I feel like I’ve spent the last four days in hibernation, awaking like Rip Van Winkle to an entirely new environment. And while the new environment is still filled with boxes and won’t have internet, cable or phone ’til tomorrow, it’s still a very pleasant environment, flat so the boys can bike everywhere, near family, very near the schools, filled with friendly people (many of which have already introduced themselves and I’m worked double-hard this time to remember their names) and with plenty of potential for renovation (and the space that’s there is nice all by itself). There will definitely be an adjustment period, but overall, it was very nice to wake up in.

On a personal note, with the move, getting ready for PDC, my son’s birthday, my wife’s birthday and my 14th wedding anniversary, some of my personal relationships have suffered (I’m *so* sorry to have missed last week’s PND!). My have my apologies. I hope things will get better after the PDC!

You have to love a bunch of geeks willing to publish a video of themselves doing a parody of an N’Sync song, including the dance moves. Nice!

[via Mr. Anderson]

Not too far behind Indigo and Avalon's beta 1, WinFS posts their own beta 1 (although Tom Rizzo, Director in SQL marketing says it may be a tad early). Since their "endgame" is "that WinFS will be in beta when Windows Vista ships," so long as they don't move past beta to RC or RTM (or back to alpha), they've hit it. Congrats! : )

Please return to your regularly scheduled programming.

P.S. I imagine the DevCon come back in time, but it may well be a while…

Doug and I will be giving the following talk at the PDC this year:

“Are you tired of lackluster user interfaces and bit-dropping communication infrastructures that don’t work together? If so, then you’ll want to see the magic that Doug Purdy and Chris Sells can wield when they build a couple of smart client applications using Windows Presentation Foundation and Windows Communication Foundation. In this talk, you’ll be astounded and amazed by the power and simplicity of Doug and Chris, plus they might show you some WinFX, if you ask nicely.”

It’s midnight as I post this description and Doug has been in my office since 6:30pm working with me on it. If nothing else, it’s going to be hella fun for us. : )

Between the new job, the new house and the book, I haven’t had nearly enough contact with my local nerd friends. I’m starting to experience nerd withdrawal symptoms! Come to the PND next Tuesday and ask me about MDD, my PDC talk or how Jeff Richter and I were recently blamed for IDisposable.

According to the post on Channel9:

“At this year’s PDC, we’ll be hosting our first-ever Show Off event. What the heck is Show Off, you ask? Well, Show Off is an evening event held at the PDC where you can show off your application, tip, tool, technique, animation, or anything cool that can help or inspire other developers. We’re asking you to submit a short video demonstrating what you want to show off.”

Careful; these are the kinds of events that inspire me and my friends to get a little crazy. Still, there ain’t an audience on the planet that wants to see your cool, geeky stuff more than the PDC audience. Come one, come all!

I got a time estimate from a friend who’s a brand new contractor in the area of home renovation (my wife made me promise to start renovations on our new place immediately as a condition of purchase). He’d already bid me an hourly rate, but I asked for a rough estimate of time spent. He hasn’t yet seen the place (we can’t talk the owner into letting us come over again), but he answered my question anyway, giving me an estimate 5x lower than I suspected it would be (Danger! Danger, Will Robinson!). I replied with the following advise on how a contractor should estimate time for maximum customer happiness (and therefore maximum revenue):

There are two schools of thought on time estimates. One school of thought, which I’ll call “bait & switch,” says to knowingly under-estimate so that by the time the customer notices a slip, they’re committed and they continue with their contractor by sheer momentum, hoping it’ll all be over soon. This technique produces customers that either pay more than they thought or that force the contractor to cut corners to meet their initial estimate, lowering the quality. In either case, the customer tends to get unhappy, which hurts repeat business and word of mouth.

The other estimation technique I’ll call “under-promise & over-deliver.” In this scenario, the contractor estimates their time very conservatively, then doubles or triples it to take into account the unforeseen. This estimate may scare the customer away, but a good contractor will say things like “I hope it’ll be less, but I want to make sure that we spend enough time to make sure that you’re happy,” to smooth the way. Plus, when the contractor delivers early, the customer is happy, calls again for future work and says things like “and he came in under the initial estimate!” to all his friends.

Obviously, very few people that read this site are contractors in the area of home renovation, but I think the advice applies to most forms of contracting. Take it as you will.