Senior Software Engineer – Mainframe Migration to .NET

T3 Technologies’ mission is to help liberate small and medium sized customers from the grips of IBM mainframe costs and bring them to the world of .NET quickly, accurately and in a cost effective manner. Our development team is responsible for providing tooling to our migration specialists to help fill gaps in the migration solution and improve productivity and efficiency. T3 has immediate openings for contract or permanent positions for Software Engineers. The positions are remote, but candidate must live in the United States.

A Software Engineer at T3 is responsible for developing smart and unique solutions to difficult problems. This could be a one time solution to fill an immediate need for a migration project, or it could be to develop a large scale tool that will be reused over and over on future migrations. Tooling is typically built in either .NET/C# or in COBOL and provides a rare opportunity to experience many different technologies, both new and legacy, day to day.

Candidates must have experience and knowledge in: Microsoft .NET, C#, SQL Server and Regular Expressions, as well as knowledge in mainframe programming technologies such as COBOL, CICS, JCL, and VSAM. We are interested in building a well-rounded team, so stronger experience is acceptable on either the Microsoft .NET or mainframe side, however knowledge of both sides is a requirement. Candidates must be self-driven and be capable of staying on task while working independently. Experience with working remote is preferred. Please send a cover letter, resume and references to Robert Lair, Development Manager at robertlair@t3t.com.

AOL Mail in Silverlight 2

AOL Mail now has a RIA application built in Silverlight 2.  From what I have seen so far, it is pretty snazzy.  Signing up for email there is free, and you can even reactivate your old AOL screen name for free.  Check it out at: http://ria.webmail.aol.com

FYI: The above screen shot is from the Mac OS, showing off Silverlight’s true platform independence.

Hat Tip: April Russo

Beginning Silverlight 2: From Novice to Professional

I am very pleased to announce that my latest book Beginning Silverlight 2: From Novice to Professional (Apress 2009), is released!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590599527

http://www.apress.com/book/view/1590599527

I will be shortly posting the source for the book and will of course be posting any updates as they come in.  If you own the book and like it, I would greatly appreciate if you would add a review on Amazon supporting the book.

I am also currently making plans for a Silverlight 3 book, so if there is anything you would like to see in that book (that either isn’t in the Silverlight 2 version, or something in the Silverlight 2 version that you definitely want to see again for Silverlight 3), then feel free to contact me.  One snag in the process is that apparently I let robertlair.com expire and it was snagged by one of those “give me $1500” services, so I am currently working on a replacement site.  Soon robertlair.net will be up and running and I will be posting additional files and information there.

You can also contact me directly at robertlair at gmail dot com.

For fans of “The Big Bang Theory”

For all of you fans of “The Big Bang Theory,”  I am sure you have enjoyed some of the T-Shirts that Sheldon and Leonard wear, or the fancy gadgets such as the Flipboard Clothing Folding Board.  And even more, I am sure you have thought “WHERE CAN I GET COOL STUFF LIKE THAT?”  Yep, I know you have, do not deny it.  Well, someone has gone to the trouble to look up all the different T-Shirts and linked to where you can get it.  So if you just HAVE to have that Caffine Molecule T-Shirt, then you know where to get it.  The website is located at: http://www.sheldonshirts.com.

Enjoy!

Installing WSS 3.0 on a Windows Server 2003 VM

The following steps are what I followed to get WSS 3.0 successfully running on my Windows Server 2003 Virtual Machine.

1. Installed the Application Server (IIS) and Mail Server (POP3/SMTP) Roles.

   Administrative Tools –> Manage Your Server, click on the Add or remove a role link, and follow the instructions to add the two roles above.

2. Install Microsoft .NET 2.0.
3. Check that ASP.NET 2.0 is an allowed web extension.

   For me this took a few steps, because ASP.NET didn’t even show up in the list for me in Web Extensions.  To fix this, open a command prompt (Start –> Run), then navigate to the v2.0.50727 directory under C:\Windows\Microsoft .NET\Framework.  Once you are there, type the following command.

   aspnet_regiis.exe -iru -enable

   After you get the successful message, go back to Web Extensions under IIS and refresh.  You should then see ASP.NET v2 in the list and allowed.  If it isn’t allowed, click to allow it.

4. Download the latest version of WSS 3.0.  You can get that here.
5. I just used Basic install.  After the install was finished, I accepted to allow SharePoint to configure.
6. After this finished, it browsed to my WSS 3.0 Portal!

Awesome Free Mind Mapping Tool (Web-Based)

Today I was searching for a free mind mapping tool that I could use on my MacOS and ideally one that I could use on Windows as well and sync between the two.  In my searching, I came across this gem.  It is 100% web based, and free.  I was very skeptical of how good it could be given its pricetag as well as the fact that it was completely web-based, however after using it, I am very impressed. The tool is called wisemapping, and the following is a screenshot:

WiseMapping.com

If you are into mind mapping, you really need to give this one a try!

http://www.wisemapping.com

Join in on the “Do-Goodery”

Over at FriendFeed.com, one of the best ideas I have seen in a while is taking place. The idea is that everyone has spare time during the week, and we all have our areas of expertise.  What if we all help each other with issues in those areas during that “spare hour.” each week?  I must say, I joined without any thoughts of asking for time, and I have already found 3 people that are going to help me with some areas that I need help with.

So join in on the Do-Goodery! (Thanks Anna for the great phrase)

http://friendfeed.com/rooms/freehour

If anyone is interested, my friendfeed.com url is: http://friendfeed.com/robertlair

ScreenCaptures in Mac

The last two weeks I have been adapting to my new MacBook Pro.  I am running Vista x64 Ultimate in BootCamp and VMWare Fusion 2.  I run it in Unity, so I run my MacOS applications next to my Vista applications such as Visual Studio 2008 and Microsoft Word 2007.  (I use 2007 instead of Mac’s version of Word, because Word 2008 for the Mac SUCKS royally).  Anyway, for my book I need to be able to take screencaptures.  I can either take screencaptures from the PC, but I figured, why not just take screencaptures through MacOS.  So I learned that you can take a screenshot of a given window by pressing: COMMAND + SHIFT + 4, then SPACE, then click on the window to capture.  That saves the windows screencapture to the desktop.  However, it saves it as a PNG, which will not do for publishing. So needed to save as TIFF instead.  To do that, from a Terminal window in MacOS I type the following command:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture type tiff
killall SystemUIServer

Now, when it saves the screencaptures it saves them in TIFF format.  Pretty nice!

More information on Screen Captures in Mac OS

New .NET Logo

There is a new .NET Logo.

New .NET Logo

Silverlight 2 Released Today? … Ok… TOMORROW!

Quite a bit of rumors out there that indicate that today is the day that Silverlight 2 will be released.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/microsoft/?p=1634

Update: The announcement was that it will be released tomorrow.  🙂

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2008/oct08/10-13Silverlight2PR.mspx