May 2004 - Posts
Rory and I flew back from TechEd on the same plane and were able to sit beside each other. Andrew and Chris were on that flight too.
Rory has a bit of a fear of flying, so I tried to distract him from the fact that we were way up in the air, with nothing in between us and the hard, hard ground.
We had seats in the back of the plane. The *back* of the plane. The *very back* of the plane. The engine was right outside. We didn't have a window, which helped hide the fact that we were flying, but the engine noise kept giving away the fact that we weren't just sitting in a TechEd cabana.
He was working on a blog entry and also doing some research for a future entry, the second in a series. I must say, for someone who is afraid of flying he was doing quite well.
Things were going OK until the captain came over the speaker to announce that we were 31,000 feet in the air. I looked a Rory and smiled an apology. He had a look of terror on his face.
To help make things better I told him we were less than six miles high. "When you think about it, it's not really that high." That didn't really help at all.
To further distract him from his discomfort I thought I would show him a couple of pictures I took on the flight down to San Diego. I knew he really wanted to see what was going on outside, but we didn't have a window. I popped open this one of Half Dome, California from 31000 feet. I reminded him that Half Dome is over 8000 feet tall, and yet it looked so small. For some reason it didn't settle his mind.
Half Dome, California
Then I opened this one of Los Angeles from 31000 feet.
Los Angeles
It didn't do the trick either. Even when I zoomed in to show him that Dodger Stadium was in the picture he didn't sit back and relax. (He's not much of a baseball fan.)
Detail of Dodger Stadium from the picture above...
Hm.
Desperate, I did the unthinkable. I distracted him by opening the air vent above my head. The vent must have had a direct line to the fan from the lavatory, because the smell was awful. At least it took his mind off the flying.
Now that I have around 150 pictures from TechEd, I'd love to organize them all. But how to do it? By date? By subject matter or theme? Other? I have some that I've cropped and edited, and already published to my blog. Argh! I need WinFS today.
I took a stroll over to Ian's blog this afternoon and I saw this picture. Hm. That looks familiar.
.jpg)
Ian's Top Gun picture
I dropped into my TechEd pictures folder and there it was -- my own capture of the same sign. Heh. Everyone with a camera probably takes a picture of that sign when they eat at Kansas City Barbeque. (It's great food. (The food, not the sign.))
Here's my Top Gun picture:
Notice the lack of the HSoP Method (one of the few
I took that way while at TechEd)
I had a chance to meet Ian on Thursday afternoon when a few of us took a little break from the techincal activities. More on that later, though. He's a great fellow, and the English accent makes for some fun conversations.
...AKA, palm trees, coconuts, and sand...
On Thursday morning, Carl and Rory held a .NET Rocks! special event in the cabana area at TechEd. Since there weren't any MS product group folks available for interviewing (it was supposed to be an “MS speaks to .NET Rocks” session) , Carl quickly switched the format around to “the audience speaks to Microsoft.”
There were a number of good questions, complaints, and a bunch of good discussion. The questions and answers will be posted on the .NET Rocks! web site.
Everyone who wanted to talk had a chance, including me. :o) I closed my eyes at one point to imagine I was listening to them via their broadcast. (Um, no, I wasn't sleeping, thank you very much. No way I was bored out of my skull while taking notes for Carl and Rory. Nope. Wide awake the whole time. I was concentrating.)
After the hour had flown by, Carl asked the folks to give a .NET Rocks! cheer. Boy, did they ever! I think the cabana area is still echoing even now. People all across the “Sails” area turned to see what they were missing.
Good times!
Just after the cheer, with the echoes in the air...
On Tuesday night I had a chance to eat dinner with a bunch of the Microsoft Developer Evangelists and Developer Community Champions. It's great to be able to get together as a group from time to time to talk about how things are going, what exciting things are happening with the user groups we work with, what kind of problems we're having. It's like having a big group therapy session. MS has a bunch of talented folks with tremendous passion for the developer community. It's easy to get jazzed from hanging around them and sharing stories.
