Well, I've heard about Twitter but just never really saw the point.  But after I noticed my good friend Dave was a twitter (what do you call people that use Twitter?  a twitter, a twit, ...) I thought, what they hay, I'll give it a whirl.  I'm trying it out and will see how long I stick with it.  Check me out at http://www.twitter.com/lautzenheiser

OK....this may be well known, but I seem to forget it all the time.   If while browsing data you want to set a field to NULL, Ctrl-0 will do the trick.  Very simple and easy.  I know it works in Management Studio 2005, but I think it works in Enterprise Manager 2000 as well.

I'm officially tired of cold, snow and grey days.  I'm ready to mow my lawn, open my pool, crack open the windows to let a warm breeze blow through the house.  I'm ready to end the sniffles, coughs and runny noses.  I'm ready for the sun to set at 9pm.  I'm ready to be kept awake at night listening to crickets, or staying up late laying out on the deck looking up at the stars.  I'm ready for a good thunderstorm.   I can't wait.

Here we are at the start of another new year.  My parents told me when I was just a young lad that time went faster as you got older, how right they were.  Let's look back at a few personal highlights of 2007.

• Number one on my list:  My continued faith in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.  As any believer, I've faltered throughout the year, but my faith continues to carry me through. 
• A very close second:  15 years of marriage to a wonderful woman.
• A very close third:  Another year spent with my four awesome children.

Now some more business / technically related highlights:

• Started off the year finishing up a fairly large web app, that while it was mostly completed early in the year, has just now in the last two months been launched live.  The delay sprung from mostly marketing timing and issues and some last minute changes from the client.  So far while traffic is light (limited number of existing customers, so not a public site), things seem to be going well.
• Come June, we landed a huge project that while it was only supposed to last through June, ended up last though October.  This was an open-ended project (basically they called us in to finish up a project that was a bit in trouble)..they anticipated only a months worth of work, but it was quite a bit larger than that.  We still go in sporadically now, but there is some potential for another fairly large project with them that could take us well into 2008.
• Finishing up another large web application now, hopefully to be completed by end of January. 
• I recently opened an office with a collegue of mine.  This is really just a place to get away and stay focused.  Anyone who works from home can testify that it can be a distraction at times, especially with children.  My home isn't large enough to have an office I can really go to that can be closed off from the rest of the home (I have to wait until the kids leave the house, which is quite a few years off).  This office away from home has helped gain me a few extra productive hours each week.

Goals for 2008, most fairly typical, I hesitate to call them resolutions though:

• Become a better husband and father.  Spend more quality time with my family while not taking away the quality time I give my clients.
• Become a better football coach.  I coach youth football.  2007 was my first year coaching flag (been coaching tackle up to this point).  All boys were 1st and 2nd graders so it was quite the challenge, but I had more fun this year then I did all the years coaching the older boys.  2008 I will be with the flag teams again this year so I'm looking forward to the fall for that.
• Continue to grow my business while still taking care of my existing clients.  Getting to the point where I need to find an employee or two.
• Find that one product to develop that may not make me a billionaire, but will at least give me an area of focus to move in that direction (yes I dream large).

I'm sure there will be plenty of surprises (some good some bad) in 2008, but that is what makes life interesting.  Best wishes to everyone in 2008.

I've recently started playing with SubSonic on a new project.  My first few attempts at generating code failed.  The files were being generated, but they contained no code.  I'm sure it states it clearly somewhere but I was in one of my moods where "By golly, I'm not reading the stinking documentation, I'm figuring this out myself."  Well after an hour or so of this, I finally discovered, SubSonic really likes primary keys on the tables it's generating code for.    I had a few tables that didn't have primary keys (I know, smack me now), anyway's I throw those keys on and all is well. 

I'm really liking SubSonic and I tend to agree with Rob more than Jeff in the recent debate (makes for a good read).

I love the ClickOnce technology of smart clients.  What a great way to distribute software to my clients.  Since I'm an independent with many clients all in geographically different locations, most of which I've created a mixture of web apps and winforms software for, smart clients have simplified my job greatly.  Someone needs a quick fix or tweak, presto, from home, I make the change, publish it and there off and running.  No more taking an hour or so out of my day to go spend 5 minutes distributing an update on site. 

There are pitfalls to the clickonce technology however that I've discovered.  Mainly the issue of the expiring certificate which requires and uninstall and reinstall of the application.  A buddy of mine has created a workaround that using the C++ code in the KB article linked, that fixes the issue, but still not an optimal solution.  Supposedly this is fixed/changed in Orcas.  I'll have to dig up his solution and blog about it soon.

Wondering though, is ClickOnce used in the wild much?  For standalone apps, commericial or otherwise?  I would think that there would be some, but having difficulty finding any.  Just curious if the ClickOnce model is viable for a released product.

Off topic, but this is pretty cool.   I'm a bit of a amateur astronomer (and I mean really amateur) but I read about Comet 17P which had a super outburst on October 24th where it brightened 12-13 magnitudes.  Anyways it was pretty easy to find and while I didn't drag my telescope out, it was quite visible and spectacular in binoculars.  Once you know what you're looking for it's easy to find with the naked eye.  It's currently in the constellation Perseus.  Check out the links and you'll find pics and better description of where to look.

I've played off and on over the years with developing my own blog engine.  Why?  Mostly just as a learning experience and a place to experiment with new stuff.   What I've been finding with most other blog engines (dasBlog used here, Wordpress being the two that I'm most familiar with) that while they have a great number of features, like most software, I only use a small fraction of the features.  I want a blog engine that is all my own that has just the features that I want.

I've been inspired to finish it up.  Check out this new blog I stumbled upon through a comment in a Hanselman post.  Josh took up the challenge to create his own blog engine and I must saythe result is a very clean, nice design.  While I haven't seen any of the underlying code, I'm pretty impressed with the end results.  Great job Josh.  Now to polish off my source (perhaps polish it off just to throw it all away) and get moving on my own engine.  Plenty of stuff to learn!

Been a bit since I've been around, but I won't dwell on that.  I'm here now and that's all the matters.  Here is my question to anyone that still may look at this from time to time.  I often work on projects with other consultants and normally we work remotely.  I've got some ideas on how to handle source-control remotely amongst many independent developers that are not necessarily in the same town, state, whatever, but I wanted to get some other opinions on how others many handle this.  What software do you use?  What services if any are available?