AnyDVD's "Rip To Image" feature is meant only for HD/BluRay discs, not standard-def DVDs. You could experience compatibility issues if you continue to use it. I personally use CloneDVD to rip my discs to ISO format for playback.

They certainly make me wish I liked seafood.

I have a few friends who work as waitresses at a Red Lobster, and I've always referred to them as "Lobsteritas". I guess I'll have to come up with a new term.

Too late now. The course is paid for and I've already got about 25% of it completed. But I can certainly supplement the class with additional books and practices.

I currently employ zero project management techniques. My boss says "we need the ability to do XXXXX. Go do it." I invent some sort of turn-around time which is almost always grossly inaccurate, and I get started working. Halfway through the project, we discover we forgot that in order to do XXXXX we first need to do YYYYY and we'd also like to add ZZZZZ. And with that, the two week estimate turns into 6 months of actual work. I don't expect the class to make me an expert in project management, but in my case, my boss and I NEED some sort of foundation of standards and practices. Also, I now have a developer working under me, so it will only compound our problems if he's just wandering about without some sort of real direction as to what tasks he's to accomplish.

It's the "Certificate in Project Management" course, which almost exclusively references the PMBOK guide.

I'm actually going through the PMBOK online course from Boston University right now. I have about 2400 pages of PDF text to read, containing fascinating copy such as: "Project Integration processes provide the methodology to identify, define, combine, unify, and coordinate all the processes and activities defined in the five Project Management Process Groups." I'm lucky if I can read 200 pages of that drivel a day.

Josh Gray wrote:

In your case I suspect you are going to have to do quite a bit of adjusting to working with someone else. If it's going to just be the two of you you'll really need to get along so take your time and be confident in your decision.

You hit the nail on the head. The idea of bringing on a second developer has been brought up once or twice in the past 2 years or so and I've always resisted it. I'm having a hard time trying to accept that someone else is going to be touching projects that I've worked very hard on and take great pride in. I'll freely admit that I'm a total hack and certainly, someone else could come in and easily improve my software--and by extension--my work abilities. I just have a fear of constantly butting heads with someone who has a Masters in CS telling me that my app doesn't follow a single design methodology and is insistent that we do things THEIR way.

I agree with you 100%. To me it's more important to see how someone approaches a problem rather than their command an particular language. I suppose this is the part of the interviewing process that I'm having difficulty with. I think I'll use your second test question as I think it gives some valuable insight as to how a candidate thinks. And for the record, I'd never be able to hire you simply because your prefix your SQL tables with "tbl", and that drives me nuts :-D Thanks again for the tips and help.

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:

Tip #1: Don't waste your money with worthless recruiting / head-hunter firms. Place an ad on Dice and you will get the exact same resume list head-hunters will give you.

Not my decision. As I mentioned in an earlier reply, this company provides various hiring services for us and my boss was adamant that we pass the buck onto them.

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:

Tip #2: A code test is a good pre-screening tool. Best to require it use data you publish from a webservice you control. You would be surprised at how many ".NET Developers" cannot access a web service. Give a dead-line for submission.

I like this idea a lot. I was balking at the idea of giving an extensive test during the interview itself, as I (nor the candidate I'm sure) don't want to sit around my office for however long it takes to complete a test-of-skills application. This would allow me to make them do it on their own time, and I could spend my time reviewing it with them rather than twiddling my thumbs waiting for them to complete it.

Ennis Ray Lynch, Jr. wrote:

Tip #3: You get what you pay for

Ultimately, this also is not up to me. I don't sign the checks. My boss' motto is simply "Get the #1 best person we can for the price we are paying". I interviewed a young, affable guy the other day who said he'd be happy with $30k. But he had no college degree and only about a year and half of actual experience. Contrast that with the international candidates who are asking for every penny we're willing to offer. To me, saving the money might make it worth considering the first candidate. To my boss, it's a waste because he won't be 100% ready to sit down and work on day one.

We tried last year to find and hire a person on our own, with no success. We already have this recruiter on retainer for some other head-hunting, so my boss is adamant that we use him to find the developer as well. In my area there is a surprising lack of developers based on the current demand.

I think that's a great list of questions to ask. The test I administered previously was something like this: 1. Write a class with the following properties xxx and has a method that returns yyyy 2. Write a stored procedure that updates xxxx table and takes yyy parameters And basically, more questions of that sort. But I like your approach of asking about concepts rather than just tasks.

I can appreciate that and I'd hardly expect (or want to hire) anyone to spend the majority of their free time programming. But I feel like any potential candidate should have at least ONE sample of their work. It could be a school project, or something they made solely for the purpose of having it in a portfolio. When I first graduated and started going on interviews, I actually built a small e-commerce site just so that I'd have something to show employers.

That may or may not be feasible simply because: 1. They may not own a laptop 2. Their development work may belong to their previous employer, so it's proprietary, private or not even in their personal possession (say that 3 times, fast). Although that does bring up a good point: I've asked ones who couldn't provide me with a code sample due to either #1 or #2 above to give me a sample of a personal project they worked on in their free time. To me, when they still *can't* provide a code sample--because they don't do any development in their free time--it tells me that they're not too serious about developing their skills. I may have 75,000 un-finished projects that I've started in my spare time, but at least there's something to be said for taking it upon myself to learn some new things and get some practice.

Personality is important, but my boss is very insistent that anyone we hire should be able to get up to speed almost immediately. I've interviewed plenty of nice people that I would enjoy working with, but unfortunately they were all fairly inexperienced and my boss wasn't willing to spend 6 months to train them.

My company has decided that after 4 years of me doing 100% of the IT work, we need another developer. This person will work directly under my supervision and be tasked with maintaining a C# distributed WinForms app as well as some ASP.NET work. We've hired a headhunter to pre-qualify candidates and set up phone & in-person interviews. And this is the point where my inexperience with hiring really comes to light. I'm getting a little better at the face-to-face and phone interviews, but I'm still not sure how to qualify a person skill-wise. It seems like right now all I'm doing is saying things like "Do you know C#? Have you use SQL Server?" And naturally the candidate tells me that yes, they have. Can anyone give me some tips on how to gauge just HOW experienced or skilled someone might be in the areas that I require? I've asked for code samples, but some candidates can't provide that as it is most likely property of their previous employer. And I'm not sure that 1 class file will really give me a good reference point as to their skill level when taken out of the context of a project as a whole. I've also considered giving a small test, but I'm not too sure how long or difficult I should make it. Suggestions or comments from those that have experience with hiring and interviewing would be most appreciated at this point.

The OpenFileDialog is for Windows Forms, not ASP.NET. You need to allow the user to upload a file from their computer to your server. Your server cannot read files on a client's machine.

You mention ASP.NET, so do you really want the user to upload an image from their machine to your server?

The DevExpress free XtraEditors library (http://www.devexpress.com/Products/Free/WebRegistration60/[^]) might include the CheckedComboBox control. It's not listed on the site, but it's a part of the XtraEditors library, so I think it's just an oversight on their part. Also, their PopupContainerEdit control allows you to embed any editor into a popup combo box control.

I actually had to convert a 26 page to Excel yesterday. While Acrobat has a "copy to table" option, I found that the formatting was messed up if a column contained blank cells. I downloaded a free trial of Able2Extract from http://www.investintech.com/pdftoxls.html[^] and had all 26 pages converted in a few minutes.