Fear and Loathing

I’m just sitting with the CodePlex guys at TechEd and Scott Cate from myKB.com came over and dropped a bombshell on us. He pulled out a Sony Vaio UX50 that came in from Japan. This thing kicks the llama’s ass, and then some.

Check out the specs on this bad boy… 1/2GB of RAM, 30GB drive, a killer video card (Scott was playing his video of his sailboat at PDC), plugs into a monitor and keyboard so you can use it as a desktop. The list goes on. There’s also going to be a hardware upgrade so you can replace the 30GB drive with a solid state one. Our mouths were drooling over this one.

This thing rocks and I don’t know about you but I’m getting one asap. I mean, anything that I can fit in the palm of my hand (or Scott’s) and has this much power… why would I bother with my Compaq R4000 laptop? Twice the power at a quarter the size and the same cost?

Today was pretty busy and I really don’t have time to get into a long diatribe about the events of the day so I thought I would share a photo journal of some of the highlights. The day started out okay, and the crowds filled up fast. Although it’s odd there were more people going down than going up? What does that say for the conference? More stuff happening on the bottom floor? A deadly gas in the lower levels that cause less people to use escalators? Can’t say the traffic was the same by the end of the evening.

Carl Franklin and co. put on their live broadcast of .NET Rocks today with the guys from Team System who put the Database version together.

Here Carl is hacking into the sound system because, well, he’s Carl.

Of course what’s a photo blog without Fitz as he does his best Blue Man Group impression and blends into the background during one of his chalk talks.

We had an MVP dinner at a place called Anthony’s. Great food, great company, but they seem to have a very strict way of serving. For instance they wouldn’t let someone have a hand towel who didn’t have the lobster, even though it was available. Anyways, here’s Jim from Microsoft who’ll be presenting later this week. Evil looking, but he’s a PM on SharePoint so what do you expect?

Todd Bleeker. International Man of Mystery. What can I say? A crazy man at the podium (some say even crazier than me).

Later that night at the dinner he had the same expression on his face, but I just couldn’t resist snapping his pic. Nice expression lobster boy!

This photo blog was brought to you by the letters W, S, and S and the number 3.

The morning was odd as there were little bags with newspapers in them on our hotel room door. Wonder if it’s a cult thing or something?

Well, we made it the first day but today is the crunch. I’m just hanging in the TLC area for Office after stopping briefly in a couple of sessions (I seemed to be the only ScrumMaster at Peter Provosts’ Adopting Agile in the Enterprise talk). I’ll here my SharePoint Forums up and running on Office 2007 and there are a few people that wanted to see it so stop by and grab me if I have it ready. Had a quick breakfast with AC (god that boy can eat) and met Heather Solomon for the first time (Hi Heather!). So many more people to meet, so little time.

P.S. Yeah, AC I lied about posting your pic on my blog. Get over it.

My laptop seems to be acting up with my mouse flying all over the place. I’m looking for a place in Boston to pick up one of the new Microsoft Laser mice (with the zoom feature button which is great for presentations) so if anyone knows where I can get one (they only have some craptastic travel mouse at the conference store) let me know.

Back later with some goings on about the chalk talks here on SharePoint and what’s happening. I’ll be in the TLC (officially) between 5–9 PM today but wandering around between then, so drop by and we’ll do SharePoint finger puppets.

BTW, I am uploading the 8,000 photos I’m taking at the conference on my Flickr site. All of the TechEd ones are tagged with “teched2006” and in a TechEd set here. Feel free to comment, link to, and otherwise hammer the Flickr folks.

It’s 6 AM. Breakfast is in an hour. I have to go in and do some validation on the hands on labs (and get familiar with them myself).

My eyelids hurt.

Good morning, starshine, the earth says hello.

Or is it first swag? It’s like the debate between “gif” and “jif”. Anyways, if you’re at TechEd you know all about the goods. You get it the moment you register and the junk you have to take home with you just never stops flowing.

If you’re thinking “Well, it’s all cool but I’ll never use any of this stuff” you might want to take a closer look at what you actually get. There are some pretty neat things you should be aware of with your TechEd backpack.

First there’s the backpack itself. Well, maybe not a backpack in the traditional sense. It’s more like a back-laptop-pack, crossing over some middle ground between geeky bag to hold swag and man-purse. In any case, it’s a good thing and if you don’t have a bag to haul around your goodies, you do now.

