Alec Whittington

New unit testing tools

AlecWhittington — Tue, 19 May 2009 15:30:00 GMT

This is a promotional post - but I do use Typemock Isolator and believe in this product. Unit Testing ASP.NET? ASP.NET unit testing has never been this easy. Typemock is launching a new product for ASP.NET developers – the ASP.NET Bundle - and for the...(read more)

S#arp Architecture - Taking the hassle out of starting new projects

AlecWhittington — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 04:36:00 GMT

In March 2006 Billy McCafferty wrote an article on CodeProject about NHibernate best practices using ASP.NET . He took the time to discuss the advantages of using an O/RM with ASP.NET as well as information on Dependency Injection / Inversion of Control...(read more)

Meet my new friend...Balsamiq

AlecWhittington — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 22:55:00 GMT

Most people that know me understand the fact that I read a lot of blogs. Well earlier in the week, Oren (Ayende) posted about a tool he had found for making mock-ups. Well this is something I currently do frequently as I need to display mock-ups of new...(read more)

Google Chrome

AlecWhittington — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:16:00 GMT

I am generally an early adopter of new technologies and gadgets and today was no exception. I first heard of Chrome via the blog sphere a couple of months ago and was intrigued by it immediately. Earlier I installed Chrome and was immediately impressed...(read more)

The Ninja of Dependency Injectors --- Ninject

AlecWhittington — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 06:43:00 GMT

Recently I am been following Rob Conery as he explores Test Driven Development using the ASP.NET MVC framework. Rob is using a style of development known as Test First Development or Red - Green - Refactor. The timing of these articles was actually nice...(read more)

To those of you who...

AlecWhittington — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 15:04:00 GMT

Sorry to those of you who have tried to contact me via email from the blog over the past several months. Apparently I forgot to update an email address. This has been corrected, so feel free to contact me....(read more)

ASP.NET MVC - Storefront

AlecWhittington — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 15:50:00 GMT

Well Rob Conery is at it again. This time he is keeping us riveted to our chairs with his new MVC Storefront series. So far he has created 3 screencasts that can be found at: ASP.NET MVC: Introducing The MVC Storefront Series ASP.NET MVC: MVC Storefront...(read more)

My new Dedicated server

AlecWhittington — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:56:00 GMT

As many of you already know, I recently left my job at CrystalTech Web Hosting . It was on good terms and I am still friends with everyone there. One of the downsides was the fact I was about ready to make the jump to a dedicated server to house a side...(read more)

Microsoft Sidewinder mouse

AlecWhittington — Sat, 20 Oct 2007 06:37:00 GMT

While reading blogs recently, I came across several blog posts about the new Microsoft Sidewinder mouse . Most of the posts were positive overall and it just so happened that I needed a new mouse. My trusted Logitech MX1000 had finally decided that the...(read more)

A refreshing take on RoR

AlecWhittington — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:57:00 GMT

Rob Conery made a very interesting post on Ruby on Rails today. I stand with everything he is saying, especially about how he could not imagine treating his users in the way the Rails team does. This is a very important part of the whole post, if you are going to release something to the public, you need to be willing to support it and the situations that may arise from the use by others. I volunteer as a Project Lead for DotNetNuke and there is one thing I have found out, you don't know shit about your users until they use your product and find bugs you thought were never possible. I understand that it is hard sometimes to maintain your composure when someone you do not know starts verbally abusing you in a public forum. They don't know your dedication to the project, they don't know you, what gives them the right to treat you this way? Well guess what bud, you put yourself into that position. Sometimes you are gonna have people say things that you don't wanna hear, it will make you mad. The only person to be mad at this is yourself. You put yourself in the public eye.

So head on over to Rob's place and check out the post. While you are there, check out his other posts too. He has a very unique writing style that I think displays who he is very well. Rob is an all around good guy and someone I admire deeply. I just want to know, where do you get your energy Rob?

Stupid Mistakes

AlecWhittington — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:40:00 GMT

There is nothing worse than making stupid mistake because you are tired or for whatever reason. Yesterday I made one hell of a stupid mistake. I work for a little company called SMBLive, the company is based in Virginia but I work remotely from Arizona. It is an ideal arrangement, much better than my previous arrangement that caused me to drive 84 miles daily. The project I am currently working on is based on one of our current product platforms and I am trying to set-up a local development environment.

