I did the first of my 3.5 (I have two demos during the futures panel in addition to my talks) today. It was the above titled talk. As our talks are limited to 45 minutes (with an additional 15 for questions) this was a real whirlwind presentation. There is so much to share and I had to do so very efficiently using techniques like showing code, but maybe not always running it (“trust me, it works”) or when for some reason, deploying a sql server project did not pop my new sproc into SQL Server, umm, just move on (“trust me it works”). I always have fun talking about one of my fave .NET topics – and had my need to show off even more of SQLDependency sated by an additional 1/2 hour with some of the attendees out in the hall afterwards. This was a bit different than my regular ado.net talk as I focused on the SQL Server Integration and added in demos on the new XML type in SQL Server and it’s partner, System.Data.SqlXML and also demonstrated creating a database project in .NET and moving some of the intense but hard-to-code-in-TSQL processing to the server side.

Though I planned to work on tomorrow’s demos talk (Indigo intro) and futures panel demos (Indigo and ATLAS) and call it an early night, I have been struggling with the fact that no USB pointing devices are being recognized on my laptop. Fortunately (like, thank the demo gods…) my USB drive for VPC is working and thumbdrive also – so I willl just have to continue struggling with the touchpad. That makes moving the pointer slow going. For my tablet friends, yeah yeah, just use the pen, but picking up the pen, pointing, then putting it down and typing etc is not something I do smoothly either.

Tomorrow’s schedule: Tech Check at 7:30 am, futures panel from 10:30 – 1:00, Indigo (err WCF) talk at 2:30. The talk is a “get your head wrapped around Indigo” and I look forward to helping to bring more future Indigo/WCF users to their “oooooooh, I get it!” momentl.

Posted from BLInk!

I had a really bad problem with USB today that I want to blog about (with my resolution) before it spins out of my head.

I am using a USB wireless mouse. It started acting flakey today — doing things like not reacting to mouse clicks and then lagging a lot when I was moving it around the screen. I rebooted a few times but it didn’t help. I then went to a hardwired mouse that worked properly for a few minutes than was flaky in a different way. For example, I move the mouse down on the screen then suddenly it would be at the top of the screen.

For the short term it meant that I had to do my first TechEd presentation with a touch pad which was bad news for me.

So I have spent the last few hours fiddling around with this. I thought perhaps it was my USB port, but was happy to see that my thumb drive and external drive (which I am 100% dependent on for my Indigo talk) was working. My powerpoint clicker, another USB pointing device was also failing. The failure was a) a windows message saying that the USB device failed and b) they stopped working all together!

Nothing made sense so no point in going through all of the things I tried…but what I ended up doing that worked was after noticing that in Device Manager, I had the extended USB hub manager and 4 other usb hub managers with usb devices, I disabled all but one of the 4 hub managers.

The LaCie drive was still working, but when I put the thumbdrive in the 2nd usb port, it didn’t work. Well, flaky – windows explorer said there is a D: but I couldn’t read it.

Then I reenabled the 2nd of those 4 usb managers with no effect. But when I reenabled the third, my thumbdrive worked and after I stopped and removed it and plugged in the mouse, that too worked.

Hours of needless aggravation and I still want to prep for tomorrows talks! But I know from experience that staying up all hours is a very bad thing for conference prep. I will be much better off going to bed, getting a decent night’s sleep and then hammering in the morning.

(written 12:30 am Tuesday morning but posted later)

One of the best parts of being here is that I have finally gotten to meet Thea Burger who I met via blogging and had a lot to do with my being here as well as the others who took up her “bring Julie to South Africa” meme – Ernst Kuschke, Hilton Giesenow and Armand du Plessis. Kate took a pic of Hilton and I today and I will definitely be getting one of Thea, Ernst and Armand before the end of TechEd.

I can’t believe I only arrived yesterday. I feel like I have been here a long time! (that’s good, though now I think I’ll go phone home…)

(written Tuesday 11:50pm – posted later)\

Posted from BLInk!

Are you a video jockey? Create a screencast starring Microsoft Visual Studio Team System, Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005 or Biztalk Server 2006… and you!

I am happy to announce that the East Region Evangelism Team and TechSmith have come together to promote the Launch Tour 2005 with a screencasting contest. To join the funs – and competition – download a free 30 day evaluation of Camtasia Studio. Then record you on onscreen action, your audio, and even your webcam feed.. To show off your rock star personality.

Winners will be selected for the following tour cities only: New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta and Orlando. All winning entries will receive a backstage pass to these events and rock star treatment at the event, as well as various prizes includes a copy of Camtasia Studio.

The grand prize winner will be flown to New York City (from within the continental US) to give a demo live, onstage during the during the Steve Guggenheimer keynote!

The winning screencasts will be featured on Channel9

Ready to go to Rock School?

1. Register for the event that you’ll be attending
2. Send your AVI screencast submission to Thom Robbins. Entries must be received at least two days prior to each event.

 Official rules, Camtasia download information and additional details can be found here.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org