We had one correct answer to the Geek Challenge last month, and it came from Allen Hutchison of Smalley Steel Ring. The correct answer is D, that all three transformations are possible. Thanks to Han Yang for providing the content for the Malleable Mystery challenge. She found the images we used on a Chinese math blog. Allen’s solution was to do some Terminator style morphing and re-joining.  However, the transformations can also be done using continuous transformation, and without re-joining surfaces. Just as the coffee cup to doughnut transformation is demonstrated by an animation, a great way to demonstrate a continuous deformation is to show a series of intermediate that s... [Read more...]

Each month DMC's Employee Spotlight takes a closer look at a different employee to learn more about the people who make up Team DMC. This month, Courtney Mitchell introduces DMC's Morale and Security Director, Wiskie and shares her favorite DMC events.   

85 Guests 55 Filets of Beef 20 Seared Salmon Fillets 125 Specialty Martinis 81 Glasses of Maker’s 46 1 Bud Light (Really?) That, my friends, is how DMC rolls. As the newest member of DMC’s Party Planning Committee (PPC) I had an inside look at the planning process behind DMC’s legendary company parties. With past soirees including an Odyssey Cruise and a bowling competition at Lucky Strike, it became apparent that few venues could offer an experience to top that of years past. The Signature Room on the ninety-fifth floor of the John Hancock Center was the ideal place to host just such a holiday bash. With an ear-popping elevator ride that led to a spectacular view of Mic... [Read more...]

DMC's video series aims to share our technical and cultural stories. In this video, we invite you to step inside our Chicago office space.  DMC's Office Tour Tour DMC's office and lab space, stocked kitchen, rooftop deck, fitness center and more with our employees.    Check out our YouTube channel for a full list of DMC videos, which we'll be updating frequently with fresh topics.

DMC is proud to announce that it has achieved Gold Partner status within the Microsoft Partner Network for the ninth consecutive year.  Microsoft uses Gold Status Competencies to identify top partners in specific solution areas.  DMC earned gold status this year for the Application Development (custom .NET application development) and Collaboration and Content (SharePoint solutions).   DMC ranks among the top 3% of more than 64,000 Microsoft partners worldwide who have earned a gold competency.  By achieving a gold level competency in two areas, DMC ranks among the top 1% of Microsoft partners worldwide.    To earn a Microsoft gold competency,... [Read more...]

Anyone that has worked with SharePoint 2010 workflows knows what a valuable tool they can be for a variety of tasks. However, list workflows in particular suffer from a reusability problem. While site and reusable workflows are by design (and definition) reusable, list workflows are tied to a specific list. That does not mean that there are cases when copying or moving the workflow to a different site is a desired action. I recently ran into an issue when I wanted to copy a list from one site to another along with all of the associated content and workflows. I quickly found out that while it was relatively simple to move the list and data (with a few gotchas co... [Read more...]

Today I had to restore user authentication on a SharePoint farm. The farm had been functional yesterday, but upon arriving into work this morning users would get a low-level error message when trying to log in. Microsoft pushed out some security patches yesterday for Windows Server 2008 R2. A discussion of some of the problems encountered by users can be found here. I found that on this farm, the Forefront Identity Manager Synchronization Service failed to start, which in turn broke the User Synchronization Service, which then broke user authentication. I removed the following updates to restore user authentication: KB2769369 KB2757638 KB2756920 KB2742598 KB2736418 Uninstalling all ... [Read more...]

As I explained in a previous post, a client had need of copying appointments from an Exchange shared calendar to a SharePoint calendar. I recently encountered a bug in calendar lists that I thought I should share. The task was to populate a SharePoint calendar with appointments from Exchange. Exchange appointments have a unique ID that I was using in SharePoint, but this ID is re-used for instances of a recurring appointment. In order to differentiate instances of recurring appointments, I would use the start time of the appointment. This worked well for most appointments but I found that it did not work for all-day appointments. The CAML query I constructed to find all-day appointments by ... [Read more...]

The best use of the mystery figure (in my opinion), and the answer to last month’s Geek Challenge is B: Used as an element of a proof of the Pythagorean Theorem. The figure generates an amazingly short derivation of the theorem, as our winner Gareth Meirion-Griffith of DMC demonstrates with just 2 lines of algebra: Consider the figure above. The figure consists of: 1) A large square with sides of length C and an area of C2 2) Four right triangles with sides of length A, B, and C, and an area of (1/2)AB (four triangles combined give a total triangular area of 2AB) 3) A small square with sides of length B-A and an area of (B-A)2 = B2 + A2 - 2AB. Thus, the area of t... [Read more...]

Gareth Meirion-Griffith, Systems Engineer How is living in Chicago different than living in England? I actually prefer living in the states and I even like American football. There is a lot of positivity and so much to see in the U.S. I enjoy the diverse geography of having access to desert, pastures, cities, and mountains in one country. I do miss my American bulldog, Bella, who lives in England.   What are your favorite spots in Chicago? I’ve lived in the South Loop for four years and it’s still one of my favorite Chicago neighborhoods. It’s got the convenience of being close to downtown while being a bit quieter. My favorite meal involves heading to the Signature Room for th... [Read more...]