And sometimes we try to figure out new ideas for designer sunglasses.
Steve demonstrates his idea... Um. No.
I didn't know MONO had made it to the TV world, but in San Diego it has. I grabbed a photo as evidence:
That's Cory Isakson's hand, pointing the way...
My stomach still hurts. On Wednesday evening I went to dinner with a few guys. The food was excellent, but the laughter… oh, the laughter was too much. I've never laughed so hard in my life.
I took the following picture to record the event for posterity.
Just before dinner with Cory, Carl, Richard, and Rory.
(I should have taken a peek at what was going on
behind me. I might have changed my dinner plans. :o)
A few minutes later, after I had already taken the group picture (using the HSoP™ Method by the way), Jon Box, Regional Director from Memphis, showed up and contributed to the fun. (By being too late for the picture he can deny he's ever met any of us. (Jon is a smart man. And he's funny too. (It's scary to be surrounded by so many smart, funny people.))
During dinner Rory was able to channel Steve Ballmer. He also morphed into a nerd -- not that he isn't one already -- but a nerd that was really into Start Trek and Star Wars. I almost busted a gut. Carl channeled Nat King Cole, singing about chipmunks roasting on an open fire. More laughter. Jon and Rory continued aconversation they had started when they first met, about preferences.
It was fun and laughter all dinner long.
The food was surprisingly good. I mean, a good southern style BBQ place in San Diego? No way. But, yep, it was very good.
Mm. Some sliced BBQ pork with beans. It doesn't
get much better than this.
Yep, today Mr. E-Biz, Owen Allen, passes into another year around the Sun. We're rooming together at TechEd, and he's a great roommate. (He doesn't snore.)
Happy birthday, man.
[Update: apparently some people outside the US don't have Dove bars. What are they? A little piece of heaven on a stick. Very creamy vanilla ice cream covered with very rich and creamy chocolate. Click here for my other post about them. (But be careful, once you see one you'll never be the same. Once you taste one there's absolutely no going back.)]
Dove bars. They rule the world.
And they're also very elusive.
I was able to snag one on Monday, but ever since then I've struck out. You have to be in the right place at the right time. By the time you see someone eating one, they're all gone.
You make a mad dash (while still trying to look cool) in the opposite direction the Dove eater is walking. As you walk upstream you see others with Dove bars, in earlier stages of eating. You know you're getting close and… NO! GONE!
All that are left are the frozen fruit bars. Tons of frozen fruit bars. Who wants a friggin frozen fruit bar when you can have a Dove bar? When you NEED a Dove bar? When your body can't go on any longer without a Dove bar?
I have serious Dove bar envy.
Attending the first Team System session…
Silos in the IT lifecycle
Infrastructure architect, business stakeholder, project manager, solution architect, developer, tester
Role-based features of VS Team System: architect, developer, tester
Integration with Microsoft Project
3 main goals of Visual Studio Team System
· Reduce complexity
· Facilitate communication
· Enable 3rd party ecosystem
Demo time. Here's some of the stuff they showed off. They worked their way through a scenario with all the people who would be involved with a project: project manager, infrastructure architect, solution architect, developer and tester.
Enterprise source code control system. FINALLY! One scenario: Create a private branch in the source control tool - changes you've made can be stored on the source code repository without affecting the main source tree. They've made it VERY easy to put stuff into a private branch and pull it back out. Allows you to keep your source code safe without having to break the build.
There's no built-in WinForm UI test tool. They demonstrated tight integration with a 3rd party GUI test tool though. Didn't have to leave the Visual Studio environment to run the 3rd party tool. Results were displayed in VS environment. (The unit test and code coverage tools do come with Visual Studio Team System.)
The unit test tools allow developers to easily run unit tests. Allows the test team to dive deeper in the tests - the "easier" ones are already caught by the developer before they get to testing.
Very cool: Out of the box, the load test tool will highlight performance monitor counters that are out of "acceptable" range. You can tweak the thresholds, but the default values are threshold recommendations from MS based on best practices.
