TechEd 2004: Yes, I believe we found Whidbey

Well Big Steve did not disappoint, no t-shirts with stupid catch phrases for us. We got colored baseballs. That’s right sporting equipment for a not so sporty crowd. No big deal they did have a pre Beta release of Visual Studio 2005 available. For those who are into this type of stuff that’s pretty cool. The most important thing to me, about this, is the ability to develop websites using ASP .NET 2.0. Basically it comes with a lot of out of the box functionality that developers are building on their own.

One example is instead of building your custom page frame solution (headers and footers) ASP .NET 2.0 comes with something called master pages. This, at first glance, is a more robust alternative to the traditional includes files. It also comes with built in common navigation tools and user authentication tools. These are extended from the 1.x versions. I’m going to kick it around and try to become familiar with it. The final release isn’t scheduled until next summer. Oh that anticipation.

You can read about all of this at http://msdn.microsoft.com/msdnmag/issues/04/06/default.aspx

For any ASP .NET developers it is a really good read.

TechEd 2004 Keynote Address

So I’m sitting here among 8,000 (that’s what the guy behind me said) IT types waiting for MS’s CEO Steve Balmer to tell us what’s new. There’s a promise for a free gift. I’m hoping for a Beta version of Whidbey but I’m expecting a “Do less with more T-Shirt”. As a man I don’t know how I feel about wearing a shirt like that. Oh well. A funny thing is this is MS TechEd and the Network is down. Maybe not down, but at least rendered useless by the aforementioned IT guys trying to get onto the wireless network all at once.

Yesterday Eric and I did a tour of the Gas Lamp District. It was pretty interesting and actually had some very nice architecture. Got to go here comes Steve.

Click Here for pics from Today
Click Here for pics from Yesterday
Click Here for pics from The Day Before

Going to TechEd 2004

So me and my associate Eric Webb, get it Webb, websites. Ha, that one never gets old. Where was I? Oh yeah we're going to Microsoft's TechEd to learn about all the new promises Bill has to make our lives even more dependent on his whims. You can read the propaganda at www.microsoft.com/seminar/teched2004/default.mspx

I'm excited, it's kinda like a woodstock for geeks. They give out t-shirts and junk food instead of dancing naked and smoking pot. It's out in San Diego and I will keep a record of all the amazing things that I learn out there.

The Interview - Part 2

The interview went well. My wife Kara had to see a doctor that day which made the "superman routine" a little bit more interesting but no worries. At least not about the job interview, but that’s another topic. So I went to the faculty club and had lunch with Dr. Tim Chester. He’s a pretty laid back guy and just asked me about my experience and if I wanted to come out for a visit. So I of course said yes. Kara and I are scheduled to fly out to Doha, Qatar on June 9th. Now all I have to do is tell my boss about this amazing new opportunity.

I'm leaving for training on Friday and I should tell her about needing to take off work before then. I mentioned that I was approached about a position and she told me that I should still go to training. Now that it is a lot more certain I wonder how she will react. She's very fair but nothing's certain.

Back to work
Blog on my friends, Blog on

The Interview - Part 1

So I'm about to do the whole interview thing for a position in Qatar, or as I like to call it Q-Town. I'm a little nervous, but more about making the switch between business casual to a business suite on campus next to where I work. Then having lunch at a high profile place "The Faculty Club" and switching back to my current dress without getting too much attention drawn to myself. We'll see how it goes. Well back to work.

Blogging at last

I think it's funny that IT types are always the last to get on board with technologies that make life easier. The mentality of "I can write my own blogging tool, who needs that in a box solution?" keeps us from ever really getting anything done. Well I have submitted. Thanks to blogger.com the world will no longer be deprived of my thoughts.

I'm not really sure what I'm going to put up here or who is going to read it but we'll see. I would like to break it up into categories so people who want to read about some ASP .NET problem I solved won't have to wade through my thoughts on our government or religion. I don't know if our friends at blogger will allow this, but we'll see.

- Russell