This is more of a note for myself, but I thought I'd share it with everyone.  I just watched the Channel9 interview with the WIX team and it looks VERY interesting.  I've been looking for a better way to build installs since I HATE INSTALLSHIELD!  I've used the setup and deployment projects in VisualStudio for some simpler projects but found it to lack extensibility.  WIX, according to the team, is used by virually all the Microsoft products.  I will have to check it out when I have time.

I've been putting off blogging about this because there is SOOO much to say! What an awesome event! (although it 6:00AM came pretty quick after all that fun on Friday night) I found myself back at the Milwaukee Hyatt at 6:50AM on Saturday morning wearing my new User Group shirt. These shirts were embroidered by the local sewing hermit, Travis Feirtag. Seriously, Travis, a member of the UG Executive Commitee, did a great job on these shirts! But is it User Group or Users Group...hmmmm. ;) For starters Scott and Doug Rhoten gave some of our $80K worth of prizes away...always a good way to start a day! Coffee in hand I joined some friends and watched the first speaker of the day, Michèle Leroux Bustamante, give a great presentation on WCF. Michèle did a great job keeping her composure even with the start of the day issue with the projector. Michèle was followed by Scott, "the comic," Hanselman and his presentation on dasBlog and open source. Scott's presentation was very polished and funny! Scott's use of tools and his Colossal Cave/Transylvania joke was the high point of the presentation. I should also mention that he has me taking another look at dasBlog. The lunch Q&A session was held while attendees feasted on the free pizza. I have to admit I missed most of it due to conversations with sponsors and attendees. Julie Lerman's discussion of ADO.NET and SQL Server 2005 followed lunch. Having met Julie the night before, I found her presentation very well done! Bill Hatfield was next with a great presentation on AJAX and Atlas followed by Jason Beres and his "world changing" ;) WPF presentation.

For me the day ended with a beer with Val and Avonelle followed by dinner with the UG Executive Committee. A fantastic day filled with so many wonderful things!

For those of you in the Midwest, checkout WI .NET Users Group Deeper in .NET 2006. It's happening on April 22, 2006 at the Hyatt Regency Milwaukee. It's a FREE all day event featuring talks by Jason Beres, Scott Hanselman, Bill Hatfield, Julie Lerman, and Michèle Leroux Bustamante. Space is limited, so sign up now!!!!!

Check these articles out:
Quantum computer solves problem, without running
and
Evidence of Children's UFO and Extraterrestrial Encounters to be Presented at a United Nations Affiliated Conference in Montreal

I've been doing quite a bit of reading on my tablet lately. Most of the documents have been in PDF format and I was becoming frustrated with Acrobat's lack of native ink support. After searching for a solution, I've found the simplest thing to do is print the PDF to Journal format and read and ink on the document in Journal. Is there a better way that anyone knows of?

I found this t-shirt a while back and found it again today. It's classic!

I have a fascination with abrasive water jet cutting. I think its amazing that water and sand can cut multi inch thick steel. I have experimented with the basic technology at relatively low pressures. Building my own intensifier and playing around with 20,000 psi water just sounds (and is) a bit too dangerous for me. A practical, low-cost, water jet system has not been a reality until now. The guys at WardJet just announced their M-Series retrofit kits.

M-Series retrofit kits transform practically any CNC machine, including milling and turning machines, lasers, routers, robotic arms and oxy-fuel or plasma cutters, into waterjet-cutting systems.

I don't have a dollar figure for this system, but my guess is in the $10-20K range. Almost in reach for serious hobbyist and a real bargain for small machine shops!

How cool is this!?!?! The Japanese company Tmsuk is building it as a rescue robot, what I'd love to see is an episode of BattleBots with a couple of these!

FYI. I started adding some of the freeware projects I've designed in the last few years to my homepage. Check it out at http://www.chadalbrecht.com

It would appear that Apple has worked it's magic on the stock market! With the announcement of the new products with Intel CPU's, Apple's stock price closed at 80.86 on Tuesday! (Thanks to Brad Feld for the info)