The Wit and Ramblings of David Giard

My Father, the Survivor

2013-06-16T08:06:18.8426811-07:00

My father passed away last month. He was 81 years old and he was a survivor. Since his death, I’ve been thinking about all the challenges he faced in life and how he managed to survive them.

My father was in high school when his own father died. His response was to enlist in the US Navy after graduation so that his mother would not be burdened by another mouth to feed.

He didn't just enlist in the Navy: He served honorably for 23 years; he went to school at night and on weekends, eventually earning a Bachelor’s degree from George Washington and a Master’s degree from the Naval Graduate Academy. He and my mother raised 6 children (including me). He received his commission, served in 2 foreign wars, saw combat in Viet Nam as a Hospital Corpsman, and retired as a Lieutenant Commander after 23 years of honorable service.

After retiring from the Navy, he entered private left and he excelled at this as well. He worked over 20 years at St. John Hospital, overseeing its expansion into one of the largest health care organizations in Michigan. He was active in the community and served as a President of the Grosse Pointe Rotary Club. His children grew up and moved away and began families of their own. By the time he retired, he was Vice President of St. John Medical Center and ready to move to Florida to play bridge.

In Florida, he didn’t just take up bridge: He learned the game so well that he became a Life Master within 5 years. He was also active in his new community of Sun City Center, serving as President of the Bridge Club and a member of the Knights of Columbus. He remained very active while his health allowed him to be.

In his later years, his health began to fail. Skin cancer, blood disease, and nerve damage in his back and leg all took their toll on him. But he remained positive and downplayed the limitations of his physical body. The Vietnam War did not kill him and raising 6 kids did not kill him and the stress of running a hospital did not kill him, so what chance did skin cancer have?

Two years ago, he was struck by his greatest physical ailment when Alzheimer's began to rob him of his memories and his speech and his mind. Still, he remained positive. I heard from multiple caregivers that he always had a kind word for them. This was his way of defeating Alzheimer's - at least temporarily.

Last month, Normand Giard finally succumbed to all the physical trauma he had endured. He slipped into a coma and died quietly within 48 hours. My father passed away on May 10, 2013. My family flew to Florida to mourn him and to comfort my mother and to hug one another; then we each flew back home to resume our lives.

But the story doesn't end here. When I think of my father and his life, I am struck by what I see as his greatest strength - his ability to face the difficulties thrown in front of him and perceive these as challenges, rather than obstacles. My father focused on finding solutions to his problems, rather than dwelling on unfortunate circumstances.

My plan is to honor my father's memory by trying to emulate this trait. By focusing less on the obstacles in my path and more on the opportunities these obstacles present; By seeing each challenge in my life as an opportunity to excel, rather than an excuse to fail; by finding things to be grateful for, instead of things to complain about.

This will be my gift to my father - Normand Giard, the survivor, whom I miss very much on this Father's Day.

Tech Ed 2013 Recap

2013-06-14T22:25:00-07:00

Last week, I was doubly fortunate. First, because I had the opportunity to attend my second Tech Ed. Although I attend a lot of conferences, the large, commercial conferences tend to be out of my price range. But more importantly, I was fortunate to be invited to speak at Tech Ed this year. This was by far the largest in-person event at which I have ever spoken and it was a great experience!

I arrived in New Orleans Saturday night and had dinner with Richard Campbell and Tibi Covaci - two of the smartest people I know.

Saturday morning, I woke up early and took a bus with a bunch of volunteers to a New Orleans neighborhood still recovering from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina 8 years ago. Tech Ed partnered with several local charities to invite a busload of attendees to help build houses in this neighborhood. You can read more about the event here.

A morning pounding nails left me exhausted but a hot bath later I was ready to attend the INETA Meet and Greet - a chance for those in the developer community to connect with one another. It was also a great chance for me to catch up with others on the INETA Board of Directors, an amazing group of people who put a lot of effort into making the developer community better.

My presentation was scheduled for Monday afternoon, so I spent most of the morning preparing for it. The topic was "Effective Data Visualization" - a talk I have given many times in the past. I was nervous but the presentation went well and the 70 minutes flew by. Over 200 people attended the session and several people approached me afterward to tell me how much they enjoyed the talk and what they learned. Microsoft Evangelist Brady Gaster was kind enough to sit in my session and provide some valuable feedback on my presentation skills. You can watch a recording of my presentation here.

At Tech Ed last year in New Orleans, I won "Speaker Idol" - a competition among those who have never presented at Tech Ed before. Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of .NET Rocks fame host the contest in which each contestant must deliver a 5-minute presentation, followed by critiquing by a panel of 4 judges. A heat takes place each day during lunch and the finals are held on the last day of Tech Ed. As last year's Speaker Idol champion, I was asked to be a judge this year. The quality of the competition was amazing this year and I was excited to see Jeff Fritz - whom I met at last year's Speaker Idol - finish as runner-up this year. The champion was Jessica Devita, who gave an excellent presentation on Office 365 Migrations. I had a blast judging this event and I'm grateful I was asked to do so.

One advantage this conference has is the number of people on the Microsoft product teams who attend and make themselves available. One section of the trade show floor is designated "Ask the Experts" where Microsoft employees and industry experts make themselves available to answer questions of attendees. I took advantage of this opportunity, getting answers to my question about how to configure startup options for Lync (the menu is hidden until you click the 'Gear' icon); and my question about how to configure DNS to point to my Azure Web Site without prefacing the URL with "www" (I need to add the URL to the "MANAGE DOMAINS" list in the Azure portal).

On Wednesday, I volunteered to work one of the Ask the Experts area and I answered a number of questions about Visual Studio.

Tech Ed features over 700 sessions, which can be a bit overwhelming. I managed to catch a few of these - some in person and some via recordings. My notes are at the end of this article. I'll likely be watching some more videos during the coming weeks. They are available at http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013#fbid=-b30gJBZH1s

Even without Tech Ed, a few days in New Orleans is a pleasant experience. The hotel (Loews) was great; I explored the French Quarter in the evenings; Thanks to Becky Isserman, I experienced my first Beignet (at Cafe du Monde); I attended a number of parties thrown by sponsors; I had dinner with many old and new friends, including Mihai Tataran, Mark Minasi, Brent Stineman, Dustin Campbell, Chris Woodruff, and too many others to list here; I ate too much excellent spicy food; and I walked so much that my feet ached by the time I left.

The only downside was that I had to leave a day early to attend my son's high school graduation, so I missed the closing party at the Louisiana Super Dome that featured a concert by Tina Turner.

All in all, Tech Ed was an amazing experience and I hope to be invited to speak again next year.

Photos of Tech Ed

Session Notes

KEYNOTE

by Brad Anderson
video

Key Changes to Azure
    BizTalk in cloud
    Billing prorated by the minute
    Web sites now support SSL

Brownfield Development: Taming Legacy Code with Better Unit Testing and Microsoft Fakes

by Peter Provost and Joshua Weber
http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2013/DEV-B331#fbid=i3RgnF-27j2

Legacy Code=Any code without tests
    Risk of change outweighs value of new features
Start writing tests
    Pick something you know; then another thing you know
What test
    Code you will change
    Code that affects what you change
    Test to understand code

Do not test
Irrelevant edge cases
Unrelated working code

Recommended:
    Working Effectively with Legacy Code by Michael Feathers
Large methods are painful
    Do too much
    Need to understand it all to make a change
    Solution
        Refactor into smaller methods
        Single Responsibilty
    Use SENSOR variables
        private Object SENSOR;
        this.SENSOR = somevariable;
    Shim/Seam:
        Change what a method does
        Requires a scope with using()

Visual Studio Tips and Tricks

by Dustin Campbell and Scott Cate
video

Solution Explorer
Expand class: View members
Right-click class or method: Scope to: Used By
Filter pending changes

Common metaphor
Back arrow

CTRL - Last cursor position
CTRL SHIFT - Reverse direction

View | Code Definition
Always shows definition in a window without navigating away

CTRL ,
Navigate To
Global Search

CTRL SHIFT V
cycles through items on clipboard ring

SHIFT ALT F11
Prompt which nested function to step into

Building Modern, HTML5-Based Business Apps on Windows Azure with Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch

by Beth Massi
video

Rapid Application Development for data-based apps
Handles CRUD for you

Single Page app
"Responsive Design": Layout changes as screen size changes
1. Start
2. Describe your data
3. Create screens for common tasks

Customize screens
Define custom queries

Design or Die: The Challenge to the Microsoft Developer Ecosystem

by Billy Hollis
video

Software landscape is changing
Customers expect apps to work on different devices

Layering information in a single panel is now possible

You don't have to be as good as professional designers; You have to be better than you are now
Need basic understanding of composition and a process

Data Grids tend not to be good for touch
If we expand size of cells to touch, less data on screen

OK to have incomplete metaphors; Mind fills in the details

Gutenberg Principle
    In left-to-right reading cultures, people tend to scan rectangular surfaces from top-left to bottom-right.
    Fitt's Law
        Big buttons are easier to find and use
        Hollis: If buttons are too large, insulting to user (Fisher-Price principle)
    Hick's Law
        Too many options confuse / slow down users

People like wide open spaces

Screen real estate is no longer as valuable as it once was. Easy to swap screens.

Recommended books
Universal Principles of Design
Designing with the Mind in Mind

Keys for Design Process
    Create multiple design. Compete for best one.
    Collaborate
    Iterate
    Starts with paper (tools constrain your brain to what you know how to make the tool do)

Observe users in the field

Present multiple prototypes
Focuses users on differences between options, rather than nitpicking limitations of a design

TypeScript: Scaling Up JavaScript

Jonathan Turner
video

JavaScript Designed to
Client
Server
work on any OS
(so does Typescript output)

JavaScript code works in TypeScript

Compatibility: Can call into 3rd party javascript libraries from Typescript

Type system
Statically typed
Better Intellisense
Type-checking only at design-time (removed at compile-time)

http://www.typescriptlang.org/
"Play" link: Write Typescript: See compiled JavaScript

Lino Tadros on Cross-Platform Mobile Development

2013-06-10T11:11:00-07:00

Episode 269

Lino Tadros on Cross-Platform Mobile Development

John Papa on Single Page Applications

2013-06-03T11:10:00-07:00

Episode 268

John Papa on Single Page Applications

Eric Boyd on Scaling Windows Azure

2013-05-27T11:08:00-07:00

Episode 267

Eric Boyd on Scaling Windows Azure

Jeff Fritz on MVC vs Web Forms

2013-05-20T11:07:00-07:00

Episode 266

Jeff Fritz on MVC vs Web Forms

Chris Love on Touch Interfaces for Mobile Web Applications

2013-05-14T02:09:00-07:00

Episode 265

Chris Love on Touch Interfaces for Mobile Web Applications

Hoop Somuah on Azure Services for Halo

2013-05-06T14:08:00-07:00

Episode 264

Hoop Somuah on Azure Services for Halo

Shawn Weisfeld on UserGroup.tv

2013-04-29T23:10:00-07:00

Episode 263

Shawn Weisfeld on UserGroup.tv

Global Windows Azure Boot Camp is coming

2013-04-24T17:55:42.9678386-07:00

I first heard about the Global Windows Azure Boot Camp in February, while attending the Microsoft MVP Summit. Azure MVP Magnus Mårtensson told me about a day that he and his cohorts were planning when cities all over the world would simultaneously host an event designed to teach people about cloud computing and Windows Azure. Students, instructors, and organizers in each city would be able to collaborate and order to learn more about this exciting technology.

It's two months later and I find myself preparing to host one of these boot camps - this one in Southfield, MI. My friend Mike Wood is helping to organize the event, both globally and in Columbus, OH and he forwarded to me some people in Michigan who had heard about the event and were prepared to drive to Columbus to attend.

So I began planning and it is now rolling forward at full speed. 65 people have already registered for the Detroit Azure Boot Camp. I've enlisted the help of Victor Szalma and Susan Yount to help present some material; and Brian Korzynski and Ed Hanlon will be assisting with the logistics. Sogeti and Microsoft agreed to sponsor the event, which means we can keep it free and provide lunch for everyone.

Each attendee should bring a laptop with Windows 7 or 8; Visual Studio; and the Windows Azure Training Kit installed. In addition, they should sign up for a Windows Azure account prior to arriving at the event.

