I have been meaning to write this for a couple of weeks now, my year in review and what's in store for 2010. Unfortunately I ended up in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and a minor complication that kept me there for 8 days.

Year in Review
2009 was a pretty good year for me. I started competing in the sport of Triathlon, finishing well in 2 half iron distance and 2 Olympic distance events.

• Capital View Olympic Distance
• Sprit of Racine Half Ironman
• Pigman Half Ironman
• Peregrine Charities Olympic Distance

My 2009 race schedule was to get some experience before attempting Ironman Wisconsin in 2010. I am pretty set on gear, with all my major purchases completed last year, and the last big one (Power meter) I just took care of. I picked up a used Argon 18 E-114, Kurt Kinetic Indoor trainer, Nineteen Frequency Wetsuit, Garmin Forerunner 305 GPS and just ordered a Powertap SL+ system. I gained a lot of valuable experience during my 09 races, and I am excited to see how much I can improve over last year. The biggest thing I learned was that my bike volume was not high enough to support the bike effort I was attempting on race day.

On the professional side of things, I finally got off the side lines and presented at the Madison .Net User group on Sharepoint 2010. For my first presentation, I think I did an ok job and the feedback I got was mainly positive. I still need to get my free copy of resharper so I can give it one more try. Also on the professional side, I accepted a new position as a Software Engineer with a new startup called Madison Research Technologies (MRT). MRT is working on developing a technical solution to a costly problem in the health care industry. I'll be able to talk about it more once we launch the product. I can tell you that I’m using a Microsoft Stack (what else would I be using) consisting of Asp.Net MVC and SQL Server.

To end my year right, and to get me psyched for Ironman training, my body thought it would fun to put me in the hospital for a week with a ruptured appendix and a pretty serious case of Ileus. I got the NG tube passed up the nose (while awake) and didn’t get any food for almost a week. By the time I got home, I had lost 7 pounds, and no it wasn’t water weight, seeing as I was on an IV continuously.

2010

The biggest thing I have going in 2010 is my first Ironman, Ironman Wisconsin, on September 12th. I just had my first full week of training the last week in January. Since that was an “off” week, it was a good week to start back up after my little appendix issue. My FTP is down 25-30 watts, running speed is down 1 mph, swim speed is down, heart rate is up, and endurance is shot. The good news is, I know what I need to do to get back into shape. I know what I’m capable of with the mediocre training schedule i had last year, so with all the hours I’m scheduled to put in this year, I should be back on track in no time. Be sure to keep an eye on my fitness category if you want to know how I’m doing.

My new job at MRT is going very well. It’s nice to be doing a little more programming, especially with Asp.Net MVC on the web side of things. It’s a bit of a change from Terso, what with averaging 1 e-mail/day over the last 3 weeks, and I think I was the first person to schedule a meeting in Outlook. If Terso was small with 20 people, MRT is really small with only 6. Speaking of Terso, if you check out the front page of the Terso Corporate Website, you can see my wife demoing the new Terso TS032 Intelligent Cabinet. I always wanted to be married to a Model ;)

I wanted to put more effort into this post, but since it’s February already, it’s outdated already before I even post it. I hope to make up for this with some additional posts in the near future.

Welcome to my blog, a little place on the internet that I write about various Microsoft Technologies (Technology category and sub categories) and my quest to become an Ironman in 2010 (Fitness category).

This is my 3rd, and longest running attempt at blogging. My first blog, part of my DotNetNuke install ran from 2004 until 2005, in which I had maybe 10 posts. My second blog was internal to my employer, but I eventually moved all of the content to this, my 3rd blog, and have been posting pretty regularly since the end of 2006.

My ongoing inspiration for blogging, is Scott Hansleman’s blog, which I started reading sometime in 2004. While Scott’s blog is my inspiration, I have not gotten to the point of putting out the same level of quality that Scott does.

My blog has been a place to store interesting information online, for me to reference in the future by googling, binging my site. I find myself posting to Twitter allot of stuff that would have normally ended up on my blog as short posts, so hopefully I’ll be able to post higher quality content going forward. It’s definitely a work in progress though. If you look at my Conference Notes you’ll see a mix of raw notes and somewhat edited posts mixed together.