Next are the DVDs. You get:

• Visual Studio 2005 Professional 90–Day Trial Edition – This isn’t just VS2005 but the DVD also contains the client tools for Visual Studio Team System as well as some resources like developer tools (Compuware, Crystal Reports, Dotfuscator) and controls and components (CodeRush, Infragistics, ComponentOne, Dundas). Handy if you’re looking to not re-invent the wheel.
• Windows Server Code Name “Longhorn” – Again, the MS Marketing engine is confusing us as we have grown up with “Longhorn” being what became “Vista”. However the next version of Windows Server 2003 is called Longhorn so be it. This contains a bootable DVD of the 32–bit x86 edition of Beta 2.
• Micrsosoft Windows 64–bit Resource DVD – This contains all kinds of white papers, case studies, training videos, and source code for you 64–bit crazies out there.
• Office 2007 Beta 2 – In case you missed downloading it (or couldn’t sit through the download times) this DVD set has all the clients and servers for Office 2007. Just install and get going on the next generation of Office.
• The Cool Way to Power Your Enterprise – This is an AMD disc with a bunch of white papers and video presentations on why AMD is so good. I do run an AMD laptop and all my desktops are AMD so is it good? YMMV.
• Sysinternals Video Library – These guys make the coolest toys so sit back and enjoy a set of video tutorials from the guys that wrote all those tools.
• Windows Vista – As you might have seen recently in the blog-o-sphere, the public beta of Vista went out. Here it is in DVD format if you need a copy.
• Virtual Servers – MS is all about virtualization these days so this contains lots of goodies (including the very free Virtual Server R2) for you virtual geeks
• Secure Messaging Evaluation Kit – This DVD contains a whack of stuff for you security freaks and covers Antigen (including a trial for use with SMTP and Exchange), ISA Server, and lots of presentations and documents on building, configuring, and securing a DMZ.
• How Microsoft does IT – If you have checked out various webcasts and white papers on how Microsoft runs it’s own IT department, then you might want to look at this DVD. It contains all that plus new material with Best Practices and Case Studies on how it all fits together. Handy as I’m sure your own IT department will be much smaller than Microsofts and it’s good to know you’re not trying to do something that’s impossible.
• Office SharePoint Server 2007 Technical Resource DVD – SharePoint is so damn huge that it has it’s own resource DVD. This puppy has everything you want to know about SharePoint 2007 and even contains a very cool VPC all setup and ready to go. Just extract it and run Virtual PC (eval copy included on disc) or Virtual Server R2 (free on the other disc above) and you’re off to the races. You’ll have a completely configured stand-alone server with your own Active Directory, SharePoint Server, Office 2007 client and all the various accounts to use it. Not only that, there are a set of labs and walkthroughs that get you introduced to the various concepts of SharePoint 2007 like the Business Data Catalog, Workflow, Content Types, and more. All goodness.

On top of the DVD/CDs you also get a stack of books and papers. Most people regard these as filler but have you ever read any of them? Here’s some of the highlights of the good stuff here (and things you need to act on in order to cash in on bringing the goodies home with you):

• Conference Expo Guide – Okay, most people don’t bother with this but there are some good things in here like “when are you getting the conference DVDs” and “where the heck are the bathrooms?”. Your TechEd survival depends on it.
• TechEd notepad – No, this isn’t a “special edition” of our favorite notepad.exe (which I’m still waiting for my Notepad MVP award!) but just a blank pad for you to scribble junk down like (short) urls, girls phone numbers (there are some geek girls wandering around, really), and other useless stuff if you’re not the type that brought a laptop.
• System Center Essentials 2007 – Fill out the card and drop it in the Essentials 2007 booth in the Technical Learning Centre (TLC) to win a free Xbox 360.
• MVP – There’s changes happening in the MVP program like the recent “nominate a MVP” update they’ve done to the site. You can go online and nominate someone yourself so if there’s someone in the community that you think should be an MVP and isn’t, here’s your chance.
• Altiris – Stop by booth #316 and get a free sports umbrella (and enter for a chance to win a $500 amazon.com gift certificate)
• MSDN Magazine – You get a free copy of the June 2006 edition of MSDN magazine with a pretty good article on MSBuild and a sampler CD of the Chart FX tools from www.softwarefx.com
• Microsoft Business Intelligence – Check out the Business Intelligence TLC to snag an ugly orange bracelet. It’s ugly but you could win a Plantronics Voyager 510–USB headset (although I think I should win one for writing this crap)
• Symantec – Fill out the card and drop it off at booth #109 for a chance to win a portable Garmin GPS unit.
• In addition, check some of the other papers and flyers as most of them tell you to check out their booth and want you to present that paper to get some extra swag.

