Angel's Landing at Zion National Park is at the tip of this mountain:

and begins with this warning:

I am terrified of heights and have Vertigo, but up we went.

After a while of normal switchbacks and through a canyon, we hit the famous Walter's Wiggles - a series of very tight switchbacks that are built up for support.

Sometimes, there is no edge on Walter's Wiggles:

Eventually, we reached Scout Lookout to be greeted by these happy little one-holers...

 

and another warning...

but on we went... to this

 

I went up a ways, but eventually was pretty scared and knew that going down would be harder. So I turned around and Rich went on. Here are a few pictures to his journey over this hump, up the next...

 

then across this narrow precipice (with a 1500' drop!!!)

and on to the glory of Angel's Landing and this view.

Then he had to come all the way back to where he left me still recovering from my few feet on the rocks. Yay Rich!

Last night at about 5:30 we were headed out of Zion and there was a spectacular sunset. Because of the clouds in the sky, the red rocks were glowing red from the reflection of the sun off of the clouds. We pulled over in a spot near the entrance where there were a lot of people taking photos. I went to the bridge to try to take a picture but my camera battery was dead. Uggh. Anyway, I was standing next to some people who were all set up with the tripod etc taking pictures. I took a double take at one of the men - could that be Robert Redford? But of course - how could it be - just some man who was beautiful in the same way that Redford is (and just keeps getting better and better ). Today we realized that there is a film festival in Zion (www.ziffutah.com), so just maybe....

Posted from BLInk!

Last year, prior to the fall DevConnections conference in Las Vegas, I spent a few days in Zion National Park with Kathleen Dollard. I loved it so much that I promised myself that if I was invited back to Las Vegas, I would return to Zion and bring my husband with me. So, here I am in Zion where we have had a few great days already. One thing that I really wanted to do this time was hike up the Zion Narrows - the canyon river. So this morning we rented the proper gear and did it. What a great experience!

Here are two photos from the Narrows.

 

I have sent all of the revised powerpoints from my 4 sessions at DevConnections to be put up on the Connections website. If you were an attendee, there is information in your book on how to download these. I will be packing up the demos and getting them off to the conference organizers as well. This won't be for a few more days though.

Posted from BLInk!

If you are doing evals for sessions at DevConnections or any conference, comments are really helpful in addition to filling out the checkboxes. If you liked our talk - what did you like about it? If you didn't like it - it is extremely useful to know why! The same goes for the other questions that are asked, such as about presentation skills. The goal is to always improve... as it benefits everyone ...  so metadata (even if it is not love) is very helpful!

Posted from BLInk!

Christian Weyer convinced me not to update my demo computer from WSE3 October CTP to WSE3 RTM when I have my WSE3 session this afternoon. I promised not to. BUt that just takes all the fun and challenge I could have added to my day (read just a little sarcasm into that statement...)

Posted from BLInk!

Dan Appelman and I had a fun time talking about casing with some C# developers over lunch at DevConnections yesterday... [read more...]

[A DevLife post]

Posted from BLInk!

Sushi with Charles Petzold, Kathleen Dollard and Esther Schindler ... [read more ...]

[A DevLife post]

Posted from BLInk!

Technical Connection is recruiting for to full-time Burlington area direct hire .NET positions. 

Position one is for Project Manager/Quality Assurance Manager full software development lifecycle in a .NET environment.  Salary in $70 K range with full benefits.  Must be able to pass US security clearance.

Position two is for a .Net Developer C# language Salary to $80 K and full benefits.  Must be able to pass US security clearance.

Contact:

Chris Johnson
Technical Connection, Inc.
Vermontjobs@aol.com
802-658-TECH

Posted from BLInk!

Shirley & Gary Brothers (who run DevConnections) invited the speakers up their amazing suite in "THE Hotel" at Mandalay Bay for cocktail hour this evening. Here are some photos... We are such good and reponsible speakers though and had to leave so we could work on our talks!

Evjens

 
Active Nick, Brian Noyes, Paul Litwin, Juval Lowy, Robert Green

Kathleen Dollard, Dan Appelman

 
Charles Petzold, Kate Gregory, Torsten Grabs, Active Nick

Robert Green, Shirley Brothers, Bernard Wong, Ken Getz

 
Our Wine Steward!

