Scott Hanselman

I left the MVP Summit a little early, since I've got major SDK releases back at the ranch, and a multi-city international trip looming, I really felt the need to get back.  However, I still had a blast and got a LOT done.  I also met a lot of Product Group folks, a PILE of old and new friends and generally got to do lots of things I wouldn't ordinarily.

Some Highlights:

• Saw absolutely EVERYONE.  I won't name drop as the list is too long. 
• Talked to people from all over the globe.  Saw lots of friends from Malaysia, Russia,
• Met the RDs for this year.  Looks like a fantastic bunch.  Remember, you can always find your local RD at http://www.microsoft.com/rd.
• Saw a pile of Longhorn stuff and noticed that http://www.longhornblogs.com was listed in PCMagazine as one of the Top 100 Web Sites you don't know about.
• Had FANTASTIC Ethiopian food at Pan African Cafe on 1st and Pike.  Tell the owner that Scott the ferenj who spoke tinish tinish amarigna sent you.  Order Beef T'ibs and thank me later.
• Saw some fantastic 3D Avalon stuff in the new Longhorn build.
• Had dinner with the Off Topic crew and got into a huge talk with some ShadowFax developers.
• Filmed a promotional video at Microsoft Studios.

No, this picture of me and my SPOT Watch doesn't need to be color corrected (note the color of my face versus my hands) ... I am JUST that red.  I was sunburned while trying out for the Apprentice 2 here in Portland.  Much to my (and others') surprise, they selected someone with a more human skin color.

This is Scoble, myself, Scoble's entourage, and 15 Italian MVPs (very cool guys) who followed us after I yelled 'Viva Italia!'

Uh...ya. ;)  And what's really funny is that he hasn't taken it off yet! 

Everyone at the Summit was running a Smart Phone or iPaq.  Since I was feeling pretty inadequate, I tried to show off my snazzy new color Blackberry.  Well, apparently my Blackberry hadn't got wind of the Sun/Microsoft agreement and throw the first exception I've ever seen.  Sigh.  I never thought I'd say this, but then I rebooted my phone.

Got to go to Microsoft Studios and film a promotional video that will be shown at TechEd in San Diego.  (No, that's not me, it's Rocky Lhotka, fellow Goatee'ed RD, or 'evil Scott' as he's known in the alternate Star Trek Universe).

Met Andy Cheung, Hong Kong RD, MVP and VP of the Hong Kong .NET Users Group.  Note, that I'm still slightly red.  Fortunately, I'm not as sunburned as I was last night (see below).

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Rock on.  And it's well timed, as I was just feeling ill about my previous MSI building solution.

On Monday, April 5, 2004, as part of the Shared Source Initiative, Microsoft releases the source code for the Windows Installer XML (WiX) developer tool to SourceForge under the IBM Common Public License or CPL.

Background Details:

• The Windows Installer XML (WiX - pronounced "wicks") is a toolset for advanced Windows developers that builds Windows installation packages from XML source code. Overall, WiX can improve the process of how software developers release software.
• Many Microsoft product development teams use WiX to deliver their installation packages. Utilizing the 1.0 Common Language Runtime, WiX builds with Visual Studio.Net 2003 on Windows 2000, Windows XP, and will be of use with future Windows offerings.
  [FrankArr - MSDN]

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Actor, Director, Producer Forest Whitaker (Ghost Dog) is sitting here at the W bar.
Scott Hanselman - Corillian Corp
scott@corillian.com
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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Made it to Seattle for the MVP Summit.  Microsoft again spares to expense.  I'm at the W - unspeakably spendy, but as always the W is a fabulous hotel.  All the Starwood Hotels are.

Had an early meeting then bumped into Sam Gentile on the Elevator ride up.  Saw Bill Evjen and Jeff Julian, as well as Robert McLaws and Anand from dotnetindia.com.  I passed on a boat ride that sounded like fun (not a big fan of a moving horizon) and I'm down at the Pike Place Fish Market with Scoble. 

Registration opens at 4pm...apparently the number of MVPs attending had doubled from last year.  The big question is, what happens when it doubles again?
Scott Hanselman - Corillian Corp
scott@corillian.com
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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GOTCHA #1: Here's a crazy thing.  Let me try to paint a word picture for you of the thing I debugged today with the info I was given in the order it was given:

Symptom: "So, Scott, it appears that users using the Content Advisor feature of IE (the one that's there to prevent kids from seeing naughty things) occasionaly and apparently randomly get logged out of our website"

Me: "That sucks."

Additional Information #1: "Turns out the get logged out when we open a new Window with target='_blank' or javascript:window.open."

Me: "That IS weird.  Good luck with that."

Additional Information #2: "With IEHttpHeaders we see that the Forms Authentication Cookie 'disappears' when this new window opens."

Me: "Well that's just kooky talk.  Cookies don't disappear, they are either tossed with the HTTP Header set-cookie directive, or they are not passed in the Http Request."

Additional Information #3: "Well, turns out that when Content Advisor is OFF, the interaction looks like this:

HTTP GET /somefile.aspx
RESPONSE 200
HTTP GET /somethingelse.aspx (we did a javascript.open)
RESPONSE 302 getthisfile.aspx
HTTP GET getthisfile.aspx
RESPONSE 200

But when Content Advisor is ON, we see this:

HTTP GET /somefile.aspx
RESPONSE 200
HTTP GET /somethingelse.aspx (we did a javascript.open)
HTTP GET /
RESPONSE 200
RESPONSE 302 getthisfile.aspx
HTTP GET getthisfile.aspx
RESPONSE 200

Me: "Well, crap. Who or what is asking for '/' in the middle there?  What's the Headers look like?"

Additional Information #4: "Let's see...when the Response to the GET of / comes back...oh...doh, look at that: 

Set-Cookie:AUTHCOOKIE=; expires=Wednesday, 09-Nov-99 10:34:56 GMT;path=/

Me: "Hm...so clearly SOMEONE is tossing that cookie.  Well, the only place we erase that cookie is the login.aspx page.  Say, what's the DEFAULT page for this site?  It's login.aspx you say?  Oy.

CONCLUSION: When the Content Advisor is ON, Internet Explorer will request '/' from a site anytime a new window is opened.  It does this to request and cache the PICS data from either the page or the headers.  Turned out that on our site, when we opened a new window, IE would go and request the default page '/' which is set in IIS as login.aspx...and we had if(!IsPostBack) FormsAuthentication.SignOut() automatically logging folks out to be tidy.  The Content Advisor's overzealous retrieval of our default page logged the user out.  Damned interesting.

GOTCHA #2: One other thing to remember, if you DON'T have a PICS (Platform for Internet Content Selection) header in your Http Headers or as a META tag in your HTML then folks using Content Advisor in IE may not be able to view your site at all.

So, I just added a standard "I'm harmless" PICS header to the project-wide base page (in the OnLoad).

Response.AddHeader("pics-label","(pics-1.1 \"http://www.icra.org/ratingsv02.html\" comment \"ICRAonline EN v2.0\" l r (nz 1 vz 1 lz 1 oz 1 cz 1) \"http://www.rsac.org/ratingsv01.html\" l r (n 0 s 0 v 0 l 0))"

Also, there's a great PICS Rating Generator online as well.

About Scott

Scott Hanselman is a former professor, former Chief Architect in finance, now speaker, consultant, father, diabetic, and Microsoft employee. He is a failed stand-up comic, a cornrower, and a book author.

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