So I am back and alive from Alaska. We were snowed in for a few days and I missed a slew of flights (and conferences) but the worst that really happened to me was a bad sunburn.

The climb was great. We all had to rope up just in case we fell into a crevasse and needed to be rescued by our fellow climbers. We had to break trail in snow up to our hips and sometimes up to our armpits.

I am the second person on the first rope.

Eventually we got to the summit.

In Alaska at the base camp of Mt. McKinley (Denali), at 20,320 feet (almost 7,000 meters) it is the tallest mountain in North America, and one of the “7 summits”.

I am in the land of the 24 hour sunshine, I have not seen nighttime since last Thursday. The weather forecasts are a hoot, “party sunny“ and “sunshine“ for the “overnights“.

I am not going to the top of Denali, but climbing a much smaller mountin next door to build up my skills. More to come....

You need to read this blog by my pal Richard Campbell. There are some strange things afoot in the Java and Open Source Community.

http://www.campbellassociates.ca/blog/PermaLink.aspx?guid=be972f31-02e4-47f5-919a-faa5c7211b60 

Here is a quote from the blog to whet your appetite: “How badly derailed is the EJB 3 development path given the implied manipulation of the working groups?”

Well we win one. After a few years of Microsoft hiring away RDs (Chris Selles, etc), today we stole one from them. Rob Howard was made an RD today. As of 6/1/04 Rob is no longer a Microsoft employee and we snagged him as an RD!  Rob is fulfilling a career goal and has started his own company, Telligent Systems based in Dallas, Texas.

Welcome Rob. This doesn't suck.

I leave on Friday for Alaska to climb some mountains.

Tech*Ed 2004 is over. :(

I am home and am intstalling all of goodies while sporting my new tee shirts. Got some cool stuff.

The last day saw an arguement over the MVP program vs the RD program. Since I am a member of both, I am going to think about this some and post something up here. I will offend people, not sure who but stay tuned.

Blogs. Sessions. Fellow speakers. Parties. Emails from the office. Drinks at the MSDN Party.

Not too much fun. TechED 2004 rocks.

Our session called From Interoperability to Migration: SQL Server and Linux Databases Working Together which was in Cabana 08 went awesome today. We showed a SQL Server linked Server connecting to an Oracle 10g database running under Red Hat. Enough said.

For all of you that attended, not sure how to get the 2 8gb VPC images to you just yet, but we will find a way. Stay tuned.

I signed many RD Bingo cards. Good luck to everyone.