On Wednesday we drew the prize draw for the 2008 summer road trip. Jeremy took the data, imported it into SQL, did some code to match registrations and invitations to evaluation forms, then write a little function to draw someone from random from the list of entries. The prize pool was: Two servers with...

Many of you have asked about availability of the code and slides from the road trip, and the good news is that they are now up. Jeremy has the scoop along with instructions to build a VM for yourself. Enjoy!

Today we are in Invercargill.  Today is the last day of our Road Trip.  Today is kind of a sad day. We've had a great time driving around the country presenting on Visual Studio 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008.  I think those who have come along have enjoyed the road trip...

Last night JB and I flew down to meet Chris in Dunedin.  In retrospect, we could have gone down this morning, but it translated into a good sleep in this morning, and we are safely in the town we need to be in and not at the mercy of the airlines to get us there under time pressure, so all good...

This morning we woke up in the middle of nowhere, with no mobile coverage, no telephone and lots of distance between us and civilization - a geek's worst nightmare.  We were of course in Maruia Springs Thermal Resort in Lewis Pass.  Chris is still not feeling very good, but he managed to find...

Last night we took the ferry to the South Island at 6:15 (give or take 30 minutes for a delay).  We it was dark when we got to Picton, which meant we got to take some photos during sunset in the sounds which was pretty cool.  When we got to Picton we headed to a motel where we stayed for the...

  Today the boys did their presentation to our home town of Wellington.  It went well and was generally enjoyed by everyone.  The Paramount was a fantastic venue and we had heaps of capacity so even though we  had hundreds of registrations we didn't need to close it off. It was great...

Jeremy and Chris are both really looking forward to Wellington tomorrow - it is our home town, and we are expecting the biggest (and best?) audience at a very cool venue - the Paramount Picture Theatre. Today however, we are in Palmerston North. After breakfast, we headed back down through Dannevirke...

We started the week at 7am by driving from Wellington to Napier.  It was pouring rain in Wellington - but the rain eased and cleared once we got through the Waiarapa. It was funny driving through my home town, Dannevirke, and pointing out one or two features of the town along the way including the...

The road between Hamilton and New Plymouth was interesting.  There is little to no cellular coverage for about an hour and a half - which made us techies feel quite isolated.  We particularly felt for the owners of the petrol station at Awakino... We also drove through a bug storm.  Jeremy...

We made our way from Auckland to Tauranga today.  No dramas with the location this time (phew!), and we started making stops and taking photos along the way.  We stopped in Paeroa and Waihi to take some photos, grab drinks (you can't not do this in Paeroa) and take a look at the gold mine in...

Last night was a bit of an experience.  We jumped on the plane in Wellington to come to Auckland for the first leg of he .Net User Group Summer Road Trip trying to tote 30kg of computer equipment, managed switches and a heap of varying cables along with our laptop bags as carry on luggage on the...

Hold on - we're heading your way!  The content is prepped, the rehearsal is done, we are on our way! On Monday the .Net User Groups kick off their summer road trip in Auckland.  I'm tagging along, so after Auckland we head down the country until we get to Invercargill.  Full details, including...

Just an update - if you are trying to register for the Auckland leg of the 2008 Summer Road trip, it is now full - so we have closed registrations. If you are in one of the other locations - we still have room, so register today to go in to win one of the nice home servers . We've also got some software...

I thought I'd put up the details of the specs of the boxes we will be using and giving away at the end of the Summer Road Trip . To re-iterate - if you want to win this - you'll need to register and turn up and fill in an eval form on the day to be in the draw to win one of these puppies... ...

Over the last few weeks Chris and Jeremy have been working away behind the scenes to prepare the content for the road trip that will be coming in a few weeks time to a location near you. This morning they did the first complete run through to an audience.  We had a developer and a non developer...

Register here - details below :-) The NZ community rocks!  As you probably know, we've got three big products coming out in the  new year (Windows Server 2008, SQL Server 2008 and Visual Studio 2008) and the community is preparing to do a major road trip around New Zealand. Chris Auld and Jeremy...