MikeFitz with overflow bit set…

A couple of hours ago, someone I’m married to, got me one; big time.

She had an appointment with the hairdresser at 10:00.  As she raced out the door at 9:53 she said, “Mike, I’m currently holding the high bid at $910 on this eBay item.  The auction closes in 7 minutes but I have to go.  I want you to click on this button at 9:55 and if someone has out-bid me, I want you to bid again, up to $950.”

Now, I’m a complete newbie at this evilBay thing.  However, I said, “Yes, Dear.”  (I find I can always get the last word in any argument as long as it is “Dear”, as in “Yes, Dear.”)  So I did as I was told.

At 9:55, there was a minor flurry of bids against another person (probably the store owner).  However at 9:59:35 I submitted the winning bid of $940.  “Well done”, I thought to myself, smugly.  I had handled the pressure and come in at $10 under her reserve.  Yep, she was lucky she got the right man onto that job!

And then I noticed what we had bought: a treadmill!  My mind raced.  “Where are we going to put it?  What’s going to be thrown out to make room for it?  And who’s the intended user?  Oh, No!”

And I can just hear her now, “Well you bought it!”

Aaarrgh!

– Mike

Yesterday I went along to the lunchtime meeting of the Brisbane SharePoint User Group.  Great presentations by Kristian Kalsing and James Milne.  Kristian has posted a blog entry with a list of references on Creating SharePoint Site Definitions.  A pretty good meeting all round.

Alarmingly, it became apparent in the discussion after the presentations that many attendees, myself included, were not aware that “BizTalk Bill” Chestnut was in town and scheduled to talk on BizTalk Server 2006 to BrizTalk, the Brisbane BizTalk Community Group, that very evening.

Obviously, I can only blame myself for not getting over to http://www.briztalk.com/, registering and checking out the Events page.  I should then have recorded this important event in my previous blog entry.

Help me out here

All this raises some questions, like:

1. “Is there a single place where Brisbane’s Microsoft-aligned developers can go to keep track of all developer events coming up this week?  … or this month?”
2. “If not, what’s the best way to set this up?  A fixed web page which everyone can link to?  A blog to which everyone can subscribe?  The mother of all mailing lists?”
3. “How is this done in other states?”
4. “Who is going to keep it up to date?”
5. “Should I volunteer for this?”

If anyone has any suggestions/answers to questions 1 to 4, please leave a comment or contact me.  (Question 5, that’s a rhetorical question, isn’t it?)

Cheers, MikeFitz

(PS. As it turned out, I had a parent-teacher interview for No 3 son last night, so I was going to miss Bill anyway.  I hope Ray Trattles took good notes for me.)

Brisbane software developers should have some of these in their diary by now.

• Brisbane SharePoint User’s Group
  Wed 8 Feb 06, 12:00 Microsoft Brisbane office.
  Kristian Kalsing on “Cool Web Parts” and James Milne on “SharePoint Customisation using Front Page”.
• Qld SQL Server User Group
  Thu 9 Feb 06, 17:30 for 18:00 Microsoft Brisbane office.  Note the special date this month.
  Greg Low speaking on “Stored Procedure Recompiles in SQL Server 2005 (and avoiding them)”
• Qld MSDN User Group
  Tue 21 Feb 06, 17:30 for 18:00 Microsoft Brisbane office. 
• Microsoft Security Interchange
  Wed 1 Mar 06, 18:15. Don’t show up at Microsoft for this one. It’s at Ballymore.
• Code Camp Oz
  Sun 23-Mon 24 Apr 06 (just before Anzac Day) Charles Sturt University, Wagga Wagga

Contact me if you need any more details.

This is a bloke’s first blog entry.  I’ve resisted the urge to blog in the past because I’m a bit worried about the concept of blogging.

As Scott Adams, author of Dilbert, my favourite cartoon series, once said,  “The basic premise of blogging is this: whatever is in my mind when I write this, is far more important than what would otherwise have been in your mind when you read this.”  For a funny guy, he’s such a cynic.

However, unlike Scott, I am quite prepared to accept that plenty of other people know more about “stuff” than I do.  Just tell me about it.  Leave a comment.

Right, now that that’s out of the way, let’s get started…