If you are near the Toledo area, stop by HCR Manor Care for the local VS 2005 Launch Event.  The NWNUG meeting starts at 6:00 and here is a snippet of the action:

John Hopkins, active community leader in the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group, will be presenting on VS.NET 2005, SQL Server 2005, and Biztalk. He will be covering an overview of the new technology and tools that Microsoft just released this month!

Come join us for the official VS.NET 2005 INETA lauch event at the Northwest Ohio .NET User Group. We will be raffling off several fully licensed copies of VS.NET and SQL 2005 (standard edition) as well as other prizes! Must be present to win.

If you have already had a chance to experiment with the new version, come share your experiences with the group.

John T. Hopkins is a veteran of 13 years in the IT industry, with experiences ranging from front-line tech support to IT management and everything in between. Currently an independent software consultant, John's focus is business productivity solutions built on the .NET platform. John is also a founding member and treasurer of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group ( G.A.N.G.)

Map:

Here is a Google Map, which can give you customized directions.

Directions:

If you're coming from the South (ie Perrysburg): Take 75 North until you get to the downtown exit (25 N). Get in the right hand lane -- you will eventually end up on Erie St. Follow Erie St. until you get to Jefferson Ave, make a right. Follow that until you get to St. Clair St- make a left(the only way you can turn).

If you're coming from the North (Detroit, Sylvania, Ann Arbor)- Take 75S to the downtown exit- Washington St. Follow Washington until you get to Erie St. and make a left onto it. Follow Erie St. until you get to Jefferson Ave. Make a right on Jefferson Ave. Follow that until you get to St. Clair St- make a left (the only way you can turn).

You may park on the street or in the parking garage behind the building (St. Clair St). Street parking is free after 5:00 pm.

In order to enter the building, please use the rear entrance (from St. Clair St) which is a single door right under the elevated walkway to the parking garage. Go to the information desk and security will point you to our meeting room.

Evan Williams, the creator of Blogger (which he has since sold to Google), posted his Ten Rules for Web Startups.  This is invaluable advice if you are planning on starting your own micro-ISV.  Some are common sense but most of his points are very valid and other ISV owers have repeated these points in their own way.

Dane Cook is funny mother f****r.  If you have not heard about Dane Cook, crawl back under your rock.  I lived under the rock until recently too.  I have heard of him but I never listened to any of his albums.  On a recent bachelor party trip to Chicago, a friend brought his Retaliation CD to listen to on the way.  We must have listened to it a four times during the two day trip.  My favorite tracks are the ones where he talks about the party and sh**ing on coats and the one where he thinks that every man wants to be involved in a heist.  Classics.

You should really download the album or go to the store and buy it.  If you don't trust me, head over to his web site and check out his videos.  You'll have a blasty-blast.

OK, I have two groups of friends.  Nerd friends and non-nerd friends.  When I sent out an email to all my friends to announce this blog, some of them replied, what the f*** is a blog?  Well, here is your answer short and sweet.

A blog is short for web log which is a series of posts that a contributor or a group of contributors write.  It can be similar to a journal or an opinion column in a newspaper.  Basically, it is a way for me to get across my thoughts, ideas, and findings.

There are multiple ways that you can read blogs.  One way is to go to the site and check it out once in a while.  Another way is to use a blog aggregator which can read all of your blogs from one address.  Most blogs can be subscribed to because they publish their content using an RSS file format.  This is a standard way that blogs are published.  Since blogs and blogging has become mainstream, you can use a blog aggregator to get all your blog information from one place.  I have listed some of the popular ones below.  If you have a web site that you look at each day, look for a logo that looks similar to this: 

Here are some popular blog aggregator web sites that you can use to subscribe to this blog:

Newsgator

Bloglines

Here are some links so that you can subscribe to my blog using the aggregators listed above:

So at first I wasn't going to get an XBox 360 at launch but then I got caught up in the hype and hoopla so I decided I was going to give it a decent try.  I did some calling around and I was going to wait in the Best Buy line.  There were only about 7 people in line near the Best Buy by my house and I knew they were getting around 58 so I had a good chance.  I read somewhere that they would give away tickets at night and you could pick it up in the morning. I called to make sure but they were not passing out tickets till the morning.  Forget it, I can't hang with that.

I knew that the Meijer was going to have a lottery at around midnight so I decided to try that with a friend.  We went there and lost, well I lost but he was able to get a core system which is close to loosing anyway.  I think he was more pissed off than I was and at least he had a unit.  We decided to go to a friends house since he didn't procrastinate as bad and had one on reserve at the local EB Games.  We played until about 3 am.  I have to say that I am not impressed.

My friend got Perfect Dark Zero and NHL Hockey.  The graphics were not good, in fact they sucked.  The main character in Perfect Dark explodes in these wierd pixels when she dies.  I think I saw that on Tron for Atari.  The boards sucked after about 2 minutes of play on them because they were not engaging.  NHL Hockey looked about one step up from the version on Sega Genesis.  It had a lot of detail but nothing innovative.  I know we only scratched the surface in the games but I needed to be impressed to drop 400 bones on something I am only going to play once in a great while anyway.  The coolest thing about the 360 are the controllers.  The wireless controllers feel good in your hand and you never have to worry about a cord.

I will probably still get one because I had a lot of fun playing Call of Duty in the stores.  I will probably only buy that game and rent the others.  I am still not going to try that hard though.  The console lives up to its hype but the games (so far) have a long way to go.

Well someone who reads this blog already has mentioned that I did not congratulate the Buckeyes on their great win yesterday over Michigan.  I am still kind of recovering from yesterday so my thoughts are still not all there.  Anyone that knows me knows that I am a huge Ohio State football fan.  That was one of the greatest games that I have seen (still not as good as their 2002 win over Miami (FL) in the Fiesta bowl).  Michigan played a great game so my hats off to them.  Troy Smith had an unbelievable game as well.

The game was kind of bitter sweet though.  I only have one more game left to watch some of best defensive line backers in the county before they go off to the NFL.  Good luck to you AJ Hawk, Bobby Carpenter, and Anthony Schlegel.

Everyone is doing it so I might as well drink the Kool-Aid too.  I have been wanting to start blogging for a long time but I just never had the time (read: never made the time) to get this blog up.  I know that it is easy to sign up using Blogger or MSN Spaces, but I wanted to use something I had some control over so I went with using .Text since I have the source code and can change some stuff.  I plan on writing my own blog framework somewhere down the line so I can add some features that I want.

I will be blogging about my business ventures and trying to get out of bed with "the man" as well as some nerd stuff like .NET programming, tablet PCs, Media Center, and other nerd toys.  I will throw in some personal sh1t and funny stuff as well.  I will probably be the only one reading this so I can't wait to amuse myself.