The Malaysian Rainforest

Today a bunch of us speakers went on a trek for 8 hours in the Malaysian Rainforest where we did battle with malaria laden bugs, leaches and lots of natural obstacles. At times it was sweltering hot (to quote Tim) and we had to strip down and cool off.

This was a truly amazing experience. We used a machete to cut through the jungle and climbed through water, drank water out of roots and learned basic jungle survival (like how to cut a water bottle out of bamboo-I don’t think my bamboo water bottle is going to make it through Thai customs tomorrow).

The reward of the day was a phenomenal series of waterfalls and lots of wildlife. 

The RegEx session went over very well. The crowd liked how my mom made my life difficult and helped me with this expression: Ste((v|ph)en|ve). They also found the flaw in this test for US Phone Numbers: 1-\(?\d{3}\)?-\d{3}-\d{4}

Code and slides avaliable here.

Top of the World-and TechEd

Last night we had dinner on the top of the world, in the world's tallest building, The Petronas Towers. I also found out I am the #1 ranked speaker so far at TechED, I am humbled.

Rozenshtein Comes to Asia...

Who said TSQL is not fun? Dr. Rozenshtein is now a popular man in KL. Code and slide download for DEV206 "Efficient and Secure Data Retrieval in Your Middle Tier Using Stored Procedures and ADO. NET " is available on gotdotnet here. Enjoy!

There is no code for EDM207 ".NET CF Database Development with SQL Server CE 2.0 ROI" since it is a case study.

Party KL Style

Ok, Clemens finally showed up and we did our usual routine: drink a lot, dance like wackos and have an awesome time at a local bar last night with some other speakers and local MS folkes. Too bad for Clemens that he had an early session, mine is not until 4pm. :)

DEV203 ASP .NET DataGrid Drill Down

Since Commnet and Wireless are down this is for those of you who attended DEV203 today, here is the code and slides download, examples in both VB and C#.

To Query String or Not to Query String

That is the question before Adam Cogan and I at breakfast this morning. He loves them. I hate them. He likes to make an HTMLa report and then use query strings to save the parameters and then email the URL to other people so that they can see the same thing. I’d rather save a view (parameters, etc) and let someone click on that. Or use postbacks. I don’t like Query Strings for a two main reasons reasons:

1. The user can change the query string and possibly see data they are not allowed to see, or you have to write code to prevent that.
2. Query Strings leave you wide open to SQL Injection Attacks and Denial of Service attacks (especially when you use sloppy code by concatenation of a SQL statement-something that you should NEVER do.) So you will have to write some RegEx expressions to validate the query strings.

Adam says that since you can code the responses to #1 and #2 query strings are useful and worth it. I tend to disagree and only use Query Strings when absolutely necessary. Who is right? We both are. It all depends on how much time and energy you are willing to spend, Adam wants particular functionality and is willing to pay (write validation code) for it, I am willing to pay (write functionality code) in different ways.

Today Scott Case, fellow RD Tim Huckaby, and I went to Kuala Gandah Elephant Conservation Centre in central Malaysia. This facility, run by the Malaysian Government, takes elephants that are endangered and relocates them to the protected natural rainforest where they roam just about free. The centre also looks after orphan elephants. We got to spend the day with some of the relocated elephants that have not entered the general population yet. I am talking up close in nature with some serious elephants-at times it was quite intimidating like when we had to run out of their way! That said this was one of the most amazing things that I have ever done in my life.

First we got to hang out with an orphan baby female elephant. She was very tame and really enjoyed having us pet her and play with her. She especially liked when we would put our hands in her mouth. At 20 months old she was already over 1,000 pounds!

Then we went into the preserve and hung out with five adults and a child elephant. This was a totally wild experience. After that we got the chance to bathe and hand feed the elephants. After washing and feeding them, they treated us to rides, on land in the river. While in the river the elephants liked to throw us overboard, we were told it was a sign of affection by our guide Razali-who was a very cool dude.

When we were all done, we visited another preserve and saw a nearly extinct bear (who loved me) and some deer and other cool animals. This was quite a unique experience.

What a great day to spend my off day at TechEd. Well it is back to work tomorrow, five sessions in 3 days!!

Where in the world is Clemens Vasters?

Clearly not in KL like he is suppose to be. I think Pat told me they are in Bangkok and that they do not get into KL until Tuesday.

Anyway get your asses here, we need to get drunk. Sicne June Clemens and I have gotten drunk together in North America, Africa and Europe. We need to add Asia to that list. Plus we have to get Scott Hanselman to party some too.

A Malaysian Brick-With an Australian

Adam Cogan who thinks that blogs are stupid and thinks that personal posts are even stupider did a brick with me today-we ran 5km and swam. (Well the swim was not as intense, but we went through the motions since we weight trained too after the run.)

While Adam can kick my ass in tennis as I learned the hard way back in 1998, he has no advantage over me while running. J

Meanwhile back in the good old USA, teammates Tom Halligan and Andy Catlin banged out 71.6 miles in the park Saturday as I learned when Tom called me to wake me up to tell me.

TechED Malaysia

Just arrived in Kuala Lumpur for TechED Malaysia. High speed internet in the hotel room, lots of RDs here and tons of technical sessions this week, what else could a geek want? Well maybe a shorter plane flight! :)

Off to dinner with Adam Cogan and then we have a day of fun tomorrow.

High speed internet just rocks, I am IMing with my lead developer and using remote desktop to push his changes up to stage, all in Asia and the dev and server are in New York.What did we do before IM, broadband, and Remote Desktop? Suffer I guess. :)

SARS?

Back when VSLive was in town and I was walking around with some speakers from around the world, they were suprised at the police and national guard presence in New York. I said that while the world has gotten back to normal after 9/11, New York has not.

Well getting off the plane in Hong Kong a while ago reminded me that SARS is still a problem. Had to take a body temp test and fill out medial forms, and I am just a transfer passanger.

Off to TechEd (and other Adventures)

I am off at 11pm tonight to TechED in Kuala Lumpur , Malaysia. I get into KL at 2pm on Saturday due to the international date line. Nothing like a 20+ hour flight to catch up on some sleep, watch some movies, and do some work. I am now doing 5 sessions in KL, was drafted to do a chalk talk:

CHK9 Chalk Talk: Developing Mobile Applications wit NET Compaq Framework & SQL Server CE 2.0

DATE/TIME: 8/28/2003 14:45

My other 4 sessions are:

DEV203 ASP .NET DataGrid Drill Down

DATE/TIME: 8/26/2003 12:00

EDM207 .NET CF Database Development with SQL Server CE 2.0 ROI

DATE/TIME: 8/27/2003 16:00

DEV206 Efficient and Secure Data Retrieval in Your Middle Tier Using Stored Procedures and ADO. NET.

DATE/TIME: 8/27/2003 17:30

DEV315 Using Regular Expressions in Windows Forms and ASP .NET

DATE/TIME: 8/28/2003 10:30

Looking forward to seeing my fellow RDs:

Adam Cogan (Australia)

Tim Huckaby (US-San Diego)

Clemens Vasters (Germany)

Scott Hanselman (US-Portland)