Donny Mack

New Build Coming this Week

We haven't updated many bug fixes for a couple days now do to the fact that we've decided to redu not only our physical architecture, but our application architecture. We have finished many, many changes and feature fixes (INCLUDING JOB SUBMISSION) for all those who have emailed me. I'll be updating all by weeks end (that is Sunday) for me. I was also informed that we'll be getting a new build of our Blogs engine soon! We're very excited to see what's coming!

Beyond the feature improvements (BUG FIXES) we have optimized some of the code, but we still have more to do. Oh, and we're slowly adding more and more forums, we'd love comments on what forum groups and forums we should add.

Http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/forums/

Server Configuration Update

It's been awhile since I've made an entry, but with good reason. We've been upgrading, switching, and adding servers to our hardware architecture. Over the last couple days we upgraded one of our web servers to Windows 2003, switched database servers, and rebuilt another server. It's been pretty tricky to do while keeping the site up and going but we've done a pretty good job, I wish we had unlimited servers :-)

Experiences so far are great!

Windows 2003 is such an awesome server it's amazing. I love IIS 6.0, application pools kick ass!! Our database server is still running Windows 2000 Ent., but soon we'll be upgrading that.

Tonight or early tomorrow we'll be switching back to our newly rebuilt database server and then starting the rebuild of what will become our second web server with Windows 2003. After which we'll be watching for a month or so to see how it performs, if we still aren't happy we'll be adding ISA which will take care of hopefully any other server performance issues.

I just rebuilt our entire solution structure to ensure easy updates to the site and documentaion, we also just purchased a real life development server (a beefy one at that) so we can eliminate these unneeded bugs that keep popping up, a result of not using proper source control. (Frankly, a lot of the bugs are resulting from someone overwriting someones elses code, not good)

We still have a lot of work to do but we're slowly getting to a very stable build. We have a HUGE amount of features we'll be adding after we're stable I'm very happy about and I think they'll make DotNetJunkies one of the highest quality, FREE programming communities on the World Wide NET or rather the Interweb ;-)

Windows 2003 Here We Come

In True Form

Would You Like More of These on DotNetJunkies?

http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/pdf/DoculabsWebServiceScalability.pdf 

There big, but very valuable downloads! I am trying to get my hand into a bunch of different ones.

Part 2.0: would you want them to be PDF or PDF in a ZIP file for download or other?? Converted to HTML?

Updates

- I just finished uploading a new build of our web logs code which included many performance enhancements and better support for images and I uploaded some pictures of my little sisters graduation: http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/donnymack/gallery/52.aspx

- We also have updated a lot of the content redirects that have been plaging us. We haven't caught all of them yet, but we're getting there. Come on search engines, update your content already.

- We've made a lot of small bug fixes, to many to list.

- We just picked up another super power server to ad to our garden. For those who don't know we host with http://securewebs.com, they are by far the best hosting company we've ever had. They've really been helping out with architecting us a good home for the new DNJ.

Oh, and we finally have a new article up and it's a good one! Check it out here:

High-Performance .NET Application Development & Architecture

More updates soon

Web Services Performance Benchmark Study Results

Servers, Servers, Servers

So we have good news and bad news. The good news is that we have seen a DRAMATIC increase in visitors of our site since our new launch. The bad news is we now need more servers. You may have noticed issues with performance over the last couple days, we know! We're working on it. To date, we added a statistics/sample db/weblog MEGA server which is HUGE! We'll be moving ads over there tomorrow. After that we should see a pretty huge increase in performance. If we're still hurting, which I hope we are (sorry, the more visitors we have the more good we're doing) we'll add another server! I just wanted to say sorry for the crappy performance, and lack of new content (we've been dealing with this sh**) and we're going to start releasing the many, many new great articles we have backed up soon!

Thanks for all of your support during these hard times!

Location, Site, Articles

I thought it was time to give a quick update. I'm in Seattle now, I have lots of great meetings planned with Microsoft. I can't yet tell what all are about, but we're planning some great stuff for DotNetJunkies. I'm here until the 21^st so if you're here we're having a couple different social outings, let me know.

I updated a bunch of bug fixes today - I have a bunch more I'm going to upload tomorrow including the new weblog build which I wasn't able to get up this weekend. Also, I'll be putting up our first new article since the launch which is a wonderful article writing by Dimitrios Markatos called: High-Performance .NET Application Development & Architecture. It is awesome!

Well, I have a bunch of other updates to give, but no time. I'm off to a "night-cap" meeting. More tomorrow! 

Also, I'm working with all the publishers right now to get out a lot of new sample chapters of .NET books. I'll be releasing at least one a week. Here is the first: http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/DotNetBooks/OnlineChapters/AWL/0672323435/

Headline:

A Cool Wi-Fi Application

I just discovered a cool wi-fi application for both pocket pc/windows called netstumbler. http://www.netstumbler.com  I'm not going to write to much about it, but you should check it out! It is far better than any other application I have used out there.

Have Fun!

