Well, wouldyalookatdat?!

MS is going to include 5 seats for Foundation Server with any of the team system skus.

This will make lots of people happy.

However I am scratching my head a little because, if I understand Thom's explanation correctly the other night at VTdotNET, Foundation Server is aimed at huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge shops with lots and lots and lots of developers.

Anyway, I know a few small companies in Vermont that will be happy to hear this!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Microsoft New England is sponsoring a free showing of the new Star Wars flick that Rod Paddock says he would see again and again! Here are the details on Thom Robbins' blog.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Egad - Microsoft is now talking about Hawaii which is THREE product cycles out from what we are working on today.

VS2003

VS2005 (Whidbey)

VSxxx  (Orcas)

VSIhopetoberetiredby then (Hawaii)

http://www.AcehAid.org

Since I have an interest in WS-Federation and Liberty, I found this post from Tim Bray (by way of Robert Scoble) also notable. It's very difficult to always know what the big picture is of things like these - especially since I am pretty uninvolved in Interop still.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I found this interesting article on raising your hourly rates when you are a consultant. It is not directed at IT consultants, but just at consultants in general. I find it to be good objective advice. I had been billing the same rate for many many many years and have finally been adjusting to a new set of rates (still with a special rate for long-term clients) over the past few months. I know a lot of developers within our blogging .NET community that have made the leap to consulting in the past year or so. I have been working as a contractor since 1989, yet I sometimes need the same advice as a consulting newbie!

http://www.AcehAid.org

I have been thinking about the Birds of a Feather session that I am leading at TechEd called "Life on the Bleeding Edge" and hoping that there will be people there that are already heavily into technologies like Longhorn, Avalon, Indigo, or have used .NET for so long that they are almost bored silly with it. Tablet PC users, etc

I did not create the session because I have the answer, but becasue I think it's a really interesting question and am very hopeful that there will be a mix of early adopters and VB6 devotees for an interesting dicussion. Here's the info

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am going to be doing a webcast with DCC Glen Gordon on the topic of MARS - Multiple Active Resultsets - on May 25th. This is one of a pair of ADO.NET 2 talks that Glen and Mark Dunn are doing together, but I'll be filling in for Mark on this one. MARS is a topic that I have been digging into for almost the past year as part of my explorations of ADO.NET 2.0, so I'm looking forward to the webcast which will be full of how-to's and watch-out's!

The first webcast is an ADO.NET 2.0 overview that Mark & Glen will be doing on May 23rd.

Glen has a deep level of experience with SQL Server, so I am really looking forward to his perspective on MARS and am happy that Mark thought of me when he realized he had a difficult scheduling conflict.

You can register here for the MARS webcast.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Sahil Malik is in the final phases of his upcoming ADO.NET 2.0 book!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Atlanta's Code Camp and the "Developer Developer Developer" event in the u.k

Here is a blog post from Plip on the u.k. event which is modeled after Code Camps.

Here is one from Atlanta Code Camp by Chris Williams.

Surely there will be more.

http://www.AcehAid.org

One of the things that I have been invited to do this year that I am really looking forward to is participate on the Advisory Board for the Software Engineering Department at Burlington based Champlain College. The funny thing about that links is that there is a picture of myself and architecture guru Keith Pleas on the page! That was taken at the Vermont.NET's June 2003 meeting where we had Keith come in as our INETA Speaker, Thom Robbins spoke also, MSDN was filming us as part of their video on how great INETA is and we helped celebrate INETA's 100th Speaker Bureau event! There were 50 people at the meeting. Champlain is proud to host our summer meetings.

Champlain is a very advanced with their technology and even just built a new building dedicated to it. They have a degree program in Software Engineering and even a offer a masters degree in I.T.

So as a software professional, someone who has lots of involvement with Microsoft and also someone who spends a lot of time looking at [some] of the future products coming down the pipes, I do have something to offer the college as they plan for the next academic year of preparing students for the real world!

http://www.AcehAid.org

A component walks into a bar and ...

http://www.AcehAid.org

I am not a gamer. I don't know how to play Xbox, but I can spell it at least. Either way, I am really impressed by something on their new site that REALLY goes out of the box (no pun intended) with thinking about websites. It is something I have been heralding the geniuses at Hi-Res for years.

What is great is that you get to think and explore the site. It is not filled with hand holding explicit links. There's not much there, but what I love so much is the page you get to by clicking on the question mark. It forces you to think and play with it rather than being hammer on the head obvious. Brilliant stuff. And when I finally followed my instincts and found success, it was really gratifying.

http://www.AcehAid.org

This time it is about 30 miles from Padang. 6.9. Here's some minimal info.

Padang is in southern Sumatra whereas the earlier disasters were in the northwest, in Aceh Province.

Here is a map on the AcehAid website (IDEP Foundation) so you can see where all of these places are relative to each other. IDEP continues to work night and day in response to the nightmare tsunamis that happened in December and continue to rely on financial support.

http://www.AcehAid.org

The links on their site are currently a wreck, but you can go here http://www.ejhs.k12.vt.us/ to get more info. I have copied and pasted from their site, but again, thee links in the descriptions won't work very well. I have emailed them so hopefully they will be fixed soon.

