Looking at the calendar I realize that had I not left Keane 5 weeks ago I would be celebrating my 15th anniversary with the company today. Looking back over the last 5 weeks I have learned a lot and had a chance to work on projects that I think will prove to have a bigger impact than the work I was doing at Keane. I do and will continue to miss my friends and colleagues at Keane but I am loving the chance I have to learn and do new things with Advaiya. In the end I think the decision to change jobs was a good one. In a bit of irony, my last day with Keane I came home and had a letter directing me to a web site to pick out my 15 year anniversary gift from the company. I did go and look but didn't order since I knew I wasn't going to be working there today.

I got back from Malaysia over the weekend. I intended to post after each talk at TechEd but for some reason I couldn't connect to my web server. I had a good time speaking at the event. I met a lot of smart people who asked good questions. The only thing that I would have liked to do better is to have my demos work better. I was really disappointed at the one that worked in the hotel room and the speakers room but when I got on stage it broke :(

I think the best part of the speaking was when I went off on a tangent on Tuesday and successfully associated an information card with my Windows Live account on stage. It was the first time I had tried it and I was hoping that the beta wasn't closed or that I wouldn't hit an error with the process in front of 200+ people. It worked and I have been using CardSpace to log into my HotMail account ever since then. I will post the steps I followed in a subsequent entry.

I am really excited about the direction that CardSpace is taking and the different scenarios that it will enable.

I also got to do a little sight seeing before I came home. I  had the chance to visit an elephant sanctuary at Kuala Gundar. I saw an add for a credit card in the airport today. It had a family with some of the children touching an elephant. The tag line was something like "reminding your children what awesome really means". I felt that touching and feeding the elephants was truly an awesome experience. The saddest part was seeing this little elephant.

She is about 8 years old and she lost her left front foot in a poachers trap. It was a very sobering sight and makes you think about the impact you have in the world

After the conference was over I went on another tour where I got to feed some silver leaf monkeys. They really loved the green beans that we were feeding them. I was surprised when they started to climb up me. I was really surprised the first time one of the monkeys jumped on my shoulder but I found that they didn't really care about me. They just wanted their food.

I hope to be able to go to Tech Ed South East Asia again next year.

As I prepare to head off to Kuala Lumpur I realized that I hadn't published my schedule. Just in case you are in the area this is what I will be speaking on and when

Sorry for the short notice but we had to cancel the Utah County .NET User Group meeting this month. We will meet again next month on the 19th. Please see our web site at http://www.ucnug.org for more information.

I have been dying to post this announcement here but I thought I would send out personal e-mails to all the people I worked with and let them know before they heard it here. Unfortunately, that turned out to be a bigger task than I thought and I haven't sent out all the e-mails I wanted to. I finally decided that it is better to read it on my blog than to suddenly find out that my Keane e-mail account doesn't work any more.

This Friday will be my last day with Keane. I will be leaving 5 weeks short of my 15 year anniversary. I have enjoyed my time at Keane and the many people that I have had a chance to meet and work with along the way.

I will be starting work for Advaiya on the 20th. I am excited about the challenges that await me and the chance I will have to work with and contribute to a team working on different challenges.

I just read this announcement from SQLServerCentral.com

SQL Server 2008 on Feb 27, 2008

At it's annual Worldwide Partner Conference yesterday, Microsoft announced the release dates for it's next trio of products: Windows 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008. On February 27, 2008, Microsoft will launch these products in Los Angeles with a wave of kickoff events around the world to follow.

That's 231 days from today and it means that it's time to start getting ready for those upgrades.

I think it is nice to know the launch date but what I really want to know is the release date. The launch date is when the large events that tell us what the new features are and how to use them. The launch usually is close to the release date but in the case of some products like BizTalk server they were months apart. I have very much enjoyed the little time I have spent working with Visual Studio 2008 and can hardly wait for it to be final.

I saw an e-mail going around a while ago (not sure when but I think it was in the last few weeks) about someone who had worked at both Google and Microsoft and was comparing the experience between the two companies. One thing he said was that at Google there was an IT store or something like that on each floor where you could get your computer fixed. One of the comments was something along the lines of "If Google hires such smart programmers why do they need an IT department?". I was thinking something similar since I have been both a programmer and a system administrator for most of my career. The last two weeks I realized why there are dedicated IT people in companies.

I was copying a large file to my web server when the machine reported that the network connection was lost. I thought it was no big deal and I would just get around to copying it the next day. The next day I had e-mail that my web site was down. When I looked the server was in a constant reboot cycle. After a few days in recovery console and running checkdisk I realized that something had gone wrong with the disk. I am not sure what it was but I lost a directory that had the backups of the How Do I videos that I am making for Microsoft. I ended up rebuilding the machine. To make matters worse the XP Home edition machine that our family shares also developed problems. I ended up rebuilding it as well. The total time to do it wasn't that long but since I have a "day job" I could only work on the evenings and weekends which stretched it out to more than 2 weeks to get everything back up and running. I was thankful for my backups but realized that I need a better solution. I am still working on that better solution but for now I have a 1TB drive sitting near my server that I am backing up to.

It has been a while since I have posted here, but it isn't because I haven't wanted to. I have just been very busy. First there was Microsoft Mix where I got to learn more about Silverlight, Blend, and the future of web development on the Microsoft platform.

Last week I was at TechEd Orlando where I spent a good deal of time in the TLC area talking about Windows CardSpace. It was a lot of fun and I also got to give a chalk talk on Friday about identity in the real world. While there I also was asked to sit in on a panel discussion on identity and CardSpace that was recorded for Dot Net Rocks! I don't know when the episode will air but when it does I will be sure to post information about it here.

Finally I have been busy creating a series of screen casts for Microsoft about ASP.NET and VSTS. The first of the videos is available at http://www.asp.net/learn/videos/view.aspx?tabid=63&id=147 and covers creating an HttpModule. Look for more videos at http://www.asp.net in the future. The first VSTS video should be posted soon and I will be sure to let you know where that is available.

I also have been busy preparing for Tech Ed South East Asia in September.

Add to that all of the issues that come up with having a family, job, and life and I hope you will forgive the lack of information.