So Microsoft comes to the Orange County Convention Center for two weeks in June (aka TechEd).  They paid for the thing for two whole weeks.  The weekend between the IT Pro Week and the Dev Week is part of that two weeks and the aforementioned facility will be sitting idle.  What so you do?  Let the community have it...

Microsoft Commmunity Summit 2008

We had a lively evening last night (see our house in the picture above).  A brush fire in the preserve behind our home came very very close.  But the amazing response from all of the fire departments in Brevard County saved every home that was threatened.  An amazing job by these guys with special thanks to the Titusville unit who setup in our yard.  The strategy is apparently to let it burn all it wants to burn, but stop it short of the house.  The less fuel left means less work later. 

It was also an amazing night out to connect with neighbors and show support for each other.  I got to talk with atleast 20 of my neighbors at various times throughout the night.  An incredible example of community.

I got the word today that my manager would sign off on me attending TechEd this year!  Very excited!  I've attended VS Live in the past and am anxious to see how Tech Ed compares.  Just looking at the conference agenda makes me think I will be burning out by Day 4.  If anybody from the Space Coast .Net User Group is going, drop me a line so we can hook up.  I am on the Tech Ed community site as well.

I experienced the power of the Blog for the first time last week.  An entry I wrote concerning HTTP Send Port timeouts and message re-transmits came home.  I got an email from somebody in my employer's government division regarding my post.  The 3rd party vendor they use for a procurement system has BizTalk as part of the solution.  they were seeing multiple message posts to a web service.  The tech support guy at the 3rd party vendor sent them a link to my blog.  The government division folks recognized my name and emailed me.  A short teleconference later and the problem was understood and solved.  Small wide world.

I am speaking tonight with a colleague at the Space Coast .Net User Group.  The meeting is at 6:30 PM at the Space Coast Credit Union's Headquarters Building.  George Tomek will be presenting on WF and I will be doing Practical Adapter Pattern.  Hope to see some familiar faces.

When:
2/20/2008
6:30 PM - 8:30 PM

Where:
Space Coast Credit Union Corp Headquaters
8045 N. Wickham Road
Melbourne, FL 32940

What:
The ADO.NET Entity Framework, part of ADO.NET components of the .NET Framework, is an Object-Relational mapping technology from Microsoft. It is geared to solving the mismatch between the formats data is stored in a database and in which it is consumed in an object-oriented programming language or other front ends.