3/30/2010Yesterday, Monday, March 29th, was my first day at Microsoft! I can't tell you how excited I am to be part of this amazing company! I will still work out of the Hampton Roads area (Norfolk / Va Beach) - as a part of the Federal Services Group, focusing on USN and USMC. That's where my experience is so I'm hoping I can help continue to bring great techincal solutions to our military services.
I plan to remain involved in community events, so those who are used to seeing me at SharePoint Satrudays, Code Camps and user groups will still see me around. How much I'm able to attend remains to be seen and will depend upon how much traveling I'll have to do in my new capacity.
Here's to a new beginning - I hope I can help make a difference! 10/2/2009
Well, it's not quite midnight the night before our eighth (yes, count 'em!) Richmond Code Camp. I've finished my presentaiton deck, just need to get demos worked out on my virtual.... At least I'm not alone: my firend Robin Edwards is somewhere else in the motel working on her presentation for the Richmond Code Camp, too! Birds of a feather???
Sounds like we'll have a record breaking crowd tonmorrow and I'm in charge of Registration, so time to get some shut eye.
Hope everyone enjoys it. I'm sure those who attend will find it well worth their while. 9/24/2009
My past few weeks have been frustrating - dealing with virtual issues. I needed to get a way to run a 64-bit Win 2008 guest OS to support some work I'm doing on some COOL new things - let your imagination run wild! :) Anyway, that requirement boiled down to Hyper-V or booting from a VHD (with Win 7 or Win 2008 OS). I managed to get my main desktop able to boot from the VHD - so success there. No such joy on my laptop that I had upgraded RAM to 8 GB of RAM in anticipation of being able to access most of it from a virtual. So Plan B - installed Windows Server 2008 R2 on my laptop, enabled the Hyper-V role and voila! - I was able to run the 64-bit guest OS. I deluded myself that everything was hunky-dory.
Then I needed to give a demo that I'd done before - of the SharePoint BI stack and how it applies for my customers' environment. Whipped out my presentation 32-bit VHD that has all my demos on it - and found that Hyper-V insisted that the hardware of that VHD had changed so much that the virtual's OS had to be re-activated. Then the second shoe dropped. I couldn't get Hyper-V to see my laptop's NIC (Wi-Fi is totally out of the question with Hyper-V). The last two days have been spent trying to get my virtual activated - or more precisely, Hyper-V to allow my guest OS access to my network. No joy.
Pressure's mounting because we're on our way to the Richmond SPUG tonight, en route to Roanoke's SPUG Friday, Sept 25th - where I'm supposed to present for half a day - with the virtual I can't get to boot. Other issues on other laptops cropped up along the way (e.g. former demo laptop has dead video - it's a brick on KVM, former, former laptop doesn't have enough RAM so virtual is dog-slow..) You get the picture. Tick, tick, tick.. Finally dropped back and punted - meaning I loaded Windows 7 on my Windows 2008 R2 with Hyper-V laptop in dual-boot mode, and now I can at least run the 32-bit VMs from Windows 7, albeit only allowed about 3.5 GBs of my 8 GBs of RAM. Still, it's operational.
So now while my husband drives us to Richmond (traffic sucks, of course - tunnels, Navy traffic,...), I'm installing core applications on the new Win 7 image - Office 2007, Tweetdeck, my Verizon aircard app,
I dropped by my blog to grab former presentations I'm giving tomorrow in Roanoke - so I can polish them up - and decided to vent my virtual frustrations here.
Final piece of getting my 32-bit VMs to work in my Hyper-V laptop will be to install Hyper-V Server on my desktop at home, get that Hyper-V to authenticate my 32-bit VMs, and then export/import them over to my laptop running Hyper-V. Wish me luck!
8/25/2009The fall event season is heating up! Be sure to put Richmond Code Camp on your schedule. We've been running RCC for several eyars now and it's a top-notch event. Great speakers, venue (J Sargent Reynolds), sponsors, and of course our attendees. Folks have come to know this is a premium event full of great sessions. So hurry over to the following link and register now!
3/5/2009
This weekend I'll be helping out my good friend, Robin Edwards, as she puts on her third Roanoke Code Camp. I can't believe this will be my first Roanoke Code Camp - what the heck took me so long?!?! Anyway, that's where I'll be - doing whatever I can to help things go smoothly. But knowing Robin, she won't need any help! I'll also be giving my SharePoint talk on creating dashboards using SharePoint Designer. If anyone is out in the western part of VA, hope to see you at the Code Camp!
Ignore any login challenges - just click cancel - as often as necessary. They WILL open! 10/2/2008Hope to see lots of folks this Saturday - Great content and even greater speakers! Many are MVPs - this is a top-notch event. We are in a new location this time - the J. Sargeants Reynolds new facility on Parham Rd. Please see the web site for the schedule, directions, links to our sponsors, blogs of many of the speakers, etc. 5/14/2008
Don't know how I managed to get myself so tied up, but the next several weeks are going to be very busy - and challenging to fit around a busy work schedule!
Tomorrow, May 15th is our monthly HRSSUG meeting. This month is part two of our 2008 Launch and we also have a speaker from Mindsharp - Corro'll Driskell - to talk to us about InfoPath and SharePoint! In addition, TekSystems is hosting the meeting (pizza) and we have the usual Launch SWAG to raffle off.
Then Saturday, May 17th, is the No Va Code Camp. I'll be speaking on integrating SQL Server Reporting Services (including SQL Server 2008) and SharePoint.
Tuesday, May 20th, is the Microsoft Launch event in Richmond. I'm working the PASS and INETA booths there.
Whew! Then a 3-day holiday weekend (Memorial Day), and the following Friday, May 30th I'm off to TechEd in Orlando for a week. I'll be working the Microsoft Certification Study Hall while at TechEd.
Give me a shout if anyone will be at any of these events!
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