PDC in L.A. is smokin'

Yesterday was a long day between 6 hours of flight time, and several other hours of miscellaneous travel between home, airports, terminals, and hotels. The descent into L.A. was interesting. We were warned about the smell of smoke since there some brush fires in our path. We saw a couple of them from the air and I was completely surprised at the amount of smoke obscuring the ground....and then bam - we flew into a huge smoke cloud and the smell of smoke didn't surprise me as much as the light blocking effects. It's wierd when somebody turns off the sun. As we were getting off the plane some pilots from our plane were talking in the ramp....“Holy Crap, that was like flying into a thunderstorm“. Don't they have a pilot's lounge for this kind of thing?

After a fine dinner at Gladstone's in Mailbu with DennisLee , DaveLloyd and about 25 pigeon's that could swallow my youngest daughter whole, we retired back to the hotel to do some pre-Bof collection of content for our Visual Studio.NET Tips and Tricks session. I learned lots of neat tricks from both of them. I also had some good things to share. This was sort of a mini bof between 3 people. I can already see that I'll have to really play the moderator role. Tips were flying back and forth so quick - we also need a scribe tonight.

One of the tips which was more of a PDC tip than anything, is that on of use who will remain nameless - isn't familiar with the fully enriched PDC Calendar - which is only available if you log on . “Log on?” He asked. Yes, you first go to http://mymsevents.com/MyMSEvents/ and then in the toolbar - click Login and use your passport account that you registered with. You see a few new menu items available afterwards like “My Calendar”. Don't even think of using the “Sessions” menu item to browse the list of topics - it's way too pedestrian. The My Calendar is printable. I thought it was also downloadable to PocketPC and Outlook but I can't seem to do that anymore. Anyone else ever see that? Am I missing something? Also check out the “Session Evaluations“  a nice way to do online evals.

I need breakfast...badly.

Time Change

I left home at 4:45 am so I would have time to pick up Barry Gervin and get to the airport for our 7:20 flight. I stopped for coffee knowing it would be the last time for a week that I would enjoy the sweet aroma and flavour of a Tim Horton's large black 2 sugars. I was hungry so I pick up a couple of blueberry muffins for breakfast.

Our flight left on time, and the first leg was quick. Between Toronto and Cleveland we got coffee and a blueberry muffin. It was OK.

Between Cleveland and LA we had in flight entertainment. The movie Legally Blonde II and episodes of the TV shows Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Wings.

Next thing you know they start serving breakfast. I sat eagerly awaiting some eggs and of course one of the standard breakfast meats. The flight attendant pulled her cart up to our aisle and set down a lovely healthy breakfast. Cereal, milk a banana and a blueberry muffin. It's a good thing I really like blue berry muffins.

That was a long day. I was in bed by 9 pm and them up at 6 which of course I thought was 7. Now I am going to get that breakfast I have been waiting for, then off the convention centre to register for PDC 2003.

Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks @ PDC

I'm hosting a birds of a feather Sunday night from 8-9pm at the Microsoft PDC. The topic is Visual Studio .NET Tips and Tricks. Hope to see you there - and grab a beer or three afterwards.

Code:
BoF29
Room: Room 402AB

MS Professional Developers Conference...

...here we come.

Myself and fellow ObjectSharpies DennisLee and DaveLloyd are heading out Saturday morning for the PDC in L.A. Stay tuned for our perspectives on Whidbey (essentially .NET 2.0), Yukon (SQL Server 2004?), and Longhorn (Windows 2005?). Key pieces of technology I'll be researching are Indigo (new web services framework) and Avalon (new windows forms framework).

I'm also looking forward to seeing MSBuild and trying to understand how it will compare, compete or compliment NAnt. I still don't see anything about the next version of Visual Source Safe - what's up with that?

If you are in town, look me up and I'll buy you a beer.