As most of you know, Microsoft gives MVP awardees access to some great benefits. I’ll admit, this is the first time I’ve used it to have access to something fun and non-work related. While I only had the opportunity to play it twice (it’s just hard to find the time to play games), the new Age of Empires Online game is quite interesting. I was able to play it during it’s Alpha stage, and it’s now hit the closed Beta stage, which we’ve been encouraged to invite people to apply for. http://www.ageofempiresonli...

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As many of you know, I have a passion for music. And after being gone 3 weeks, it’s nice to be home and discover the new music that has hit the scene over the past few weeks. One song in particular struck a cord with me and in a matter of a few weeks while I was gone, it went from being unheard of to being ranked number 3. So the chorus of the song is about “Can we pretend that airplanes, In the night sky, Are like shooting stars” so I can have all the wishes, as there are planes in the night sky....

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The Back Story: As a Microsoft MVP awardee, one of the many benefits is free software, books, and various products. Some of the producers/manufacturers ask for reviews in exchange, others just ask for a brief mention (nothing is ever really free). But considering that some of the products are essential to my everyday computing, I never mind mentioning their names and evangelizing their products. One of these tools just happened to save me a countless number of hours. With the release of Microsoft’s...

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The catch? Attend the Ozarks .Net User Group meeting on April 1st. Here’s a list of the other prizes for the event GRAND PRIZE 1 - iPad (Wi-Fi 16GB) THIRD PARTY COMPONENTS 6 - Telerik Premium Collection 5 - Infragistics NetAdvantage for .NET 1 - Nevron Chart for .NET Lite DevExpress Xceed PRODUCTIVITY 2 - CodeRush with Refactor! Pro 2 - ReSharper CodeSmith GAMES 3 - Halo3 ODST (XBox 360) 3 - Forza Motorsport (Xbox 360) OTHER SOFTWARE 3 - Windows 7 Ultimate 2 - Microsoft Office Standard 2007 HARDWARE...

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Fair warning, I’m combining several blog posts into one. As a father, there’s nothing that makes you more proud than to see your son take his first steps, say daddy for the first time, or catch his first ball. In my professional career I’m extremely proud of the accomplishments my peers have been making. These are the people I’ve been working with and helping their professional community efforts, and while I like to think I helped them in some way, truth be told, they entirely did the work on their...

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Jan 29 – Holiday Party @ Fast Lanes, Lowell, Arkansas Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group Feb 7 – Kansas City Office Geeks (SharePoint Saturday) Daniel Larson Feb 12 – Little Rock .Net Users Group Keith Elder of Deep Fried Bytes Mar 1-4 – Microsoft MVP Summit Mar 18-20 – Mix ‘09 April 2 – Ozarks .Net User Group Claudio Lassala May 11-15 – TechEd 2009...

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For those that are unaware, Chris Williams, a fellow VB MVP does a 9 Questions series with fellow developers and influencers. I was extremely honored to be picked this week and hope you find the series as interesting as I do. Chris is also an active participant in the VB Insider's List Serv and actively gives feedback to the Visual Basic team in Redmond. You can read my answers to his 9 questions over at GeeksWithBlogs.net at http://geekswithblogs.net/c... Technorati...

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It was this time last year at TechEd that Cory Smith introduced me to the Visual Basic product team. He first introduced me to Ed Hickey, who is the VB MVP Lead at Microsoft. The funny story about Ed is, less than a week after Ed awarded me the MVP status, he transfers out. I knew I was hard to work with, but didn't realize I was .... that .... difficult. Also last year at TechEd 2007, Cory let me hang out with him at Universal Studios where I rubbed elbows with the Visual Basic product team! He's...

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I suppose I was naive in thinking that once I received my Microsoft MVP award, I could breathe a bit. But we've had sooo much Developer Community activity, I haven't had a chance to breathe, much less blog. I still haven't had an opportunity to blog about the MVP Summit! Needless to say, the MVP Summit was a blast (other than having a digestive track illness, where I missed the last day's keynotes). The best thing about the Summit was the ability to meet and talk directly with the product teams....

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Ok, so my announcement is 6 days late. I'm proud to announce that I received the coveted Microsoft MVP award for Visual Basic (currently the only MVP in Arkansas). I'd first like to thank the Academy ... oh wait wrong speech again. Actually I would like to thank the following people for their help and encouragement. My apologies in advance if I neglected to mention you. Northwest Arkansas .Net User Group - a great bunch that has been an exciting group to get to know and share with Travis Doyle -...

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