Getting along in the snow
Jan. 27th, 2004 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jcfialaWell, late Sunday afternoon it snowed here in Denver. It was a bit of a surprise - no one had expected it - but it was only 2-4 inches here in town, so it wasn't that big of a deal. Luckily, Tammy and my walk had ended about 45 minutes earlier, and we didn't get caught in it.
The walk was fairly long, especially for Tammy. She kept expressing surprise at how far we had gotten without her getting tired, and she didn't really slow down until we were on the way home - which, due to the way we'd walked, was mostly uphill. Ah, well.
Monday it was still very cold out, and a lot of the slush was re-freezing, making the morning traffic very heavy. It was a little worrisome, as I had a 10 AM interview with a firm up in Loveland, an hour's drive away. However, just before I was ready to get ready for the trip, I got a call: the manager I was going to interview with had called in sick. So, it's rescheduled for tomorrow.
So, instead of the interview my wife and I spent some time together before she went off for overtime work. After she left I shoveled the walk. Good work, that. Some boys had shown up earlier this morning to see if I wanted to pay them to do it, but that's a luxury. Besides, without having a gym membership, a good snowfall is a really decent chance to get some exersize.
Stayed in after that until the evening, when it was time to head to the Microsoft Offices for the Denver Visual Studios .NET Users Group meeting. Due to the trickiness of Denver traffic, the 5:30 opening time meant I could leave at 4:30 and get there at 5:00, or leave at 5:00 and get there at 6:00. So I got there early. Luckily, they were there early so I got a sandwich (free snack provided by AmberPoint) and settled down to wait.
The meeting was fun. First there was a presentation by (I think) Roy Ogborn on using your own classes and collections to handle data from a database rather than DataSets - sometimes it can be faster running, and as he preached, it's more true to Object Oriented Theory. Not everyone completely agreed with him, at least on it being better, as there are reasons to go with DataSets.
After that, the sponsor AmberPoint had a short presentation on their man product, a web services managing tool that really looked very useful. They gave out a developer level version of their product as well. When I get more into ASP.NET, I'm going to have to play around with it.
Finally, the longest part of the meeting was Scott Short from Microsoft going forth on the upcoming Indigo platform for web services. I took a lot of notes off of this, but I won't go into too much detail here, as apparently this is something that's supposed to become available when 'Longhorn' publishes - which is apparently the next version of XP.
It was pretty late, and so people were pretty anxious for the door prizes, which started quickly. I was hoping to win one of the Best Buy gift certificates, but what I did win was nice - "The Book of Visual Studio .NET: A Guide for Developers", by Robert B. Dunaway. I'll have to have a good look at it soon, but haven't yet.
One nice thing that would lead to that is that I also got at the meeting a copy of the final version of Visual Studio .NET "Everett", which is apparently the 2003 version of VS .NET. Given that I can't afford VS.NET, it would be nice to have a copy. Haven't installed it yet. I also got a package of "Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System", which also looks cool. One of the benefits of having the meeting at Microsoft's regional offices. :)
Today's been much less busy. I've done some major organizing and sorting of my notes for Legends of the Floating Worlds, that d20 anime fantasy roleplaying book that I'm writing. I've been getting back into writing it this month, and I feel better for it. And then I was restless, and went out to do some grocery shopping. Got a lot of good things on sale, including a metric ton of Progresso soups, which were 2/$3.00 - a fantastic savings on soup that's often 4 or 5 WW points per can.
I hope things have been going as well for you.
The walk was fairly long, especially for Tammy. She kept expressing surprise at how far we had gotten without her getting tired, and she didn't really slow down until we were on the way home - which, due to the way we'd walked, was mostly uphill. Ah, well.
Monday it was still very cold out, and a lot of the slush was re-freezing, making the morning traffic very heavy. It was a little worrisome, as I had a 10 AM interview with a firm up in Loveland, an hour's drive away. However, just before I was ready to get ready for the trip, I got a call: the manager I was going to interview with had called in sick. So, it's rescheduled for tomorrow.
So, instead of the interview my wife and I spent some time together before she went off for overtime work. After she left I shoveled the walk. Good work, that. Some boys had shown up earlier this morning to see if I wanted to pay them to do it, but that's a luxury. Besides, without having a gym membership, a good snowfall is a really decent chance to get some exersize.
Stayed in after that until the evening, when it was time to head to the Microsoft Offices for the Denver Visual Studios .NET Users Group meeting. Due to the trickiness of Denver traffic, the 5:30 opening time meant I could leave at 4:30 and get there at 5:00, or leave at 5:00 and get there at 6:00. So I got there early. Luckily, they were there early so I got a sandwich (free snack provided by AmberPoint) and settled down to wait.
The meeting was fun. First there was a presentation by (I think) Roy Ogborn on using your own classes and collections to handle data from a database rather than DataSets - sometimes it can be faster running, and as he preached, it's more true to Object Oriented Theory. Not everyone completely agreed with him, at least on it being better, as there are reasons to go with DataSets.
After that, the sponsor AmberPoint had a short presentation on their man product, a web services managing tool that really looked very useful. They gave out a developer level version of their product as well. When I get more into ASP.NET, I'm going to have to play around with it.
Finally, the longest part of the meeting was Scott Short from Microsoft going forth on the upcoming Indigo platform for web services. I took a lot of notes off of this, but I won't go into too much detail here, as apparently this is something that's supposed to become available when 'Longhorn' publishes - which is apparently the next version of XP.
It was pretty late, and so people were pretty anxious for the door prizes, which started quickly. I was hoping to win one of the Best Buy gift certificates, but what I did win was nice - "The Book of Visual Studio .NET: A Guide for Developers", by Robert B. Dunaway. I'll have to have a good look at it soon, but haven't yet.
One nice thing that would lead to that is that I also got at the meeting a copy of the final version of Visual Studio .NET "Everett", which is apparently the 2003 version of VS .NET. Given that I can't afford VS.NET, it would be nice to have a copy. Haven't installed it yet. I also got a package of "Visual Studio Tools for the Microsoft Office System", which also looks cool. One of the benefits of having the meeting at Microsoft's regional offices. :)
Today's been much less busy. I've done some major organizing and sorting of my notes for Legends of the Floating Worlds, that d20 anime fantasy roleplaying book that I'm writing. I've been getting back into writing it this month, and I feel better for it. And then I was restless, and went out to do some grocery shopping. Got a lot of good things on sale, including a metric ton of Progresso soups, which were 2/$3.00 - a fantastic savings on soup that's often 4 or 5 WW points per can.
I hope things have been going as well for you.