Tech

I am an 8 year veteran of .Net and related Microsoft Technologies and currently a Senior Software Engineer at Terso Solutions, a wholly owned subsidiary of Promega Corporation. I am responsible for just a little bit of everything at Terso, from participating on the Scrum team as a architect, developer, tester and business analyst, to helping out with the management of Terso’s backend infrastructure.

I am an active member with the Madison .Net Users Group, which meets on the first and 3rd Wednesday of each month at Herzing College on Madison’s east side. The first meeting is your typical one person presentation on a given topic. The second meeting is an open forum where anyone can come and talk to anyone who will listen. If you a a Microsoft Developer, or any type of technology professional, I encourage you to check us out.

I enjoy living on the cutting edge of technology, and am constantly looking for new technical solutions for business problems (maybe too much so). If you know where I can find my dream job, let me know ;)

Picture Source: Scott Hanselman’s Blue Badge Post

Non-Tech

I live in Oregon, just south of Madison with my my very lovely and understanding wife Jennifer, and our two feline friends Candy and CJ. My wife uses the same picture below on FaceBook, so I shouldn’t get into to much trouble posting it here.

My loving and supporting wife	CJ on the left and Candy on the right

In 2010, I will be training to compete in Ironman Wisconsin (ImMoo) as part of the Endurance House becoming an Ironman team (paid training program). I started in Triathlon in 2009 with the goal of gaining experience for ImMoo.

I also play roller hockey when I have the chance, and played a little bit of recreational Ice Hockey while I was going to school. I’ve done paintball and airsoft in the past as well, and spent 7 years playing Laser Storm laser tag across the country.

This is the first of a two part post on my trip to Las Vegas for the Microsoft Mix 2009 conference. This first part will focus on Las Vegas from the tourist point of view, with part two focusing on Mix itself.

Hotel

This was my first time in Las Vegas and I stayed at the Trump Hotel, which is only a 5 minute walk from the strip (Las Vegas Blvd). Located on Fashion Mall drive, it is on the North end of the strip (Fasion Mall Drive is across the street from the Wynn). I highly recommend the Trump Hotel, and both my wife and I enjoyed our stay there. The room was only $89/night plus the mandatory $15 resort fee (which seems to be common).

The rooms themselves are like a studio apartment, complete with enough of a kitchen to cook some basic meals, and a huge marble tiled bathroom with a whirlpool tub. There is a 32” LCD TV in the living area, and a 9” LCD in the bathroom mirror. I’m surprised they didn’t have a LCD TV next to the toilet to go with the phone. I didn’t do any cooking, but I did make use of the refrigerator to keep some beverages available.

They have a pretty nice exercise room, and a pool area with lots of room to just layout in the sun. The pool isn’t fancy, there are no fake rocks, slides, or kiddie play areas, but it is quite functional and heated. In addition to the pool, there are two hot tubs and two rows of cabanas available for rent. While I didn’t walk around to the other side, I noticed on the model of the hotel property which was in the lobby, that the other side had additional room for sun bathing. I saw a couple of kids in the pool, but for the most part, it was pretty quiet, and I was even able to get in some “lap” swimming on Thursday night before the pool closed. 

The Strip

I spent a lot of time walking up and down the strip, before and after my wife came. There is quite a parity between walking the strip at night, and heading over to the Venetian for the conference in the morning. At night, it’s like you see in the movies, big crowds and bright lights, while in the morning it’s like any other busy downtown city street. I noticed a good number of people out jogging on the strip, and I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go running in the idea morning weather. Maybe it was the result of being inside all winter, but the air smelled very fresh in the morning, and I really enjoyed the two runs I got in. I was pressed for time, so I was only able to do a 30 minute run (15 out and 15 back), which got me as far south as south end of Caesars Palace one morning, and up to the Stratosphere on the other morning. 

A good amount of my time was spent in the Venetian and Plazo, since that is where the conference was, and by the end of the week, I felt pretty good at navigating the labyrinth under the two hotels. I think that the Venetian and Plazo were my favorite hotels to wander around in. My wife really liked Caesars Palace and the Forum shops (so much that I had the pleasure of walking all the way thru the Forum shops twice) due to the roman architecture and theme. Everyone says the Wynn is awesome, but I must have missing something because I was unimpressed given the high praise.

