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It's About Time for a Dunkin' Run

You’re sitting in your cubicle, amongst the other cubicles in the giant cube-farm that is called your office. It’s the beginning of your Monday and you realize that you’re just not going to have enough to make it through the rest of your day, much less the rest of the week. What you need are DONUTS!

dunkin-run

Now, if you just left quietly on a little break and then walked back in later with donuts, in most employee manuals that’s grounds for dismissal. Not sure if it’s because you left, or because you didn’t bring donuts back for everyone.

In these days of social media we need an application that makes it easy for you to work with your coworkers and bring back the food of the cube-farm gods to make it through your week. You need the Dunkin’ Run website from Dunkin’ Donuts!

It just takes 4 steps:

  • INVITE: Start a run at DunkinRun.com from your computer, mobile device, or our iPhone application . You are now "the runner", and pick which friends you’d like to invite by providing their email or mobile phone number (no spaces or dashes e.g. 1234567890).
  • ORDER: Select what you want from the menu, and we’ll contact your friends and tell them to do the same.
  • RUN: Go get the goods. We’ll compile all orders for you, and you can print it out or have it sent to your mobile device (if you print it, just hand the print out to the Dunkin’ crew member at the shop and they’ll take it from there).
  • ENJOY! Bring the goodies back, and enjoy the deliciousness, along with the hero worship from your friends.

Go ahead and be the hero of your office. Go to the Dunkin’ Run website and go grab some coffee and donuts for your colleagues.

Uncover some Dunkin’ Donuts and coffee for your team

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Using Multiple Connections for ASP.NET Development

This may not be a tip that's too outstanding for everyone, but I've recently started employing the tweak to help me in my web development tasks. One of the challenges for me in development is that the data source for my web pages may change depending on my location on specific testing need. This tip shows you how to easily manage those changes on the fly.

Depending on the situation, I could be working on the development of a website while working completely off a local copy of the database. Later I may need to point the web pages to a different database for testing that could be on one of the other corporate machines. Lastly, I could need to point the development to the live production server.

I used to accomplish this by having multiple versions of the web.config file that would point to each location. Now instead I add all the connection strings into a single web.config file and then comment out all of those that I'm not using.

I use Microsoft Visual Web Developer 2008 Express as my development tool and I can easily manage the web.config file internally and use one-click toolbar buttons to comment or uncomment out portions of the code.

UPDATE: Microsoft has discontinued their Visual Studio Express product and replaced it with the Visual Studio Community. Here's a nice article from the folks at Spreadsheeto on the change and differences between the two offerings from Microsoft.

Now I don't have to worry about maintaining multiple web.config files and making sure I mirror any changes in one with all the others. Now I just use one file and have all the connection strings available at anytime as needed.

Image: Screen capture of web.config development interface

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48 Days – Finding the Work You Love

In this economy it’s probably not the best time or what you would think is the best time to go looking for another job. There’s not much available out there and if you’ve already got a job that’s paying the bills and is secure as you can imagine it is, why switch. The answer is because of the importance and reward of finding the work you love.

48-days

A number of years ago I heard about Dan Miller and his 48 Days site and decided to order the package. I heard about it after I’d been laid off from my job of seven years that I loved. I decided to read the book to find out more about myself and what really did interest me in a job. It was a great resource.

The 48 Days website has much of the same information provided in the book, as well as doing some more things that weren’t available when I first read it. Now Dan has a podcast that appears to be doing well too.

There’s a reason it’s called "work" but it’s also true that if you find the right job, you’ll never have to "work" another day in your life. Finding employment or a vocation that makes you happy is an amazing reward, the 48 Days website can help you achieve that goal.

Uncover the work you love at 48 Days with Dan Miller

Image: Screenshot of 48 Days website