Today was the last day of PDC. The astute reader will realize that I didn't post yesterday. The truth is that I didn't attend any sessions yesterday and only 1 today because work got in the way.

The session I attended today was about the cloud and physics. The presenter pointed out that for most users they will be facing issues like latency and bandwidth problems that don't appear in the lab. It was very thought provoking.

Another thing that was though provoking was a t-shirt I saw. On the front it said "serial killer". I am sure it was about doing parallel processing and not serial but I was wondering if the wearer were heading to the airport and if so what kind of a reception he would get from the TSA screeners there.

Now that PDC is over I am telling myself that I will spend the next few months viewing the recorded sessions and learning more. Even though that will probably not happen I have to say that I feel like I know more about what is coming and am excited to see it. We will all be busy trying to figure out how the world of the server, desktop, mobile, and cloud will work together.

The keynote today was about Windows 7. I saw a lot of things that I think will improve the average day of most Windows users. I especially liked the MRU list showing up with the icons on the task list. That will save me multiple clicks each day.

I really liked the demos of synchronizing data between different office applications. I work with a lot of remote teams and sometimes Live Meeting doesn't seem to be the best environment.

I also liked the keynote on the Azure services and moving from a local service to one hosted in the cloud. I had seen a similar demo less than a month ago at an NDA event but it was still great to see.

I went to a "lap around Oslo" session and saw some good stuff with the modeling language "M", the tool "Quadrant", and the repository.

Most of this afternoon was spent working and talking to a lot of the other RDs. For me getting to see all these smart people may be the best part of a conference like this.

You can see screencasts and get news from PDC from a variety of sources including microsoftpdc.com so I won't try to capture every detail but instead put down my thoughts on what I learned/saw.

Today has been an Azure day. In the morning keynote Microsoft announced Microsoft Azure, their new operating system for the cloud. I have spent most of the rest of the day in sessions learning more about the cloud and what all it can do now and what it will do in the future. I have some small ideas for the SQL Services storage and how to use it. I just registered for my Azure account so I can test out the CTP.

One of the useful and impressive demos I saw was of a workflow that started out as a local WF workflow and then sent messages into the cloud where the workflow continued and finally messages were sent back to the originating workflow. I can envision scenarios where certain things like payroll or invoicing could be made part of the workflow and companies could reduce costs for commodity items that are not really part of their core business.

In other news the WCF REST starter kit was released on CodePlex. You can access it at http://www.codeplex.com/aspnet/Wiki/View.aspx?title=WCF%20REST. There is also documentation and other information at the WCF Developer Center REST site.

Also LiveID will become an OpenID provider. It is in CTP now but if it works and gains wide spread adoption it will enable a lot more "single sign on" scenarios. This looks like the first concrete step to come out of Microsoft agreeing to support OpenID.

finally, while not PDC related, TJay Belt had an article on duties for on-call DBAs featured at SQLServerCentral.com.

Tomorrow I head off to PDC. The conference will start on Monday and I am sure it will be a great experience with a lot of new ideas and technologies.

Just one week from today is the Utah Code Camp. You can start signing up and viewing sessions at UTCodeCamp.com. I will be giving a session there and am looking forward to it.

After that there is the SSWUG.org vConference. This is a virtual conference so you can attend from your desk. This is really a good idea for those who can't afford to take a week off of work to attend a conference or who were not able to get the travel budget approved. You can see the first 10 minutes of the sessions I am delivering by going to http://www.vconferenceonline.com/speaker.asp?id=ScottG. While you are there you can sign up for the conference which is being held November 5, 6, and 7. At $100 for the conference I think it is a great deal.

I was sent an article today that said Bill Gates has started another company called BGC3. While the details are sketchy it sounds like the company will be a think tank that will be focused on solving problems. I would love to see Bill Gates apply the passion and energy that he has around solving humanitarian and education issues to other issues like alternative energy sources, better user interfaces to computers, or global warming.

Only time will tell what if anything comes out of this company.

Microsoft is looking for people who have used the BRE in a project to fill out a survey so they can get feedback and plan for the next version. I haven't ever used BRE so I didn't answer the survey but if you have used BRE please fill out the survey at https://live.datstat.com/MSCSD-Collector/Survey.ashx?Name=BRE_Usage_Survey_Blog.

Yesterday Microsoft announced that Silverlight 2 was released. The amazing thing is that it is already installed on one in four of the computers in the world. Also the integration with Eclipse is exciting as it will allow Silverlight to be used in organizations where they don't normally have Microsoft development tools.

Today you can download it from http://silverlight.net/GetStarted. There is also a lot of guidance to help you get started with Silverlight development.

I am sorry to report that we had to cancel the Utah County .NET User Group meeting for October. There was a perfect storm of bad news including a change in our speaker's schedule. We will hold our regularly scheduled meeting next month on November 19.

You would think that I would learn but it seems that I am doomed to create the same mistakes again and again. The particular mistake that I am talking about now is the tendency I have to change Windows settings without thinking through all the consequences.

Yesterday I was trying to set up Office Communicator to use my USB headset and microphone. I could only get the sound to come out of the computer speakers. I could see that the sound was set to the default device which were the computer speakers. Since I had been playing my Zune through them that made sense. I tried changing the settings to the headset but it wouldn't reset the default nor allow me to choose the headset. I thought I would just disable the internal speakers and then it would work. When I disabled the speakers there was no sound at all from the computer. I was in a little panic as I am supposed to be recording some stuff this weekend and not being able to play it back and hear what I did would be a big problem.

I tried going into the device manager to re-enable the device. That didn't work. Although I could see other disabled devices the disabled sound device had disappeared. I tried re-installing the drivers but that didn't work either.

I finally reverted to the Vista System Restore points. I went back to the last daily restore point before I had disabled the sound device. After about a half an hour of intensive disk activity the machine rebooted and I heard sound again.

I have some minor complaints about Vista but things like the System Restore that protect me from my own stupidity are proof to me that Microsoft is listening to their customers and the pains they have.

Rob Bagby will be in town on October 23 to host an MSDN event titled Demystifying the Code. You can find complete details including a registration link at http://blogs.msdn.com/bags/archive/2008/10/02/msdn-unleashed-event-in-salt-lake-city-on-october-23rd.aspx. The first 50 people to come to the event will be getting a copy of the book Applications = Code + Markup by Charles Petzold.

The session will cover some of the latest technologies from Microsoft including WPF, Silverlight 2, and Visual Studio 2008 SP1. The event is being held at the Microsoft offices in Salt Lake City.