Daily Archives: May 12, 2004

The rewards of running a user group

Just Rambling

I received this email from Rich Peliel, one of the members of Vermont.NET after Tim Huckaby’s presentation on Monday night.

Julie, thanks for bringing Tim to our meeting. His code demo was exactly what I needed to  get my report for my manager. This saved me so much time and from so many headaches.

This is a guy who is trying to teach himself ASP.NET in his free time so that he can do more interesting tasks in his job.

I remember sitting in a FoxPro meeting many [many] years ago with the wonderful Mac Rubel speaking. He did something in passing that I had never seen before and I said “wait, stop, what did you just do?“  I always remember him referring to that as an “oh“ moment. You never know what, in a technical talk, will trigger that.

So getting this email from Rich really made my day. It is the kind of message that makes me always remember why I love running a user group.

This kind of stuff happens at every meeting, even though this one was a little special since Tim is a little special 🙂 and since he came all the way from California as an INETA Speaker. Tim also received a copy of this email and replied that he’s be happy to come to speak at Vermont.NET every year for the rest of his life if we’d have him… Thanks Tim. It’s documented now!

TechEd Snacks

Just Rambling

Remember the chocolate cake debate from TechEd last year? I was an “it was awful” voter. So was Marcie. Marcie is now writing about the rumor that the snacks might not be at TechEd this year and  how she will miss the Little Debbies. It made me think of something that is pretty strange. I actually lost weight at TechEd and PDC. It’s those mile long arenas back and forth back and forth. I get more exercise at those conferences than I do at home during a normal day of sitting on my butt in front of the computer. Then I come back and eventually those 3-5 pounds find their way home – onto some part of my body (well, I know which part at least…)

Michele Leroux Bustmante has FINALLY got a blog

Community Cheerleading

Michele knew what she was going to call this dasBlog based blog a long time ago…DasBlonde is finally live. For those of you under-the-rock dwellers that don’t know Michele, she is an MSDN Regional Director in the San Diego area, a prolific technical author (MSDN, Code Magazine, Fawcette, etc. etc.), well known conference speaker, an associate of Juval Lowy’s IDesign and someone who is extremely knowledgeable in many areas of development. Michele has created an empire of .net training at UCSD Extension. Well, the list does go on and on. Michele is a woman with an incredibly impressive background and a lot to teach us all. Welcome to blog world, baby!

Sightings and Discoveries

Vermont

Having moved to this house in August of last year, spring is now a time for discovering what types of plants and flowers are around (planted or wild) and birds as well. In the past week I have found a few varieties of trillium on the Beane Trail behind our house, rhubarb in the old veggie patch (which we just tilled up in order to reclaim), zillions of lupine in our front yard/field/wildflower area, so many many types of flowers coming up around the house and a beautiful pair of Baltimore Orioles on my walk with Tasha this morning.

Microsoft Watch: Trouble in Tablet Land

Tablet

This did not come in through the RSS feed, so thanks to Robert Scoble for  pointing it out.

Mary Jo Foley lists the many problems/points of confusion with  the message Microsoft is sending about TabletPCs and wonders what the future holds (and what we think).

Robert says that if the Tablet Team was blogging, this problem would not exist (or not be as bad). I’m not sure I agree with that. The IPOD isn’t successful because of Apple’s computing.

Loren Heiny, Layne Heiny, and Peter Rysavy are frequently analyzing this in their weblogs, which, if this topic interests you, I would recommend subscribing to.

Whatever the problem, whatever the reason – it is a huge shame that this is the public perception.

Mary Jo has a great quote in her article:

One user said it best: “The irony is, people love Tablets and it’s a great technology. End users love it once they see it. It’s the most viral thing ever. A gold mine. And they (Microsoft) are committing suicide.”