Almost exactly year ago, my life was changed forever by the arrival of my son Patrick. I tried to approach my imending fatherhood with an open mind, realizing that my life was going to change but not really sure exactly how. So far, I think I’m doing pretty well. Today, Patrick is walking (in spurts), talking (in gibberish mostly), eating solid foods and otherwise making everyone around him smile. I don’t write as much code, play as much XBOX or read for fun as much as I used to, but I do seem to smile a lot more.

I am truly blessed to have such an amazing wife, son and job.

We just pushed out a bunch of new content on MSDN Architecture Center. The Architecture Strategy Series is a collection of video presentations that have been delivered at Architect Forums around the world since last November.

Most notably among these seminars is an updated version of Pat Helland’s PDC talk. In theis version, he introduces the Metropolis analogy. Metropolis is an analogy between the evolution of cities during the Industrial Revolution and the evolution of enterprises during the Information Revolution. I find this analogy very illuminating when talking to people about where we’re headed in information technology. Even if you attended or watched the PDC Architecture Symposium talk, I highly recomend watching this session.

Other sessions include:

• Information & Application Architecture for the Service-Oriented Enterprise
• Solution Architecture for the Service-Oriented Enterprise
• “Longhorn” Client Strategy
• Dynamic Systems Initiative
• Microsoft Systems Architecture
• Real Time Collaboration
• Trustworthy Computing

BTW, is there any interest in us making this content available for download? If so, what formats are important? PowerPoint slides, audio only, or the entire audio/video/slides experience?

(Note – As usual, my normal disclaimer applies. However, let me add to that by saying: in this post, any negative comments regarding AOL executives has nothing to do with the competitive relationship between my employer (Microsoft) and AOL. For the purposes of this post, I’m a sports fan, not a b0rg. We will return to our regularly scheduled technical blogging shortly.)

Ted Leonsis is an abomination to the sport of hockey. He has transformed a Washington Capitals team that had gone to the Stanley Cup finals the year before he bought them into little more than a minor league hockey team unable to escape the basement in the standings. And to top it off, he has somehow managed to alienate the fans and lose $30 million dollars a year doing it.

His AOL bio claims that Leonsis “has employed state-of-the-art consumer and interactive initiatives to dramatically boost the Capitals’ attendance and revenue.” Really? Then why is he losing $30 million a year? Note to Ted: the best way to dramatically boost attendance is to actually field a competitive team.

His WashingtonCaps.com bio claims that Leonsis is “[k]nown for his fan-friendly approach as an owner”. At least, he was until he got into a fight physical altercation with a fan who had the nerve to criticize Leonsis in the wake of the Jagr trade. Note to Ted: don’t include fisticuffs with fans who actually paid to come see your team in your “List of 125 Ways We Are New and Improved”.

And now, he has traded Peter Bondra for a bag of old pucks minor leaguer and a draft pick. In the world of sports, trades aren’t usually a big deal. But this is not a normal trade. Bondra was “Mr. Capital”, having spent his entire 14 year career with the Caps. He is the Caps all-time leading scorer. He was on the verge of having played more games for the Caps than anyone in their history. And even though the team was in the cellar, he wanted to stay and help them rebuild. When he was talking to the press, he cried. In this age of multi-million dollar athlete salaries with the rampant “me first” attitude, a five-time all-star cried because he wanted to stay with the team he loved rather than be traded to a legitimate Stanley Cup contender. Yet Leonsis even tried to spin this: “allowing [Bondra] the opportunity to win a Cup is important.” Of course, it’s important, but having a player who loves where he plays and fans that love him right back is much more important.

Of course, if Bondra is expendable, then so is anyone else with any talent whatsoever. Only Kolzig, Gonchar and Witt remain from the ’98 Stanley Cup Finals team. How long until they are dumped to reduce salary allowed the opportunity to win a Cup with some other team? (rumor mill has it Gonchar is next on the trade block, going to the Devils)

Suddenly, I am looking forward to an extended lockout in the wake of the expiring Collective Bargaining Agreement. Watching the pitiful product Leonsis has foisted on Washington area hockey fans is a disgrace.

Since all my favorite players are on one way tickets out of town, I actually hope that the Capitals continue to suck until Leonsis has lost so much money that he has no choice but to sell the team.

I like Jeff’s suggestions for a Service Oriented Lanugage as well as RebelGeekz’ idea of how to include XML Infoset information in a language without resorting to angle brackets. I wonder what a community developed lanugauge would look like? I’ve experimented with Coco/R which really reduces the effort it takes to build a parser. Of course, the language design and code generation are the hard parts!

Source for Coco/R is available on the Rotor Community Projects page. Other cool projects include a port of Rotor to WinCE, two different AOP projects – one for C# and the other language neutral and a set of improved collections.

Steve and Keith beat me too it (I was in a meeting), but let me blog the news anyway: We’ve relaunched the MSDN .NET Architecture Center. In addition to the much-improved look and feel, it improves our ability to get new content on the site. For example, we just posted the February edition of Architecture Update featuing an article on smart clients by David Hill and a new community article by yours truly (plus a new yet still horrific picture). We also have two webcasts this week (actually, we have webcasts every week).

Let me know what you think of the new design plus what other content you’d like to see up there.

BTW, I’m aware that there is no RSS feed for the new Architecture Center yet. We’re working on that…