I love me some CardSpace, but I sure wish there was better documentation on how to use it, especially from WCF. The current documentation is very conceptual so you really only have the samples to go on, which sucks not to put too fine a point on it.

One example shows how to use WCS with WCF’s wsHttpBinding. However, it turns out you can also use WCS with WCF’s wsFederationHttpBinding. I’ve been experimenting with that binding talking to an STS, and it’s never invoked the WCS UI before. Why does this example invoke WCS? I’m guessing because it doesn’t specify an issuer in the config file, but I’d need to see documentation to be sure.

Also, using the federation binding appears to be the only way to request/demand additional claims beyond the private personal identifier (aka the PPID). If you want the client’s email address, name, address, etc, you need to specify that via the claimTypeRequirements of the binding’s messagesecurity element. But that configuration isn’t valid for the wsHttp binding. Why?

Finally, the two bindings produce different results on the security token. Using wsHttp, you get three claims: RSA Identity, RDA Possess Property and PPID Possess Property. When using wsFederationHttp, you get Hash Possess Property and PPID Possess Property (plus the claims you request). What happened to the RSA claims? If you attempt to add RSA to the claimTypeRequirements, CardSpace throws an error as an invalid request. Again, why? Keith Brown recently wrote about how to use the RSA claim, so it sounds like a valuable piece of information to have. How come the federation binding doesn’t send it?

I’m living in a tinder box, hosing down the roof
It’s raging all around me, and I still refuse to move
There’s a lesson I’m desperate to learn
And I’m willing to burn
“Willing To Burn” by Maia Sharp

• A warm welcome goes out to the 110th congress. Between the Democratic majority in both houses and Republicans looking to distance themselves from President Decider and his abysmal approval ratings, maybe we’ll actually get something accomplished in the next two years.
• Not as nice as USC trouncing Michigan, but I like seeing Notre Dame on the receiving end of a 41-14 beatdown from LSU in the Sugar Bowl. That’s the 9th consecutive bowl loss for the Irish.
• Actually started getting some work done yesterday. Today I’m doing some WCF STS work, but yesterday I focused on SSB and WF.
• I need to better understand WF’s faulting and compensation model. I got sidetracked yesterday when I realized that when a WF instance faults, the built-in SQL persistence service deletes the persisted instance from the database. That doesn’t seem right to me, but I was wrong last time I called out the WF SQL persistence service so I want to do more digging before I open my trap.
• I dig WF persistence. I wrote a few weeks ago about shipping a WF instance to a developer for debugging. Yesterday, I thought about having a persistence service that kept a history of the WF instance rather than overwriting it. I wonder if that would help with production debugging?
• Great quote yesterday by my boss, speaking ill of a project that will remain nameless:
  “Basically, they’ve spent the last month building an executive presentation to say we’re screwed”

Late start + early meeting = short post today

• Want a free SAAB? Drop a line to my boss. Note, you have to be willing to steal it.
• Saw Clerks II last night. It was the first Kevin Smith movie I haven’t seen in the theaters since the original. Better than I expected, but it’s time for Kevin to move on to new material.
• Unlike most avid movie fans I know, I’m not a NetFlix customer. Nothing against them, but I’ve never been moved to sign up. But we did just sign up for the free trial of Blockbuster Total Access. Basically, it’s a clone of NetFlix, but you can bring your movies back to your local Blockbuster store and get a free rental on the spot. Plus, you get eCoupons (I think once a month) which are good for free movie or DVD rentals in the store. We’ll see how it goes.
• As expected, I didn’t get much done yesterday. I don’t think anyone did around here. I did pave the dev partition on my laptop. My laptop isn’t very Vista friendly and we blew our hardware budget on new desktops (which I am definitely not complaining about) so I’m still on XP.
• I wonder how well SQL MobileAnywhere Compact Edition works with ASP.NET? Seems like that would be a better choice than SQL Express for small websites like personal blogs.
• Almost finished getting Christmas put away. What with the wind storm, it seems like it went by very fast this year.

