 Tuesday, January 27, 2004
The New Virus
The New Virus
There is a new email Virus going around. Don’t blame Microsoft or even the person who created the virus. It has been 5 years since the Melissa virus, if users are still propagating the email viruses, then let’s blame them (us).
More info, I already got about 10 emails from friends saying “test” and stuff like that:
http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Business/ap20040127_22.html
Sunday, January 25, 2004
Can I Have Some Hummus Please?
Can I Have Some Hummus Please?
Day 1 of the MDC is under way here in Cairo and Bill Gates’ Keynote went over well, his first time in Egypt and first time speaking in the Middle East. While Bill was talking about reliable computing, there was a power outage, we all got a chuckle.
Visited the Grand Pyramids today as well as did some shopping on my spare time. I have been in the country for over 24 hours now and still have not had any hummus. Maybe some soon…
Alexanderia tomorrow and then 4 sessions back to back to back to back on Tuesday.
Friday, January 23, 2004
The Airtrain to Egypt
The Airtrain to Egypt
I leave tonight for the 2004 MDC in Cairo, Egypt. I am going to take the new Airtrain to JFK airport for the first time.
The Airtrain has been a long time coming. I am not a big fan of the Airtrain, since it does not provide a single-seat ride from JFK to Manhattan like the London’s Heathrow Express does. I have a three seat ride to JFK. So to travel from my house on E86th Street:
6 train to 51st street
Transfer to E Train to Jamaica
Transfer to Airtrain to American Airlines Terminal
While it will only be $7 total to get to JFK in about an hour, I am a little let down that I have to ride three trains to get there. That said it is better than a $40 taxi ride that is going to be stuck in traffic. And in the past I took the A train to Howard Beach, but that was more like 1.5 hours and a two sear ride for $2.
Thursday, January 22, 2004
Getting Ready for the Middle East Developers Conference
Getting Ready for the Middle East Developers Conference
On Saturday the 2004 MDC starts in Cairo, Egypt. Bill Gates’ keynote is on Sunday and I deliver four sessions (back to back to back to back) on Tuesday. This will be a test of my stamina, I look at this as “power presenting”. My 4th or 5th time to North Africa in the last 2 years (and second visit to Egypt in the last 11 months) has be very excited, so I am sure I can keep up. Plus the attendees in Africa rock. My sessions are:
Except for the datagrid, these are all new sessions, the Cache session should be simple but super duper practical. I will cover custom caching and fragmented caching. We will look ever so briefly at the future, but this session is about how to increasing your site’s speed NOW, not when Whidbey ships.
Other RDs will be in the house besides Mr. Gates:
- Patrick Hynds (Boston)
- Abdelmalek Kemmou (Morocco)
- Goksin Bakir (Turkey)
- Selcuk Uzun (Turkey)
- Hossam Khalifa (Egypt)
Sunday, January 18, 2004
Tech*Ed 2004 Sessions
Tech*Ed 2004 Sessions
The Tech*Ed 2004 Web Site is up and running (register today!) and sessions are already on-line. I have two sessions up and ready to go:
|
Create Smart XML-Aware Applications with SQL Server “Yukon” |
|
Efficient and Secure Data Retrieval in Your Middle Tier Using Stored Procedures and ADO.NET |
Tech*ED in the US and Europe are the technical events of the year (and social gatherings too). Hope to see you there. Can’t wait to do some surfing in La Jolla.
Friday, January 16, 2004
Scottie Boy Wonder
Scottie Boy Wonder
Uber geek, RD for Portland, and all around great guy, Scott Hanselman, spoke at the NYC .NET Developers User Group last night. He spoke about Web Services and the crowd of about 100 loved every minute of it. Amazing that so many people came to see Scott when it was just about zero degrees last night in New York. Scott was not shutting up about his new Microsoft Watch, which I mocked and then compared to my supercool Casio Film Watch that Kathleen gave me for Christmas that has a databank and world time. Scott was so jealous.
Thursday, January 15, 2004
DevDays is here!
DevDays is here!
Microsoft has announced the dates for DevDays in the US and I will be speaking (keynoting w/ Andrew Brust) in New York City on Feb 23rd and Newark, NJ on March 4th. Register now and save money!
Wednesday, January 14, 2004
New Years Resolution
New Years Resolution
I never really make them. But I do like to do things each New Years. One is reformat all my computers and reinstall everything. A nice clean start. I also like to clean the hard to reach places in my apartment, like take the refrigerator out and clean in the dark abyss back there. Also change the batteries in the smoke detector, you get the idea.
One thing I do along with the reformat of the hard drives is clean up Outlook. I archive ootles of mail and go through my contacts and try to keep them in order. I always have a few friends who have like 3 or 4 entries in my contacts because they have a work mail, pop, and hotmail/yahoo. I had well over 500 contacts in my contact folder in Outlook. I have no idea how up to date it is, I know in 2003, I moved twice and had 4 different mailing addresses. I am also one of those annoying people who have a work email, personal pop email and a hotmail account (which is basically a porn only account). So I must be causing others problems, how many of my contacts are the same.
So I ran a cool tool that I have been playing with for a while called Plaxo. It is basically a free tool that allows you to mass email your whole contact list and have people verify their data over the web. It works cool and they don’t spam you, I have been a member of Plaxo for months. Your contacts don’t have to even join, just verify on a web form their info is correct. Of course as my pal Conor says “You give me control over my own Contact record, watch out, evil things may happen!!!”.
After I ran it, many people had changed information, or gave me more info than I had before. Also lots of old friends saw me in their inbox and emailed to say hi. I also got 36 bounces that I have to track down the owners through other means. All in all, a great experience.
How does Plaxo make money? Beats the hell out of me. I do hope that they stay around tho, I want to run this again next year.
So check out Plaxo if you have the time.
|