Managed World

I’m posting this here for me more than anyone, but if any of you haven’t heard of these applications you have to check them out. I must give a quick thanks to Scott Hanselman who I was exposed to these utilities through.

SlickRun

TaskSwitchXP

I had a great dinner tonight. I finally got to meet John “iunknown” Lam and got to have some great conversations about Code Generation, Ruby, Source Control, and so on. Of the people I knew, at dinner there was John, Scott Hanselman, Jason Mauer, Cory Isakson and a few others whose names escape me right now (have I told you that I’m *really* bad with names?). On the bus ride home I got to meet SqlDiva, DonXML’s wife (at least, that’s what she said  (I hope I got the link right)). Mauer and I were having a pseudo-philosophical conversation about static vs. dynamic languages, writing code, etc. and DonXML’s wife said that I really need to have a chat with (or at least introduce myself to) DonXML because he would have loved to be part of the conversation Mauer and I were having. Well, I’ll have to see if I can arrange a meeting tomorrow (as in tracking down one person in the entire conference ).

I’m too tired to type much else about the conference today. I got some work done on the Managed DirectX tutorials I’m doing. I also got some more practice on emacs (yes, you heard me right, emacs (I need a good platform for developing Ruby with)). More to come in the future.

I never thought I would say this about Tech Ed, but it’s actually refreshing to attend a presentation that wasn’t a direct reading from a set of powerpoint slides. Scott’s presentation was quite good. Then again, Scott is a great presenter. I just wish other presenters would go read the presentation tips he has posted on his blog.

The talk wasn’t quite about what I thought it was going to be. On the other hand, it was much more “hands on”. On the “not what I thought it would be” side, Scott largely talked about how they applied code generation at Corillian, rather than about code generation itself. However, I can’t help but think in the back of my mind that this is actually a good thing. What it did was provide a good context in which to learn all about what code generation is good for. I don’t know if I would have liked it better though if maybe he drilled into more detail about a specific application of code generation rather than an overview of a bunch of different applications.

Overall, I think it was a great presentation. I give it a 9/10. An A for this one. There might be a chance that the only reason I haven’t awarded it a 10 though is because I want some room to grow in case I hear a better presentation (which if the way presentations have gone so far is any indication, this WON’T happen (which is definitely disappointing)).

Good job, Scott.

Well, I only have a sentence or two for a Day 1 wrap up, so I won’t be long, I swear. I’m not sure how often I will be posting like I did today (who knows, you may not hear from me the rest of the week), but I will try (or not). On to the wrap up…..

The best way that I can wrap up most of the presentations today is with a quote of how I responded to someone else today when they asked me how the day was:

“I had the apparent pleasure of seeing a bunch of live powerpoint readings. It was like poetry, evidently.”

And with that I’m out!

I was really looking forward to this session……… until it started that is. At first I loved the approach the presentation team was going to take. Basically, instead of power pointing all of us to death, they were going to do a run-through of the entire software development process (from spec to deploy). My excitement didn’t last too long though. I believe it ended when I realized that they were going to do the EXACT same presentation that is ALREADY on the net. I may be alone here, but I didn’t fly all the way to Florida to see presentations that I could have seen at home on the webcasts. Geez!

I think in hindsight, I must be in some kind of finicky mood today because I found the presentations didn’t live up to my expectations. Oh well, perhaps after some more sleep, I will be a little more “open-minded” tomorrow .

See ya’ lata’, alligata’

[#BEGIN_RANT#]

Is it just me, or has the proliferation of mobile devices actually made people more rude and less considerate of others? This is a major pet peeve of mine. I call it “mobile manners” (well, not really (and you can tell I’m not a marketing guy by that horrible name :D)).

Basically, this kid in front of me has his cell phone ring in the middle of the presentation. If that wasn’t rude enough, he not only didn’t silence the sucker, he answered it and started talking. WTF?!?!? It wasn’t enough of a clue that everyone around him was staring at him. NOOOOOOO, he was just blissfully chatting away. Does he not realize how much of a dick he’s being?!? I guess not.

This is also my annoyance with the almighty Blackberry (the mobile device, not the fruit). I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been sitting in a meeting and someone’s Blackberry goes off. And what does this person do? Of course he doesn’t put it away or silence it, because that would be too polite. And we can’t find ourselves being polite in this day and age! NO! They whip out the Blackberry and start typing away at it, happily ignoring EVERYTHING that is happening in the meeting. This is especially annoying when this person is THE reason the meeting was being held in the first place. As if that isn’t bad enough, they do the same thing around clients and users!!!!!! What does that communicate to the client or user about you as a company? ARG!!!

I’m going to SCREAM if I have to deal with jerks much more this week.

CAVEAT: I may sound really pissed now, but I’m not. I’m actually in a really great mood and just felt like writing about something, so I chose one of my pet peeves.

Oh well, the session is starting, so I need to go unless I become the rude one in here. Here’s to hoping this one is better than the last two!!!

[#END_RANT#]