Letter of the week---November 27, 2008

My thanks to a reader who sent this email to me yesterday...

Mr. Smiley

I purchased your book about a week and a half ago. I already passed half the book and I can tell you is that this the best introductory book I have ever read..It's worth every penny.

You know, I was getting frustrated with other books and sometimes I got to a point where I thought programming was not for me, but your book is so nicely written and so understandable that I am have progressed more in this short time then ever before.

I just want to thank you and I really really appreciate you took the dedication and time to write this book.

I think, thanks to your book I can eventually have a sucessful career.

New Jersey Employee Search

Know anyone who works in State Government?

Apparently, you can query their name here, and find out their salary for the year 2007...

http://php.app.com/NJpublicemployees/search.php

You can also query an entire town.

Cinnaminson---Blue Newspaper Recycling Buckets

Anyone know the schedule of delivery for the new Blue Newspaper Recycling buckets I'm seeing in parts of Cinnaminson?

I subscribe to 3 newspapers a week, and I have so many newspapers that I recently purchased a big blue storage bucket of my own to accommodate the every-other-week recycling pickup.

Based on my usage, you would have thought that our household would be one of the first to get these.

Update, Tuesday, November 25th.

Well, the blue buckets came rolling down Pomona Road, and I am now the proud owner (recipient) of a blue newspaper recycling bucket, can. I think it holds about 60 gallons, so bucket is an understatement.

Another Plagarism Site

Any computer authors out there?

See if your book is being plagarized here...my C++ book is...

http://hates.home.anadolu.edu.tr/books/Computer/

Fan Mail---Letter of the week

I just received this very nice email from a student/reader who bought my book last week---nice emails like this inspire me to keep writing in the face of overwhelming obstacles to just quit and watch the Eagles frustrate me with another close loss :)

By the way, here is the Amazon.com link to the book this reader is talking about....

http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-C-John-Smiley/dp/0072222611/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1227460659&sr=1-7

It's listed as being out-of-print, but I have the rights to sell it, and have republished it under my Smiley Publishing brand. I have a hundred copies right behind me if anyone needs one.

Hi John,

I hope you remember me. I purchased your book about a week and a half ago. I already passed half the book and I can tell you is that this the best introductory book I have ever read..It's worth every penny.

You know, I was getting frustrated with other books and sometimes I got to a point where I thought programming was not for me, but your book is so nicely written and so understandable that I am have progressed more in this short time then ever before.

I just want to thank you and I really really appreciate you took the dedication and time to write this book.

I think, thanks to your book I can eventually have a sucessful career. I am eager to learn more. By the way, do you have a continuation book for C#?....It would be great if you did. Or if you don't, can you recommend me one from another source....

I need to get up to pace because I would eventually like to get Microsoft Certified in .NET in the near future.

As you can tell I joined your C# group in Facebook but I am the only member there.

Page Views

My website stats indicate that this page averages over 1,000 views per day

http://www.johnsmiley.com/cis18.notfree/smiley029/smiley029.htm

Now how can I make money on it?

I've tried 'turning it off' for a week, and asking people to make a donation. One person did.

I've tried putting a 'donation' button on the top---no one did.

I've recently placed Yahoo ads on the top---nothing obvious, although just now I've modified my Yahoo reporting criteria to let me know how well that page is doing.

More to follow.

ASP.Net Question of the week (Friday, November 21, 2008)

Question.

I swear I've looked all through the tool box in Visual Web Developer Express and there is no control named Web Server control.

Answer:

It can be confusing. There are HTML controls and there are also Web Server Controls.

HTML controls, if you are familiar with HTML, are controls that work with the HTML object model--such as radio buttons, buttons, forms, etc. You can code these directly into an HTML page.

ASP.Net permits you to use these controls in an ASP.Net page--which makes sense.

In addition, ASP.Net also provides additional controls beyond the HTML like controls. This also makes sense since, as a developer, you are looking for greater functionality than mere HTML controls--after all, that's why you're learning ASP.Net. These additional controls can be bunched into a category called Web Server Controls.

This page from MSDN does a decent job of describing the categories...

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/zsyt68f1.aspx


In the old days, this would have been printed and included in the Product documentation.