A bit of a random, but nice day.

• Rory joined Microsoft as a cartoonist for MSDN.  There's some presenting in the job description as well.  Congrats Rory.
• The Portland Nerd Dinner was lovely, as usual.
• Thanks to Jim Blizzard for the free books.  Jim represents everything that is good about Microsoft.
• Thanks to Chris Sells for being so approachable about all things Longhorn.  Chris also brought a crew along from the O'Reilly Open Source Convention.  There were a few people who we having iBook Drum Circles that couldn't make it, but I DID very much enjoy meeting and talking to Sam Ruby. 
• Sam Ruby was a kind, soft-spoken and very insightful fellow who told me a number of great insights into ATOM and the making of a new "standard."  Such things, if they are good, seem to take off with a life of their own, don't they?
• I'm heading to BAY.NET tomorrow (PDX->SFO) to talk about Web Services and darnit if I'm not nervous to meet Simon Fell.  I'm looking forward to talking to him (and the group) about the chaos around null, nil, specified and "just not there."  I predict a blood bath of newbie confusion.  Fully. 
• Is it null?"
• "Yes, nil"
• "But it's there"
• "No, it's there, but it's marked nil" 
• "Is it specified?"
• "It's both specified and it's nil" 
• "So if it's not there it's nil and not specified"
• "No if it's not there, it's specified but nil itself is then unspecified."
• "But is the boolean false then?" 
• "There is no boolean"
• Anyway, I shall try my best for the talk to not suck egregiously.
• Had a big internal release of a magical thingie I've been working on all this time and we're all a titter with excitement.  Inconvenient that I'm travelling the same day, but Patrick Cauldwell has the whole thing on lockdown, so I know we're solid.  (I am disturbed though that his 9-year-old thinks Breakin' was better than Breakin' II: Electric Boogaloo. At least we agree on the tour de force that was Krush Groove.)