The Hobbit Hole

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This week I was busy doing presentations and handling booth duty at the PASS Summit. PASS stands for the Professional Association for SQL Server.

I gave two presentations, or actually the same presentation twice, about our newly released product, the SQL Server Driver for PHP 1.1. The driver has been out a month, and we’re already working on the next release full steam ahead.

The presentation was fairly straightforward, just detailing some of the more “enterprise level” features within the driver. The first presentation went absolutely great, but the main demo for SQL Azure in the second one failed to connect! Still, the second presentation went well also. I’ll see if I can post the deck here online. Otherwise, it will be online somewhere, I’m sure.

The funny thing I’m learning is that I like doing these presentations. I also like writing specifications. I don’t like either nearly as much as writing code, but doing these from time to time is a nice change of pace from slinging C++ all day long. Who knows, maybe I’ll morph into a Program Manager someday.

(Program Manager is a position at Microsoft of people who are the “customer advocate”, or those who detail what a product should do from the user’s standpoint.)

I’m not the greatest at getting things done. I really, really want to join this cult. Amen.

I’ve recently subscribed to Lonnie Ezell‘s Zero2Novel writing program. It’s the first writing program I’ve ever done. I’ve always wanted to write a novel, but it was low on the list of goals I have for myself. (I’m much more interested in writing an indie video game.)

Still, this program had some appeal for me. I subscribed for a few reasons:

• I’ve always wanted to write a book of my own.
• Lonnie Ezell is already an author of a good book.
• Lonnie is one of the hosts of the Dragon’s Landing, a great podcast about role-playing gaming.
• Lonnie is out of work. I’m supporting his effort out of solidarity with a fellow gamer.

I’m not one deluded to think that I have the next great (American/Fantasy/Thriller/insert genre here) novel in my head, but I do feel that I have the ability to churn out some schlock. Since I’m not in it for the money, it will most likely just turn into a series of chapters I post here and maybe at the end I’ll put it in PDF format.