It’s released, but not yet available for MSDN subscribers. That said, you can download the Trial Edition and get your hands on it. My understanding is that you can product key activate it later, when it shows up on MSDN.

Click here For more information on Express Studio 3, including a top 10 list of features. I’m most excited about #7 …

Team Foundation Server Integration – share your Expression Studio project files with those of your colleagues by using check in and check out functionality with Microsoft Team Foundation Server integration.

There’s a new book out (download or Lulu) which blends content from Microsoft's {You Shape} It campaign. Developers Developers Developers Developers is a free download and released under a Creative Commons license.

Here’s a snapshot of the table of contents … 

• Working with Brownfield Code by Donald Belcham (Microsoft MVP)
• Beyond C# and VB by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
• Remaining Valuable to Employers featuring Barry Gervin, Billy Hollis, Bruce Johnson, Scott Howlett, Adam Cogan, and Jonathan Zuck
• All I Wanted Was My Data by Barry Gervin (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Efficiency Upgrade by Derek Hatchard (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Getting Started with Continuous Integration by Sondre Bjellås (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• On Strike at the Software Factory by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
• C# Features You Should Be Using by Ted Neward (Microsoft MVP)
• Accelerate Your Coding with Code Snippets by Brian Noyes (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Is Silverlight 2 Ready for Business Applications? by Jonas Follesø (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Innovate with Silverlight 2 by Daniel Crenna (Microsoft MVP)
• Real World WPF: Rich UI + HD by Gill Cleeren (Microsoft Regional Director and MVP)
• Hidden Talents by Peter Jones
• Creating Useful Installers with Custom Actions by Christian Jacob
• Banking with XML by Peter Jones
• Sending Email

I ran across this document today, which details out Microsoft’s virtualization strategy on implementing 64-bit (Hyper-V) virtualization in the classrooms. As virtual machines do more, and require more resources, so must the hardware/software requirements of the training centers be updated.

In a nutshell, here are the requirements for HL6:

Hardware

· 64-bit Intel Virtualization Technology or AMD Virtualization processor (2.8 GHz dual core or better recommended)

· Dual 120 GB hard disks 7200 RPM SATA or better (striped)

· 4 GB RAM expandable to 8 GB or higher

· DVD (dual layer recommended)

· Network adapter

· Sound card

· Video adapter aero-capable recommended

· Super VGA monitor (17 inch/ 43 cm)

Software

· 64-bit Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Edition

· Hyper-V role configured

· Microsoft Learning Lab Launcher – Hyper-V version

I happened upon this interesting Microsoft site the other day. You can lookup the end-date for mainstream as well as extended support for your favorite (Microsoft) software product, such as Team Foundation Server 2008:

You can lookup by index, product family, or by searching.

You can read more about Microsoft Support Lifecycle here. Be sure to checkout the list of obsolete products too (like Microsoft FoxBASE).

According to Bloomberg, the deal was for $7.4 Billon in cash. This should prove interesting, especially since Oracle now owns two major database platforms (Oracle and MySQL). On one hand this means (arguably) a single competitor for Microsoft’s SQL Server, but yet a company that has an alternate operating system (Solaris) and a major database component, so potentially a competitor to Windows. It will be interesting to watch this.

Here are the details on Sun’s site and Oracle’s site.

… but not in the way you might think.

Our geek lunches and impromptu geek meetings usually end up happening at the Oriental Express (a.k.a Jimmy’s) here in Boise.

Check out the fortunes that 3 (out of 4) eaters at our table received last week:

The 4th guy (I’ll assume it was Chris Frye) got a fortune about love or romance or something. So last year!

“Weeks of coding can save you hours of planning”

-Anonymous

A couple weeks ago I was in Minneapolis on a gig. Planning to fly out Saturday morning, I looked for something to do Friday night. I found this ad in the local paper:

So I ran down and bought a ticket to the Friday 9:40 show. I'm a big fan of Bruce Campbell, and his ever "B" movies. In fact, a little know piece of trivia is that I named my malamute "Brisco" after Brisco County Junior. So, in addition to enjoying the My Name is Bruce movie - which was about Bruce Campbell playing an horror-movie actor who gets asked to fit a real-life zombie. Ya, I know.

After the movie, Bruce appeared, joked a bit, and then started answering questions. I asked about the status of Bubba Nosferatu, and he said that he wasn't going to have any part in it, but that Paul Giamatti and Ron Perlman were involved. Here's a couple of (poor quality) photos of Bruce at the theater and an Apple MOV file (43mb) of him answering some questions (video bad, sound good).

