One of the best, yet often overlooked, features of ASP.NET 2.0 is health monitoring. I believe it is absolutely essential to be notified of any problems with your web application, and this is where health monitoring comes in handy. A few years ago I wrote an article about custom error pages and demonstrated various ways to tap into error details. Health Monitoring is a natural progression of that approach. 

I saw a December MSDN article, entitled Uploading Files in ASP.NET 2.0, and wanted to offer my comments on some gotchas with uploading files. I’ve spent countless hours and tried numerous hacks to tame file uploading and have enough bruses from hitting my head against the wall (figuratively speaking). 

Money has a peculiar property: if you don’t want or know how to manage it, somebody else will happily to do it for you and play you for fool along the way. As if there was a shortage of Wall Street scandals last year, there’s always room for one more. I’m referring to the freshly baked ordeal with Bernard Madoff and his clever scheme of siphoning off billions of dollars. 

Bob Sullivan’s Gotcha Capitalism begins with an entertaining story of being ripped off by a hot dog vendor in mid-town New York. Having been charged $3, he mentions he works right around the corner at which point the street vendor forks over the rest of the change and apologizes profusely for mistaking him for a tourist.