There are a lot of things to be excited about.  My fourth daughter was born not two weeks ago, my sister is getting married, work is going great, and I'm going to Tech-Ed 2005 in Orlando, Florida on June 5th - 10th!

This will be my first Tech-Ed and I'm really excited about it.  I've had the opportunity over the years to attend a couple of VBits, PDC, a couple of Microsoft Partner Conferences, and others, but I've never had the chance, for one reason or another, to attend a Tech-Ed.  If you're going to be there and want to hook up and talk tech or just hang out, let me know...it's going to be a blast!

Here's some news I'm very excited to share and want to disseminate before too long.  In conjunction with Microsoft, several of the local .NET community leaders have been planning a brand new event for May 18th, 2005 called Betas 2005 Unleashed.

This event will focus on the up and coming technologies from Microsoft (Visual Studio .NET 2005 and SQL Server 2005) and will have a respective track for each.  This FREE conference will focus on the technologies and will not (I repeat NOT) simply be a conference of fluff and PowerPoint.  Each of the presenters will be diving right into the technology and will use it to drive their presentations.

In the Visual Studio .NET 2005 track we'll be discussing topics such as

• Web Development Platform - ASP.NET 2.0 (presented by yours truly)
• Smart Client Development Platform - Windows Forms, Mobile Development
• Visual Studio Team System

The SQL Server 2005 track provides the following

• SQL Server Developer Platform - SQLCLR, TSQL Enhancements
• Business Intelligence Platform - Reporting Services, Analysis Services, Data Warehousing
• Infrastructure Platform - Availability, Management, Database Mirroring

The conference venue will be the Miller Free Enterprise Center in the SLCC-Miller Campus in Sandy, Utah (9750 South 300 W).  The full day event will be on May 18th, 2005 from 8:30 AM - 5:00 PM (breakfast will be provided at 7:30 AM).

Come one and all to what will be a fantastic event!

Registration is open to everyone!

Well, after much deliberation and discussion, we finally decided on a name for the new addition to the family:  Loganne Amber Zupancic.  Loganne pronounced as 'Logan'.  We opted for the spelling variation 1) to be more consistent with her sisters' names and 2) to make the name appear more feminine (though Logan is a perfectly good girl name).

She and mom got home from the hospital today and both are doing great.  We're so excited to have her home and in our lives!

Ok, I must admit that I think this is AWESOME!  Though I'm perhaps a bit late to this party, seeing that Craig Paterson posted on it last March, and apparently it's been available for some months, but I wanted to help spread the word for those that hadn't seen this, or known about it.

When it comes to favorite games, the original The Legend of Zelda is probably at the top of my all-time list.  That game was a lot of fun.  Well, it appears that Armageddon Games has created a tribute to the original game (in that it replicates exactly the game we all love), but they've made it extensible.  This allows people to go in an create new quests, items, enemies, graphics, etc.

I am in love...retro-love.

Yesterday was a pretty active, exciting, fantastic, exhilarating, exhausting day.  For that reason I delayed until today to announce the birth of our fourth (yes 4th!) girl.  Born at 9:56 AM, weighing in at 8 lbs 1 oz and 19 1/2 inches in length, Logan [yet undecided middle name, though leaning towards Irene] Zupancic entered this world by way of Cesarean Section.  She was breach (bottom down).

She and mom are doing fantastic and we hope to have them home this Wednesday.  Four girls is a handful...I'm dreading the teenage years...and the weddings...

They're such great girls.  I love 'em.

Without stirring any coals, and providing an impartial perspective and overview, Philippe has created a thorough analysis of the differences between VB.NET and C#.  It's nice to have a good, comprehensive reference that's well written and thought out.  Thanks Philippe!

Today we had a great INETA sponsored .NET User Group meeting presented by Carl Prothman.  The topic was ADO.NET.  This turned out to be a great topic for the group as many people had some questions answered.  For the most part, it was an introduction to ADO.NET, so it covered quite a few of the basics and “What is...” types of things, but I think many participants and attendees gained some new tidbits of knowledge.

We very much appreciate the participation of all that attended - we had a great turnout of just over 50 people - so that's great!  Also, we had the opportunity to give Scott Golightly's Raffle Application a dry run.  It worked out perfectly!  Thanks to everyone for participating!