I lost a friend from High School a few weeks ago - Scott Chestnut (yes that's a Toga). I've known Scott since junior high and spent many a weekend evening with him in high school. We drifted apart since graduation, but saw each other a few times. One such encounter was an impromptu lunch with some other 1986'ers here in Boise in 2006 (Scott's in the center with his trademark "turban" haircut).

Here is his official obituary from the Times News newspaper.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif. -- Scott Thomas Chestnut passed away peacefully and surrounded by the love of his family and friends in the early morning hours of Thursday, Dec. 4, 2008, after a long battle with alcoholism. Scott will be remembered for his sense of humor, intelligence, generosity, and ability to live life in the moment.

Scott was born in California and grew up in Twin Falls. He graduated from Twin Falls High School in 1986, leaving behind a legacy of many memorable stories. After Twin Falls High School, he graduated from Saddleback Community College and continued his study of physics at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. Scott lived in Twin Falls, Boise and, most recently, Walnut Creek, Calif., while working as a network engineer.

He is survived by his fiancee, Amy Gibbons; his parents, David and Jill Chestnut; his siblings, Shannon and Steve Reheuser, Amy and Jeff Dodds, and Todd and Lacie Chestnut; his grandmother, Anna Dugan; his grandfather, Wesley Chestnut; three nephews and one niece; aunts and uncles; cousins; and numerous friends.

A celebration of Scott's life was held Dec. 6 in Alameda, Calif. A service will be held at 4:30 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 13, at the Ascension Episcopal Church, 371 Eastland Drive N. in Twin Falls.

In lieu of flowers, please donate to the Scripps Research Institute, Pearson Center for Alcoholism & Addiction Research, www.pearsoncenter.org, (858)784-7268 or a charity of your choice.

I met up with Steve Smith at PDC last week, as well as Rick Strahl and Jeffrey Palermo (of Party with Palermo). It seems that these guys along with some other respected technologists (Hanselman, Guthrie, Osherove, and Howard) are aggregating over at DevMavens. The term Maven means an expert, connoisseur, or a person with special knowledge, which these guys have plenty of.

Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 delivers an intuitive, Office-like report authoring environment enabling business and power users to leverage their experience with Microsoft Office 2007 products. Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services Report Builder 2.0 supports the full capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Reporting Services including:

• Flexible report layout capabilities of SQL Server 2008 Report Definition Language
• Data Visualizations including charts and gauges
• Richly formatted textboxes
• Export to Microsoft Office Word format

Features specific to Report Builder 2.0 are focused on simplifying the process of creating and editing reports and queries and include the following:

• Easy to use wizards for creating table, matrix and chart data regions
• Support for directly opening and editing reports stored on the report server
• Support for using server resources such as shared data sources
• Query designers for multiple data sources including a Microsoft SQL Server-specific query designer

The Seattle developer community is holding Seattle Code Camp November 15-16, 2008 at the DigiPen campus in Redmond, Washington (close to Seattle). Please pass this notice on to folks you think are interested in either attending or speaking. Speaking of speaking, they are looking for speakers. If you hit the code camp site, you will see that they don't have sessions or tracks listed at this point. This 'camp is a blank page at this point that needs to be colored in - which is a great venue for presentations. If you have something you are passionate about but have never done any public speaking I encourage you to give it a try. If you are an experienced speaker, this is your time to get involved in your local community and share some of your experience.

What types of topics are they looking for?  Pretty much anything goes as long as (A) it involves code, and )B) It isn't a direct advertisement for a product or service. This means that this isn't limited to .NET or even Microsoft technologies. Past 'camps have included sessions on XBOX 360 development, Java, PHP, Delphi, and Rails. Submit your sessions here. Alternatively if you have no desire to get up in front of a bunch of developers and impart your wisdom, they could still use your help. Please promote this code camp at your user group meetings, post it on your blog (like I did), email it to interested locals and encourage your friends and coworkers to submit sessions.

Finally if you plan on attending please register so that we can get some idea of the required space and food needs.

Whether you're attending Microsoft's PDC or not, The Underground is the place to be!

Microsoft and INETA have joined forces to bring you a truly amazing experience in downtown Los Angeles on the Wednesday during PDC. They've got a fantastic speakeasy evening lined up, one that's sure to leave a lasting impression. It'll be a great night of vignettes, networking, music, dancing, food and drinks!

Check it out. See you there!

Thanks to those who attended the second meeting of the Boise SQL Server User Group. We had a good turnout of around 30 people and I hope everyone enjoyed my presentation of SQL Server 2008 Integration Services (SSIS). I tried to balance the presentation between those who hadn't used SSIS and those who have.

If you are interested in the sample projects, packages, and data files from the talk, here they are.