So it is official. I am going to be climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania this October.

Crazy enough to join me are two fellow RDs, Paul Sheriff and Richard Campbell. At 19,340 feet, this will edge out my time on Everest as the highest altitude I have been to. We are going to take the Western Breach route, sleep the last night at 18,000 feet and summit on the “real” side. When we come down, we will do a 5 day safari so expect lots of photos.

That is what I said to the ticket salesman last night at Shea Stadium as I bought a $5 ticket to the Mets v Expos game. Cheaper than a movie, Linda, Sara and I entered with high expectations. After a $6.50 beer, $2.50 hotdog and $3 popcorn, the Mets did get their money. The game was fun, pitching was good, but the Mets came up short 2-1. We had to shout French curses at the Montreal Expos, it was a hoot.

CA’s Chairman and CEO Sanjay Kumar has stepped down and resigned his position from the board. Enron/WorldCom style accounting scandals have reached our industry.  It is a sad day. In a strange move, CA has created a new position for Kumar as chief software architect. Why keep him around at all? Did he do something wrong? If not why did he have to resign then? Investors and customers want to know.

Sanjay is also the co-owner of the New York Islanders NHL team, is there something going on there too? I mean they just lost in the first round of the playoffs.

A sidebar, I have always wondered what it would be like if CA were based in Canada. Their home page would be www.ca.ca

Ha!

Richard Campbell and I are doing an interoperability session at TechED. We are using RedHat, Oracle, Windows 2003 and SQL Server and showing how they work and play well together. The Oracle 10g database runs on Linux, but Oracle provides support only for Red Hat Linux and SuSE. If you want to run Oracle 10g on any other Linux variant (you know the “free“ ones), you're on your own. It is kind of funny after you pay RedHat and Oracle the total cost it is higher than the Windows/SQL Server version. But Linux is free....I guess only if you don't want to run any business apps or have any support.

Last year at this time the government of Tunisia was using Open Source and was anti-Microsoft. So Microsoft did something unusual in the “battle” and just let their products and technology speak for themselves by putting on the first annual North Africa Developers Conference in Tunis, Tunisia.  The event was a smashing success since about 90% of the technical content was delivered by 3^rd party developers and was not the typical MS Marketing crap. Microsoft Europe, Africa and Middle East CEO Jean Philippe Courtois delivered a keynote and met with government officials. Us Regional Directors were all over the place giving technical sessions, presenting case studies, and doing ask the experts booths.

So this year the conference was held in the logical location of Casablanca, Morocco. Microsoft has been in Morocco for 10 years and is the headquarters of the sub. There is lots of development going on in Morocco so the attendees were top notch.

So there is debate over where to have the NDC next year. Many at Microsoft North Africa think Algeria is the place to have it, but may be worried that attendance might not be as strong as in the past two years. But those who argue for Algeria think that Microsoft has another great opportunity to lets its technology speak for itself in a newly emerging market. Hope it is held there!

Day 3 of Africa Developers Conference started with a bit of a painc. My session on TSQL was scheduled to start at 9am, but the translators did not show up. Three years ago I was in Morocco on vacation I learned a few terms in Arabic and “No Problem” or MaCain Mushleel so I said “No Translator, McCain Mushkeel”. That got a laugh. Eventually my translator showed up and the technical content was presented. After that was the closing keynote, we had almost 1,500 developers at the event, and Microsoft extimates that there are 5,000 developers, so there was a great reach at this event.

See you next year in Algeria!

Day 2 of the 2004 North Africa Developers Conference

Ask the experts was quite an experience. Ingo and I staffed the Distributed Applications booth, but also took on Mobility and SQL Server/Data Access. We had quite a long conversation with the Federal Reserve bank of Mocorro about a check clearing HA SQL Server applicaiton. Log Shipping and triggers were the hot topics as well as seperate files for index, data and logs.

Also Goskin, Ingo and I visited the Hassan II Mosque and it was awesome. It is the third largest Mozque in the world, behind Mecca and Medina and the largest closed Mosque in the world. It can accomidate over 75,000 worshipers. It had a retracting roof and amazing turkish baths in the basement.

After the Mosque visit and some McDonalds, we hit the shops in the medina. It was loads of fun trying to get the best price for our items. I think the photo below shows the solution to my latest hair problem (Kathleen won't let me cut it.)

In Cairo, I danced with a Belly Dancer so Clemens had to one up me here in Casablanca. :)

Day 1 of the 2004 North Africa Developers Conference got off to a rough start, but it still doesn’t suck, even without hummus and lots of second hand smoke. (Nor did last year.) I had the first session after the keynote (on ASP. NET Mobile Controls) and the keynote was 30 minutes over. (The Keynote was all in French, but it was pretty cool, showed Whidbey Smart Device Extensions and new Language Features to name a few.) When I got to my room the A/V was not working. But I started as soon as I could. But there was no translator!!! After about 15 minutes they passed out the translation headphones and life was good.

I spoke about the Mobile Web Controls for the first session and many people really got into it and laughed at my translated jokes. I showed the adaptive rendering for different devices, so I showed each example in HTML (both IE and Netscape) and OpenWave and Nokia browsers as well as the pocket pc mobile IE. The audience mocked my lousy French. At least I did type in "Bonjour Monde" instead of "Hello World."

After lunch by the pool, did my second session “SQL Server Notification Services” and after that spoke at length with the Casablanca Stock Exchange IT guy about using SSNF over their customer home grown solution.

Now I am at Casa de Malek doing the email thing and blogging. Goskin, Ingo and I will go to the Hassan II Mosque tomorrow, the second largest mosque in the world (behind Mecca) and the largest closed religious building in the world.

Of course I am here with the other Regional Directors, we had a dinner last night:

• Clemens (I will not drink too late with Steve and be late for my session like in KL) Vasters
• Scott (I will go to bed early) Hanselman
• Yann Faure
• Andrew (The Odd Couple) Brust
• Sylvain (I speak French, thererore I am) Duford
• Ingo (I am taller than Stephen) Rammer
• Eric Groise
• Goksin (Motorbike) Bakir
• Malek (Party to Damascus) Kemmou

My first day in Casablanca went off as expected. Arrived in town and met up with Makek, Clemens, Ingo, Andrew et al and had dinner at Makek’s Mom and Dad’s house, a traditional Moroccan meal. Then Malek, Andrew and I painted the town for a while and saw a Scottish band (with a cute lead singer named Lola) play at a local watering hole. Tomorrow the NDC begins…