Patterns & Practices Summit

Looks like I'm off to the Sydney patterns and practices summit next month.
There are some great speakers and sessions organized.
If you haven't heard about it yet here's the link for more detail
http://www.pnpsummit.com/apac2006.aspx

Shrink Virtual PC Images

A long time ago when I first started using virtual PC there was a shrink procedure I used but it was pretty painful and involved third party tools to zero out the drive.

The other day while moving things on my usb drive to try and find space I did a bit of a search to find out if the shrink had got any easier and was pleasantly surprised.

After following the procedure I managed to knock 1gig off an 8gig image with very little effort, it's quite likely if I could of cleared a lot more space if I had spent some more time clearing things out (see this site for a more comprehensive list of things you can clear)

Here's how you do it:

• Backup the VPC image
• Defragment all the drives on the virtual server
• Mount the Virtual Disk Precompactor.iso which can be found in \Program Files\Microsoft Virtual PC\Virtual Machine Additions and run it
• Shut down the image (don't save the state shut it down properly)
• Use the Compress hard drive option

Pretty simple stuff :)

Ben's an InfoPath MVP

We have our first MVP at SDM Melbourne !

Congrats to Ben Walters my fellow Melbourne SDM employee for receiving an MVP award from Microsoft for his work with InfoPath.

Ben's been able to help us provide some great highly customized InfoPath forms to clients.
In order to get the client the best solution he has had to deal with quite a lot of frustrating limitations and quirks in the product with very little guidance available online or elsewhere.

It's great to see he's been rewarded for all the hard work he's put in working with the product and helping other developers avoid the same frustrations.

The end of 2005 and the start of 2006

Happy new year everyone :)

I've had a pretty exciting 2005.

Early in the year I moved jobs from OBS to SDM, the whole process was pretty stressful but 8 months on I'm very happy at my new job. OBS was a good place to work but all things considered I'm much happier at SDM. At both companies the work has been really good and the people I work with have been great.
I think the main differences have been SDM's commitment to having proper project management, the amount of experience the other developers have and the more family oriented attitude of everyone at the company. Hopefully I'll be working there for a long time to come !
Late in the year I became state manager for custom development which means there will be plenty of new challenges in the 2006.

Just after mid way through the year I finished my Master degree in Systems Development (MCSD .Net stream) at Charles Sturt. With the exemptions I got for my MCSD I only had to do 7 out of 12 subjects so I managed to complete it in a year. In order to do that I basically had to work on uni stuff every weekend for that year. It was a whole heap of work but I also learnt a lot and was definitely worth doing. The best thing was that all the subjects I did was on technology and topics that were directly relevant to my work.
When I finished my bachelors degree all I remember is being glad it was done and the certificate is still in the post pack they sent it to me in. When I finished my masters I was really proud and the certificate was put straight up on the wall as I feel really proud of the achievement.

In august Greg and I also found out the most exciting news of the year that I was pregnant.
I hated the first 12 weeks as not only did I feel sick and tired all the time but we had also agreed that we wouldn't tell any one until our first ultrasound which was really hard. It's incredibly difficult working with good friends each day and not telling them and it only got worse at teched.
After the first 12 weeks it has been amazing. It was quite interesting finally telling people the news, especially as most people didn't believe us at first also trying to explain to people that as Greg works from home I won't need to take a year off work.

Can't describe how wonderful it was seeing our little baby at our two ultrasounds. Now I'm 23 weeks pregnant and our little boy is kicking me around pretty regularly which feels very odd but is also exciting. None of my old clothes fit any more and I'm starting to have to physically slow down as well. It's an strange thing when you realize that you just can't walk around as fast any more among and things and it's' only going to get worse.

Very much looking forward to meeting our little boy when he arrives at the end of April or the start of May. There will also be some hard decisions coming along like deciding at what point I need to stop working and even worse the day when I have to go back to work and leave our little bub at home with Greg. One part of me knows that I'm going to miss greatly spending all day with our bub but at the same time I know that if I took the traditional 6-12 months off work I would go insane.

Finished the year finding out that our good friends Andy and Steph's new daughter Aurora has been born. We had the privilege of meeting her a couple of days ago which was really exciting.
Naturally she is a beautiful baby and both Andy and Steph are glowing with the excitement of her arrival. They are going to make a great family.

From a technokogy point of view I'm looking forward to getting VSTS setup at SDM as well as working more with vs 2005, sql 2005 and office 12 when it arrives. I'm sure all the new technology will help us to build some new exciting solutions as well as solve some old problems a lot more easily.
Also looking forward to getting my xbox 360 in 58 days :)

So for me 2005 has been great and now I'm looking forward to 2006 which will probably be not only the most challenging but also the most rewarding year of my life so far !