Spoiler: Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s Dad

It seems yesterday my post including a key plot point of the most recent book in the Harry Potter series upset Dirk and Mike. I feel that the criticism is unjustified given that the book has been out for quite a while now, and asking people to refrain from talking about the plot (and future plot possibilities) is just too restrictive – especially when they made time to go and read the book.

The magic of the Harry Potter books has never been the end-point in the story, it has been the journey getting there, it really shouldn’t be a surprise that one of the major characters would be killed off – it is about as obvious as Anakin Skywalker turning to the dark-side and becoming Darth Vader.

Actually – my wife has a theory about Dumbledore’s death. She thinks that Dumbledore made Snape make one of the unbreakable vow things so that when it came down to it Snape would have to kill Dumbledore to keep his cover as a Death Eater.

Spolier warning? Bite me.

If you see this post . . .

. . . it means I survived the bus trip into work with the worlds worst bus driver.

A an instant messenger conversation with Joseph Cooney . . .

Joseph Cooney says:

ping

Mitch Denny says:

pong

Joseph Cooney says:

hey mitch - I’ve got something pretty important I want to talk to you about. Have you got a minute?

Mitch Denny says:

Yep.

Mitch Denny says:

Would you prefer phone?

Joseph Cooney says:

Do you really think dumbledore’s dead?

Joseph Cooney says:

I mean…

Mitch Denny says:

Hahhaha

Joseph Cooney says:

I just finished “the half blood prince”

Joseph Cooney says:

and I can’t believe it

Joseph Cooney says:

DEAD

Important Safety Tip

Important safety tip – never go in a boat with Chuck.

Note from Home

Last week I didn’t make it to the Canberra .NET User Group. Now to be fair I don’t actually get along that often – mostly because I have conflicting work engagements, but for some reason Geoff noted that no-one from Readify made it.

Grant actually forgot to go and Darren and Rocky were heads down getting some software ready to ship. I had been helping them during the day but I couldn’t make the meeting because I had a prior commitment at home.

I’m hoping that I can make it to the upcoming meeting on the 17th of November. Ben Sudbury is presenting on web-application security so I am sure that the Readify security wonk (Rocky H) will be attending too.

Readify Dinner on Wednesday Night

Grant has posted up a link to an article about Unintended Consequences. It is an interesting read and I think Grant was prompted to post it after the Readify Canberra crew and Greg Low (of no fixed address) went out to dinner.

From memory the conversation generally circled around the fact that no matter how good technology gets people will still be people

My blog is worth . . .

Since Matty did it – I am going to do it too!

My blog is worth $37,824.18.
How much is your blog worth?

Visual Studio 2005 (Professional) and SQL Server 2005 (Developer Edition) haved shipped!

For those of you with an MSDN subscription (thats all of you right?), Visual Studio 2005 (Professional) and SQL Server 2005 (Developer Edition) are up on MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Presumably the others will follow soon – this is good news! We are officially out of the BETA cycle for these products and other teams can start stabilising against them – these are things I would like to see ship an updated drop soonish:

• WinFX (WPF, WCF, WWF etc)
• Sparkle
• Windows Vista

BizTalk 2004 and WebSphere MQ Adapter - Losing Messages

Twice in the past two or three months I have encountered a problem with BizTalk 2004 and the WebSphere MQ Adapter where the message leaves the queue, but doesn’t arrive in BizTalk – I can’t even track it with the Health and Activity Monitor. There seems to be some kind of condition that causes the adapter to do this because the machine I went back to today was working perfectly a month or so ago.

Re-installing the adapter seems to fix the problem, but it is still a bit wierd. I presume there is some setting _somwhere_ that I can restore without having to go through the whole configuration nightmare.

Hobart, Virgin Blue Gate Lounge

It’s 6am, well, actually its 5am, people in Tasmania like to pretend that it is 6am. I presume it makes them less upset about being up this early – heck – lets make it 11am, that we we can be positively joyous! It doesn’t alter the fact that I really only got about four hours sleep last night, and about four hours sleep the night before that.

I flew down the Hobart yesterday so that I could present at the Hobart .NET User Group meeting on Visual Studio Team System. The session whent for about two and half hours and I showed people through some of the work item tracking features, source code control features and testing features of Team System. We had about twenty people turn up which not a bad turn out for Hobart I believe.

Now – I actually need to thank Sean Malloy and David Burela. Sean is the leader of the Hobar .NET User Group and looked after the logistics of getting word of the event out, and David provided the venue at the Wrestpoint Casino. Thanks guys!