This coming Tuesday (November 11th), Microsoft and the Portland User Experience Group (PDXUX) are throwing a party to celebrate the release of Silverlight 2. If nothing else you should stop by to check out the presentation by Tim Heuer, one of the big names in the Silverlight world today. We'll also have several demo stations set up showing off some cool new stuff built with Silverlight 2.

Along with Silverlight, we'll be talking a bit about BizSpark, which just launched this morning. BizSpark is a new program by Microsoft to support startups, where startups can receive software at no cost not just for development usage, but for production as well. No longer will cost be a barrier for those who'd like to pursue their big idea with Microsoft tools.

Free food, drinks, and prizes -- Hope to see you on Tuesday!

Register on upcoming.org

(I waited to blog until after the results were announced... didn't want to jinx anything like last time.)

Today was Election Day here in the USA. I voted for Barack Obama. For once I felt like I was voting for a candidate that was actually decent, and wasn't the lesser of two evils. In a way I think it's karma paying back for what we've had to suffer through during the past eight years. But I don't think Obama is some sort of savior.

We're not in good shape right now. According to David Walker, the Comptroller General from 1998 to March 2008 (and the guy who had been pointing out the mistakes we've been making with deficit spending and overcommitting ourselves), the US debt is not $10.6 trillion as commonly quoted, but is actually $55 trillion dollars when you don't "cook the books". That amounts to $480,000 of debt for every US household. You, me, your neighbors, your coworkers, your friends... we all have half a million dollars worth of debt on our backs.

Walker also stated (from an interview on Real Time with Bill Maher) that it didn't really matter who we elected president; both Obama and McCain's proposed economic plans would end up making things worse.

It's pretty simple -- deficit spending has to stop. We have to not only stop running up the national debt, but pay it down so we own our own country again and don't end up using our currency as wallpaper. The US has been living beyond its means for generations and it is totally unsustainable. It seems we are now approaching the point where the wheels are falling off the wagon.

One difference I see Obama making in this regard is something we've been lacking from our leadership for a long time -- honesty. I believe Obama will actually call things as they are, and as a result help prepare us for the real sacrifices we will all need to make to turn this country around. I think of right after 9/11, when Bush called on Americans to "keep on spending"... I have faith that Obama will not make such hollow, short-sighted decisions like this.

But I am still very concerned about how we're going to get back on the right track. (The right track being something that this country hasn't done at least since I've been alive.)

There are other things that concern me about the current state of the US, and three things I believe we absolutely must fix in our political system for us to move forward. But I am beat from working out this morning and from the excitement of the day... it's time for me to hit the sack. For now I am glad to see that Obama will be the next President of the United States. I hope it's the first step towards all of us getting off our asses and getting our country back in order.

PDC2008 was a blast... arguably the best PDC I've been to (I've been at PDCs since the maligned "Hailstorm" PDC of 2001). A lot of big announcements, including our cloud computing system known as Windows Azure, Windows 7, Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework 4.0, Live Services, Silverlight 2 for Mobile... a ton of stuff. So many things were announced it can be hard to digest, even being at the event.

Lucky for us, the PDC crew this year recorded the sessions and posted them online at Channel 9, like they've done in the past for MIX. They're free to view even if you didn't attend PDC, so if you missed out on the conference, head to Channel 9 and get the next best thing.

A few sessions I'd recommend include:

• WF 4.0: A First Look -- I was at this session and it was my favorite of the conference. Really looking foward to getting my hands on WF 4.0.
• The Future of C# -- obligatory Anders flexing of brain muscle
• Managed Extensibility Framework -- the future of extensibility in the .NET Framework, and you can get the code today. Don't miss this one.
• MSDN .NET Framework: Overview and Applications for Babies -- Hanselman's BabySmash opus.

And of course don't miss the keynotes, where they show off Azure, Windows 7, and more. It's all at http://channel9.msdn.com/pdc2008/.

The XNA team is a machine. From their first announcement in early 2006 to their RTM of v1 in December 2006, they've been releasing updates and major versions on a consistent basis. The trend continue with XNA Game Studio 3.0, which was released last week (though you might have missed it with all the news about PDC2008 going on).

Get the latest info and bits at http://creators.xna.com/.

The day has finally come... Silverlight 2 is done and out the door. My compadre Tim Heuer, who is now focusing on Silverlight, has a great writeup about the release. Just go there now and soak it in. :)

Speaking of Tim and Silverlight, I'm working with the gang with the Portland User Experience Group (PDXUX.net) on a Silverlight Launch Party we'll be throwing on November 11th right here in Portland. Tim will be in town to show off Silverlight 2 in all it's glory. I'll update this post as soon as we have a registration link up, otherwise keep your eye on http://pdxux.net for this and other Portland happenings having to do with UX, Silverlight, WPF, and other front-end goodness.

Seattle folk now have their own UX group with the Seattle Designer Developer Interaction Group (sd2ig). Their first meeting is tomorrow (10/15) at Bellevue Place. Don't miss it.

