The .NET Rocks!
Online show schedule for next week:
Mon: Raleigh
Tue: Atlanta
Wed: Nashville
Thu: Memphis
Fri: Dallas
This is the online schedule. Of course, we'll be doing the Nashville show live on Monday night.
So we got to Raleigh just in time on Thursday. It took us a little effort to find the place, and with local traffic being what it is, well, we got there just as we were supposed to take the stage. It only took us a few minutes to set up, and in reality we only ran over by 15 minutes or so as I recall.
We had a great turnout in Raleigh, especially in the boat afterwords. 70 minutes worth of recorded stories. Great stuff.
Jim Duffy is in Raleigh, and we had some fun with him at the event too. You'd be surprised how many people down here are using
.NET Nuke. :-) Thanks to Connie Marthinson and the crew for helping us pull off another stellar event in Raleigh, NC.
We were on the road on the early side for the haul to Atlanta.
As you can see from the website we thinned out the GPS data a little by changing the upload interval to 5 minutes from 1 minute. I hope we can tweak the data to fill in the missing points and thin out the stretch from Baltimore to Raleigh. Thanks to
Dr. Neil and his crew for getting the app going with what little time they spent on it. This might be the start of a reusable trip tracker application!
The Atlanta event was great also.
Mark Dunn was there and as we were speaking,
Rory Blyth walked in. Having all 3 co-hosts of DNR together in the same room caused the audio equipment to stop working. It was amazing. I'm kidding of course. The audio equipment worked just fine, but when Rory walked in the door, everyone's hair fell out instantaneously.
I presented Mark with a special gift. When we started promoting the show I made up five huge posters (9'x4') that say .NET Rocks! - The Internet Audio Talk Show for .NET Developers with Carl Franklin and Mark Dunn. I sent one to Microsoft, and it's still hanging in the caf at building 42. I gave another one to the DevConnections people to hang at their shows, one to Microsoft in Waltham to hang in the big room, I have one hanging at franklins.net, and there was one more. I brought that down for Mark as it will be worth millions some day :-) If anyone sees this item on ebay, please let me know immediately! :-)
After the Atlanta event we threw a party at
Definition 6 in Atlanta. Mark broke out a bottle of
his favorite Bourbon and we partook thereof. At the same time, we interviewed several interesting people in a side room at the party including Mark and Rory, the CEO of Definition 6, and believe it or not, some actual developers who listen to the show and had stories to tell. Geoff is pissed at us because we used up 89.5 out of 90 minutes of possible space on the 1 gig CF card :-)
Speaking of Geoff, he hooked up with some online friends of his that live in the area. They met him at the event and we didn't see him all night. Pretty cool how technology helps people get together.
Anyway, I think we rolled back to the hotel (via designated driver of course) around 3AM. Twas a fun night.
So early Saturday morning I called the front desk:
Me: Is there any coin-operated launrdy facility in the building
Her: (yawning)... uh.... nope....nothing
Me: Are there any laundromats in the area? (we're in Alpharetta)
Her: (voice cracking).. nope.... nothing at all
Me: You're telling me there are no laundromats in or around Alpharetta?
Her: That's right... when..... when I get ... to the orange sign.... I ....I turn it off....(snoring)
So we looked in the yellow pages and there was a place not far from us in nearby Roswell. Now, this is Roswell, Georgia. Not Roswell, New Mexico. I know what you are thinking about the front desk clerk and she's clearly not one of them. Although if Mark Miller were with us he'd have tried to rip off her human zipper mask.
We found the laundry, which has wash and fold service (awesome!) and then went to a music store to ah... trade my crappy practice amp for a not-so-crappy practice amp. The amp I was using (for the swag giveaway) sounded horrible. I picked up a little crate amp which I am happy to say sounds great.
We met up with Mark Dunn and his son Mark last night for ribs at Papa Reds in Cumming, GA where Mark lives. It was awesome food, but a little hard to get. Here's what I mean:
Me: (spying and pointing to the wonderful-looking bbq chciken on display) I'll take the Ribs and Chicken combo
Him: You know that the combo comes with pulled chicken...
Me: OK, so just give me a combination of ribs, and that (pointing) chicken right there and charge me accordingly
Him: (shaking his head) Uh... I can't ... the combo comes with pulled chicken
Me: So, there's no way you can sell me a plate with ribs and that chicken on it?
Him: (looking horrified and glancing around for his manager) Uh... no, I uh... askjsads...baspasdwdekr... pulled chicken....
Me: (walking to the back of the line) hm... I'll have to think about this then...
Manager: So, the reason you can't get those two items in the combo is
that chicken takes 4 hours to cook and blah blah blah
Me: Look, I don't care what you have to charge me. This is what I want
Manager: Oh Well!!! That's different!!! In that case just get the Chicken dinner with a 1/2 pound of ribs on the side!
Me: Great!
Manager: And, it will cost you the same as the combo
I felt like I was gathering requirements for medical software. The food was great, however, and we had a good time there.
More road stories to come as events unfold.