Whew. That’s a lot of swag and we’re just on the first day.

Finally I noticed that someone at the show had a sense of humor, but if you don’t get it don’t worry. You need to be at a certain geek level (almost attaining nerd status) for it to be funny.

9:49 AM. July 11. 2006.

Remember that date. It’s not only the start of TechEd 2006, but the birth of our very first Bacteria Farm.

Yup, this morning we decided to start up the Bacteria Farm and see what we can grow over the next 5 or 6 days. Of course, creating the cultures were a challenge unto themselves. The instructions were simple and even a child could understand them. Boil some water, create a glucose solution, and seed it with some bacteria.

That was the first problem. In a hotel room, boiling water isn’t that easy. So we started looking around the room for stuff we could do. After all, they provided us with water (at $4.50 a bottle) so that was taken care of. The problem was boiling it, as the hotel doesn’t regularily provide it’s guests with hot plates or kettles (some kind of fire regulation thing).

We started looking around to room to build a make-shift cultivator. We had a steam iron and ironing board. We had glasses. We had water. Now we’re talking.

It was all very MacGuyver like which was cool and made me want to create an explosive device out of left over computer parts (or a birth control device out of a MP3 player and a toaster). The problem is that it would have taken about 3000 years to get up enough boiled water in order to mix the glucose together. In the end we just used the hot water from the tap which was pretty hot. Yeah, not entirely scientific but it’s not like we’re growing ebola here (well, time will tell).

Next was the actual mixture. Being the typical developers we are, we didn’t RTFM so we tossed a small packet of glucose mixture (btw, this would have never got past the dogs at the airport) into a small glass of hot water. It seemed to turn out thick. Very thick. Thicker than the Boston accent here. After realizing that we were only supposed to use 1/4 of the packet, the water began to flow. And flow. And flow. And flow.

About a half hour later, we had some kind of base that we could add bacteria to. It’s been about 4 hours since creating the base so now I’ve added the actual bacteria to the petri dishes, as per the very helpful instructions. They say to go find bacteria in various places like dog fur and sheeps bladders, however I just don’t have any of those in Boston (if anyone knows of a handy place to get sheeps bladders let me know). So I filled the dishes with various things around the room. Here’s the rundown on our Bacteria Farm:

• Petri 1 (top left) – My mouth
• Petri 2 (top right) – My left shoe after walking around TechEd and Boston Harbor all day (and some kind of goo that I wiped off of Hanselman)
• Petri 3 (middle) – The base of the toilet at the Lenox
• Petri 4 (bottom left) – Inside the sink drain at the Lenox
• Petri 5 (bottom right) – The window sill outside our room at the Lenox

God. So much news to report and so little time (in a very Willy Wonka like fashion). Scoble is leaving Microsoft which is being touted as the biggest mistake Microsoft made (although some wonder if he did anything to improve it). I had dinner with John Lam, Scott Hanselman, Bill Evjen, and others and we talked about everything (mostly the type of planes that were roaring over our heads). John has put the Ruby seed in my head (curse you John!) and I’m going to give it a shot. Who knows? Ruby? SharePoint? Might make for an interesting (and perhaps powerful) combo.

The morning was spent at an MVP Event with our good friend Sean O’Drisco (the head of the MVP program) and just talking about the evolution of things. Fun and informative. Again it was great seeing new and old MVPs and I got a chance to talk to the InfoPath guy (sorry, can’t remember your name) and how SharePoint 2007 and InfoPath were going to rule the world. I’ll pass on a great tip later after I check it out in my VM which he told me about.

A brief lunch, and I headed off to register at the event and get some orientation for tommorow. I’m spending the majority of TechEd at the Office Technical Learning Center. This is like an uber Ask the Experts booth, but with Hands on Labs, chalk talks, white boards, comfy couches, and small (20–25 people) theatre presentations. All great stuff and I hope to demo and talk about lots of 2007 stuff. Drop by and say hi if you’re down here as I’ll be pimping the MS warez with AC, Woody, and others.

