When I first discovered ASP.NET MVC, I was about to begin development on a brand new project at work.  Since I come from a more “pure” background of web development (not Web Forms), I immediately got excited when I heard about this new framework.  The pieces began to click in my mind.. *finally* an ASP.NET that doesn’t rely on the drag and drop experience and hide the true nature of the web, I thought. Day after day I would read articles and watch conference videos about this new and exciting way to build web apps with ASP.NET.  Around the...

This tip applies to Visual Studio 2008 and Windows Installer (Setup) Projects.  They’re used to create *.msi installers for deploying applications. I was having some weird issues with my setup project.  When I tested the installer against the previous version of the installer, it would run fine without reporting any errors, but when I launched my application, the changes I made weren’t showing up.  Odd, I thought.  I figured the installer wasn’t working properly.  What I was expecting was an uninstall to show up before the install ran.  This is actually the behavior in Visual Studio 2005...

I’m sure many of you have seen this arcade game in a local mall or arcade.. This is the face of pure evil. It’s called Stacker.  The object of the game is to stack blocks on top of each other.. it’s simple.. but deceptively so.  You start with 3-block lines, and as you go up it’s sliced down to 2-block lines, and finally down to 1-block lines.. It’s so addictive, and here’s why.. these Stacker machines are prize vending games.  Usually they’ll have some great prizes like an Xbox 360, Wii, or other high...

Did you know that you can upgrade from Windows Vista to Windows 7 for almost nothing?  You only have to pay the cost of shipping ($9.99). There is a catch though.. You must have purchased your copy of Vista between June 26, 2009 and January 31, 2010 to be eligible, and you also need to send a copy of your receipt to Microsoft. In addition, you must have a version of Vista that corresponds to the version of Windows 7 that you want.  More details below.. Equivalent Windows Vista products for Windows 7 Windows Vista...