Much to do today and all of it feels non-productive. I am leaving this weekend for Orlando to attend the VSLive developers’ conference. I will be there for the week. Karen and Kaitlin are staying home this year, as the budget is a little tight for the three of us to attend. I am sure our local friends will keep Karen occupied through the week.

Today has been consumed by the maintenance locusts and tasks for this and upcoming travel. I have maps to print with directions to the hotel, Passports to renew for possible summer travel, digital media to copy to the home file shares, new software to install and the list goes on.

I just updated my XMLSpy software, Mission Kit 2008r2, and I am installing Visual Studio 2008. I should have been using VS 2008 when it first came available, but I put it off to stick with tools I knew would work for applications I am developing for work. I and my co-workers have rebuilt all our tools to support Windows Server 2008 and I did not want to risk upsetting my development environment during a critical development cycle.

So, I am installing the software prior to the trip. I will take a couple of days to get familiar with the changes and use the new tools while at the conference. This too is part of my job. I don’t need to actively use all the tools I have, but I work with enough people that do that I need to be competent. I attend the conference every other year to get a sampling of the industry and that seems to keep me on the ball.

I wish I had the bandwidth to take on Linux and Mac development tools; maybe someday. Right now the bills are paid writing software for Windows Servers.