I used to be a guy that worked out five or six times a week.  I was in great shape.  Probably 25 pounds less than what I weigh today.  Through a series of events, bad timing, and just plain laziness, I have at best been an inconsistent work out person and often times just a plain slug.  I've tried to get back in the groove and something has always blown it for me.  A vacation, an injury, extended work travel, you name it.  It doesn't take much to throw you off your stride when you are just getting started.  Well, enough is enough.  About five years ago I made the same declaration and dropped 35 pounds in about 12 weeks and stayed there until eighteen months ago.  I worked out and ate right.  It's time to get that back.

Starting tomorrow, I am getting back on the fitness bandwagon.  The last time I did this, I followed the Body For Life program and had excellent results which is the plan I will go with again.  I'll post results each Friday (weight, calories consumed for the previous week, and workout routine for the previous week) and we will see how it goes.  Don't be afraid to send me mean emails if I start to fall off the wagon!  My next major business trip is to PDC in October.  I will be taking vacation in Las Vegas starting on the 22 of October.  My goal is to lose 20 pounds by the time I get on the plane.  My extended goal is to be below 190 by Christmas.

I'd like to thank Donn Felker and Chris Williams for getting me started in the Hundred Pushup Challenge which made me get motivated to start taking care of the rest of me.

Installed IE 8 Beta 2 today and have been very pleased so far.  Snappy compared to IE 7 in most cases.  I'm trying to think about a good way to add Web Slices to SlickThought.  I have a couple of ideas but not sure if they are any better than the existing RSS feeds.  SlickThought does not render 100% correctly (the main page logo is a bit off kilter) but that is the only problem I have come across so far surfing.  The SlickThought problem is not glaring enough for me to add an IE 7 compatibility tag so I'll leave it as is. 

Spaghetti Code goes "designer" and talks with Inetium's Kris Nyreen about being a designer/developer, or devigner, and working with Silverlight 2.  Kris brings an interesting perspective having spent a lot of time working from the design side of application devolvement and UX creation.  He also has had a wealth of Adobe Flash experience which makes his thoughts on Silverlight all that much more interesting.

I'm want to start cranking out a new series of screencasts and need some ideas.  I don't really want to duplicate stuff that is already out there, so things like "Intro to Silverlight", "ASP.NET MVC Overview", etc. are pretty much out.  I also would like to do things that provide some immediate knowledge transfer and don't require the viewer to have a deep understanding of the topic to glean any benefit.  Some initial ideas are a few screencasts on Microsoft Unity and Velocity - not a ton of stuff out there and very useful technologies.  Topics that take two or three screencasts are fine as long as they all build on each other.  Anyone have any good ideas? 

A short but interesting article at WSJ Online.  The net-net for developers is that UX is becoming more and more important to corporate projects.  In may not be "in your face" right now but social trends will drive you there eventually.  The bar of user expectations have been raised significantly over the last few years as Internet applications and their accessibility and usability have drawn more and more people online.  That is the standard corporate apps are being evaluated on.  Of course, its not just UX that people are judging IT development projects on.  Speed to market, features, etc. are also big areas to pay attention too, but they are not fundamentally different than the changes that have faced developers for a while now.  But providing a better UX is something very new in the world of corporate IT development.  Get ready now for what will certainly be a driving requirement in the near future.

Yep, I have finally been able to shave a little time and start working on Developer Minute.  Still in alpha stage right now, but I've made some decent progress on the Silverlight part (mostly by stealing code from here and there), but getting closer.  Besides the intro video playing, not much else is out there.  No RSS yet, I need an Episode data template to clean up the UI stuff, I want some pop-up functionality, and right now all the data is coming from Spaghetti Code screencasts (I will be putting they same functionality into my SlickThought to watch screencasts as well).  I've had some challenges getting WCF to work with my hoster so instead of dealing with some of those hassles I am changing the way I server up the RSS. 

Stay tuned...

Using the official marketing verbage... ;-)

Nearly every application we build today has dependencies to other systems. How do we design them to work together to meet our goals? How do we decide what to build and what to buy? Do we host it ourselves or in the cloud? With a bewildering array of choices, the biggest challenge we face today is how to architect robust applications with the right technologies to meet our user’s needs and integrate nicely into our existing IT ecosystems.

Join our Central Region Architect Evangelists for a great discussion on architecting distributed applications using all the latest technologies and best practices.

• Session 1: Blueprints for Success. In this session, we will survey the modern architecture landscape from the ground up, including infrastructure, application, and client solution choices. We’ll discuss how current industry trends are shaping our architectures and present an innovative architecture mapping technique for analyzing our customer’s needs and aligning them to today’s technologies and solution patterns.
• Session 2: Making It Real. In this session, we’ll take a look at several case studies to learn how to apply the mapping technique from Session 1 to architect real world solutions that add true business value. We’ll examine applications we use every day and take a walk through a Microsoft reference architecture that explores many of the decisions we face when building modern distributed applications.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND?

Architects and Senior Developers who are interested in becoming an architect.

LOCATIONS

• Minneapolis - 9/16
• Omaha - 9/18
• Kansas City - 9/23
• St Louis - 9/25

You can get info on the event,additional locations, and REGISTER at http://www.arcready.com

http://blogs.pcworld.com/gameon/archives/007483.html

Watch the video on the linked page.  Pretty amazing.

With the release of .NET 3.5 SP1, it's time to start looking REALLY forward to PDC and what should be an excellent set of announcements, road maps, etc.  I'm double excited because I will be able to attend PDC this year.  I am triply excited because I am going to parlay my trip to L.A. into a Las Vegas visit.  I plan on going to Vegas several days before PDC starts and play some serious poker during my stay.  Take a commute flight from Vegas to L.A. on the Saturday before the conference starts to get settled in (and get some much needed sleep).

If anyone else wants to meet me in Vegas - let me know! ;-)

By way of Jason Bock, Donn Felker is taking the lead on getting a Twin Cities Give Camp organized.  Check out Donn's post for all the details on what a Give Camp is, how to get involved, etc.  Give Camps are a great way to share your time and skills to get something great accomplished in a short amount of time - worth checking out and signing up for sure!