I’ll be back later with news from the floor on TechEd and what’s going on, TechEd swag (or is it schwag? what’s the official term?), and other goodies. I’ll also be posting my TechEd schedule, my BOF session on Thursday, and whatever else I can spit out between now and tommorow.

Nothing like living vicariously through a silly MVP at TechEd huh?

So it’s TechEd and here we are in Boston. We went out and grabbed some food last night at Bertucci’s, a local brick oven delight (hey, any Italian restaurant that has a website is aces in my books). Absolutely great food and walking distance to the hotel. While walking there we passed by Trinity Church, the Boston Public Library, and a few other churches that look like they were built sometime around the creation of man. Incredible architecture so I’m going to be snapping a lot of pics this week.

The hotel is awesome and on the TechEd circuit so we’ll be able to grab a bus anytime. We’ll see how the buses go. At PDC they were great, and ran all the time so hopefully thing will go as smoothly. The Lenox hotel looks great and is a good size with free WiFi (take that airports!). We do have two beds as James decided it wasn’t going to be Planes, Trains, Automobiles for us. It’s a good view out the west window and the weather has cleared up this morning from the rain we had last night.

Finally today is the first day of our bacteria experiment. I was in a store at the Minneapolis airport and spotted the oddest thing. Bacteria Farm! It’s a kit you can grow bacteria (complete with it’s petri dishes) and Jo-Jo the dog faced boy who sports the cover was just calling out for me. I think it was the American Gothic flavour it had on the box with Jo-Jo holding his pitchfork dressed in overalls that did it for me. I’m just hoping James and I don’t look like Jo-Jo by the end of the week and the completion of the experiment. Watch for bacteria updates all week long, as we now have a purpose here in Boston.

As for the bacteria itself, they’re just so darn incredibly cute. Like those cute Sea Monkey ads from the comics in the 70s, these critters are just so cuddly (even if they are 0.0001 inches in size). Look at them? How can you not love these guys, even if they will kill a 180 pound man (or water buffalo) in 120 seconds.

Well, here we are off to TechEd 2006. I’m traveling with James Kovacs and we’re splitting a room at the Lenox Hotel here in Boston, so it’s all good.

Is it a Minneapolis thing or what? There were dozens of Amish people on the plane which was odd to me (not hanging out with the Amish very often). Didn’t matter to us since it wasn’t like they were looking for us to seed the community or anything, I just thought the whole Amish/Mennonite thing generally avoided technology. Just shows how ignorant I am about the world.

As we flew into Minneapolis we passed over a fairly large plume of smoke with a grass fire or something fueling it. Hey, when you’re geeks at 30,000 feet any excitement is fun. Although the picture doesn’t look that terrifying, it certainly was more impressive when we went over it.

As we were deplaning at the airport, they announced that walking sticks were available as we left. Cool. James and I looked at each other and thought “free stuff!” as we leave. Way to go Northwest. Unfortunately no, they didn’t have any walking sticks for us. We’re landing in Minneapolis and then doing a 4 hour stop over to Boston. Of course, as geek-luck would have it we’re re-planing in concourse F10. I would have personally preferred the F1 concourse as I think they would have been more helpful, but at least there’s power here to plug in while I drain my laptop battery.

I’m always fascinated by the oddities there are at airports. Like why would an airport have a dry cleaners? Are people that desperate and have that much time on their hands to really get laundry done while traveling? The Minneapolis airport is no exception as there were a couple of things I haven’t seen before. One was a phone charger which I thought was cool and it supported almost every type of phone. The problem is the 15 minute wait for the “turbo charge” service. The other one was a little odd. It offered scratch and win lottery tickets. Yup. Drop a buck in the machine and get a lottery ticket. My brain just doesn’t get it and I look at this as a poor mans VLT. Guess walking over to the magazine rack isn’t good enough for some people.

Of course I’m grumbling that there’s no free Wifi. Scratch and win dispensing machines, but not Wifi. Is there somebody we can contact and tell them how much we’ll love and cherish them if they just tossed us a frickin’ bone and gave us a connection to check our mail? What’s even worse is that these pay hot spots (like the one here) charge $6.95 for the day. Okay, that’s not too expensive and works for me but since we’re only here for a couple of hours, it’s not $6.95 per day, it’s $6.95 per hour (more or less). I don’t see anyone who would hang around an airport all day long and if they did, then Wifi is the last thing they probably need.

Well, as long as there’s no free Wifi at airports I’ll continue to gripe and bitch about it.