Jeff Makes Software

I knew it wouldn't take long, but FastClick's pop-ups (or technically pop-unders) beat the blocker in SP2. The nice thing is that they only serve one per day per site per user anyway. I'm willing to deal with that if the site's owner gets paid.

It was sunny and 74 this morning when I decided to go solo to Cedar Point for a couple of hours. I had lunch with a friend working there, then walked on to a few rides (not terribly busy with most kids back in school). Between the fifth and sixth inversions on Raptor, I thought, "Wow, if I had not left my six-figure corporate code monkey job, I'd be sitting in a cube right now developing software I could care less about." Instead I was flying through the air strapped into a roller coaster.

Writing a Membership provider sure was easy, but wow is the documentation a bit thin for writing a Profile provider. I've started with the GetPropertyValues() method. So far I've got this bit working in a class called PopForumsProfileProvider, which inherits the abstract base class ProfileProvider:

I've been playing a little with the themes in v2 and I've changed my opinion on them. When I first learned about the basic capabilities of themes I kind of shrugged it off as a, "That's neat, I guess."

Scott Guthrie pointed me in the right direction in my last post regarding the use of SQL Express databases in ASP.NET v2. What I thought most incredible was that in e-mail he said that a box with SQL Express on it will create a database file in your /data folder, ready to go, for Membership, Profile and such, just as it did with the Access provider (which is going away for beta 2)! How cool is that?

It's my understanding that since the Access providers are going away in .NET v2 that the SQL providers will be the default. However, and correct me if I'm wrong, they won't generate a database file for Membership, Profile, etc., the way that the Access provider did in the /data folder, right?

In the last week, I think I've had at least ten invites to give away from Gmail. I get the distinct impression that they're either pushing another level of traffic for testing purposes or they're considering going live soon. There are so many accounts out there now that it's not nearly as cool or "in" as it used to be to use Gmail!

It appears that Longhorn is going to be less than we had hoped for. According to News.com, some features will be left out just so they can finally get it out the door. Personally, I don't care that much, but I know the Windows developers that have been working with the alphas are disappointed.