Category: It Happened to Me

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It Happened to Me Work

Halifax Coffee and Code This Afternoon – Just Us Cafe on Barrington

Just Us Cafe logoThis afternoon (Wednesday, November 4th) from 2:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. Atlantic time, I’ll be holding a Halifax edition of “Coffee and Code” at Just Us Cafe on Barrington (1678 Barrington). My coworkers Damir Bersinic and Rodney Buike will be joining me. Come on down and chat with us about Microsoft, the tech industry in general, the job market, accordions, whatever!

(If you’re a developer who’s interested in building a cloud computing-based application on Windows Azure, you might want to come down for this one, as I might have an offer that you might find difficult to resist. Just sayin’.)

There may be plans for dinner and accordion-and-beer-fueled mayhem this evening, so if you’re into that sort of thing, drop me a line.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection.

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It Happened to Me

Halifax Bound

halifaxTechDays, Microsoft’s cross-Canada conference for developers and IT pros took a break in October, but returns in November to complete its tour of the five remaining cities. As leader of one of the conference tracks it means that I’ll be on the road, hitting these five cities over the next couple of months:

  • Halifax: November 2nd and 3rd
  • Calgary: November 17th and 18th
  • Montreal: December 2nd and 3rd
  • Ottawa: December 9th and 10th
  • Winnipeg: December 15th and 16th

If you’re a programmer or IT pro who works with Microsoft tools and technologies or is thinking about doing so, you’d do well to check out TechDays. You can find out more at the TechDays site, or you can always drop me a line.

If you’re in Halifax and would like to catch up, I’ll be holding a Coffee and Code at Just Us Cafe (1678 Barrington) on Wednesday, November 4th from 2 to 6 p.m. Come by, have a coffee and a chat!

I’ll be landing in Halifax this weekend, and chances are I might be looking to do something on Saturday night…

This article also appears in Coffee and Code.
Related articles appear in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.

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It Happened to Me Slice of Life

Slice of Life: Going After the Dungeons and Dragons Market

While going out for brunch with our friends Liz and Keith and their kids on Roncesvalles, I saw these signs promoting Kennel Cafe’s services. If you never played Dungeons and Dragons, the jokes are totally meaningless, but if you have, they’re pretty amusing:

Kennel Cafe sign: "Cats add a +5 modifier to all persuasion and intimidation skill checks. Adopt a cat!"

Kennel Cafe sign: "Cats provide 15% base mana cost reduction for all spells -- even Lay on Hands!!!"

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Geek It Happened to Me Slice of Life

Slice of Life: Me and Steve B.

I bought a fuzzy “Cat in the Hat”-style raver hat with a Canadian flag pattern on a whim earlier this year, thinking that I’d probably find a pretty good use for it some day. That day, it turns out, was yesterday, where I turned it into what I believe was yesterday’s only Steve Ballmer photo-op with a non-management Microsoft Canada employee:

Joey deVilla and Steve Ballmer, wearing Joey's Canadian flag raver hatPhoto by Barnaby Jeans.

Yesterday was a busy day at the Harbour Castle Convention Centre, where we had an all-day Steve Ballmer-rama. In the morning, Steve keynoted an event showcasing Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2 and Exchange Server 2010 for the media, key customers and partners. This was followed by an employees-only “town hall” where Steve did a short presentation followed by a Q&A session. On a whim similar to the one that led me to buy it, I took the hat (along with the accordion) along with me.

Following a suggestion from my co-worker Damir, I arrived very early for the town hall, grabbed a seat by the stage and donned the hat. When Steve made his appearance, he did so in classic Ballmer style, running and whooping, high-fiving people as he made his way to the stage. As soon as he saw me, he yelled “Hey!”, put the hat on and posed with me for the photo above.

I’d made a decent splash at Microsoft in my first year, and I’d been wondering if I could match it in my second, which began on Monday. This isn’t a bad start.

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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Geek It Happened to Me Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)

Reporting From the Canadian Windows 7 Event

cdnwin7

The official launch of Windows 7 doesn’t happen until tomorrow, but we’re having a big launch event with Steve Ballmer today in Toronto! I’ll be blogging and tweeting all day from the launch venue – Toronto’s Harbour Castle Westin Convention Centre.

For the full skinny on the event, follow the #cdnwin7 (short for “Canadian Windows 7”) hashtag on Twitter.

This article also appears in Canadian Developer Connection and Global Nerdy.

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Geek It Happened to Me Work

One Year at Microsoft

I knew that I might be a little too busy to write an anniversary blog post with my work schedule this week. That’s why I wrote that article last month to mark having worked at Microsoft for 11 months. My schedule was a little less hectic then. Go and read the article if you like – everything that I wrote then still applies today, with the notable exception of a month’s time having passed.

Having said that, I still like celebrating milestones, so I thought I’d mark this day with a quick photo-collage featuring Yours Truly on the job:

one year at microsoft

As I wrote earlier: “It’s been great so far. I’m going to stick around for a little while.”

This article also appears in Global Nerdy.

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It Happened to Me Music

Dragonette Live

I caught Dragonette at the launch party for MSN.ca a couple of weeks ago and was pretty impressed. I’m fond of their synth-pop-cut-with-guitars sound and am going to have to get my hands on their new album.

I took some shots of their performance; you can either check out this Flickr photoset or watch the slideshow below: