Writing
Articles
Essays on thinking clearly, working for yourself, and doing real work while AI rewrites the rules. Two decades of them.
Integration Testing
What integration testing actually means versus unit testing, with a worked C# example showing how to mock dependencies and test how layers interact.
2008.10.24Read →Visual Studio Project MSBuild Import Error Fix
Getting a 'Microsoft.CSharp.targets was not found' error in Visual Studio? Swap $(MSBuildToolsPath) for $(MSBuildBinPath) in your project file.
2008.10.20Read →GMail Tip – Finding Un-Read Email
The fastest way to find unread email in Gmail: type label:unread into the search box and hit search, no digging through pages of mail.
2008.10.17Read →
TFS – Disabling Continuous Integration with NO-CI
How to stop a TFS 2008 check-in from triggering an endless continuous integration build loop, using the ***NO_CI*** comment trick.
2008.10.17Read →Google IG Home Page – RSS Feed Issues
Google IG's RSS reader silently stops updating when your feed has too many items, showing months-old posts. Keep feeds to 5-30 items to avoid it.
2008.10.15Read →The Importance of Incremental Builds
TFS 2008's default 'Full Build' cleans and re-fetches everything on every check-in. Switching to IncrementalBuild cut our 20-minute build to 4.
2008.10.15Read →TFS Users & Groups with Active Directory Policies
AD group changes can take up to 60 minutes to reach TFS security. Restart the TFS Task Scheduler service to force an immediate policy refresh.
2008.10.14Read →Windows se7en?
Microsoft named its next OS Windows 7, so I gave it a better name: Windows se7en, an OS so gangster it'll cut you if you slip, son.
2008.10.14Read →Twin Cities Code Camp Presentation and Code
Source code and slides from my Twin Cities Code Camp talk on wiring the Windows Workflow Rules Engine into a WCF service for flexible rules.
2008.10.13Read →Sleep Deprived WCF Error
A WCF 'metadata unavailable' error, caused by a missing type in the namespace path or an enum using DataMemberAttribute instead of EnumMemberAttribute.
2008.10.11Read →Dependency Walker & SP1 TFS 2008 Upgrade Issues
TFS 2008 SP1 upgrade fatal-erroring? A stray Dependency Replicator service was blocking IIS Admin - uninstall it, patch, then reinstall it.
2008.10.10Read →My Visual Studio Settings – My Altered Vibrant Ink Settings Setup
My dark Visual Studio color scheme, an altered version of Vibrant Ink, as a downloadable vssettings file. Requires the Consolas font to look right.
2008.10.07Read →