Arr! Tis the eve of me new band's first port call! We be No Good Jones (flotsam and jetsam from what used to be Floorboard) and we be playing for ye fellow pirates and wenches at Red Room. Music starts at 9pm. We know not the order, so don't ask unless ye want me pegleg wedged in your starboard!

(p.s. today is International Talk Like a Pirate Day.)

Guy Burstein in Israel has a good collection of info about the service packs in his blog post. Here's the quick links to the goods:

• VS 2008 Service Pack Preparation Tool (you'll need to run this first if you've been playing with the betas of VS2008 SP1 or Silverlight 2)
• Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1
• .NET Framework 3.5 Service pack 1

Miracles do happen -- someone is buying my house! I am finally escaping the droll clutches of Salem and am moving back to Portland this weekend! The timing couldn't be better, having just wrapped up the Code Trip tour last week.

My New Year's resolution was to get out of the house and move back to Portland. When I listed my house a couple months ago, I figured it would be awesome if I could be back up in Portland by summer, but I'd be happy if I could unload the house sometime in this calendar year. Needless to say I am very happy with the sale, even if I'm making squat on the house.

I'll be renting through the end of this year while the real estate market bottoms out (hopefully), and I'll probably look to buy a place a year from now. But in the mean time I'm going to call the Pearl District my home and see if downtown living is all it's cracked up to be.

Before I moved to Portland in mid-2001, I was living in Miami doing web development for a local semiconductor distributor. My buddy Cory was about to move to Portland to attend the Art Institute, and had been emailing me for several months about how great Portland was. I ended up being laid off form the bursting dot-com bubble and couldn't find any local work. I decided it may be time to start looking out of state, so Portland was the first place I checked out. That's where I came across an open position with Microsoft, and the rest is history.

When I got the job and was apartment hunting from Miami, I remember reading about the Pearl District and this one particular place downtown called Honeyman Hardware Lofts. I liked the place (an old industrial warehouse renovated into lofts) and really liked the idea of being downtown, but my priority at that time was finding a place with a basement (!) so I'd have somewhere for a future band to practice. I've got my drummer's garage for that now, so when it came time to find a place downtown, Honeyman was the first place I stopped.

My apartment is actually on the right of this picture directly below the "HARDWARE LOFTS" lettering... I already have nefarious plans for window decorations. Being a block from the gym, the streetcar, the Park Blocks, Ben & Jerry's, Jimmy Mak's... I can't wait. (Even just not having to drive an additional hour when I arrive at the airport will be a treat for me.)

So anyway, this post is not just to share my jubilation, but also to solicit for manual labor. The big move is this Saturday (4/26) and I could use a hand or two. Most of my things are already in a storage unit in Tualatin (I pretty much moved out of my house before starting The Code Trip), so it will pretty much be just loading up the U-Haul there and unloading it into my apartment (i.e. no direct exposure to Salem and its lethargic effects). If you're available and want to chip in, please shoot me an email. Thanks!

So if you haven't noticed, I haven't blogged in a while... I told myself I wouldn't post another item until I updated my web site's codebase to a current version of Loggo. Well, development and planning for The Code Trip has been eating up all my time (as well as getting my house on the market), but there was no way I could hold off on this one.

Two killer announcements from the XNA team. For starters, the first feature of XNA Game Studio 3.0 was announced: support for developing games to run on the Zune. These will work with all current Zune devices (Zune 4/8, the original Zune 30, and the Zune 80) and you don't need a Creators Club membership to deploy to your Zune. It's 2D sprite graphics only but does have networking support similar to current XNA GS 2.0... pretty amazing. More info on the Zune Game Development FAQ.

Next is the announcement of Xbox LIVE Community Games.

The XNA team is delighted to announce the Xbox LIVE community games, scheduled for launch in the holiday 2008 season, with a beta coming in spring 2008.  This offering gives the opportunity to share, peer review, download and play games created by the community, for the community.

Now you'll be able to share those XNA games you've built with other 360 owners, and they don't need to know anything about Creators Club, Visual Studio, etc. You'll even be able to sell your games through Xbox LIVE! There's a FAQ on this as well for more information.

The dream of XNA and the Creators Club is coming true right before our eyes. For the latest info about XNA Game Studio, keep it tuned to http://creators.xna.com/ and their What's New page.

Man, what a week! InstallFests in Olympia on Tuesday, Spokane on Wednesday, and Mountain View on Thursday... I am fried. Monday it starts up again with the Seattle InstallFest and Bellingham on Tuesday. After that I'm on vacation -- Zach is coming to visit for the holidays. Can't wait!

Anyway, this weekend I'm supposed to be cleaning up the house, putting up a tree, wrapping presents, etc. but here comes the XNA team releasing XNA Game Studio 2.0 to throw a big monkey wrench into my plans. Lots of improvements, including support for all editions of VS2005 (VS2008 coming soon), networking support, ChatPad, the Guide... awesome! (Except that I won't be sleeping for the next two days.)

Head to creators.xna.com for all the new bits, including an upgrade wizard for existing XNA GSE 1.x projects. With XNA GS 2.0 and the new Halo 3 Heroic Map Pack that came out on last Tuesday, I'm totally screwed.