Last week I was busy in Las Vegas at the DevConnections/OpenForce conferences, and unlike that pithy but over-used catch-phrase, what happens at a conference in Vegas should definitely not stay in Vegas but should be blogged (only things during sessions that won’t get anyone in trouble).

While at DevConnections/OpenForce, I had some great conversations with various people on the topic of ASP.NET MVC. While many expressed their excitement about the framework and asked when they could see the bits (soon, I promise), there were several who had mixed feelings about it. I relish these conversations because it helps highlight the areas in which we need to put more work in and helps me become a better communicator about it.

UPDATE: This content is a bit outdated as these interfaces have changed in ASP.NET MVC since the writing of this post.

Recently I gave out a few free copies of a book I co-wrote, but ran out quickly. This is the same book that Jeff Atwood (a co-author) told everyone, Do Not Buy This Book.

One thing I’ve found with various open source projects is that many of them contain very useful code nuggets that could be generally useful to developers writing different kinds of apps. Unfortunately, in many cases, these nuggets are hidden. If you’ve ever found yourself thinking, Man, I wonder how that one open source app does XYZ because I could use that in this app, then you know what I mean.

A while back, Jon Galloway asked the question, Can Operating Systems tell if they’re running in a Virtual Machine? What a silly question! When was the last time an Operating System questioned its own existence? Is that going to be in the next version of Windows - Windows Vista Into Its Own Soul? Or perhaps Apple will come out with Mac OS Existentialist?

From Monday night to Thursday afternoon next week I will be in Las Vegas attending both DevConnections/ASPConnections as well as the DotNetNuke OpenForce conference. After that, I will be up in Redmond for the next week.

Pop quiz for you C# developers out there. Will the following code compile?

An undisclosed source informed me that MySpace China is using a modified version of Subtext for its blogging engine.

Like a lovesick puppy, my good friend Rob Conery is following me to Microsoft.

For those starting out at Microsoft, an analogy that you’re likely to hear a lot is “Drinking from the firehose”. The first time I’ve ever heard this phrase was when Dare used it in a post about the flood of information due to subscribing to multiple RSS feeds.

If you live in the Seattle area and like code, talking about code, or listening to people talk about code, you owe it to yourself to check out the Seattle Code Camp.

Many of you noticed that my blog was down. Thanks for the heads up. For some reason, it was pegging the CPU at 100% all of a sudden. Not sure why this was happening since nobody made any changes to the server. At least no changes they would fess up to ;).

UPDATE: We decided on the Three Lions Pub in Redmond at 7:30 PM

Here’s the dirty little secret about being a software developer. No matter how good the code you write is, it’s crap to another developer.

In his post Goodby CodeBetter and ALT.NET, Sam Gentile writes about his dissatisfaction with CodeBetter and the ALT.NET movement. I don’t know Sam personally, but I’ve read his blog for a long time and know him to be a well reasoned thoughtful person.

I think Miguel de Icaza nails it regarding some of the FUD being written about Microsoft’s latest move to make the source code to the .NET Framework available under the Microsoft Reference License (Ms-RL).

I just received a few advanced copies of our new book and am giving away three of them to the first three people who leave a comment on this post.

One weakness with many blog engines, Subtext included, is that it is difficult to change the tags and categories for multiple entries at a time. In general, most blog engines streamline the workflow for tagging and categorizing a single blog post.

It is a sad fact of life that, in this day and age, arguments are not won with sound logic and reasoning. Instead, applying the principle of framing an argument is much more effective at swaying public opinion.