1. You get walk into the kitchen and fix your own food when you realize that PDC doesn’t have breakfast. ( Right, @timheuer?  )
2. No “Genius BO” to have to suffer through.  You know who I mean.  You’re sitting behind a guy so brilliant that he could write a new programming language in its entirety on his laptop in during the keynote but apparently can’t comprehend the nuances of personal hygiene.
3. You can threaten Ray Ozzie out loud if he says the word “Cloud” just one more time without having to miss the rest of PDC due to your sudden but imminent incarceration.
4. You get to experience the joy of your two year old coming into your home office during the keynote and asking you, “doin, daddy? Watching tv on puter?”
5. You can get the poppy seed from the bagel you got from your kitchen (see #1) unstuck without someone next to you saying, “STOP SUCKING YOUR TEETH!”
6. Real Internet access.  ‘nuff said.
7. Your body and brain thinks it’s 11:30 because guess what?  It really IS 11:30!
8. You can watch the entire speech without having to decide whether to leave early so you can a good spot in line at Starbucks.*
9. The “Ray Ozzie Drinking Game”.  You can take a drink* every time he said “Cloud” without getting arrested and pass out in your own comfortable chair.
10. When Ray gets boring (and he will), you can hop on over to YouTube and watch Steve Ballmer be not boring.

Popularity: 12% [?]

I’ve spent the last 5 years writing a blog that was almost exclusively political.  I’ve had a good time with it, but I’m simply burned out on politiics.  I don’t need that kind of anger in my life and since I hadn’t been able to even write a good post in 5 months, I decided that it’s time that I sunset my political writings.

I’m actually quite proud of what I’ve written, but I also know that strong opinions have a tendency to cost opportunities with people who simply do not want to risk that this potentially brilliant software developer is also a complete jerk.  Anyone that knows me realizes that this isn’t the case, but in the marketplace of professional developers, getting to know someone may not even be an option.

So while I’ve put one passion on the shelf, I’ve taken the opportunity to focus on my greater passion, and that is software.  One of the reasons I haven’t written very much on my blogs over the past 6 to 10 months is because I’ve been immersed in a new love.  That love is WPF.

Ok, I’ll admit that I’m crazy that way, and my wife will vouch for that if pressed.  We all have our little quirks and one of mine just happens to be putting markup on the desktop.  (psst!  that’s XAML for those of you in Rio Linda…)

So there we are.  And here we are.  I can honestly say that I have no idea what shape this blog will take, but I’m planning on becoming somewhat of a fairly decent resource on WPF (or at least a place to start) on a variety of areas.  There are some great WPF sites out there, but there can be more.  I’ll link to anything that strikes my fancy, but I’ll also use it to flesh out my own way of doing things in public so that maybe someone else can benefit from my struggles.

One thing I haven’t mentioned is that I’m well in the process of writing a Twitter client in WPF and I’ll be documenting some of that here as well.  I’m not ready to announce the feature set yet, because to be honest, there are some features I’ve got that I’ve always wanted and don’t see in any other twitter clients.

All of this will end up being something that hopefully others will find useful.  Then again, I may be the only one who benefits from it, but that’s ok, too.

So come along and let’s makes some beautiful software together!

Popularity: 7% [?]