In my Sql Query Notification session, I had an odd problem. My SqlCacheDependency demo did not receive it's invalidation. This happened when I set it up in code and also when I set it up in <%Cache> directive on the page. This is a demo that I have done many times in the past year so I was not only mystified, but a little heartbroken.

The only thing that was different was that I had run a SqlRequestNotification demo right before it. This demo listens for the notification on a separate thread.

Now playing with it some more, I see that after I end the first demo (SqlRequestNotification) and start up the SqlCacheDependency... when I change the data, I hit the event handler in the first demo. So that was still hanging around.

What I think is happening is that even when I end the demo and close the page, the file based web server is still there (I can even see it in my system tray right now). The app was still alive and the listener was still listening. So now I am going to have to dig further into SqlRequestNotification in a real scenario even though it is not something I think I will not use frequently. If it wasn't the web app, it is likely that in this non-best practices demo code, I am not disposing enough things (though the listener's main task is within a using statement) or something along those lines. Most importantly, it is not a likely scenario to run these two things back to back and therefore this is an unusual problem that I encountered.

I couldn't really take the time to think this through in the session and probably wouldn't have come to this conclusion under the small pressure of the clock ticking and those expectant faces in the audience. So I just had to go with "I promise you this works! This is the right code for you to use..." and move on to wrap up the session.

Posted from BLInk!

Really ... I wish I could just go to all of the amazing sessions around me. So many things I haven't explored yet in VS2005 that I could  be learning!! Though of course, I'm thrilled to be able to share what I have learned by giving the sessions. So I will just keep working at making my own sessions as good as I can.

I did sit in on a bit of Kathleen Dollard's "Polishing your Winforms Apps" session this morning. There is just so much to learn...

There are a LOT of attendees here this year. I overheard someone (not official) say something like 3000. That would be amazing. I think it was 1600 last year.

Posted from BLInk!

I plan to show off this mega visualizer in my Debugger Visualizer session today as well as the DateTime visualizer that John Mueller wrote for his DevSource article.

Posted from BLInk!

I will be doing a session on Tablet PC development at GUVSM.NET on December 12th. This is sponsored by the MSDN Canada Speaker Bureau. A beautiful time of year (though perhaps a wee bit frigid) to visit a beautiful city. I plan to stay an extra day to see the Provence exhibit at the museum of Fine Arts.

Posted from BLInk!

There's nothing like planning ahead! I will be visiting 3 user groups in late June (yes that's 2006) in Canada's Atlantic provinces. Places I have wanted to go for a long time so I am thrilled to be able to visit the groups and see these beautiful provinces at the same time. I will be going to INETA groups in Moncton New Brunswick, Halifax Nova Scotia and St. John's Newfoundland. Thanks to Amanda Murphy and Derek Hatchard for having me and also accommodating a schedule that allowed me to spread the talks out so that I can explore these magical places.

Posted from BLInk!

it came to me in an email from my sister and was too funny not to share...

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org

WSE 3.0 is now fully released. Thanks to Mark, Sidd (the two I worked with most closely) and the whole team for all the work on this great product that I love to love. Hmm, I wonder if my session on Thursday will be the first presentation to use the full release of wse 3.0? Too bad it's only a one hour slot...

Posted from BLInk!

They are both sessions that I am doing tomorrow.

Customizing your Debugging Experience at 8am (gotta talk to Carl about those 8am sessions) and then my favorite ado.net 2.0 topic at 2pm. Tomorrow. Vegas. DevConnections.

Posted from BLInk!

Where better to talk about the MenuStrip, ToolStrip and other cool new WinForms controls but in Las Vegas. Jessica Fosler who owns these pieces of VS2005 WinForms is presenting today. Unfortunately, I'm now up in my room prepping my own 4 sessions but definitely enjoyed meeting her this morning in the speaker room. Charles Petzold was there who's new Programming Windows Forms (for VS2005) book has an entire chapter called "Cruising the Strip" in his book about these tools. Being in Las Vegas had us all giggling over the possibilities of jokes Jessica could make in her presentation. Hopefully, we didn't corrupt her too much.

Posted from BLInk!

Typical - must leave for the airport in 1/2 hour and have been doing client work all morning. Still have to pack (thank goodness I washed all my clothes already). Hopefully my travelling duds aren't too wrinkly!

I am so looking forward to another DevConnections conference and then a vacation in Zion National Park and Bryce Canyone with my husband!

Don't Forget: www.acehaid.org