Guy Barrette, who runs the Visual Studio .NET User Group (www.guvsm.net) in Montreal has bribed me with a Montreal delicacy to speak at his group in October. I will be trying out my “Web Services Security for Dummies with WSE2” talk that I am doing at ASPConnections in Vegas in November.

Oh, the treat is chocolatines. They are mini chocolate croissants. Need I say more?

So I have to leave tomorrow for about a week. Another non-vacation trip but stealing at least the weekend and bringing Rich so I will make the most of it. I had the usual million emergencies (including 3 hours out with an unbootable computer yesterday) that have left me scrambling and feeling completely unprepared to leave. Looks like an all nighter. Rich finally gave up at 8:30 (now) on the possibility of my making dinner tonight. Looks like it’s gonna be mac & cheese. Well, I can give all of my lovely organic produce to the housesitter while we are gone. I’m predicting yet another “10 minute packing job” to get a week’s worth of clothes together sometime within the last half hour before we leave for the airport.

Since I don’t dare leave my computers on while I’m gone (so many storms here), I have to make sure my laptop is 100% independent and prepared for any emergency- even a rebuild of a humongous, 3rd party control laden VB6 app.

will be in Redmond July 16-22nd with my hubby too! let the rumor mills churn. Just kidding – nothing exciting. I have to go out and convinced Rich to come as it will be the closest thing to a vacation this summer. He’ll probably hang out at REI while I’m on campus. 🙂

Okay so it freaked me out just a little to see the word Hailstorm pop into my aggregator earlier this week. It’s source was this article on Microsoft-Watch.com about a proposed service by Microsoft, that Mary Jo says sounds suspiciously similar to the original description of Hailstorm. Hailstorm is one of the things that drove me into the arms of Java a bunch of years ago. .NET and developer services of course brought me back to Microsoft.

Last Thursday, Carl pulled together a bunch of people for a “speaker lounge” dotNetRocks show. It was a bit chaotic, but really fun . Along with Rory and Carl were me, Don Kiely, Kathleen Dollard, Bill Vaughan, Scott Hanselman, Patrick Hynds, Mark Dunn and Dan Appleman. I had a major lightning storm so I had to bail out just after Dan came on but he was awesome. I don’t really know Dan, but certainly I have benefitted from his experience quite a lot over the years. He has just done something very interesting, which is to write an internet security book for end users “Always Use Protection: A Teen’s Guide to Safe Computing“. He is on tour with the book and is such a great interviewee.

The discussion ranged from technical to very non-technical. So it really was just like hanging out with my pals in the speaker lounge (or the cabana!)

…wouldn’t it make you laugh if you knew that I have been checking my transcript on the MCP site about 5 times a day to see if my Security exam (which I now have paper proof that I passed) has shown up yet and my certification has changed from “MCP” to “MCAD”.

If I cared, that is…

But since I have been a developer for 20 years and up until May had never taken even one test, obviously it’s not that important to me. 🙂

She doesn’t know what it means yet, but it sounds really great and I can’t wait to find out what Elizabeth Grigg discovers that the definition of “becoming the loop” is.

“Anyway, instead of being out of the loop, I’m going to become the loop. Granted I don’t know what that means.”

I was a little astonished by this article in the local paper, as I had heard nothing about this meeting. I love this quote: “I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before“. 🙁 I have worked so hard to get the local media interested in Vermont.NET but they have never written anything about the user group. I have always thought it would be a great benefit to our members to be known by the local business community. So though the user group is known worldwide, and we have had up to 50 attendees at past meetings, the group and it’s notorious leader seem to be somewhat invisible at a certain level locally. Perhaps the problem is that the user group is not part of a local business association.

Nevertheless, I’m really happy that this is going to happen and I have gotten a nice introduction to the folks who are heading it up. Hopefully this will be a big help to me in promoting the user group and the resources provided by it’s members to the local (Vermont-wide) business community as well as helping to promote the fact that there is a lot of leading edge work being done in our area.

Burlington-area software companies decided they need to form an association 

Local software developers gathered in Burlington on Wednesday to explore whether they share enough in common to create an association.

The 35 software developers attending a luncheon at the Wyndham Burlington were in agreement — an association would fill a void.

“I’m surprised it hasn’t happened before,” said Don Schramm, general manager of Data Systems Inc., who organized the meeting. “People are really feeling isolated out there and there seems to be a genuine need for some type of organi- zation.”

Many at the meeting were company owners. The largest company has 35 employees, but many were one-person operations, Schramm said.

Schramm was surprised by the diversity of the group. None of the companies at the meeting were direct competitors, he said. The group ranged from medical software developers to developers for non-profits, education and wholesalers, said Bruce Seifer, assistant director of Burlington’s Community and Economic Development Office.

CEDO sponsored the meeting, covering the $17-a-plate lunch and sending out invitations to 70 area companies. CEDO played a similar role in launching the South End Arts and Business Association years ago, Seifer said.

Attendees agreed that an association could serve as a catalyst for everything from networking to sharing office space to facilitating employee training.

The group said that the first order of business would be to create a database that informs them of who is out there in the local area, Seifer said.

Fewer than half the people at the luncheon knew each other, Seifer said. Networking could be useful for a variety of purposes, including teaming up for marketing studies and referring work to local companies, keeping jobs and income in the local economy.

“I see there’s an opportunity for people to work together,” Seifer said.

Eleven at the meeting signed up to form a steering committee to create an association.

Kasia points out that iEmployee.com, a web based timesheet application, looks pretty loosy goosey when it comes to security. Not having access to that portion of the application, I can’t see what she is referring to. But if she says it’s lame, it’s lame.

You know it’s kind of a joke among those who really understand networks and system admin that people turn off their windows xp firewall in order to solve computer problems.

I’m probably going to spend a good part of my “weekend” trying to avoid being one of those people.

update: maybe I’m not so stupid – according to this kb article, at least