I suspect that I have managed to set a record for the longest silence after an initial blog post. Except, that is, for all the people posted once and never came back.

Like all poor students, I do have some excuses. I was on vacation in Alaska, an utterly excellent sojourn which I may talk about sometime if there’s nothing else to write down. Suffice to say that if you have a chance to drive the Denali Highway, just do it. Never mind those car rental agencies and their pesky girly-man warnings. We had the time of our lives out there. Just make sure you slow down for other cars and respect the ptarmigans as they slowly moonwalk across the road.

My other excuse is that our team has been working like ants to meet the dates for our next milestone. It has not been a true death march, although there were some minor casualties. Our mission? To boldly make Indigo Beta 2 safe for human use. Obviously nothing can be said about this until the Los Angeles PDC, but even so, I should warn you: the transactions support is really good. Much better than in Beta 1, in the same way that Tom Yum is a much better soup than Caldo Verde.

Speaking of the PDC, I will be attending this year. Not as a talker like some of my more illustrious co-workers, but as a free-lancer eager to see what other Microsoft teams are working on and what our customers make of it all. Maybe I’ll even see you there.