The product is a MS SharePoint based product and as such I need to set-up a virtual machine that has SharePoint installed along with MS SQL and VS 2005. Seems fairly simple, right? Don't let it fool you, it's not that straight forward. So yesterday after being woke up at 5:17 to put out a fire, I spent the rest of my 17 hour day setting up the VM. I prefer to use VMWare over Virtual PC as I find it to be lighter on the resources as well as being very intuitive. So I spend a few hours getting the OS configured with AD, DNS, IIS, .NET 2.0 and 3.0, and then all those Updates. Finally I can move on to the rest, so I install MS SQL DE and SP2. Simple install, so I move onto VS 2005. Another simple install. I move on to installing the dreaded SP1 for VS 2005 (you know, the one that takes FOREVER) and I notice is says it is for the "Premier Partner Edition". Oh damn, I should have installed VS before SQL. Ok fix all of that and decide it is 10PM, I need to get some sleep. I am beat and can finish it in the morning.

Well right before I go to bed, I decided I wanted to defrag my VM drive on my host machine. I keep all of my VM's in one location for organization purposes and the drive is a SATA II drive so it is faster than my boot drive. Moving on, I noticed that there were quite a few VM's in there that I did not use or did not need so I decided to clean them out. Well silly me, I forgot that the one I just created was in an old folder because it was replacing one. I did not realize my stupid mistake until this morning. Looks like I will be setting it up, AGAIN. I hate stupid mistakes.

Are you into mash-ups?

AlecWhittington — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 14:33:00 GMT

The CodeMash conference has opened up registration. The conference is January 9 - 11, 2008 in Sandusky, Ohio.

You can register here.

DotNetNuke 4.6.2 Released

AlecWhittington — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:38:00 GMT

Today DotNetNuke 4.6.2 was released. Go download it now!

To see the change log, you can go to http://support.dotnetnuke.com/project/ChangeLog.aspx?PROJID=2.

Congrats

AlecWhittington — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:21:00 GMT

I just wanted to give a big congratulations to Phil Haack on his new job. Phil, I know you will do great things, but to echo Rob's comment; Don't mess it up. :)

Also, Scott Hanselman is now at Microsoft and I look forward to seeing more post from him on the move as well as development. Congrats Scott.

My first post

AlecWhittington — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 03:04:00 GMT

Well I have actually had this blog for a few months now, thanks to Joe Stagner. So I felt it was time to make my first post. So a brief introduction is in order.

About myself

I have been working in the technology field since 1998, first as an HTML schlepper and then moving my way up the ladder. It did not become a programmer until 2001 and finally made the transition to developer in 2003. I have been working with .NET since the first beta of version 1.0. Most of my experience is with ASP.NET, with the feather in my cap being the first ASP.NET control panel in the Shared Web Hosting industry. I have worked at CrystalTech Web Hosting for the past 5 years, until I recently when I transitioned to a Solutions Architect position at SMBLive.

My interests

Programming - I just live, eat, and breathe programming.
Custom Vehicles - There is nothing like building a custom vehicle. It is very rewarding, yet leaves you very broke. I am a member of Negative Camber truck club and have been so for the past 10 years.
Shooting - I have grown up around guns and as such have a great love for shooting. I do not mean the kind where you and your buddies go into the middle of no where, I mean at a sanctioned range. It is just too dangerous to go 'off the range' now a days. I was a competitive shooter for the US Army, placing in the top 10 at the All Army matches in Combat Rifle, shooting at distances of up to 400m with iron sights on a M16A2. I currently try to shoot as often as I can, but it is getting harder to find the time.
My dogs - There are currently 3 dogs in the house, two of which share one half of my bed (they just wont stay off). My big girl is Luna, she is a Blue Great Dane. her buddy is Roscoe, a Pit Bull. He tries to run things, but she wont let him for long. The other dog belongs to my roommate / best friend. His name is harley and he is a Rhodesian Ridgeback mix.

Well That is it for now, I hope to become a frequent blogger.