DotNetRocks (The infamous Internet radio talk show, hosted by Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell) is hitting the road! They will be in Dallas tomorrow night. Make sure that you stop by if you’re in the area. If you’re not in the area, start heading there now. 
<![CDATA[
We bought the Batman Begins DVD this week. I liked the move when it came out; I think that it's a good direction for the franchise to go. Here's the truly disappointing part about the DVD. From the main menu it lists “features”, but when you go to the “features” section of the DVD, the only “feature” is the theatrical trailer of Batman Begins. What?! No Behind the Scenes, no Making of Batman Begins, no Sneak peak at the next Batman.... how disappointing. And why does it say Features, it should be Feature. Or, better yet, just put Theatrical Trailer on the main menu and don't make me take the extra click step. Truly disappointing extra(s). Still, a good movie though.
Update: I just saw that there is a Two Disc Special Edition, I bet that has the normal extras that we would all expect to be on a DVD. Oh well.
]]>
What a cool company. I got a package in the mail today from Redmond, but it wasn’t for me. It was addressed to my three children (by name). It was full of Microsoft toys and a hand written note telling the kids how excited they were to meet them and for them to move to Dallas. 3 Microsoft stuffed animal bouncy balls, 3 Microsoft slinkys, 3 Microsoft coloring books and crayons for the moving trip. Now if only I can get someone to send me an XBox 360 for moving to Dallas. My kids were so excited, and I just thought… wow, what a cool company to do that, and I get to work there. Neat!
First, you may have noticed (or not) that I added a new blog category, “Microsoft”. This is because a lot of what I have wanted to blog about over the last two weeks would have gone in the “Technology” section, because it’s Microsoft, but the reality is that the things that I have wanted to blog about have nothing to do with Technology and everything to with working for Microsoft. I didn’t have a good fit, so I created a new one. Enjoy!
<![CDATA[
Today is the last day of my first two weeks working for the man. Let me recap...
Week 1:
Monday was a whole lot of paper work and watching videos. On the plus side of Microsoft, almost all of the “paper work” is online. That part's very nice. Some of the other caviots... The videos were neat. I got to see a lot of the heritage of MS that I was unfarmiliar with. The guys that I work with took me to lunch down stairs.
Tuesday and Wednesday we went to an offsite meeting in Austin. Cool, my first week on the job and I'm at a camp “resort” getting to know my coworkers. Bummer though, I forgot my favorite Wrox hat at the camp when I left. However, Disfunction Junction was awsome Tuesday night.
Thrusday and Friday I worked from home in Tulsa. Nice first week!
Week 2:
This entire week has been a blur... Monday I flew to Dallas, Tuesday I flew to Lubbock for a user group (Great group BTW - I'm looking forward to working with them!), Wednesday I flew back to Dallas, and Thrusday (late afternoon) I flew back to Tulsa. Busy, busy busy. The most overwelming thing about my job (and this cought me completely off gaurd) is the amount of email that I have to deal with. This sounds weird sinse it's only email, but I now work with over 20 .Net User Groups and SIGs (Special Interest Groups) in the North Texas, Oklahoma and Arkansas, plus there are multiple engagements with enterprise customers that I am now participating in. So, it's not only the amount of email, but the time delay because I have to go get context for each one to realy know what to do with it.
It's getting a little better now, I have some folders and am able to respond and file a larger percentage of my emails. Ugh. I didn't expect this at all, but there are other realy cool things that have happened that I didn't expect either. Wednesday I was getting on the elevator and looked to my left, there's Rory Blyth getting on next to me. Cool, here is someone that I used to listen to when he was on DNR (he is now an MSDN presenter and host of The Code Room), and now I read his blog fairly regualary. We chatted briefly had a “air shake” (a bit of a jerm-a-phobe.... or just thought that I looked dirty... either way, he didn't want to touch me... no big deal, I should be used to that by now ;) The funny thing is that he talks almost exactly like the way he writes in his blog, scary I know. Oh, and he's a lot shorter in person, which is funny because how exactly can you tell how tall someone is by reading there blog? I don't know.