I think I ended up catching the TI Pirates/Siren show 3-4 times during the week. You can get a pretty good view from across the street, and it’s usually less crowed on the north side (closest to the Fashion Mall). However, I would recommend watching it at least once from the “front row” which would be on the bridge that leads to the hotel, closest to the Siren’s ship. Also, the show is more impressive in complete darkness, as you get to see the full light show.

Also at TI, is a most excellent brunch buffet, offered on Saturday and Sunday until 4pm I believe. Without champagne, it’s only $17/person, which is really cheap compared to other buffets and sit down restaurants in Vegas. Considering a large orange juice would easily run you $3/glass, and I had two, that’s $6 right there. The line was long, but moved fast. They have a VIP line, so if you hunt around, you can probably get your hands on some VIP tickets and skip the line. Other notable dining experiences were Del Torro (Lamborghini resturant) in the Venetian, and the Harley Davidson Cafe towards the south end of the strip.

Shows and Attractions

We saw two Cirque du Soleil shows, Ka at the MGM Grand and Mystere at TI, and they were freckin awesome. I was a little apprehensive about spending $400 on show tickets, but it was worth it. I highly recommend spending the extra money and getting the best possible seats you can. We had front row seats for Mystere and were able to see everything in such detail, from the performers costumes to the expressions on their faces. The half price ticket place was actually a pretty good deal. Right now if you buy online thru Ciruqe Du Soleil, you can get two category 1 tickets for $257.50 after a 25% discount and all fees, where as we only paid $218 a the half price ticket place.

Ka is the only Cirque du Soleil show that has an actual story line to it, set in ancient china I believe and follows the ordeal of a young brother and sister (prince and princess) caught in the middle of a war. It is a high energy performance with incredible choreography, stunts and martial arts. My wife described it best as live action anime. Check out the trailer on youtube, and another video that shows some of the mechanical engineering behind the scenes. Mystere is similar to Ka without the storyline and martial arts influence, however it is no less incredible. It would be hard to choose just one. Next time we are looking to go to O, and then change things up with the Blue Man Group.

On our last full day in Vegas, we rented a BMW Z4 convertible and drove to the Hoover Dam. The last 4 miles to the dam was bumper to bumper traffic, as all the weekend visitors were trying to get back to Arizona, and it’s only a 2 lane road over the dam. However, they are working on a 4 lane highway and brand new bridge over the river just south of the dam, which looks impressive itself. We opted for the 45 minute power plant tour, and felt a little underwhelmed. We both thought that the 2 hour dam tour might have been better, but we didn’t have enough time for that.

Needless to say, it was somewhat of a downer coming back home to cold weather, and snow. Both my wife and I were looking for Vegas deals all week, and we will definitely be going back sometime.

If you are reading this, it means I’ve successfully updated to the latest version of DasBlog, version 2.2. I’m calling this the 1.1 version of my blog, with a couple of point releases scheduled in the near future focused on a new theme, proper support for uploading images, and code formatting.

I don’t even know what version of DasBlog I was running before this, so I wanted as clean an upgrade as possible. I decided to start with a completely clean install, then copy my posts over, diff the config files and see what happens. Since I run my blog in a virtual directory with a sub domain pointer, I created a new virtual directory to do testing, and then updated the sub domain pointer when everything was ready to go.

Here are the steps I took to upgade to DasBlog 2.2:

1. Download DasBlog 2.2 from the CodePlex Site. I chose the web-files.zip file.
2. Unzip the web-files.zip to a temp directory
3. Copy my content folder from my old blog to the dasblogce folder in the new temp folder. I actually backup my content folder daily from my hosting provider, so I already had this locally.
4. Leaving everything else the same for now, I zipped up the contents of the dasblogce folder and uploaded it to my hosting provider
5. Create a new sub folder on the root of my website called blog2
6. Extract the contents of the zip file I uploaded in step 4 to the blog2 sub folder.
7. Using WinMerge, diff the web.config file between the old and new site
8. Again, using WinMerge, diff the SiteConfig folder
9. Finally diff the theme I am using, re-adding support for
1. Google Analytics
2. OpenID
10. Test
11. Update blog.salvoz.com to point to the new folder
12. Final updates to configuration
13. Update backup routine to pull from the new folder

All in all it wasn’t too painful to do a clean update, and I’m glad I went that way. Total time start to finish was about 2.5 hours.

