Alec Whittington

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 as I was exploring the use of the MVC framework as a possible replacement technology for my companies current web site. This all motivated me to continue down a path that I had started a few years ago, but was never able to fully follow due to corporate limitations.

 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.

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:

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 project I am working on. I admit, I was leery of search for a Windows Dedicated host, but I eventually found one that seemed like they knew what they were doing.

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 years of gaming abuse were too much for it to handle, it stopped holding a charge. I decided to roll the dice and give the Sidewinder a try, even though I was leaning towards a new Logitech MX Revolution.

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.

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