All in all, I think that I'm going to love working here and with all of the community leaders.
]]>
Jean-Luc was just awarded MVP status for VSTS. Way to go!
I met Jean-Luc at Tech, he thinks that I’m the funniest person that he’s ever met, which goes to show that he need to meet more people. Congratulations!
<![CDATA[
D'Arcy beat me to it, but had to mention that Matt and Brendon are the new Co-Chair VPs of Technology for INETA. These two have done some amazing things in the Atlanta area (like starting and leading over 8 INETA groups in the Atlanta area!) and launching a new Sharepoint program for user groups that will probably go national later this year! Cool.
I had the privilege of getting to know them at Tech Ed this year. I know that they will be a huge addition to INETA North America. Congratulations!
]]>
<![CDATA[
While I'm on the MSN IM topic... here's one thing that I really want. Have you noticed this? If any of your contacts use the MSN Spaces and then they update their spaces blog, their contact name in your IM get a yellow asterisk by it. From there you can view their “profile card” and with it their latest entry. If you click on that entry you are taken to their spaces blog.
I so want to add my own blog to my MSN IM profile. Do you know if that can be done? The MSN Messenger Team should add it. At least, I would like that.
]]>
<![CDATA[
A friend of mine has been really in to using google talk lately. Personally, I don't see what all of the hype has been about... I like too many of the features in MSN Messenger. I like things like being able to transfer files, send winks, customize personal images, do audio and video, do white boarding, and application sharing, integrated games (like checkers and othello!), integration with your mobile device so that people can send IMs directly to your cell phone (favorite feature). None of these exist with google talk. With google talk you get text messaging and voice communication. That's it. Nothing else.
But there is one feature that (I have to admit) I like about google talk. When you close a conversation and then start an IM with that same person again, your previous conversations are still right there, in other words, it's very easy to close a conversation (because the person wasn't responding), then when you get a response, 3 hours later, you know exactly what they are referring to and you have the whole conversation in context. I love that.
I work with a couple of people who could use some Ritalin to be brought down to a normal a.d.d. level. I get the weirdest IM's from them, and I have to think back and realize that they are just picking up a conversation that I thought ended 3 to 4 hours ago.
So, here's how to make this work in MSN IM: Open MSN IM, click on Tools -> Options; Go to the Messages Tab and look under the Message History section and find the two check boxes (“Automatically keep a history of my conversations“ and “Show my last conversation in New Conversation Windows“), make sure that both of those check boxes are checked... wallah, you can now deal with a.d.d!
Oh yeah, how many people with a.d.d. does it take to change a light bulb?
hmm? what? Let's go ride bikes!
]]>
<![CDATA[
I had the privilege of speaking at the .Net User Group in Oklahoma City last night. I had a great time, Dave (VP and Treasurer from Tulsa DNUG) drove his wife's convertible BMW (Thanks Connie!). The topic was Visual Studio 2005 Team Systems overview. If you are interested, the slide are here.
They have this neat tradition of taking the speaker out for drinks after the meeting, we went to the Bricktown Brewery. It was a lot of fun, I think that's a great idea. They have a great group and great leadership, I'm looking forward to working with them more!
]]>
Where I'm Speaking... Featured Posts
on Add some (biz)Spark to your startup!
on Add some (biz)Spark to your startup!
on Microsoft Training in Dallas on Microsoft Announces new Linux MVP
on Silverlight at the Redmond .NET User Group Tonight!
on Silverlight at the Redmond .NET User Group Tonight!
on Silverlight at the Redmond .NET User Group Tonight! on The Fit in February Developer Challenge gains momentum!
Improving Blogs My Health Blog - Less of me. CommunityCast.tv Twitter
Subscribe in a reader