Position:	Network Administrator
Deadline:	May 23, 2005
Description:	Full-time, 12 month position available to direct, coordinate and maintain local area computer network activities of the Chittenden Central Supervisory Union, Union #46 School District and Essex Junction School District.  BA in Computer Science or related field, plus 3 to 5 years as a network administrator preferred.  Certifications in or ability to obtain certifications in Microsoft, Novell and/or Cisco required.  For additional details please refer to the job description.  Excellent benefits package including family medical and dental insurance; life insurance; a retirement plan with up to a 200% employer match; tuition reimbursement; 11 paid holidays, paid vacation and other paid leaves.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application and three letters of reference and salary requirements to the address above.

and these two which you won't retire early on but...

Position:	Microcomputer Specialist – Westford School District
Deadline:	May 25, 2005
Description:	Part-time position available, starting July 1, 2005 to serve our Westford School by performing a variety of specialized computer installation and support functions. Position pays $13.78/hour for 20 hours (2½ days) per week. For additional information please refer to the job description.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application, and at least three references to the address above.

Position:	Microcomputer Specialist – Essex High School
Deadline:	Open Until Filled
Description:	Full-time position available immediately at our Essex High School to perform a variety of specialized computer installation and support functions. Position pays $13.43/hour, with an excellent benefits package including family medical and dental insurance; life insurance; a retirement plan with up to a 200% employer match; tuition reimbursement; 11 paid holidays, paid vacation and other paid leaves. For additional information please refer to the job description.  For consideration, please send letter, resume/application, and at least three references to the address above.

http://www.AcehAid.org

SENIOR SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR
(full-time - Vergennes)
DR® Power Equipment, an information-intensive direct marketer, is looking for a Senior System Administrator to join our Information Systems Team. The ideal candidate will have 5 or more years of experience in the following areas: day-to-day systems deployment and administration, designing and managing infrastructure architecture, project management, systems security planning, procurement and supplier management, and budgeting and cost management. Our technical environment includes a multi-point wide area network, multiple Windows/ UNIX/MPE servers, an internally hosted eCommerce presence, stateful firewalling, 200+ desktops and Call Center ACD equipment. Key technologies include: Windows 2000/3, Exchange 2000, Oracle and SQL server, Cisco routers, and a host of supporting technologies.
We have several exciting initiatives in our plans and are looking for a self-starting team player to join us.

http://www.AcehAid.org

Rebecca Dias: WS-* and Liberty

Matt Powell Excellent News around Web Service Federation

Hervey Wilson Moving On...Federation Calls...  Active Directory Federation Server/Indigo/WS* - cool!!!

http://www.AcehAid.org

Late last night my poor doggie went out to pee before we went to bed. Normally I stand outside and keep and eye on her becuase we are surrounded by woods and a black dog can disappear in the black night pretty easily if they see something interesting to chase. But instead, I had a similar urge (to pee, not to chase deer) and went back inside for a few minutes. When I went back out she was not back up on the porch as I would have expected, waiting to come in. I called her (not too loudly, since it was past midnight) and still didn't hear her panting and trotting back towards me. I went and turned on some more flood lights. Still no Tasha. Finally I put on my coat and shoes and went out. Then I heard her tromping through some dry leaves and a funny snorty noise. Tasha appeared in the light and was bobbing her head up and down in a strange way. When I got up closer to her I saw that her nose had a great display of porcupine quills sticking out of it. Nose, lips and the roof of her mouth. Not a ton - maybe 20 or so total. She wasn't even whining.

After calling our vet who was on call that night twice and my mother (a breeder who has been through this with her dogs), the vet assured me that if Tasha had no complaints at all about this she would be okay through the night. Since she is old and the ones in her mouth might require sedation to remove, he did not want to do that in the middle of the night.

Tasha slept without complaint thanks to some Rescue Remedy - which I probably should have taken myself. I didn't sleep much because I'm a big worry wart and I was concerned because she is an old dog and who knows what could happen? Were there any in her chest, in her throat? I kept waking up and checking on her - sleeping soundly and breathing!

This morning we brought her to the vet first thing and he was again amazed that she still had no complaints at all - except that we hadn't fed her breakfast yet. He was able to remove all of the quills without sedation. The larger quills from the older porcupines are easier to remove for some reason so we were lucky. There is not even a bump or anything on her nose as proof that she went through this.

The stoicism of Newfoundland dogs never ceases to amaze me.

http://www.AcehAid.org

I just discovered another MVP in Vermont. Anne Stanton, a CRM MVP. Anne also runs a user group, NH/VT Upper Valley IT Consultants, which seems to focus on Small Business Server. In fact, the user group is how I found her. Someone emailed me looking for an IT Pro group in Vermont and I went to Culminis and searched on Vermont.

That makes three including me, that I know of. In addition to Anne, the 3rd is Zoe Hart (Zoe rhymes with GO ) who works at C2, a Burlington Gold Partner. Zoe is a Commerce Server MVP.

http://www.AcehAid.org

There's a fairly new u.g. in town - it's the VTFUG. They meet monthly in Burlington and have been doing so since November 2004. It's nice to keep some friends with design skills around, y'know? They meet on the 2nd Tuesday of the month, which is one night after VTdotNET.

There is another Flash/Macromedia group in Brattleboro. They have been around for a while. That is the Northern New England Macromedia User Group, aka NNEMUG. They meet on the 1st Tuesday of the month.

http://www.AcehAid.org

http://www.AcehAid.org