A note from Mr. Mom

by | Mar 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

My little girl (#5) was bornabout ten days agoand my life has changed significantly since then. When I tell people I already have four children, they say “oh, nothing to worry about thenyou’re a seasoned pro!” I think I even started to convince myself of that as well. You’d think I’ve learned my lesson by now, but every time I find myself getting a little cocky or overconfident like that, life has a way of smacking me down to reality, humbling me, and helping me appreciate things that I’ve been taking for granted, like my good wife.
I’ve always tried to take plenty of time off work after each birth to help out as much as possible. It’s funny, in my head I’ve always had visions of these picture-perfect baby moments where I’m holding the baby, everyone’s smiling, soft music is playing in the background, and the rest of my kids are gathered around, quietly watching, enjoying the moment. And then I can simply break-away now and then to work on some fun technical problems while the baby is quietly sleeping. We all have visions of utopia now and then but things rarely happen that way, if ever.
This time has been especially challenging since my other four children attend year-round school, something we wish we could change but can’t for the time being. And they all went “off-track” the day after little Emma was born. Off-track means they’re at home 24/7 for about 3 weeks. And since it’s winter here in Utah, with a foot of snow on the lawn, it also means they’re stuck indoors in our 2600 sq ft piece of heaven on earth. It’s hard to think of the right word to describe the situation but “chaos” comes closest. For example, my 5 year old doing a front flip off the top bunk causes an interestingripple-effect that cannot be undone.
The other challenging aspect of our newborn is that she and her older sister are closer together than any of the previous children. With the others, we took care to space them out by ~3 years to let everyone adjust a little before moving forward. Gisela (our next youngest) and Emma are only about 18 months apart, which means they’ll be pals growing up, but it also greatly complicates the initial stages. It basically means we have two in diapers, two who need special attention, and help with just about every aspect of their lives. Over the past week, we’ve consistently found ourselves outnumbered and overwhelmed, where too many things are unfolding at a single point in time for us to effectively cover them all. It’s quite humbling.
So here I’ve been in the middle of this situation, trying to beMr. Mom,picking up the slack and doing my wife’s typical duties so she can get extra sleep and attend to the baby. And I can’t help but feel unqualified, unprepared, and lacking the necessary levels of patience, understanding and love. I’m pretty sure my older children have looked at me a few times wondering where this strange persona came from. At times I badly want to escape to my office (e.g. hide in my cave) and find peace in my technical domain. But then I realize that isa luxury my wife simply can’t afford during such moments – the challenges don’t resolve themselves.
One of the main lessons I’ve learned over the past week is that children need structure, attention, and stimulation. XBox provides some entertainment value but children really need projects that educate and engage their interests. They need good books to read. They need incentives and feedback. Most importantly, they need communication and attention. And making it happen require a great deal of work and energy.
So this post is my small tribute to women and mothers everywhere, but especially to my own — my wife is amazing and so was my mother — the work they do day-in and day-out is harder than anything I do, hands down. I’ve known many amazing women in my life who have raised large families, much larger than ours, and I have great respect and admiration for all of them, and that respect grows as my family does.
Although it’s been a tough ten days, I wouldn’t change a thing. There is a happiness that deeply embeds itself within me for each of my children, which continually grows as they do.

CAB WPF XBAP implementation available (again)

by | Mar 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

In the time to come, I’ll be uploading packages available from my previous blog in the past because they got lost during my ISP transfer. First off, here’s the CompositeUI Application Block XBAP WPF implementation, as I blogged about here.


Please note the passwords for both protected signing keys are empty within the solution.


This posting is provided “AS IS” with no warranties, and confers no rights.

Documentation tool for BizTalk 2006

by | Mar 6, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Although this tool is not new, I blog about it because it is a must-have for every BizTalk developer:

The tool is called UK SDC BizTalk 2006 Documenter (you can download it here) and builds documentation of your BizTalk application(s). It uses reflection to find all information, therefore the BizTalk application(s) you want to document need(s) to be deployed.
One cool feature is the ability to create JPG’s for orchestrations.

Its been a while….the book, BizUnit and my job

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

 


Darren, Ewan and myself are really close to getting the book, Professional BizTalk Server 2006 out of the door, it’s been hard work but hopefully it’ll be worth while. The book offers insight in to how BizTalk works under the hood which will enable you to really exploit the architecture, this is blended with the lessons learned designing, developing, and operating some of the most mission critical BizTalk solutions that have been deployed around the world by Microsoft Consulting Services. I knew it would be a massive amount of work before we started, and it has definitely been that!!


 


As you may have seen GotDotNet is being phased out by Microsoft, because of this I’ve moved BizUnit to its new home at CodePlex, I have some great ideas for new features which, now the book is done I might actually get time to implement!! The latest version includes a bunch of work that we did on the last performance lab in Redmond that I was involved in, including some new test steps to enable it to be used to automate performance tests.


 


Aside form the book, a lots been going on for me. I left Microsoft last summer to work for a leading european investment bank, leaving after 8+ incredible years was not easy I can tell you. I had an amazing time working for Microsoft, a lot of great times. Since leaving I’ve been playing with a lot of different but very interesting technology, so I should get back to some blogging soon!

MOSS and Excel Services – great simple demo

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

After a heavy training schedule last week (collectively we trained nearly 60 students
around Australia) one of the frequent questions I got was –

“You know that excel services presentation you had, can I get a copy?”


Well folks it’s all available from MS – Have fun and enjoy. Thanks for the great interaction
last week!

Getting
Up and Running with Excel Services

Step through the process of configuring Excel Services so that you can publish an
Excel spreadsheet to a Windows SharePoint Services V3 site.

Its been a while….the book, BizUnit and my job

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

 


Darren, Ewan and myself are really close to getting the book, Professional BizTalk Server 2006 out of the door, it’s been hard work but hopefully it’ll be worth while. The book offers insight in to how BizTalk works under the hood which will enable you to really exploit the architecture, this is blended with the lessons learned designing, developing, and operating some of the most mission critical BizTalk solutions that have been deployed around the world by Microsoft Consulting Services. I knew it would be a massive amount of work before we started, and it has definitely been that!!


 


As you may have seen GotDotNet is being phased out by Microsoft, because of this I’ve moved BizUnit to its new home at CodePlex, I have some great ideas for new features which, now the book is done I might actually get time to implement!! The latest version includes a bunch of work that we did on the last performance lab in Redmond that I was involved in, including some new test steps to enable it to be used to automate performance tests.


 


Aside form the book, a lots been going on for me. I left Microsoft last summer to work for a leading european investment bank, leaving after 8+ incredible years was not easy I can tell you. I had an amazing time working for Microsoft, a lot of great times. Since leaving I’ve been playing with a lot of different but very interesting technology, so I should get back to some blogging soon!

Public Void InitializeBlog()

by | Mar 5, 2007 | BizTalk Community Blogs via Syndication

Meu nome %u00e9 Guilherme Mendon%u00e7a e %u00e9 com grande prazer que eu come%u00e7o a postar por aqui.


Usarei este espa%u00e7o para compartilhar o conhecimento e registrar as novidades ou solu%u00e7%u00e3o de problemas que encontrei.


 


Os coment%u00e1rios com sugest%u00f5es, d%u00favidas ou cr%u00edticas s%u00e3o bem-vindos.


Abra%u00e7os e at%u00e9 o pr%u00f3ximo post