I'll be out in L.A. for PDC 10/25-10/30. If you're going to be there, too, drop me an email!

Please RSVP to dmiser@wi.rr.com ASAP if you plan on making this Wednesday's ALT.NET meeting, where we can hopefully cover mocking.

When: 10/1/08 @ 7pm

Due to lack of responses, I'm canceling the ALT.NET meeting for tonight. Please mark your calendars for Wednesday, 10/1/08 for the next meeting, where we will try to cover mocking.

Please send me an email at dmiser@distribucon.com if you plan on making it in October.

Now that summer is drawing to a close, it's time to think about a meeting of the Milwaukee ALT.NET minds again.

When: Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 @ 7pm
Where: 10000 Innovation Drive, Suite 260 (SpiderLogic office)

I'm hoping that the topic will be mocking, but I'm open to other suggestions.

If you can RSVP by sending an email to me at dmiser@distribucon.com, I'd appreciate it. That way, we can start to get a handle on head count and have enough food on hand for everyone. Thanks, and hope to see you there.

If you want to add Membership Provider features to your WebHost4Life application, I've found that you can't use the aspnet_regsql wizard UI. Instead, use the following code at the command prompt:

           aspnet_regsql -C "Data Source=sqlNNN.mysite4now.com;Initial Catalog=yourdb;User
Id=yourUserName;Password=yourPwd" -A mr 
        

Replace NNN with your assigned address, and obviously replace the other elements of the above connection string, too. :-)

At the risk of having my Apple fanboy status revoked, I have to say that I find the iPhone lacking. It seems that Apple has released a half-finished product upon the masses, and the masses have spoken in hypnotized unison that they think Apple can do no wrong. Oh, sure, I was seduced at first. Visual voicemail is pretty cool. The flicking and gesturing for the UI is even wicked hot. In short, the attention to detail on the things that are implemented are first-class.

So why the negative finding? Sure, most, if not all, of these things are fairly well-known, but they do impact my day to day life.

• I have a Motorola S9 headset that doesn't work with the iPhone. Sure, phone calls can come through, but not music. Requiring an AD2P Bluetooth adapter is just plain stupid, given that the iPhone is supposed to be the pinnacle of form and function. Sorry, no. It gets a miserable failing grade.
• How is it that a device manufactured in 2007/2008 could come without cut/copy/paste?
• No speed-dial. I might be safe in saying that every phone on this planet, with the possible exception of 1950s rotary dial phones, has the capability to speed dial by pressing one button. Not so for the iPhone!
• Ok, maybe speed-dialing is so 1999, and we don't need it because the iPhone is a full-fledged multimedia experience. Fine theory, but the reality is you can't even do voice dialing! Let me take my Bluetooth headset (but not my Motorola S9!!), and - wait, I can't actually do anything with it. I need
  to take my iPhone out of my pocket, press like 4 things, and THEN I can start a conversation. I wonder if that will comply with all of those laws requiring hands-free cell phone use popping up all over the nation.
• The fact that I need to buy extra accessories to get my iPhone to work. The headphone jack was recessed for that full-flush feeling. My existing mini-RCA jack doesn't let me keep continuous playback, my Griffin FM transmitter turns my phone off, and my headphone Y-splitter isn't deep enough. At least my USB charger works.
• The World Clock doesn't allow you to add cities. It wouldn't be a big deal to add the exact city you want if we could actually access the underlying OS files.
• I'd like a much better user experience to sort, filter, and search my contacts. Using the Categories I've already assigned would be a good start. Maybe I'm just missing something here.
• No ToDo list, nor integration to any GTD system, or any system for that matter. Which brings us to...
• The Missing SDK. It's late. I don't know what to expect here, and I think Apple prefers it that way. I'll leave out the glaringly obvious fact that the SDK should have been released on Day 1. Oops. I guess I won't. :-)

I'll be working hard over the next couple of weeks to try to remedy the list above, and if I make any significant progress, I'll be sure to post here. Feel free to comment if you have any suggestions.

Problem: I have written my own membership provider to store and validate user information. Further, I have a web page that allows a user to come and sign up with a username, password, and a whole host of other client-related data. When the user submits that data, I would like to have them logged in.

Solution: Since I'm using Forms authentication for the ASP.NET website, it appears that the following code-snippet does what I want:

          if (Membership.ValidateUser(u.UserName,
u.Password)) FormsAuthentication.SetAuthCookie(u.UserName, false);