considered to be merely a new “flavour of the week”

Although there are many great technical reasons to choose MVC, there is no way to convince a non-technical (or even someone technical who would understand it but is set in their ways) why you would want to use this framework for a client deliverable. (I will touch on what I think the best case for MVC versus WebForms should be in an upcoming post – probably to be written shortly after I post this one.)

Summary

I may sound somewhat negative, but I am not. Not about this book. This is one of the better technology-related books I have read in a long time. It covers the technology in detail, it gives great examples, it gives ideas of where the technology is going, and it shows that it’s not the only solution out there. It can co-exist with other, similar technologies and continue to grow. My negatives are not really negatives, just more personal preference; there is nowhere here where I said that “this sucks” or anything along those lines, because it doesn’t. This is a well brought-together book which drives people to understand this new framework (already in 2.0 Beta – I knew I should have read faster). It isn’t the end-all, be-all; it is simply another option. And I think it’s a good one that’s only just getting started.

Over the last few months, I've done a lot of reading. Those that know me know that I love British television and have been a fan of the British sci-fi show Doctor Who for a very, very long time. I've amassed quite a collection of books surrounding the series, many of which take place after the series was cancelled in 1989. With the new series, and its adult-oriented spinoff Torchwood, a new batch of novelisations have come out. And I've recently read a few of them. Below are my thoughts on those issues.

	"Doctor Who - Shining Darkness" by Mark Michalowski This is one of the Doctor Who novels featuring the 10th Doctor (played by David Tennant) and his companion Donna Noble (played by Catherine Tate). I will say this: Although entertaining, this is not one of the best Doctor Who books I have read, from either this generation of books or the previous batch put out by both BBC Books and Virgin Publishing. That being said, this author got the personality of Donna Noble down pat from the show. (It's been a few months since I read this one, but this is the only one I have with Donna as the companion.) The main plot: Donna gets accidentally kidnapped along with some items from an art gallery (that NEVER happens to any companion of the Doctor) and now it's up to the Doctor to find her. I think the main reason that this novel does not stick out as much for me is that there are many a mechanical friend or foe already in Doctor Who - K-9, Kamelion, the Daleks, the Cybermen - and since Russel T. Davies has made virtually every Christmas special revolve around a robotic-involved menace that the Doctor has to solve every Christmas, it just gets a tad old. And now the cover of this one has what looks like a cross between a Cyberman and one of the "What Not To Wear" robots from the Christopher Eccleston season of the series? Nothing too exciting. So even though the story didn't grab me, the characterisations of the TV characters were very well done. I would give it 3 out of 5.
	"Doctor Who - Prisoner of the Daleks" by Trevor Baxendale This novel is one that was geared towards books and is most definitely not a TV episode story. This story takes place after Donna Noble has been dropped off back on Earth (at the end of the new Series 4) and has the Doctor travelling alone. Somehow, the Daleks have survived. ("They always survive," as the Doctor has said in a few episodes of the show.) The character of the Doctor was perfect here - he gets trapped, he sits around waiting, and lo and behold someone shows up and frees him. Once freed, he discovers that this group are a motley crue of Dalek Hunters, who are out for revenge against the manical robots for their crimes against humanity and every other living and breathing species in the universe. Of course, nothing goes as planned and they are all captured by the Daleks. Once they realize who they have in their clutches (they never know it's the Doctor until it's too late, of course), they - again - try to capture the TARDIS. The Doctor escapes by the skin of his teeth and even manages to save a few of his new "crew", but not everyone. This book captures the fun and excitement of a Dalek adventure without once ever hearing the metal shrilling voice out loud. Partly due to the font used to capture when the Daleks were speaking, which replaces the shrill, but also because of the nature of the story. The only constant with Doctor Who novelisations is that you are guaranteed that the Doctor (and any companions still under contract in the TV series) will not die. But that's really all you can count on. This book gets 4.5 out of 5.
	"Doctor Who - Judgement of the Judoon" by Colin Brake Since the Judoon first showed up at the start or Series 3, they've been a species cloaked in mystery. We have learned that they work for the Shadow Proclamation (first mentioned in the episode "Rose" of Series 1) and then had their role as intergalatic police elaborated upon in the final episodes of Series 4 when the Doctor and Donna visited the Shadow Proclamation. Although fearsome looking creatures (Sontaran-like armour but the creatures are more rhinocerous looking than anything), their goal is ultimately that of justice. And this book gives the characters a whole new dynamic. The Judoon are militant in nature, where the ends justify the means (even if it means killing innocents for the sake of capturing the guilty). You see those type of Judoon in this book. But then you also see Judoon with a sense of humour.... kind of. These Judoon are learning the nature of subtlety, of cooperation, and of working in a team, but they also get the chance to use their rhino-like horns when needed (sheer initmidation always works). Ranking: 4 out of 5

I was looking at my blog and it's been a while since I posted. There was also some crap in the comments on the other system that I didn't even get a notification of new comments. So, like others, I have moved away from DasBlog and went back to BlogEngine.NET. I was going to change my hosting provider as well, as I had assumed that my contract was up with GoDaddy this month and that, since I wanted to plan on playing around with ASP.NET MVC that I couldn't use GoDaddy (I had a hell of a time getting my account to .NET 2.0 back in the day...). Turns out that I renewed for 2 years last year (so 1 more year to go) and GoDaddy DOES support .NET 3.5 which I need for MVC. So, I'm gonna give it another shot.

 Right now, I'm in the midst of starting a new development book, having just finished one after a long hiatus on it (review to follow - I promised I would write one). I'm also doing some prep work to get my laptop backed up for a fresh install of Windows 7 - I must say, it's quite possibly the best OS I have run on my machines today.

Over the last 24 hours I also upgraded my tower so now I have real power - 1 GB RAM up to 4 GB, and added in a 1 TB hard drive (which will be quite nice with my already set up 1 TB external drive), so lots of space for shtuff.

Yes, I'm getting back into the geek. It's been a while. I've learned a lot from the business side at work, but now in my time.. getting my geek back.