Really Busy

As you can likely tell by the scarcity of my posts lately, I'm busier than usual right now. I had planned to blog about a few things, such as the VFPX GDI+ classes and a new tool called UP2D8, but just haven't had the time. I'll get to them in future posts but first a quick catch-up.

First there was DevCon in Phoenix a couple of weeks ago. I arrived late Saturday night: one of my flights was delayed by three hours so I had a really long layover in Denver, then it took 1/2 hour for my luggage to come down, then SuperShuttle jerked me around for 1/2 hour before taking me to the hotel. The JW Marriott in Phoenix was great. The rooms weren't quite as large or luxurious as the ones in Las Vegas, but the hotel itself was much nicer. It even had a "lazy river" in the pool area.

Sunday Tamar Granor, Rick Schummer, Jeff Zinnert and I went to Sedona, about 1.5 hours north of Phoenix (or about 1 hour with Jeff driving). Rick has been there many times so was a great tour guide for us. The red rock mountains and mesas are so beautiful. My favorite part was the Slide Rock area, where you can slide in a natural water slide (very slippery and pretty cold, but lots of fun) or just jump off a cliff into a somewhat shallow (6 ft. or so) pool.

The conference itself was great as usual: excellent food, good sessions, fun hanging out with friends. The best meal of the trip: the last night at Bahama Breeze in the Desert Ridge Mall, walking distance from the hotel. The only disappointing thing was the attendance; based on a quick head-count at the keynote, I estimated about 120. However, Rick counted attendees in both rooms (yes, only two tracks!) several times and consistently found only 60 - 70 people.

Next, one of our technical support people resigned. Her husband found a job in Saskatoon (about 250 km north of Regina) so she found a new job there as well. So, my partner Mickey and I scrambled to find a replacement. We were already in the process of finding another support person, so we sped things up and did a bunch of interviews the day after I returned from Phoenix. We hired a couple of new guys and they started yesterday. They'll spend the next week with Tonia, getting up to speed on Stonefield Query and how to support it before she leaves us. She'll be greatly missed -- her work ethic, professionalism, and great customer skills were a joy -- so the new guys have big shoes to fill. I'm sure they'll do fine, though.

I had planned to take this week off: my mother-in-law died several weeks ago and my sister-in-law, brother-in-law, and our nephew came from Winnipeg to help my wife Peggy and I clean up her house so we can sell it this fall. What a huge job it's been -- it's not a very large house but she lived there for more than 40 years, so it has 40 years worth of stuff in it. Since they're only here until the end of this week and we're having a garage sale Friday and Saturday, we have some time pressure to get as much done as possible. Unfortunately, with all the things going on at work, I wasn't able to completely take the week off.

Saturday, I leave for Prague to speak at the DevCon there. (Which means I won't be here for the second day of garage sale. Dang. However will I console myself?) Igor Vit has been trying to get me to speak there for four years now, but we could never get our schedules to match up. Fortunately, it worked out this year, so I'm really looking forward to going. I have a few days of sightseeing planned so I'll blog about it when I return.