I attended a number of seminars today, some were good (What’s New In SQL Server 2005 for Developers, Operator Overloading, Generics and BackgroundWorker in VB.Net) some were not so good (Stored Procedures with CLR in SQL Server 2005) and a couple were great (The ‘My’ Namespace in VB.Net, and Application Frameworks in VB.Net). I was irritated by the CLR SP talk because the speaker, William Vaughn, took up a bunch of time at the beginning telling jokes and relating personal political opinions. Thus, he had to rush through the actual content of his presentation, hold us over time and still not complete his presentation. I had heard he was a good presenter, but it did not show during this session.

2 pieces of information that I took away from the ‘My’ Namespaces presentation that others might be interested in:

1. When you set a VB.Net application to be a single instance application (via Project
   Properties) you can add code to the event handler StartUpNewInstance. You can also
   add code to the event handler HandleUnhandledException. If you add code to either
   of these event handlers (and possibly other new application wide event handlers) you
   must test the code outside of the debugger (Ctrl-F5). If not, the debugger will catch
   the exception before the event is fired.
2. I had heard conflicting reports about the availability of the ‘My’ namespace in C#.
   According to Microsoft, the ‘My’ functionality will only be available in VB.Net.
   According to the speaker, this is because C# does not have a background compiler running
   that can dynamically recompile the information into strongly typed classes. This statement
   was not corrected or countered by the Program Manager in charge the ‘My’ namespaces
   who was in the audience. I expect that the ‘My’ namespace will be so beneficial to
   me, that I will be creating all new projects in VB.Net, instead of C# (which I have
   been using, almost exclusively, for over 2 years).

Went walking to Chinatown for dinner tonight. We were planning on finding a restaurant that had was busy and eat there. But we took a long time to get there; everything looks different in the dark, and what is the deal with all the diagonal streets? By the time we got into Chinatown, it was late and we were hungry. Since I had decided on Cheesecake Factory last night, it was David’s turn to make the decision. We looked at 3 or 4 different restaurants. We passed by one that had a barker out front handing out menus. David decided to go into this restaurant, mostly (I think) because he couldn’t decide on any other. We walked up the stairs and got to the front desk. The maitre d’ was in a tuxedo! I looked into the restaurant and everyone was in suits and sports coats! We were in jeans and sweatshirts. But we were seated and the food was good. The restaurant was named Kan’s and it is located on Grant Street.

A restaurant with a barker and a maitre d’ in a tuxedo… Sheesh…

We had a bunch of sessions on the topic of Smart Clients. I was impressed with the way that One Click Deployment was presented, but then, most presentations are designed to impress the audience. I really think that Salem would benefit from Smart Client applications and I hope to be writing them when VS 2005 is released as beta 2 in late Spring.

I was under-whelmed, however, by the presentations on the Team software that Microsoft is releasing with Visual Studio 2005. I would have liked to see an improved updated version of Visual Source Safe. That product hasn’t been updated in at least 7 years.

In order to further my goal of self-control, I skipped breakfast at Jasmine’s this morning. I had such a great (and late, we finished after 9 pm) dinner last night, that I was not hungry at breakfast time. So why eat when I wasn’t hungry. Self control. My plan was that I would have something to eat at the conference. In the past, they have provided munchies at each break. I expected some sort of breakfast foods during the first break. Also, Salem generously signed me up with the ‘Gold Passport’ at the conference which, among other benefits, provides access to a restricted lounge area that genereally has food stuffs available. Yesterday they had bagels in the morning in the Gold Passport lounge. So I thought I was set if I got hungry before lunch.

Slightly before the first break I went to the Gold Passport lounge to get a bagel. No bagels!!! What’s the deal? Not to fear, I’ll just get some breakfast food at the regular break time.

This year is Fawcette
Technical Publication’s (the host of VSLive!) 15th Anniversary. So to celebrate, they provided cake (complete with butter frosting) for snack during the first break. I don’t want cake at 10 am. Too early.

Bottom line. I’m hungry.

Cheesecake Factory is soooooooooooooo good. I had the Orange Chicken. But we were sitting on the patio and it was very cold.

Then it started to rain. But it was just sprinkles while we were walking back.

This week’s theme might just be all about the food. 🙂