Recurring 8am Friday meetings are not my style.

• I’ve been tracking WCF for a long time. Yet, it’s still a dauntingly large topic. Yesterday I spoke to a friend who works in Windows Live who is just beginning to learn about WCF and it’s literally overwhelming him. His reaction reminded me of my early reactions to COM. It feels like no matter how much you learn about WCF, the “pile” of stuff still to learn doesn’t shrink. In contrast, while my initial exposure to the .NET Framework was overwhelming, eventually I got to the point where I felt like I had a good handle on what was in there.
• With all the configuration settings in WCF, the number of valid combinations is astronomical. While WCF’s configuration based approach is arguably more flexible than a code based approach, it’s also more complex and harder to debug in my experience. Config debugging seems to be an endless cycle of tweaking the config file and running the app to see what the effect is. We need better tools than SvcConfigEditor.
• Responding to yesterday’s Morning Coffee, Jon Flanders confirmed via email that the built-in SQL WF persistence service “doesn’t recover from faults to the last good persistence point” and that “when a fault happens, the instance closes and…is removed from the persistence database.” Is this the right behavior? I’m thinking it depends on the workflow. More on this later.
• I’m trying to get my teammates to start using the Beyond Bullet Points approach to the various presentations we build as a team. Interestingly enough, it’s been easier to get my team to adopt an agile development methodology than to adopt the Beyond Bullet Point presentation methodology. I would have expected the opposite.
• The Caps trounced the Canadiens last night, ending a five game losing streak. I’m not that worried about the losing streak – the Caps have had several players out with the flu. But beating Montreal, who came into the game twelve games above .500, so badly is a good sign. And how about Nycholat? Two goals and four assists in seven games since he was called up from Hershey. Even more impressive, he’s +2 even though the Caps were 2-5 and outscored 24-18 in those seven games while averaging nearly 21 minutes of ice time per game. Here’s hoping Nycholat stays hot.

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. 😄