Mea Culpa, Dell

Last Wednesday I blogged about how bigger companies, like Dell and Sony, do a poor job of providing a rapid response to online orders and customer concerns.  However, I was hasty in my blogging and need to (partially) apologize to Dell (but not Sony in this case.) The computer arrived on Monday, one day after I …

Mort, the “Hobbyist”, and the “Occupational” Programmer get their due

Several months ago I blogged about the need for a much simpler way to get into .NET, and I named my proposed solution VBScript.NET (in hindsight the name was a poor choice because people assumed I was proposing porting VBScript to .NET instead of providing a simplified VB.NET, but highsight often is 20/20…) And I …

It’s Always Something (#1): Wrestling with System.Xml.Xsl.XslTransform and the Document() function

It’s always something! At Xtras, we have a rather sophisticated email broadcast system that we developed internally. Our system uses a set of tables in our SQL Server database that models the type of email, who it should go to, the mailing lists, etc. It loads each newsletter subscriber’s name and email address using a FOR XML …

Where do you buy your .NET Components and other Programming Tools?

Disclaimer: I run a company (Xtras.Net) that sells .NET components and other programming tools so this topic significantly affects my own livelihood as well as that of my company. Over the past 10 years, since we launched our first printed VBxtras catalog, the state of Windows-based programming has changed.  In those days most Windows programmers wrote …