Check out the SQL Server 2005 Express Edition if you want to begin to ramp up on SQL Server 2005 features. If you're looking for a short list of reasons to check this out, go here .

Miguel de Icaza : "I think the Next Generation Web Services (WS-*) world has reached the same level of complexity that CORBA achieved in an effort to satisfy the users requests."

I attended my first geek dinner tonight. The attendees included, but were not limited to, Robert Scoble , Dana Epp , Steve Maine , Don Alvarez, Todd Bishop, Jason Anderson , Tom Arnold, Raymond Chen , Anita Rowland , and many others. Sorry if I left anyone...

Jason Anderson and Tom Arnold gave an overview of EDT (Enterprise Development & Test), part of the Team System V1 tools, tonight in building 42 after the geek dinner . In attendance besides me were Steve , Dana , Don Alvarez , Todd Bishop , and Robert...

I made it to Redmond earlier today, and spent some time walking around near my hotel. It was a pretty poor way to spend Father's Day, compared to spending time with my family, but I managed to enjoy it a little bit. There is a place called the Redmond...

Fritz shared his thoughts on writing a while back (I just saw this today though), so I thought I'd post my perspective as well. My biggest problem with writing is that I can often write extensively on a subject, even while I'm still in the stages of...

CIO Magazine : "The truth—as we all so bitterly know—is that the IT world is filled with certified, credentialed and accredited idiots. I bet you've hired a few. I know I have." [ Via Mike Gunderloy ]

Did anyone say "geek dinner?" Oh, I see Mick Stanic was so enamored of the geek dinners I kept doing (he was the guest of honor at one of mine) that he registered geekdinner.com . Heh. Speaking of which, we'll have another dinner on Monday night here...

Yesterday, while rebuilding a machine prior to leaving on a trip, I managed to screw up the only copy I had of my OPML file while backing it up to my file server. But thanks to Dave Winer , I was able to retrieve a relatively up to date copy of my file...

I read the transcript of Cory's recent talk at MSR, and I found it to be insightful and very entertaining. Here's one of my favorite excerpts: Every one of you has been riding a curve where you read more and more words off of more and more screens...

Typically, I agree with Joel on most of what he writes. However, in his recent essay titled " How Microsoft Lost the API War ", I think he's jumped the shark . I can't respond point by point due to time constraints, so I'll just take exception with what...

A few folks are pushing back on Peter's petition for unit testing features in versions of Visual Studio other than the "Team System" versions. I think that Peter's request is not unreasonable, but as some other people have pointed out there are other...

Tim Bray : "Over the last twenty years I’ve seen the rise of Structured Programming and Object-Oriented Programming and Message Passing and the Relational Model and those are all good things, but TDD is the single biggest advance in my lifetime...

Doc Searls has extended the thread on RSS and e-mail , and approaches the discussion from a relationships perspective. As technology people, too often we focus on protocols and the implementation details of software and not enough on what people are trying...

Here's an interesting local news event related to a lake drying up in suburban St. Louis.

Kingsley Idehen clarifies a comment he made to LinuxInsider regarding the portability of .NET code to environments supporting Mono.

Peter Provost is starting a blog petition related to unit testing features in VS2005. I want to start a blog petition. I want everyone who agrees with me to blog the following sentence: Unit Testing support should be included with all versions...

CMSwire explains that SharePoint 's integration with Content Management Server and support for .NET is helping the product to gain traction in corporate IT. Personally, I think the SharePoint is one of the best products we have right now because it is...

Expression 3 is the coolest free app I've seen since Art Rage. Oh, Microsoft bought the company? Awesome. Can't wait to see what this team does. [ Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger ] I also ran across this on Don Park's site recently as well...

I'll be Redmond in a week for some orientation-related activities. I'll arrive next Sunday morning and will be staying until the following Saturday. I'm interested in meeting up with folks who have time to do so, perhaps for dinner, drinks, or any other...

Is anyone else freaked out by the fact that MCA has gone completely gray?

Todd Kitta states that "if anything does ever wipe out email, I definitely don't think it will be RSS or Atom. These technologies solve (albeit sometimes similar) but different problems. I am not going to send a love note to my wife or vacation pictures...