Disable touchpad on dell latitude with 64bit Windows 7 – Alps driver

After installing Windows 7 on my Dell Latitude D620, I couldn’t find a  driver to disable the touchpad (It was not automatically installed).
After scanning google and the Dell support website, I finally stumbled acrross this post.

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Removing attached object (1..n relation) in the Entity Framework

When having 1…n relation between a base object and a list of other object, e.g. when a tournament has a list of players, removing one of the players from the list isn’t as obvious as one might expect.
var t = DB.Tournament.FirstOrDefault(c => c.Id == idTournament);
var g = DB.Golfer.FirstOrDefault(x => x.Id == idGolfer);
t.Golfer.Attach(g);
t.Golfer.Remove(g);
DB.SaveChanges();
This Stack Overflow post [...]

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Table treated as view when no primary key is defined in the DB

I was receiving the following error:
Unable to update the EntitySet ‘Player’ because it has a DefiningQuery and no element exists in the element to support the current operation.
Turns out that Entity Framework treats tables that are created without an explicit primary key, as views, and therefore does not generate an update function.   [...]

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Linq to entities insert problem – make sure the qualifiedEntitySetName is correct

After drinking cold coffee in agony for 24 hours over the Insert functionality in Linq to Entities, I finally stumbled up on a good solution.  I had been getting errors like ..  “The member with identity ‘Entities’ does not exist in the metadata collection. Parameter name: identity” in the Context.AddObject() method.
First of all I found the core [...]

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You know that you are having fun programming …

… when the coffee turns cold before you have time to have a sip.
.. and you are having too much fun when you drink that cold cup of coffee because you don’t want to spend time away from the code to get another (hot) one  :)

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Dynamic Linq to Entities – using Like conditions

I have been using L2E for a while, and I am pleasantly surprised with what I have seen so far.  Today I ran into one of the expected walls, building dynamic queries (based on incoming request params).  Finding a solution to this I stumbled onto Dynamic Linq.

http://weblogs.asp.net/scottgu/archive/2008/01/07/dynamic-linq-part-1-using-the-linq-dynamic-query-library.aspx
http://www.west-wind.com/Weblog/posts/143814.aspx
http://naspinski.net/post/Writing-Dynamic-Linq-Queries-in-Linq-to-Entities.aspx

Having downloaded a single class implementation for the dynamic [...]

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Refreshing view on “Bad agile”

http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2006/09/good-agile-bad-agile_27.html
If you have a few minutes to spare, reading this good-agile-bad-agile article offers loads of fun and is a mental reset on agile if you inhale every word.

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Agile software process tools review

Going through my annual review of the software development process tools on the market.  As the world moves to agile I am stunned by the lack of comprehensive tools available.  Maybe everybody is waiting for Microsoft to catch up and don’t dare enter this niche … ?   This is a more of a checklist for me [...]

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Are you doing a good job? :)

Most people think that they do pretty good work (even if they don’t). It’s just a little trick our minds play on us to keep life bearable. (joelonsoftware.com)

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Software project management basics

Found a great article by Esther Derby while browsing through SCRUM user groups.  (http://www.stsc.hill.af.mil/CrossTalk/2006/11/0611Derby.html)  The very bare basics of being a software development manager.  Articles of excellence which I have seen too many examples of being absent from people struggling to control software development departments and organization.

Decide What To Do and What Not To Do [...]

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