The format will be a combination of classroom-style presentations and hands-on labs and the goal is to give each student a basic understanding of Azure, some hands-on experience and a chance to dive as deeply as they can.

If you would like to attend the Detroit Azure Boot Camp, you may register at http://detroitazurebc.eventbrite.com/. If you are looking for a Boot Camp closer to your home, you can find a list of all 96 locations at http://globalwindowsazure.azurewebsites.net/?page_id=151

Scott Koon on the Problem with Software Development

2013-04-22T23:06:00-07:00

Episode 262

Scott Koon on the Problem with Software Development

Atley Hunter on Windows Phone 8

2013-04-15T22:53:00-07:00

Episode 261

Atley Hunter on Windows Phone 8

Brady Gaster on Azure Web Sites

2013-04-08T22:50:00-07:00

Episode 260

Brady Gaster on Azure Web Sites

Rachel Appel on Azure Mobile Services

2013-04-01T22:44:00-07:00

Episode 259

Rachel Appel on Azure Mobile Services

2012-13 Pioneer High School Varsity Basketball Highlights

2013-03-30T07:25:07.8080344-07:00

My youngest son recently completed his senior season of high school basketball, ending my 8 consecutive years as a high school basketball parent.

To commemorate the occasion, I created a highlight video of his team's season.

Kristin Cederquist on Nanoparticles

2013-03-25T07:28:00-07:00

Episode 258

Kristin Cederquist on Nanoparticles

Build Your Application From Front to Back

2013-03-19T07:03:00-07:00

When building a new application, you can start coding at the front, you can start coding at the back, or you can approach development randomly and just start wherever. I encourage you to start at the front-end of your application.

I came to this approach a few years ago while working on a new feature of an existing application. In the past, I had always started with the database (probably because my first language was the data-centric FoxPro language).

The new feature required a new database table and several new web pages. My partner and I split up the work: He would write the forms and business logic; while I would create the new table, stored procedures, and data access layer. I immediately jumped to work, creating stored procedures and C# methods. I created procedures and methods to add a row, update a row, delete a row, return a single row by its ID, and return all rows in the table. After a few hours, my colleague was ready to integrate his code with mine. “Where is the method to return all rows matched by last name?” he asked me. This method did not yet exist, so I wrote a function to search by last name and return matching rows. A few minutes later, he asked me for another method I had not yet written, so I wrote that one. After a few hours, I realized I had written almost none of the methods my partner needed and he used very few of the methods I had written in advance.

A light went on in my head: My approach was very inefficient.

The next feature we added, we took a different approach. We didn’t write any stored procedures or data layer methods until we had written code that called these methods. We started with the user interface, which told us which business objects and business logic we need; then wrote those business object classes and business layer code. The business layer in turn taught us what data layer methods and stored procedures we needed to write.

This is the approach I have taken ever since that project. I start with the part of the application closest to the front for which I know the requirements. I use each application layer to define the interface of the layer that it calls. This leads me to write only the methods that I need and ensures that each component has an interface that makes sense to those calling it.

This is the same philosophy used by proponents of Test-Drive Development (TDD), who advocate writing a failing test as the first test.

Starting with the front of my application and working my way back to the database has helped to keep my application interfaces, clean, lean, and logical. It took me a few years to learn this, but my code has improved since I did.

Stan Schultes on Bar Camps, Economic Summits, and SparkGrowth

2013-03-18T08:03:49.0312812-07:00

Episode 257

Stan Schultes on Bar Camps, Economic Summits, and SparkGrowth

Code and Slides from Orlando Code Camp

2013-03-17T16:00:00-07:00

Thank you to all who attended my presentations at the Orlando Code Camp this past weekend. The audiences were great and I really enjoyed the conference.

I had numerous requests for the materials, which are available below.

Querying Excel Data with .NET

2013-03-15T07:29:32.8902037-07:00

OVERVIEW

Microsoft Excel data can be treated like many other data sources from within a .NET application: we can connect to an Excel data source and we can query it using Structured Query Language (SQL). We don't even need to launch Excel or even have Excel installed in order to do so. All we need is the appropriate drivers.
This is good news if we need to read Excel data on a server, such as a web server. It’s possible to user Office Interop code to launch Excel and manipulate a spreadsheet, but Microsoft advises against doing so (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/257757).

