If your a lender and you tell the Press/Public that Foreclosures are bad and that your doing every thing you can not to foreclose, follow through.  The Truth about Mortgage reports a survey by California Reinvestment Collation "survey says few lenders making loan modifications".  The survey finds that while lenders have the intent to avoid foreclosure they are none the less avoiding loan modifications and foreclosing.  

Since I deal with a large VC++ of native-managed code I am glad to see Somasegar's list of VC++ performance enhancements in Visual studio 2008

· Editor responsiveness – Updating IntelliSense, displaying the QuickInfo tooltip and processing AutoComplete requests won’t degrade editor experience.

· Goto Definition improvements – Significant reduction in the time required to “Goto Definition”.  One customer reported that a 2 minute delay dropped to 10-20 seconds.

· Load solution performance – Load time of large Visual C++ solutions is much better.  Some customers are reporting speed ups of 25%-70%.

· File lookup in projects – Provides improvements to several scenarios such as adding files to projects, changing configurations, etc.

· Changing configuration options – Modifying options, such as adding an include directory or changing the active configuration, are much faster for large solutions.

· Reduced CPU consumption – We now process low-priority background items (such as IntelliSense population) using 20% less CPU time.

I have had to deal with slow IntelliSense and solution load times. All of these issues affect my daily use of VS.  Its great that the VC++ is finally able to address them.  Its even better to hear there will be a patch for VS 2005.

Scott Gu announced the releasing of .Net framework libraries (Microsoft Reference License).  This is good news its some thing that i miss very much when not working with the MFC libraries.  Truth be told you could already view and to some extent debug the .NET Framework with reflector but first class support in VS 2008 is defiantly great news.  Scott Hanselman appears to already have a Hansel Minutes relating to this announcement.

Found a Java Class for MISMO

http://anonsvn.labs.jboss.com/labs/jbossrules/contrib/apocrif/jbossrules/src/test/java/mismo/

In July Microsoft released Security Bulletin MS07-040-Critical Vulnerabilities in .NET Framework Could Allow Remote Code Execution (931212) 

A Security Update for Microsoft.net Framework 2.0 (KB928365) was released for  windows server 2003

this updates System.web.dll

I have found this security update to crash IIS and any asp.net 2.0 web site/web service w3wp.exe to be restarted on every web request.

It looks like this is only a problem when this security patch is automatically installed via windows updates.  Once I uninstalled the security update the crashing issue went away.  When I manually reinstalled the security update and rebooted IIS and ASP.NET continued to function correctly with out error.

Also updated was,

 940521 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/940521/) The behavior of UTF8Encoding, Unicode Encoding, and UTF32Encoding changes to comply to the Unicode 5.0 requirements for Unicode encodings after you install the security update for the .NET Framework 2.0 that is described in security bulletin MS07-040

this seems to affect how ASP.NET generates its web control names.

There just doesn't seem to be any love for the Visual Studio 2005 Web Sit Project.  I know I have none.  I' am  sure its fine for an internally developed web sites, but who cares about those.  For an ISV we need dll's.  It's simpler and your customer can't make unauthorized edits to your code.  So if like me your looking for a simple way to update some of your older asp.net projects Peter Bromberg just posted a nifty trick to get your visual studio 2003 class library project to convert to a visual studio 2005 web application project.  I recommend you take a look and save your self a migraine.

How not to access an asp.net Repeater control's data 

It would appear that between some .net updates Microsoft likes to change how Asp.net names controls.

For i As Integer = 0 To ilsn - 1       
 Dim controlname As String = "repGrid:_ctl" & i + 1 & ":txtOrder"
 Dim controlnameVal As Int32 = Request(controlname)
 StoreVal( ControlNameVal)
Next

This approach is safer

For Each di In repGrid.Items       
 Dim controlnameVal As Int32 = ConvertToINT( di.FindControl("txtOrder"))
 StoreVal( ControlNameVal)
Next

When your using an asp.net Repeater control you need to call find control on the given row in order for it to properly resolve the name.

Also of interest is this little nugget found on The Scripts forum:

.net Changing $ to _ ?

http://www.thescripts.com/forum/thread703070.html

ms went down a rat hole with names and ids. they started with ":" as

separator, but found this was illegal in an id or name, so replaced it

"$". then they realized "$" was illegal in an id when they wanted xhtml

compliance, so they changed it to "_" in an id.

I finally got tired of visiting the Calyx Support Message board today.  So a took a couple minutes to craft a little Regex to parses out all the RSS feeds ( there is not master feed). http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed+[\d]?[\d]-0-0-1\.aspx+

Then created an OPML file

>

<opml version="1.0">
	<head>
		<title></title>
	</head>
	<body>
		<outline title="Calyx Message Board" text="Calyx Message Board">
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Cardex" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Cardex" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed34-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Citrix / Terminal Server" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Citrix / Terminal Server" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed7-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Communications / E-Mail" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Communications / E-Mail" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed13-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Custom Forms" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Custom Forms" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed9-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Fannie Mae" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Fannie Mae" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed16-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / File Management" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / File Management" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed10-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Forms / Regulations" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Forms / Regulations" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed11-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Installation / Network Setup" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Installation / Network Setup" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed5-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Lenders in Point" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Lenders in Point" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed15-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Miscellaneous" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Miscellaneous" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed18-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Printing" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Printing" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed8-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Reports" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Calyx Point / Reports" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed12-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / General Chat" title="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / General Chat" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed22-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / Industry Chat" title="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / Industry Chat" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed23-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / Message Board" title="Calyx Software Message Board / General Discussion / Message Board" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed30-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / Point Data Server (PDS) / Point Data Server (PDS)" title="Calyx Software Message Board / Point Data Server (PDS) / Point Data Server (PDS)" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed19-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / WebCaster / Suggestions &amp; Requests" title="Calyx Software Message Board / WebCaster / Suggestions &amp; Requests" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed32-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
			<outline text="Calyx Software Message Board / WebCaster / WebCaster" title="Calyx Software Message Board / WebCaster / WebCaster" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/RssFeed20-0-0-1.aspx" htmlUrl="http://messageboard.calyxsupport.com/"/>
		</outline>
	</body>
</opml>

copy the above to notepad and save as a .xml file.  You can then import it into your rss reader of choice.

MDX Studio is worth a look If your using Multidimensional Expressions(MDX) in your SQL database.

Just for some background here is links to MSDN's MDX Reference.

Multidimensional Expressions (MDX) Reference

Key Concepts in MDX (MDX)

BlownMortgage offered up a depressing story about life during the peak of the mortgage boom, presented by TheTruthAboutMortgage.com

It turned out the borrower was actually employed as a loan processor, undoubtedly making less than $240,000 a year (sure some may have been making that during the boom, but that was not the case here).

In any event, you would think the loan would be dead, considering the borrower lied about their income and employment on a legal document.

Well, not the case in the mortgage industry. Instead of the file being declined, it was uplined to the VP of Underwiting who massaged the loan, probing and searching for some way to make sense of a lie. After all, the loan was worth $1.5 million, so clearly the company had no intention of throwing it away. And if it could be cleaned up a bit and sold to the investor, no one would be the wiser.

After some research, it came to the VP’s attention that the borrower was a licensed real estate agent, and just like that the 1003 was miraculously changed to state that the applicant was a loan processor and a real estate agent, earning the originally stated $20,000 a month.

It would seem money was growing on trees.