Busy, busy, busy...

Sorry for the lack updates; it definitely hasn’t been due to a lack of ideas. ;-) So here’s a quick update before I have to get back to it.

Right now I’m preparing to head to Redmond for a week of interaction with the various Microsoft product teams and fellow MVPs from around the world. Hopefully the agent I just spoke to on the phone regarding flight status is accurate and my flight will have no issues (it’s an MD80, the ones that are having the inspection issues). When I purchased the ticket back in February, the flight was for 7:40am… now it’s for 6:45am… ouch… man that’s early. Not looking forward to a 4am wakeup call.

This morning I did another Windows Vista for Developers presentation at the NTPCUG - VB group. It’s interesting to hear the questions, concerns and comments regarding the state of Vista. Once I share some of the information, I think some people are left wondering why there is so much resistance in moving to Vista. Ultimately I think that Vista is the first consumer OS released by Microsoft in an age of laptops and manufacturers are being substandard in supporting products that they’ve already sold; not that it’s entirely their fault… they are busy working on new products and laptops are definitely a product that requires a balance between the hardware, drivers and other software. Just throwing a new OS at it isn’t necessarily a good idea. There are other issues and I can’t answer to as why so many people seem to be anti-Vista; all I can say is I’ve been running it since release on all machines I use. I’m happy. The first crash I encountered was this week when a Raptor 150 drive decided to puke its guts out… my first OS re-install in over a year and a half. Something I can’t say when I was running anything prior.

The recent Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 launch event was fun as usual; however, I was a little disappointed in the lack of “tough” questions. Of the questions received, they ranged from Linq, SQL Server 2008, BizTalk, IIS and Vista (of which I deferred to the “booth” next to us manned by people from the Vista product team). There were also some questions regarding moving to Visual Studio 2008 from prior versions. So the only real developer questions were surrounding Linq. Which brings me to my next subject…

Linq is freakin’ AWESOME! Expect to see a lot more from me in the near future regarding Linq in the real world. I’m still getting my head around all the finer details… and so far I’m very impressed in the breadth (or would that be depth) that Linq offers.

Still working on growing the two DNUX groups in the area and have my first “it’s not me presenting” speaker coming to the Dallas DNUX this month. David O’Hara will be presenting; which will allow me to focus a bit more on the Fort Worth .NET Users Group local VS’08, SQL’08, Server’08 launch event taking place later this month. I’ll also have to put together another topic for the Fort Worth DNUX, so if you have any suggestions, fire them my way.

I’m going to have a new batch of samples coming soon; in addition, I plan on migrating all existing samples to 2008 as well. One particular one I’m working on that will also have a related article is using Vista Aero (“Glass”). Yes, some others have shown how to do this, but I think you’ll be interested in my particular angle on it. ;-)

I still have a write up planned that will discuss my working on a daily bases in three different development languages; this will include the positives and negatives encountered… but will not be a versus article. The three languages are Visual Basic, C# and T-SQL.

In early May, I’ll be the official Prize-man for the Dallas Tech-Fest, so be sure to come by and say hello. Early June is Tech-Ed 2008 (Developers)… I’ll be there as well hanging out in the product group areas answering (and asking) questions.