I gave up drinkin’, I gave up smokin’
I gave up thinkin’ all the time, stone cold revoken
No reason to my rhyme, I wasn’t jokin’
If there’s a phony bone in me, I want it broken
“Rub It In” by All Day Sucker

I’m trying to write more in 2007. Here’s a roundup of stuff rattling around my brain:

• Fight On! So much for Michigan and their bleating about being left out of the championship game. Also, massive congrats to Boise State.
• Santa did bring me free time this holiday, but I spent it playing games rather than writing them. I’m digging Gears (big surprise) and Dead Rising, and I’ve starting playing Viva Pinata with Patrick. Plus, I finished GRAW which I had on loan from a friend just in time to start playing Vegas. Note I said “free time” which is to say time when I wasn’t hanging out with my family. Typically during naps or after everyone was in bed, though I did skip at least one birthday party to play instead.
• We had a “surprise” snow storm two days after Christmas. Not enough to be dangerous driving, but enough to make a snowman with my kids. It’s still there, though now that it’s 55 degrees, I’m guessing it will be totally melted by the time I get home from work. It’s been melting a little bit each day, so it’s been like watching the climax of Raiders of the Lost Ark in slow motion.
• My wife and I finished watching season 5 of Alias last night. Fun, though it had really jumped the shark by Season 5. We watched the entire series on DVD, which really makes me wonder about the future of broadcast TV. We watched season 1 of Lost on DVD but we’ve been watching on TV ever since. I’m hooked on Lost, so there’s no way I could go back to DVDs at this point, but I’m thinking that DVD is a better way to go for most TV. I wonder how this will change TV storytelling.
• I wish I could see how a show like Lost or Alias evolves over time. How much of the Rimbaldi story arc was mapped out before the show started? How did the production team deal with forced changes like Jennifer Garner’s pregnancy or the apparently surprise series cancellation?
• I had 12 days off for the holidays, so it’s very tough to be back at work. As I suggested above, I did very little coding while I was off, so getting back in the saddle won’t be easy. It’s especially hard on my little boy that I’m back to work. He was acting up yesterday which is fairly unusual. I finally asked him if he was sad about me going back to work and he broke down crying. I’m very lucky to be a part of such a tight knit family.
• I’ve been in my “new” job for six months, but it seems like longer. I mean that in a good way. It feels like I fit better in this job, on a much smaller team, actually building stuff instead of just “evangelizing” it. Nothing against evangelism, I just think I burned out on that job.

So starts a new feature on DevHawk. As you might guess from the “1″ in the title, I’m hoping to make this a regular feature. As I ease back into work, expect more tech related nuggets along with the more random stuff. I should admit, however, that I actually don’t drink coffee. 😄

My wife was poking around on YouTube and found two videos she wanted to show me. The first was a music video from a band called okgo where they dance on treadmills. Interesting for about 60 seconds. Unfortunately, the video is three minutes long. Still, it is currently #8 on YouTube’s Most Watched All Time list. The other was a much funnier video called Stick Magnetic Ribbons on Your SUV (sung to the tune of Tie a Yellow Ribbon ‘Round the Old Oak Tree). The song is by the Asylum Street Spankers and the video was produced by Devil’s Night Productions.

Among Devil’s Night’s other work is an almost unknown movie called Matters of Consequence that stared Morty Coyle. Morty fronts a band called All Day Sucker, which was born out of the ashes of a band called THE iMPOSTERS. Back when I lived in LA, I used to go see THE iMPOSTERS pretty much whenever they played. This must have been the second half of 1996, when I was dealing with a massively broken heart. They had a regular gig every week, though I forget the name of the place. But I was there, pretty much every week. I used to carry Morty around the club on my shoulders during the harmonica solo of Rational Anthem. Wow, was that really 10 years ago?

Anyway, you check out a few songs from of All Day Sucker on their MySpace page. Some of the songs – Heavy Weather and Rub It In – date back to the iMPOSTERS days. Their album is available from CD Baby and from Zune, Rhapsody and iTunes. (No direct link for artists on Zune?) Check them out.

It’s amazing how small the world seems when you run across old friends online like this. Especially when the recent wind storm and power outage two weeks ago served as such a rude reminder of just how big the world really is, regardless of how it seems.