While looking for a fix to my TestDriven.Net problem (couldn’t get it to run all Xunit tests in a class or assembly), I came across an open question on Stack Overflow from a developer having the same problem. For some reason I felt compelled to answer this question once I found the answer. After a bit of searching and registry browsing, I found out that I needed to move a registry key from the Wow6432node to the “regular” section of the registry.

So back to Stack Overflow I went to answer. This being the first time I’ve answered anything on there, I figured I should sign up so I get “credit” for my one whole answer. While I have a couple of accounts from other places that support open ID, I felt that claiming my blog URL would be the techie thing to do.

I picked Claim Id from a list of open id providers because I thought Scott Hanselman recommended it, but couldn’t remember for sure, but it looked ok. Sign up was easy, and they even provided instructions for claiming my blog URL, including the HTML code, complete with my username. If you view the source of my blog page, you will see the following two lines in the <Head> section.

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://openid.claimid.com/server" />
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://openid.claimid.com/asalvo" />

In DasBlog, I added these to lines to the homeTemplate.blogtemplate file for my current theme. This is also where I placed the code to enable Google Analytics awhile back. Speaking of Google, I came across their Ajax API which I talked about briefly, and though as long as I’m in here editing for openId, might as well try adding the search functionality.

At this point it’s close to 2am, and I started this around 10:30pm. The whole ajax google search turned into a real chore to get working even close to the way I would like it. However, since I invested all this time into it, I felt like leaving it as is for now. There are some CSS entries needed to get the results to show up where they do on my page, so if you want, take a look at my CSS file as well (the relevant stuff is at the top under center column stuff).

I’d like to revisit this post when I update my theme, hopefully in the near future.

Final Script located in the head section (feel free to view source on this page as well)

<script src=”http://www.google.com/jsapi?key=YourKey” type="text/javascript"></script>  

google.load('search', '1.0');

    function OnLoad() {
      var controlRoot = document.getElementById("searchControl");

      // create the search control
      coreSearch = new GSearchControl();
      coreSearch.setLinkTarget(GSearch.LINK_TARGET_SELF);
      coreSearch.setResultSetSize(GSearch.LARGE_RESULTSET);

       // prep for decoupled search form
      var searchFormElement = document.getElementById("searchform");
      var drawOptions = new GdrawOptions();
      drawOptions.setSearchFormRoot(searchFormElement);
      drawOptions.setDrawMode(GSearchControl.DRAW_MODE_TABBED);

      // populate - web, this blog, all blogs
      var searcher = new GwebSearch();
      searcher.setSiteRestriction("http://blog.salvoz.com/");
      searcher.setUserDefinedLabel("Salvoz Blog");
      coreSearch.addSearcher(searcher);
      searcher = new GwebSearch();
      searcher.setUserDefinedLabel("The Web");
      coreSearch.addSearcher(searcher);

      coreSearch.draw(controlRoot, drawOptions);
    }
    function doCoreSearch(q) {
      coreSearch.execute(q);
    }
    google.setOnLoadCallback(OnLoad, true);

    </script>

Allow me to leave the realm of technology and offer up my thoughts on the election, just like every other blogger out there.

In an effort to be up front, I will state that I voted for McCain, although this will be the last year that I vote for someone strictly because they are a republican. I think it’s time to start seriously looking at independent candidates, although I feel that the republicans will be re-energized in 4 years.

I am grateful that the election is over and I can listen to Pandora without having a giant picture of Obama smiling at me (not that McCain would have been any better, maybe Palin would have been ;) ). The Pandora add illustrates the type of campaign that Obama was running, and other candidates should have taken notes.

I feel that this election was too much about race, and I cringe when I hear people talk about the first black president, and how this shows what America is really about. Yes, in fact it does show what America is about, and that is, that for all our talk, race STILL IS an issue, otherwise no one would be mentioning it now! I will celebrate the day when a candidate can win (be they white, black, man, women, etc) without playing the race/gender card (and yes, white males can play that card as well). I also think it will be a more momentous occasion when an independent candidate is elected President, as Democrats and Republicans are more alike then they are different.

