Last night I attended the Microsoft Office System party at the Hard Rock Cafe. The “Unauthorized Rolling Stones” were playing and the crowd was into it. I was primarily there for the food at first, but after a few free drinks, I was having a jolly good time talking to people. Even met a techie from Juneau, Alaska. Though I live in L.A., I still claim Anchorage since my family still lives there. So it was nice to bond with another Alaskan. Especially as I didn’t figure the Alaskan government would be using .NET.

In any case, I stuck out the party till the end and was rightly rewarded for it. I won the grand prize of the raffle which was a 3GHZ HP Media Center PC. It’s one of them TIVO like systems with 160 GB hard-drive, ATI Radeon 9200 (I think), TV and Radio Tuner, etc… I hear the next version of the Media Center operating system will support HDTV.

The funny part is that at the time, I was bummed I didn’t win second place which was a Tablet PC. I even went up to the guy who won it and offerred a trade, but he wasn’t having it. Especially considering I had to carry this big honking box to my car. ;)

Thanks Microsoft!