A brief anecdote (if you just want the schedule, then you can skip this and scroll down, but only at your own peril)

I'm in Cincinnati. It's taken me three days now to learn how to spell it, and the only way I know that "Cincinnati" is right is that my spell checker tells me so. If you had written me an email last week asking where I was going to be, I might have told you any of the following:

- Cincinnatti

- Cincinattie

- Cinncinatti

- Cinncinnatti

- And so on

Spelling it is tough, but getting here wasn't a walk in the park either. The flight over from Kentucky was fine, but the Cinncinnnatii airport seems to have some odd quirks. You know, for example, that there's something wrong with an airport's design when there's a line at the information desk of recently debarked passengers, all of whom have the exact same question:

How do I leave this airport?

It turns out that the Cininccinati airport is really a loosely knit collection of seemingly independent terminal hubs connected by a network of randomly scheduled transportation apparati. Getting from my terminal to the rental car desk was a trip which took only slightly longer than the actual flight to Cinccinatitni. Someone with an entrepreneurial spirit and some dough to invest could make a killing by setting up small commuter flights which would fly airport customers from their gates to the airport exit. Alternatively, Hertz could set up rental car desks in each terminal so that people could rent cars to drive to the exit where they could then pick up their "real" transportation.

By the time I was done walking from the plane (Terminal C) to the main area of the airport (Terminal 3 in Concourse A (why in the !@#$ is the main terminal for the airport number three?)), one of my arms was longer than the other from carrying my luggage. I'd like to use the longer arm to slap silly the skilled architect of pain who wielded his hatred for humanity when designing an airport the same way nature designed the solar system (large and spread the hell out).

Not that I'd do that. Slapping people is mean, even if they are probably responsible for the deaths of several elderly people each day due to Cinnccninatttie airport long-distance marathon physical overexertion induced heart attacks.

But that's enough of that.

The schedule (click on links for event details)

- 08/24/2004: Tacoma, WA

- 08/26/2004: Portland, OR

- 08/31/2004: Boulder, CO

- 09/02/2004: Denver, CO

If you live in any of these areas, and if you'd like to attend a free MSDN session, then click on the link for your city and go sign up.

And, if you know anybody who you think would be interested in attending, then please force encourage them to come. I want high attendance at my events because I want to reach as many developers as possible, and also because I think I get bigger bonuses if more people show up (but mainly because of all that crap about wanting to "reach" you).

If you have any questions about the events, then please feel free to email me, and if you'd like to find out about MSDN events happening in your area, then head over to this site. Remember that these things are free.

After Blog Mint [?] :

John just posted some images of his new PC case, and the thing has a cigarette lighter in it. Maybe that's not a big deal to you, but when I was growing up, we had to actually stick our cigarettes in electrical outlets to light them - we didn't have anything so fancy as this...