Scott Hanselman has been blogging a bit about the race, as well as the outcome last night. Scott is someone who I can identify with because we share a similar passion about technology. Scott made this comment in his post, “My boys will grow up in a country that values people of all kinds, including ones that look like them.” and I’m a little disappointed, as are a few of the people who left comments. To think that I or anyone else valued his children less because they have a darker skin complexion is something I wholeheartedly disagree with. Furthermore, to think that the election of a President with a darker skin complexion, who played the race card, illustrates a flaw in our society that must be overcome before I start celebrating. To be honest, I think Scott’s family shows a more positive image about America, with respect to the race issue, then the election of Obama.

In the end, I just get the feeling that the Republicans knew they were going to loose no matter what. I don’t think they threw in the towel, but maybe they felt it better to conserve their resources to fight another day. While I hope for a dramatic turn around in the economy, history has shown that it follows a different set of rules. There is a tough road ahead for the Democrats, and they have 2 years to fix everything, or we’ll have a repeat of 94 when the republicans took control of congress.

Damon Payne put up his goals for 2008 and I decided to post my own. This is the first time I've ever written down goals for a new year, so we'll see how well I actually follow thru on them. I guess that's a goal in and of itself, to report back on my progress throughout the year and write something up on December 31 2008.

Programming, Architecture and Professional Development

• Continue to blog, increasing the quality of my posts (Work in Progress)
• Read at least one book on programming and/or architecture. Apply what I learn to projects I am working on and blog about this. (Need to identify books)
• Start working on one or more personal projects I have been kicking around. The main purpose of these projects is to apply learnings from numerous resources (articles, blogs, books etc), as well as try out new techniques/technologies (IoC, Asp.Net MVC, Linq, MS Sync Runtime) and tools (NDepend, VS Team System). (Work in Progress, need to setup proper home development environment)
• Present at one Madison .Net User Group meeting, most likely on one of the above, or on a project from work. (Identify possible topics)

Investing

• Learn the fundamentals of long term investing (Started)
• Put in the proper time to research new investments (Work in Progress)

Personal Development

• Continue with my studies of Martial Arts, and improve
• Continue playing, and improve at Roller Hockey
• Start learning Japanese

Stuff on the Periphery

• Purchase a Katana and take classes on how to use it

I don't know, it may be too much, but only time will tell. Thankfully, there is allot of overlap, and I've some of the 2008 goals were "goals" from 2007.

I just picked up a new server off EBay to replace some aging hardware. I am now the proud new owner of a HP DL380 G3. I'll be updating this post after I get the server in, and setup.

Slashdot had a post about using Google Earth to search for missing adventurer, Steve Fossett. Usually the imagery from Google Earth (and MS Virtual Earth) is several years old. However, the company that supplies imagery for Google Earth updated the imagery for the area on Monday. Amazon.com us using it's Mechanical Turk service to accept submissions from Internet users who think they have spotted something.  According to Steve's web site, they have already identified 3 previously uncharted aircraft wrecks.

This is my first post for my new blog, and it will be short, as I've just spent most of the night getting everything setup. So far I am very happy with dasBlog. I just need to get email submission working, and move all my old posts over. Hopefully this post I'm writing in Live Writer will work, so I can cross that (test with Live Writer) off my to do list.

Speaking of Live Writer. After using it for less then 5 minutes, I like what I see. I can't wait to install it at work as well and begin contributing en-mass to the blog sphere!

Blog To-Do List:

• Move old blogs from personal site
• Move new blogs from work site
• Setup some type of nightly backup of this blogs content to my local computer
• Get email submission working
• Define Categories (Check to see if it's easy to rename a category)
• Define additional Macros

Update: Just tested updating a previous entry using Live Writer. If you see this, it worked.

This is a placeholder for an About me page.

Quick Info:

Name: Adam Salvo
Current Employment: Full time Software Engineer for Terso Solutions
Location: Madison, WI
Education: Graduated from UW-Madison in December of 2001 with a BS in Computer Science. MCSD.

FAQ:

Blog Engine: Das Blog
Hosting Provider: Web Host 4 Life