Pocket PC 2002 RSS/RDF News Aggregator

Just got forwarded this: PocketFeed v0.5  - Being a mobile fanatic I thought I'd pass it on. I'll put it on http://dotnetjunkies.com/WebLog/ later today along with a list of other aggregators

Did We Talk Blogs?

It's Friday and my brain is a little fuzzy. After a week of this I’m ready for a break! To bad I don’t get one, I’m here until Sunday then it’s off to Seattle until the 21st – Asli is going to a MS training program. Last night we went to the attendee party were Smash Mouth and the Wall Flowers played, it was fun. They had two halls there also, the first was a Las Vegas type hall and the second was a gaming hall. We hung out at the casino bar because they had pool tables, although these were the smallest pool tables I’ve ever seen – I swear they were 5’ tables.

After the fair grounds closed we decided to go down to Velvet Hookah, a Hookah bar in Deep Ellum (the bar district) – DotNetJunkies decided to open the tab up so we got a lot of people tipsy last night. The club was also jam packed with “Dancers”, you know what that means, “Programmers Gone Wild” – it was very humorous. On the flip side, damn those “Dancers” know how to dance…Diana was the leader of the pack; those who were there know who I’m talking about. We didn’t stay out to late because Asli had to do a talk today, where I’m at right now, but I ended up ordering a big ole’ cheeseburger and fries when I got back to the hotel so I was up until about 4:30AM, this is probably why I’m tired right now, oh well. What else are you supposed to do at conferences?

But the primary reason for the post is, I spoke with a lot of people about starting blogs on DotNetJunkies.com and I don't remember all of you and no one seemed to have a card, so you have my card. Email me as soon as you can so we can get you going!

Updates

Apparently, news submission has been broken for some time and no one has noticed. I uploaded new codebase for it and all is well now.

We have an updated blog engine waiting for upload. I'll be doing this on the weekend. It fixes the Gallary Images issue and there is some otimizations in there!

We have a bunch of new content we're going to start putting up shortly. We've been holding off on it until we have everything stable. We'll be getting those up in the next couple days.

Beyond that we've made quite a few smaller tweaks and bug fixes. We should be able to start adding the features we left out of this build shortly.

Didn't Quite Make it...

We went out last night to the academic party at the Hyatt Hotel IMAGES and I ended up staying up until about 5:00AM talking with a good friend Matt who is on the SQL Server team about starting to produce content for them. This seemed like an interesting idea and something Doug and I have discussed doing already so I think we're going to dive head first into it, but the one thing we aren't sure of is should we make this SQL Server site seperate from DotNetJunkies or as a piece of DotNetJunkies. What do you think? I'm not swaying either way right now, I'd prefer feedback from you on this! Would it be to messy if we started releasing SQL Server articles with ASP.NET Articles or would it be refreshing?

Let me know!

If You're Here, Come Say Hi!

Doug and I have booth 477 - Come by, here is a map of the hall: MAP

My Pool Plans...Foiled

Wrapping up Day One with Some Updates

In bed, just finished a bowl of popcorn, watching old episodes of X-Files and coding. What more could a man ask for? Just uploaded new home page for the weblogs http://www.dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/ and various other site wide controls.

We were working the convention hall again from 6:00-9:00 - not so exciting, but there were a lot of people and they were serving beer and wine so the time went by quickly. I heard there was a WebLog community meeting tonight which I unfortunately missed. But Jeff Julian went and sait it went really well! I have a couple more updates.

Tomorrow, I have a lot of plans on my plate. I plan on going down to the pool, laptop in hand, and hammering out a lot of the little bugs we have floating around right now. I can't wait to get this baby running smoothly so we can add the other features we have waiting for the ongoing builds (weekly). I'm sure you'll all be very  happy with all our upcomming features and optimizations. I'll be posting continuous updates throughout the the day.

Tomorrow night I think we have another party so that means there may be a 3:00AM, buzzed post (w/pictures). We'll see. 

Half Finished with Day One

I have some pictures up right now from last night and earlier today: http://dotnetjunkies.com/weblog/donnymack/Gallery/21.aspx. Today Doug Seven and I worked our joint booth with the great people at http://www.aspnetpro.com - we're giving away 8 hours of free consulting :-)   If you're here come by and say hi!

I won't write to much about last night, I think Doug covered most of it, but let's just say I had ti many martoonies!

I have about 2 hours to get some work done and then back to the conference hall, more later. Oh, and if there is a picture you want me to get let me know!

Just got to Dallas and Damn its HOT

I just got to Dallas for TechEd and I just checked into my wonderful room ath the Mansion on Turtle Creek: http://www.mansiononturtlecreek.com and It's HOT! I came with my 2 dogs and they're loving it, it was cold and rainy still at home in Manhattan and they're both warm weather dogs.

We're about ready to leave to go to a Ranch for a party for the INETA folks - where I'm sure I'm going to have my share of drinks. But tomorrow it's all business, yeah right, but we are sharing a booth so I actally am going to do something other than socialize this conference. Not to mention the 10 hour days I'll be putting in on getting DNJ fully functional.

Well I'll update on the party when I get back to my room - I don't think they're going to be having wireless at the "Ranch"

RSS Feeds Fixed!!