All posts by Julie

Mother’s Day for the two mommy family

Purely Personal

One of my favorite journalists (and bloggers) in Vermont is Seven Days writer, Cathy Resmer.Cathy is just cool and I love her take on the world. I meant to write about this a few weeks ago when she did a story on a hidden treasure on the Vermont/NY border that is drawn down the middle of Lake Champlain. A sculpture by Rodin! And not only is it by Rodin, but it is of Camille Claudel, one of France’s other best sculptors. I remember seeing a wonderful film about her back in my NYC days.

Recently, Cathy and her partner had a baby – her partner was the “bio-mom”. This may have created a conundrum at Mother’s day with two moms now on hand for Graham, but Cathy doesn’t see herself as a mom and they had it all worked out before Graham was born. She has a wonderful essay about this in last week’s issue with the highlight for me being when she felt “out-maternalized” by a new father. A great read, whatever your kid calls you.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

INETA Speaking “Tours”

Presentations

Somehow, almost everytime I schedule an INETA speaking event, I end up getting asked to speak at another nearby group as long as I’m there. Why not? I say. It’s fun, and I control my schedule. Luckily, the user group leaders have been flexible enough so that I can do the talks on consecutive nights.

I have 3, not 4 such trips coming up.

The first is a twist on the concept: my “Atlantic Provinces Tour”. I am speaking at 3 groups in Canada’s Atlantic Provinces over the course of 10 days. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that this is my summer vacation and my husband is joining me.

June 19th: New Brunswick.NET in Moncton, New Brunswick.
June 20th: .NET Nova Scotia in Halifax, Nova Scotia
June 26th: We Develop.NET in St. John’s Newfoundland

Trip 2 is a Western Pennsylvania tour. Coincidentally (yeah, right), the last meeting is about a hour drive from my parents house. So I will spend a few days visiting them before I head back to Vermont.

July 18th: Central Penn in Harrisburg, PA (right near Hershey, PA… yummmm)
July 19th: Leihigh Valley.NET in Bethlehem, PA
July 20th: Dot Net Valley in Scranton PA

Trip 3 is an Ohio tour which started with the idea of paying a visit to Lake Quincy (Steve and Michelle Smith’s home) near Cleveland. Then I added on two other meetings.

Sept 12: Cleveland .NET SIG
Sept 13: Findlay Ohio .NET User Group
Sept 14: Dayton .NET Developers Group

In between are scattered events: NYC in mid-August, 2 Massachussetts groups in early August and Syracuse in September.

(rather than sit here and do all the links, I will point you to my talks page where you can click to these groups’ websites)

Reminds me of an old song from the musical Oklahoma!

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont IT Jobs: Two .NET Jobs at MyWebGrocer in Burlington

Jobs

www.MyWebGrocer.com is seeking bright, motivated, energetic and inquisitive software developers. Projects vary from E-Commerce and Handheld PDA applications to Interactive Web Solutions.

We are a dedicated team that is looking for additional developers who share our enthusiasm and focus in developing market leading solutions.

The successful applicant will have experience with ASP.NET, C#, SQL, CSS, JavaScript and Visual Studio.NET. Exposure to Web Services, SQL DTS and C++ a plus.

Salary commensurate with experience.

Contact:
Jeff Downs
802-764-1841
jdowns@mywebgrocer.com

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org

Vermont Software Developer Alliance May Meeting with Thom Robbins from Microsoft!

dotNET

www.vtsda.org

Wednesday, May 17, 2006

Speaker – Thom Robbins, Microsoft New England
Topic – Trends in Software Development

Software development is changing at light speed. Gone are the days of single person development. Team based development with faster cycle times and quality code are becoming a driving force in the industry. Of course that doesn’t negate the need for security and standards. Well it may look murky but there are several trends that every software developer should keep an eye on as they build their careers. Join us to see what the future may hold.

Thom RobbinsSpeaker Bio: Thom Robbins is a Developer Evangelist with Microsoft in New England, and part of the MSDN Developer Program. He is a frequent speaker at events, including VS Live. Thom is also a regular contributor to various magazines including Visual Studio.Net, .NET Magazine and XML Web Services. He spends his time working with developers in New England. When not writing code he spends his time with wife Denise at their home in New Hampshire.

Date:    May 17th, 2006
Time:    12:00 – 2:00 pm
Place:    Courtyard by Marriott
            175 Hurricane Lane
            Williston, VT

Plenty of free parking
Map & directions

Agenda:
12:00 – 1:00      Lunch and Informal Networking
1:00 – 2:00        Presentation & Discussion

Lunch will be provided free of charge to members who RSVP at least 24 hours prior to the event. Non-members who RSVP at least 24 hours prior to the event can pay $10 which will cover the meeting cost and lunch cost.  To RSVP, please email meetings@vtsda.org. Alternatively, feel free to bring your own lunch.

Three copies of Eric Sink’s “The Business of Software” will be given away to lucky attendees.  Thanks to A Press for donating these books. 
The Business of Software

Vista versions keep on rolling

Just Rambling

Last week I downloaded version 5365 of Vista. Today I finally had some time and went to burn the image onto a DVD to install onto my laptop, only to discover that 5381 was now available. I have mid-speed DSL so these suckers take a good 12 hours to download! But it didn’t make sense not to get the latest, so I’m now closing in on hour ten and hopefully will get a peek at the latest sometime tonight. Much of this is thanks to Kate Gregory’s blog post about how much she is enjoying build 5365.

I did install Office 12 VS2005 on one of these builds, but it takes so long to do that I don’t want to do it again until I’m willing to upgrade Vista not reformat and install anew.

Don’t Forget: www.acehaid.org