Amazon to support Windows and SQL Server

Got an email from Amazon this morning stating thier plans to support Windows and SQL Server in their Elastic Compute cloud.  Windows is not too suprising, however I would not have suspected SQL Server.   So it would appear that not only will Amazon beat MSFT to standing up cloud computing for Windows, the will also compete directly with SQL Server Data Services.

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Navigating WPF’s TreeView

In Microsoft’s Windows Presentation Foundation, I think one of the more difficult things for programmers coming from WinForms and ASP.NET to conceptualize is how to work with the logical and visual control trees.   A common way this manifests itself is in how to navigate a TreeView control.   I struggled with this quite a lot, but finally got it with some help from the guys on the MDSN forum.  I’m posting the sample I made here.  Hope this is helpful to someone.

LDS Church CIO Blog

Joel Dehlin is the CIO for the LDS Church and has started a blog.   There is a surprsing about of information in the posts so far about IT at the LDS Church.  I’m excited to read more.

 Having worked at the church for the past few weeks I’ll just comment that this is a fantastic time to work in church IT.  There are some exciting projects, but even better, fantastic people who are smart, enthusiastic and an all around blast to work with. 

Christmas comes early

Today Microsoft announced the release of XNA Game Studio Express.

This totally snuck up on me, but if I understand it correctly, this will allow anyone to write games (in managed code) for the XBox 360!   Well, there goes the rest of the month for me. 🙂

Thanks

Just want to send out quick thanks to all the kind words in the comments on the Leaving Microsoft post.  That was totally unexpected, but very much appreciated.  

Repentance

Time flies when you are having fun, and blogging takes a back seat. 

I was reading a Gartner article on blogging a few days ago and something like 80+% (I forget the exact number) of  blogs are abandon in the first few months.  I felt a twinge of guilt.

So I’m back.  Hopefully for a while

Leaving Microsoft

I must be crazy! 

Today is my last day at Microsoft. I’ve worked for this company for a little over 10 years.  Just to put that into context, the day I joined, the Windows NT team were having the ship party for Windows NT 4.0.  I remember thinking the party was pretty cool but was honestly a little bummed out because I really wanted to get started coding at Microsoft.  It’s been a wonderful ride from the Windows team to COM+ to the .NET Runtime ending with 6 years in Microsoft Services. Microsoft is a fantastic company to work for.

However, I’ve always wanted to start a company.  If I’m honest with myself, I’m not exactly sure where this lack good judgment comes from.  It’s probably genetic.  My mom and dad are both successful business owners (of separate companies).  So I’ll blame them.  J

Looking forward I will be looking to do technology architecture and strategy consulting to mid tier companies here in the
Salt Lake City, Utah area.  For the first little while I will be working at the LDS Church on a resource scheduling application that has direct impact on the church’s day to day operations.  I’m very excited about it and the opportunity to work at the church.  There are some great things going on there and I feel very privileged to be a part of them.  I also hope to contribute to some community efforts for IT architects and technical leaders here in the area as well. 

My plan is to stay solo.  At least for a while.  Part of what’s driving this for me is my desire to stay technical and thus I really don’t have much aspiration to run a large services organization or body shop.  I have some ideas for some software projects I want to incubate, but my real plan is to develop deep, long term relationships with my customers as a trusted advisor on technology architecture and strategy and help them decide how to best leverage technology in a customized way in the context of their business. 

It would be very ungrateful of me not to thank the family and friends who have been very supportive of me in making this leap.   There’s been advice, many conversations and much encouragement given that I could not have done this without.  Specifically my wife, Tiffany, is incredible, and this whole experience has reminded me again that I’m married to someone way out of my league.

Wish me luck!  I’m scared to death, but too excited to care.  If you want to keep track of what’s going on, watch this blog.  There is also a website with nothing in it yet at www.altimotion.com. 

First post

Hello all. 

This is something I’ve been wanting to do for some time, but was one of those things you never really get around to.   The blog will mostly be about things that attract my attention (or distract me from what I’m supposed to be doing 🙂 ) in the various areas of technology and IT strategy.  It will be mostly a technical blog, but I may throw in bits of color from my personal life at times as well (especially if I can ever pull off that backflip on my wakeboard). Areas of current interest I will probably post on in the near future are Software Factories, Domain Specific Languages, SharePoint, Ruby, stock market investing, creativity, defeating risk aversion and productivity methodologies.

Please bear with me while I figure out all the knobs and levers on this blog thingy. 

 Looking forward to the experience. Wish me luck!