Microsoft’s VB.NET Technical Lead, Paul Vick,  is the second in DevSource’s series of .NET Rock Stars. Read his interview here.

Chris Sells was their first victim.

I love Dave Burke’s blog because he is always talking about really practical stuff – “I had this problem and here is how I solved it“ kind of posts. I’ve gotten so that I can always pick his posts out of the whole (non-ms) feed from weblogs.asp.net just by his titles. I say “that’s gotta be a D.B. post” and 9 times out of 10 I’m right. His recent foray into code generation is a great read for anyone who has been thinking about it, but too timid (or busy or whatever) to try it out. I have also managed to pick out his “coding for charity” posts as his also. My first real intro to Dave was when he showed us, at our very 2nd VTdotNET meeting, how he had figured out to share session state between classic ASP and ASP.NET. This was in March 2002 and Dave had been using his church’s website as his playground for learning .NET. I had not even installed VS.NET on my computer yet!! Definitely an early adopter.

This also makes me realize, even though I have been coding, that none of my recent posts have been technical. I guess I’m kinda funny that way.

I canNOT believe that Chris didn’t tell me he started a blog! Sheesh sheesh and sheesh!  I figured it out because of a few referrals in my inbox. Chris, Chris, Chris! (rolling eyes)

Chris runs the incredibly active Boston.NET group that even has a Longhorn Study Group already! He has become a good friend as well as my right hand in running the very busy INETA User Group Relations committee. And best of all, Chris is a fellow Mad River Glen skiier – he grew up spending many a weekend in his family’s shared ski house at the bottom of othe mountain.

Chris went out to Seattle a few days early and has some wonderful photos of the Seattle area. Looking at his pics of Mt. Rainier makes me regret not taking the extra time to do the same. He also got some great shots of Eric Ewing’s wonderful and interesting home where we attended a party (and I was an overnight guest – thanks again Eric!). He has some pics of the cruise that Keith Pleas took a bunch of INETA folks on  his very groovy trawler. There’s more. I recommend that you read the text along with the pictures. Chris is a wonderful tour guide. Check it out.

Leon Bambrick, the “Rodney Dangerfield of programming languages” (according to TuCows)  finally has his OWN domain  www.secretgeek.net – no more Brinkster! No more shutting down his blog because too many people wanted to see his hilarious VB.NET Whidbey Refactoring menu or when he posts Janet Jackson’s body parts. Leon is a laugh a minute. Follow him to his new site and his new feed

Anand M has posted a lot of great photos from the MVP Summit. Anand is an MVP from India and a voluteer with INETA.

I finally watched this on Channel 9. It’s like “come see the softer side of ….“ Microsoft. Very fun, very warm. Chris is an entertaining host.

Oh no, the internet infrastructure is in big trouble now. If this guy blogs as much as he talks, they are going to have to double the bandwidth. He is sure to shame even the chattiest of us bloggers!! I am the first to admit that I talk a lot, and even I was amazed with Dave’s gregarious qualities when we first met 1 1/2 years ago. Dave Totzke is a Toronto area based geek, and a user group leader who is also a very active INETA volunteer.

The new Plano.NET user group is having their first meeting tonight. Bloggers, Shane Henderson and Jason Alexander, of Match.COM fame (did you see the great video at DevDays???) are the founders of this group. They have an okay speaker for tonight’s inaugural meeting. (For those of you extra-sensitive types – it’s a joke, okay?) Have fun!!

But I really liked “Chasey Chestnut” the best.

Casey – your last post had me in stitches!

I expect that this series that Scott has begun will be a great expose for those of you who have always been W-2 and have wondered about working for yourself.