Bullet the Blue Blog

OK, I couldn't come up with a better title for a random entry. Hopefully, U2 fans appreciate it! As promised, a grab bag of comments & responses to a lot of questions. And bullets. Plenty of bullets.

• I'm going the bullet route to try to organize better as I am moving up to better paragraphing. Yes, I should use paragraphs more. Sorry about that. I guess most of my blogs are generally streams of conciousness and I tend to ramble without much organization. I keep noticing typos and missing words when I re-read my blog. Someone once said structure is the enemy of creativity. I could try to hide behind that saying, but that's really just an excuse for laziness. I'll get better--maybe even use more bullet points more. Ugh, like you guys need to see blogs that look like slides..

• Two more p&p guys have started blogging (and I will bug them to keep blogging).  James Newkirk and Scott Densore, both developers from our team and among the sharper guys on the team, are putting finger to keyboard (as opposed to “pen to paper”) to start telling you more about what they are involved in. In a couple of months, they will really be able to unveil some cool new things that are in the pipeline. In the meantime, I expect them to still have plenty of interesting stuff to say (if you are a fan of the Singleton pattern, take a look at Scott's blog).

• I love the blogs.msdn.com scoreboard of who has blogged and how many times. I think whoever thought of that was playing off the typical type A personality at Microsoft to get more blogging. OK, I admit it--it worked on me. I have 15 (not counting this one) which ties me with several people, including KarstenJ of the Longhorn Evangelism team, a really sharp guy and the driving force behind the Longhorn Migration Guide Emerging Practices we did back in October. Out of the 501 total people that are a part of the “honor roll”, I am tied for 175th. Of course, that doesn't count all the entries from my previous blog (~30). That'd make me 71st and mine are usually extensive--very few cheapies for me! Woo-hoo. I AM GOOD! (Yeah, it's petty but I don't care! :->)

• Another p&p Summit is about to happen in the UK in a couple of weeks. Then one in October in Virginia and planning for 2005. I think we may do the 2005 west coast one away from the mothership this time and mosey down down to sunny CA. Ron Jacobs, Lars Laakes, and I got a tremendous reception of hundreds of people when we did an free event at the Silicon Valley campus in Mountain View back in December. Plus, it'll give Ted Neward home court advantage given he's a Davis dude.

• There were tons of comments on and off line regarding business models for building blocks. Some saying they were surprised it took this long and others were fearful. I think the chief fear is that we would stop giving blocks out--I can almost guarantee that will never happen, even if the business was there. But much like Linux, there is a need for Red Hat for people who just want working, supportable binaries and easy bug fixes, incident support, etc. (no, MS is not moving into the Open Source business per se). Actually, some of my latest thinking was influenced by the three days I spent with a bunch of corporate CIOs at a non-MS even a month or so ago. Standardization of app frameworks and assets was a HUGE deal. For the smaller developer, I am not suggesting we leave you high-and-dry (if I did that, who'd read my blog? :-> ). This is really for the corporate world that doesn't even care to see the code (yes, those people exist :-> ). Anyway, I do appreciate your comments, criticisms, concerns, and ideas. Please keep them coming as I am willing, even anxious, to continue the dialog. So e-mail me and let me know what you think. Whether your a corporate developer or a small partner, if you mail me, I will respond and love to discuss/debate further. It's the only way I get smarter and we (p&p) gets better.

• To Chris Kinsman regarding the history of SQL (I totally forgot to tell you about this): I found a link with the story on SQL and as it turns out, there WAS a 1.0. Check out the link. Of course, I didn't say it was a useful version. :->

• You heard it here first: If Erik Bedard stays healthy, the Baltimore Orioles are two years away from having a bonafide ace, while Stevie MVP and Keith Bulluck are leading the Titans to the Super Bowl XXXIX trophy. No tech relevance, but a free chance for me to stand on my sports soapbox and close this entry out. Go O's!

{REM - A Perfect Square DVD}