![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I got Kerri to drop me off at Microsoft's Canberra headquarters this morning. "That one - the golden one." I pointed at it, glowing in the level sun.
She pulled off State Circle into Sydney Avenue and then tried to drive into the courtyard of the big Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade building.
"No, the golden one - over there!"
She made as if to turn off into a side-street beside a big empty parking lot. "In here, is it?"
"The other side of the road."
"What? Do I do a u-turn?" she peered along the broad avenue with fifty metres of traffic island in the middle.
"Just go along to the cross-street."
We did that thing and she pulled up outside the first office building, some glittering array of glass and steel.
"No, the golden one. Up ahead." Two buildings on and she dropped me off outside the right one, after hesitating briefly at the one in the middle.
Maybe it was invisible, maybe Microsoft exists in some sort of computer code warp, maybe she had fixed her heart on it being the DFAT building, maybe, oh I dunno.
I was 45 minutes early, and I sat on the cement kurb outside, reading Lisa Wingate's Texas Cooking, which I had bought from Lisa's own hands at the convention. Had to chuckle over the peahen/rattlesnake incident. Cripes. Were there rattlesnakes just running around loose in Texas? Lucky I didn't get much outside built-up areas, though now I remember I strode blithely through a lot of open ground on the way back from the Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth. If I'd been thinking I might have looked a bit more carefully at the ground I was walking on.
Upstairs was registration - yet another little name tag marked with my name and "Skyring" - a couple of cups of excellent coffee and some morning munchies, as well as the local geekhood. I said Hi to a couple of old friends, then sat down and read some more Lisa.
The first session was on Extreme Programming, by Dr Neil Roodyn. He wrote the book on it. He spends half his year here and half the year working for a small software company in Washington. In Redmond. Doesn't see the winter months. A good inspirational speaker and curse Amazon and their 1-click ordering!
Mary Bray was waiting in the break. She's a guru of SQL Server. A god. "You've always been a goddess to me, Mary!" I said and her eyes twinkled. But it's true - she knows her stuff, she's a true geek and I love her dearly. Her heart belongs to SQL and when she teaches, the enthusiasm just flows straight out of her, along the floor and up into her students.
Got a good look at the new SQL Server 2005 in the next session, where we learnt about the security enhancements. It's a lot more finegrained this time around, and I've got a feeling that a lot of applications are going to break before the programmers get the hang of the security features.
And the last session was on integration. They have included something akin to Biztalk in the Enterprise edition - handle processes and data flows, branching, looping and stuff with a nifty graphical interface. Lovely - I hated grappling with T/SQL in the old days. That's one language that Microsoft can show the rubbish bin and if I never see another line of it, I'll be happy!
And then I walked home, all the way down Kings Avenue, across the bridge and through the grassland on either side of Parkes Way, never thinking of rattlers at all.
Oh yeah. I got a freebie test pack of Beta 2 SQL Server 2005. Don't install it on a computer box you care about, I was warned.
She pulled off State Circle into Sydney Avenue and then tried to drive into the courtyard of the big Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade building.
"No, the golden one - over there!"
She made as if to turn off into a side-street beside a big empty parking lot. "In here, is it?"
"The other side of the road."
"What? Do I do a u-turn?" she peered along the broad avenue with fifty metres of traffic island in the middle.
"Just go along to the cross-street."
We did that thing and she pulled up outside the first office building, some glittering array of glass and steel.
"No, the golden one. Up ahead." Two buildings on and she dropped me off outside the right one, after hesitating briefly at the one in the middle.
Maybe it was invisible, maybe Microsoft exists in some sort of computer code warp, maybe she had fixed her heart on it being the DFAT building, maybe, oh I dunno.
I was 45 minutes early, and I sat on the cement kurb outside, reading Lisa Wingate's Texas Cooking, which I had bought from Lisa's own hands at the convention. Had to chuckle over the peahen/rattlesnake incident. Cripes. Were there rattlesnakes just running around loose in Texas? Lucky I didn't get much outside built-up areas, though now I remember I strode blithely through a lot of open ground on the way back from the Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth. If I'd been thinking I might have looked a bit more carefully at the ground I was walking on.
Upstairs was registration - yet another little name tag marked with my name and "Skyring" - a couple of cups of excellent coffee and some morning munchies, as well as the local geekhood. I said Hi to a couple of old friends, then sat down and read some more Lisa.
The first session was on Extreme Programming, by Dr Neil Roodyn. He wrote the book on it. He spends half his year here and half the year working for a small software company in Washington. In Redmond. Doesn't see the winter months. A good inspirational speaker and curse Amazon and their 1-click ordering!
Mary Bray was waiting in the break. She's a guru of SQL Server. A god. "You've always been a goddess to me, Mary!" I said and her eyes twinkled. But it's true - she knows her stuff, she's a true geek and I love her dearly. Her heart belongs to SQL and when she teaches, the enthusiasm just flows straight out of her, along the floor and up into her students.
Got a good look at the new SQL Server 2005 in the next session, where we learnt about the security enhancements. It's a lot more finegrained this time around, and I've got a feeling that a lot of applications are going to break before the programmers get the hang of the security features.
And the last session was on integration. They have included something akin to Biztalk in the Enterprise edition - handle processes and data flows, branching, looping and stuff with a nifty graphical interface. Lovely - I hated grappling with T/SQL in the old days. That's one language that Microsoft can show the rubbish bin and if I never see another line of it, I'll be happy!
And then I walked home, all the way down Kings Avenue, across the bridge and through the grassland on either side of Parkes Way, never thinking of rattlers at all.
Oh yeah. I got a freebie test pack of Beta 2 SQL Server 2005. Don't install it on a computer box you care about, I was warned.