SAMPLE

Here is sample code for querying Excel data and loading it into an ADO.NET DataTable

          public
          static DataTable
GetExcelData(string fullPath) { var connectionString = string.Format
( @"Provider=Microsoft.ACE.OLEDB.12.0;Data Source={0};Extended
Properties='Excel 12.0 Xml;HDR=YES'", fullPath ); var adapter = new OleDbDataAdapter
( "SELECT * FROM [Sheet1$]", connectionString );
var ds = new DataSet(); adapter.Fill(ds, "ExcelData");
DataTable excelTable = ds.Tables["ExcelData"]; return excelTable;
}

The Connection String contains the driver and the full path to the Excel file. The “HDR” in the connection string indicates that the first row of the spreadsheet contains column headers. These headers will become the column names in our ADO.NET data table.
We can call this code from a web page to read an Excel file uploaded with the ASP.NET FileUpload control. The code is shown below.

          protected
          void ReadExcelButton_Click(object sender,
EventArgs e) { if (ExcelUploaderValidator.IsValid) { string fileName
= ""; string filePath
= Server.MapPath("Upload"); var fullPath = ""; //var
fullPath = @"C:\Test\ReadExcel\ReadExcel\bin\Debug" + @"\" + fileName; if (ExcelUploader.HasFile)
{ var rand = new Random(); fileName = String.Format("{0:000000}-{1}",
rand.Next(0, 999999), ExcelUploader.FileName); fullPath = filePath + @"\"
+ fileName; ExcelUploader.SaveAs(fullPath); DataTable excelTable = ExcelUtils.GetExcelData(fullPath);
ExcelGrid.DataSource = excelTable; ExcelGrid.DataBind(); } } }

In this example, we save the uploaded file to a folder on the server; then, call our function, pointing to that file, so we can pass it in as part of the connection string.
For completeness, here is the web page markup in this sample:

          <
          div
          >
          <
          br
          />
          <
          asp:FileUpload
          ID
          ="ExcelUploader"
          runat
          ="server"
          />
          <
          asp:RegularExpressionValidator
          runat
          ="server"
          ID
          ="ExcelUploaderValidator"
          ControlToValidate
          ="ExcelUploader"
          ErrorMessage
          ="Only
Excel files or CSV files are allowed"
          ValidationExpression
          ="^.*\.(xls|XLS|xlsx|XLSX|csv|CSV)$"
          >
          
          asp:RegularExpressionValidator
          >
          <
          br
          />
          
          div
          >
          <
          asp:Button
          ID
          ="ReadExcelButton"
          runat
          ="server"
          onclick
          ="ReadExcelButton_Click"
          Text
          ="Read
Excel Document"
          />
          <
          asp:GridView
          ID
          ="ExcelGrid"
          runat
          ="server"
          >
          
          asp:GridView
          >

The query assumes that the workbook we are reading contains a worksheet named “Sheet1” and it reads all the data in that worksheet, copying it into a DataTable.

LIMITATIONS

The Excel data driver only works in 32-bit .NET projects, so you will need to configure the project properties to run in 32-bit mode.

CONCLUSION

In this article, we demonstrated a simple way to read data from an Excel document and copy it into a DataTable for further manipulation and processing.

Mark Dunn on ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile Views

2013-03-13T10:14:15.5697985-07:00

Episode 256

Mark Dunn on ASP.NET MVC 4 Mobile Views

2013 Microsoft Global MVP Summit Recap

2013-03-06T18:08:02.32776-07:00

Last week, I attended my third Microsoft Global MVP Summit. The Summit is a conference held in the Seattle area open to Microsoft MVPs.

I signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement that prevents me from talking about most of the conference content; but I can tell you about my experience and my impressions.

By far, the best part of the MVP Summit is the chance to meet so many smart people. Many of them I know by reputation before I meet them. Every year I joke that I plan to be the dumbest guy in every room at this conference. And every year, the joke is very close to reality. There are some amazing people here - those with deep knowledge of a technology; those who have built amazing products or open-source projects; those who have written books and blogs that I've read; those who produce podcasts that I listen to regularly; and those who have a story to tell about how they use technology to solve real problems. I love meeting and talking with all these people.

