I just finished watching this excellent video of Aaron Patzer, the founder and CEO of Mint.com discussing the steps to getting a startup launched.  In the video, he shares both what the expectations were, and some of the actual data from getting mint.com up and running.

I found the video to be very interesting, and truly wish I could find a few more of these sorts of things out there, as I appreciate the educational value I garner from them.

Mint CEO Aaron Patzer on Startups from Techcrunch on Vimeo.

I’ve run into this problem a couple of times, but not often enough to remember it, so I’m “writing” it down here to help improve my memory.

I was trying to run a test against an ASP.Net MVC project, when I kept encountering an error, telling me the test wouldn’t run because the location of one of my DLL or the DLL itself wasn’t trusted…

What it basically was is that the DLL in question was from the internet, and Windows knows that, so it marked it as not trusted.  The solution was easy, as explained here: simply navigate to the DLL in question, and click the Unblock button. 

That article said “You may need to restart Visual Studio before the tests will run.”  I do remember that in doing this previously, I had to restart Visual Studio every time.

Oh, and a special note: When your test project is named very similarly to your project under test—make sure you find the right file.  That took me a few minutes, as I kept trying to unblock the one in my Web project, instead of my Test project.  (Like I said, my two are similarly named.)

I hope that helps someone, or maybe myself if/when I hit this again.

I’ve recently decided that I needed to make quite a number of updates to my web site.  The site was extremely stale, had a boring template, and there was no “live” aspect to it.  My blog (this one) was hosted on a separate sub domain, and didn’t really have any integration into the site.  I also have a site with a few code samples (more to come) primarily for proof of concept. 

So three sites, each with a different purpose, and no real integration between them other than the occasional hyperlink.  And each of the three sites have a totally different look and feel to them, so there’s no good way to just intrinsically feel like they’re connected.

For a couple of work projects, I’ve been making use of the ASP.Net MVC framework, and have really come to like it—far more so than my previous WebForms work.  That’s not to say that WebForms is bad technology, I truly feel that it has its place, but that place, for me, is not where I want to focus my efforts.

I started with a commercial HTML theme I purchased for my site.  (I’ve previously used some free templates, and have just never been completely happy with them—it’s as if the designers were more amateur than those publishing templates for sale.)  I adapted the template to fit my MVC project, put in some basic content, and deployed it; there’s no “real” MVC code going on at all in the app yet, just some views with static content, some error pages, and a small bit of blog integration.

Plans

I have some plans for the site that I hope to get to soon.  I’ve been using the excellent BlogEngine.Net application to host this blog, but am really thinking of doing a blog app of my own.  It’s been said lately that blog software is becoming the “hello world” of web development, but I think it could be an interesting experience anyway.

I have a dead implementation of the Slide.Show Silverlight sample application that I’d like to dump and turn into something much more usable for personal photos/content, etc.

I’d like to be able to have the small code samples available for download as well as a living part of the site.

My goals are to take many of the patterns and practices I’ve been learning and currently applying and try to apply them in a possibly better manner here.

In my work projects, I’ve been utilizing NHibernate for an O/RM, Microsoft’s Unity container for Dependency Injection.  Due to my general nature, I’d really like to take a look at Linq to SQL or Entity Framework, along with a different IoC container (maybe StructureMap or Ninject).  It’s not that I disapprove of the existing tools I’ve been working with—just that I find it educational to see where other approaches can take me.

I think it’ll be a fun experience.  I’m going to try to occasionally document what I’m up to—and hopefully I’ll get this blog and its existing content migrated to my new platform.

A coworker just posted some tips for working with a VPN connection on Windows—things that make our remote working lives a tiny bit easier.

I found a bunch of old emails earlier today, and this gem was in the mix.  No idea as to its original source:

A freshman at Eagle Rock Junior High won first prize at the Greater Idaho Falls Science Fair, April 26. He was attempting to show how conditioned we have become to the alarmists practicing junk science and spreading fear of everything in our environment. In his project he urged people to sign a petition demanding strict control or total elimination of the chemical "dihydrogen monoxide." And for plenty of good reasons, since it can:

1. cause excessive sweating and vomiting

2. it is a major component in acid rain

3. it can cause severe burns in its gaseous state

4. accidental inhalation can kill you

5. it contributes to erosion

6. it decreases effectiveness of automobile brakes

7. it has been found in tumors of terminal cancer patients

He asked 50 people if they supported a ban of the chemical.

Forty-three said yes, six were undecided, and only one knew that the chemical was water. The title of his prize winning project was, "How Gullible Are We?" The conclusion is obvious.