Bummer.......and other stuff
Today is the last day of my vacation and that is a major bummer. Some of you know that I was vacationing last week in the mountains of North Carolina staying at this place. It was nice even though I fell down the stairs my second day there (I can be clumsy sometimes). It was very relaxing. We did some shopping, hiking and spent some time on the lake but my favorite activity was just laying out in the hammock and relaxing.
Last Sunday Chris and I took a short drive from Hendersonville up to Asheville to meet Bill Ryan and his girlfriend Kim for brunch at the Grove Park Inn. We had a great time talking about all kinds of things and Bill filled me in on what it is like to be an MVP. I'm sure glad that Chris and Kim hit it off as I'm sure that Bill and I would have bored the ladies with our conversation. I read today that Bill is off to Redmond for a few weeks. Bill I need some more book chapters to review.
I've been fielding comments and email this week concerning the MVP award as well as the Speech Technology awards. Things have been moving so fast lately.
Andrew Connell (MVP CMS) wants to do lunch soon and talk about what it's like to be an MVP. He's doing a presentation at the Jacksonville Developers User Group meeting on July 12th on being a better developer through tools and virtualization. It should be great so if you are in or around Jacksonville then don't miss it. Man there sure is some good talent in the Jacksonville area (and all of Florida).
Tomorrow reality will set in again as I have to get caught up in a hurry then dive back into the MSS 2007 rewrite of my application. My VP asked the other day if I had any design documents for the app and I told him I didn't need them as this is the third time I've written the application (MSS 2004, MSS 2007 TAP version and now the 2007 beta version). At least by now I know what the app is supposed to do. I just have to finish figuring out how to write it using Windows Workflow and managed code. But, I'm not complaining as this is the kind of stuff I thrive on.
Sara sent the book proposal off to Microsoft Press and we are waiting to hear something back from them but it looks like it may be a week or two before we can get an answer. I'm both excited and scared at the same time. It's a huge task but it will be worth it as the developer community really needs a good Speech Server book.
Well, that's pretty much what has been going on. Now I'm off to psych myself up for getting out of bed at 5:00 AM tomorrow and going back to work and that is probably going to be the hardest thing I've done all week.