The sessions are good, but, other than REDACTEDREDACTEDREDACTED, I didn't hear about a whole lot of new stuff.

There are some regular events in the evening and I took advantage of those. A party at Ted Neward's house attracted a who's who of technologists and the annual Party With Palermo (hosted by Jeff Palermo of Austin, TX) always attracts a great crowd. I attended a reception for first-time MVPs, even those this was my third summit, because:

It was hosted by INETA and I am on the Board of Directors
It was organized by my friend Joe Guadagno, who did an amazing job
INETA presented a Lifetime Achievement award to Russ Fustino at the event and I wanted to be present to congratulate Russ.

The day after the Global MVP Summit was the ASP.NET Insiders Summit organized by Scott Hanselman. I was excited to attend this conference because I was invited to join the Insiders only a few weeks ago. (I think I was the newest member at the time of the Summit). These sessions were really informative. We got a look at new and proposed language, framework, and IDE features. We also had a chance to provide feedback to the product team; and to see several open-source web frameworks. Another NDA prevents me from revealing too many details of what I saw there, but I really learned a lot from this extra day. I plan to attend the ASP.NET Summit again next year.

Two days before the MVP Summit, a group of attendees and a few other volunteers traveled to the Northwest Harvest Food Bank in Seattle to help pack fruit for needy families in the area. This was a great opportunity to meet people, have fun, and do some good.

The week was exhausting but well worth the trip. If Microsoft will have me, expect to see me at the 2014 Global MVP Summit. And I still expect to be the dumbest guy in each room.

James Bender on BDD

2013-03-03T22:53:08.5124169-07:00

Episode 255

James Bender on BDD

Creating Azure Virtual Machines

2013-02-28T08:28:00-07:00

In this screencast, I show how to create an Azure Virtual Machine.

Brian and Stephen Sherwin on Controlling your Robot Army with C#, NetDuino and Kinect

2013-02-25T07:51:00-07:00

Episode 254

Brian and Stephen Sherwin on Controlling your Robot Army with C#, NetDuino and Kinect

Creating Azure Virtual Machines

2013-02-21T13:28:00-07:00

In this screencast, I show how to create an Azure Virtual Machine.

Kevin Griffin on Winsitter

2013-02-18T09:53:00-07:00

Episode 253

Kevin Griffin on Winsitter

Creating Windows Azure Web Sites

2013-02-15T20:46:12.6628654-07:00

In this screencast, I show 3 ways to create a Windows Azure web site.

Sogeti and Meatballs with a Side of Technology

2013-02-12T07:15:00-07:00

A lot of exciting things are happening at Sogeti in Michigan. We hired a new leadership team about a year ago; we recently realigned our region with the offices in Columbus and Cleveland; and we moved our Detroit office from Farmington Hills to Southfield on January 1.

To celebrate our move to a much nicer home, Sogeti is hosting an open house tomorrow, February 13 at 6PM.

The event begins with plenty of past and other Italian food from Buca di Beppo, which is why we’ve titled this event “Sogeti and Meatballs with a Side of Technology”. Three Sogeti consultants will be giving technical presentation during the evening: Sogeti Mobility Lead Samidip Basu will talk about Windows 8; Sogeti Managed Testing Practice Manager Matthew Eakin will present The "New" Tester: How Agile is changing the Testing Skillset; and I will deliver an introduction on Cloud Computing and Windows Azure.

The purpose of the event is to introduce or re-introduce Sogeti to the Detroit technical community; however, it’s also a great opportunity for you to learn something and to network with your peers.

The event is free, but we ask that you register at http://sogeti.eventbrite.com so that we can get an accurate count for the food. The address is:

26957 Northwestern Highway
Suite 130
Southfield, MI

I hope to see you there.

Chris Woodruff on Data Experience

2013-02-12T04:56:00-07:00

Episode 252

Chris Woodruff on Data Experience

Ben Von Handorf on Android Development

2013-02-05T08:12:23.4634029-07:00

Episode 251

Ben Von Handorf on Android Development