http://blog.steeleprice.net/archive/2005/06/09/640.aspx

I was very lucky that Steele showed up as well as Michael Kaplan and a pair of folks (one developer, one marketing person) from Mobiforms who have all of their bets on a 3rd party tool they are working on for Avalon developers. I don’t think of myself as bleeding edge when I work in Whidbey because I look at people who are doing Indigo, or heck, the people who build (and keep pushing) the edge as bleeding edge. One thing I know is that it is all relative. I have more thoughts about last nights discussion and will write about that after I let them simmer a bit. But as Steele mentions, I think that the common theme was MOTIVATION. What motivates a developer or business to go to future products adn how do you motivate your developers to look ahead.

http://www.AcehAid.org

A friend brought over a laptop that someone had given her. She couldn’t figure out how to use it and I said just bring it over, I’ll check it out.

I turned it on and was totally mystified by what I saw. It was a Dell laptop and had Linux installed with a Freesbee desktop. I couldn’t figure out how to use it either. Happily I had an unopened unused fully licensed WinXP Pro hanging around so we stuck the cd in in and said “yes” to remove the partition and “yes” to reformat. 🙂

Don’t get me wrong – I am not an anti-opensource bigot. There was just no way that either my friend or I was going to figure out how she could use this quickly when she already was well-versed in all things windows.

I couldn’t pay my husband to come to Orlando with me for a week during TechEd in June or even in March for Connections. Or to San Diego last year. Or to Las Vegas for Connections. Etc….

I wish I had business trips more like this…

There was a time in my life actually when I did. In my late 20’s I had two fab all expenses paid business trips to London with plenty of time to explore. Both of them were consulting gigs. Ahh the good old days.

There’s still hope…

http://www.AcehAid.org

How on earth I am going to be ready to leave for Orlando on Saturday afternoon, I have NO clue! I am having the usual pre-going-away-for-a-week-to-a-huge-conference jitters. My clients are suddenly having crises left and right. The sun and warm weather has finally arrived in Vermont. I can see the flowers coming up in my lupin field. I still haven’t gotten the rest of the seedlings into the veggie garden. I’m always worried about my darling old dogs not being here when I come back and Rich is stocking up on Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

I know from past experience when I get to TechEd, I will be stepping out of my life for a week into a different one.You really leave everything behind and get immersed in the whole environment. Trying to get to see some sessions, but ending up talking with a million fun and interesting people. Wandering the expo hall is a blast, not for swag, but to visit with so many people you don’t get to see enough. Just imagine being stuck in a huge building with over 10,000 people who all have the same passions as you do for week. People who understand you and don’t think you’re a dork because you think computers are *it*. People who understand the insane life you lead and how hard it is to walk away from that code even when everybody’s begging for dinner. Just one more line, I know this is gonna do it….

Yep, the last days before I go, I just dread, I’m all stressed out, I don’t want to leave home. But once I’m there, I have just a majorly grand time.

Yep, I’ll be there!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Here are the ones that I am hosting with time and location.

You can find all of the BOFs by filtering on “session type” on the session breakout page. Dave Noderer also made a comprehensive list on his blog.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am really excited to announce that I am going to be writing some of my blog posts for the DevSource website, which is a Ziff-Davis online publication! Editor, Esther Schindler has done a wonderful job in creating this technical resource targeted to .NET Developers. There are lots of great articles (including the fun .NET Rock Star series :-)), contests where they give away cool stuff like Acer Ferrari laptops or Dell flat panel monitors and forums. When I post a blog over there, I will make note of it over here. The blog should be up any day now.

The purpose of this blog is to give a developer’s perspective to things – some of the pain of being a developer, my thoughts on what’s going on in the community, my take on some buzz, etc.

I even had a new picture taken for it. Big huge thanks to Wintellect‘s Mark Kovalcson, a serious photographer on the side, who brought his big camera and a light to the MS Reston office during Devscovery to snap a few photos. My buddy Sara Faatz even let me borrow some makeup, but it’s laughably light and you probably can’t tell I actually did that. Yes, I put make-up on folks, just for you!!!

As soon as it’s live, I will let you know. I’m looking forward to posting some TechEd blogs there as well.

http://www.AcehAid.org

as per Leon, I will now walk over to the corner of my office and bang my face against the wall (but it’s not brick)… ouch! ouch! ouch!

http://www.AcehAid.org

hmmm – maybe when I go to TechEd, I’ll go stay at Mark’s house, instead…. 🙂

http://www.AcehAid.org

okay – would you all please get OFF of the www.msteched.com site for a little while so I can look at the session schedules, too? 🙂

The site has been timing out and I just can’t get at the session schedules or the tool to let me schedule. Hopefully, they will have the promised RSS feed ready SOON so we have easier access to the info. I would definitely be interested in using Rob Rohr’s OneNote tool to schedule my sessions, but he can’t finish it up until the RSS is available.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I ordered something from PC Connection yesterday. Their site is awesome — quick and easy to get around. The ordering process was quick safe and I’m sure very secure. I have no problems with that.

However, since I was a dummy and typed in my credit card info off the top of my head, I did get a number wrong. So they sent me an email about it.

I originally deleted the email along with all of my other spam. It was from a girls’ name (@pcconnection.com but I didn’t notice that quickly enough) and the subject said Order ######## (with the real number in there) like so very many spam emails that come through the pipe.

This is what the email looks like (except I have masked the name of the sender as well as what might be the direct line etc…)

——————————–

We are ready to ship your order but the credit card has declined.  Please call us at the number below between 9am and 1am Eastern Time.  Thank you,

N******* ***********

Loss Prevention Analyst

PC Connection Services

**********@pcconnection.com

Phone:  800-800-**** Fax:  603-355 ****

www.pcconnection.com

The name is in  “reply blue” text as is half of the fax #. The hyperlink is to file:\\pcconnection.com, which of course fails. Therefore you would resort to calling the phone #. The phone # is not the same as the phone # on the website. So I came to the conclusion that my email and order # were scraped from somewhere along the pipe and not secured as I’m sure the credit card info was and they were luring me to call a different phone # to give my credit card details to god knows who!

I did call the phone # on the website and got my cc cleared up but had a long chat with a customer service rep about the fact that most professionals I know would advise everyone and anyone to ignore such an email and they should really reconsider how they communicate with their clients about stuff like this.

Sheesh!

http://www.AcehAid.org