Good God! This is slick as snot!
Developers can easily add instrumentation for ASP.NET application through a wizard. The load test that the testing group is available to the developer through Team System. Dev runs the load test then can look at the result - graphic & tabular view. Easily jump to the code that might be causing performance problems from the view.
Management pack wizard allows you to easily create a Microsoft Operations Manager configuration pack. Can be included when you check in the source code. Operations folks can apply the management pack to help them monitor the production system.
Broad industry support - over 15 partners making announcements
Team System will be released in first half of 2005.
Where is a Team System build? Is it on the community tech preview? I want this NOW! I want to show this to enterprise development teams. They're going to be blown away too. This is what enterprise developers have been asking Microsoft for for years.
YES! Most of the client tools demoed today are in the community build.
Eric Lee - demoed the developer portion of Team System
I met a few new Portland nerds (well, they've been in Portland for a while, and they're not new to Nerddom, but I'd never met them at a Nerd Dinner before, so that makes them a new Portland nerd (and no, that does not mean that the world revolves around me (although somtimes (OK frequently) it does (to me anyway)))) at the Portland Nerd Dinner - San Diego last night. The subject matter was the same - geekage. The food was similar - crappy food court mall food is crappy food court mall food, no matter where you are in the country.
But the atmosphere was completely different. The food court is outside. It wasn't raining. What the hell is up with that? It was just too confusing for us folks with webbed feet.
Anyway, the discussions were fast and furious. One of the new guys I had fun talking to was Darren, IT Manager from Harry's Fresh Foods. (He's on the far right in the photo.)
Where's the rain? Jason, John, Rory, and Andy - all regulars at the Portland PND - were also there.
We strolled over to the W hotel after eating to enjoy some liquid refreshments.
Via Barry Gervin, there are a number of sessions for Visual Studio Team System now available at TechEd:
- DEV200 General Session: Managing the Software Lifecycle with Visual Studio 2005 Halls GH
Tuesday 10:45 - DEV300 Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Tools: Software Project Management Room 20D
Tuesday 1:30 - DEVC36 Testing Visual Studio 2005 Applications Using the .NET Framework Cabana 06
Thursday 10:15 - DEV302 Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Tools: Building Robust and Reliable Software Room 20D
Thursday 1:30 - DEV303 Visual Studio 2005 Enterprise Tools: Enterprise-Class Source Control and Work Item Tracking Room 20D
Thursday 3:15 - DEVC39 Extending Visual Studio 2005 Team System Cabana 06
Thursday 5:00 - DEVPNL4 Enabling the End-to-End Solution Lifecycle: Microsoft Partner Panel Room 20D
Friday 12:15 - DEV356 Visual Studio 2005: Managing the Enterprise Build Process with MSBuild Room 31ABC
Friday 1:00
Sweet! I've updated my agenda!
There are tons of hands on labs this year, and for (many of them at least) they're using Virtual PC images on the lab machines. What an excellent idea. At past conferences, my HOL experience was tainted by having to wait on machines to be re-Ghosted. There would be tons of machines without anyone sitting at them, but walk up and - NO - it's being Ghosted back to its original state. Frustrating.
But here, with Virtual PC, once you're done with a lab, all the work you did in the VPC image can be blown away in an instant. Poof! And the lab machine is ready for the next person.
Good job!
(Note: sorry for the near-technical nature of this post. I'll get back to the important stuff soon.)
After eating so much rich food the past couple of days, I figured it was time to cut back a little this morning. Nothing fancy; nice and simple.
I didn't have to worry about anyone trying to steal my meal.
I took a bunch of folks from the Northwest to dinner on Sunday night. We wandered around for a while then worked our way to Sally's. It's right on the water, but that wasn't the view I was interested in. My favorite view was Owen's dinner. It was a work of art.
I tried to distract him, but he wouldn't be fooled. I ended up eating my order of grilled tuna, which was delicious, but didn't have the eye appeal of Owen's meal.
Owen, look! It's Elvis! (as I grab his plate and run)
More Posts
Next page »