One of the reasons blogging has been a little light around here recently is because I was prepping for the TechEd Session Triage. Basically, all the track owners figure out what sessions they want on their own then come together for an entire afternoon to present their sessions to each other. Turns out there is often overlap with other sessions in other tracks that need to be worked out, suggesting changes to titles and abstracts and other wise cutting up. For example. I’m sitting next to Becky who owns the Connected Systems Infrastructure track. We had several sessions in both the CSI and ARC tracks that have caused changes and cuts. We actually got the ARC, CSI and DEV tracks got together earlier this week for a “pre-iage” which means today went pretty smooth for the ARC track. Not that it felt like things were going to go smooth running around this morning. Typically, the last 24 hours before triage are a flurry of emails with last minute suggestions. This year – no exception. But now, at least it’s done.

Jochen just posted a list of known issues for the Dec 04 CTP release of the DSL Toolkit. I have not had enough time to play with this. Anyone know where I can get 3-4 more hours a day? 😄

If you’re using the MSN Deskbar, you might want to pick up Gibson Research’s Wizmo. Wizmo is a command line tool that provides a grab-bag of tools. Personally, I use it for the shutdown commands. I’ve mapped several of them to Deskbar shortcut, particularly “shutdown” and “shutdown!”. The exclamation point invokes the “damit” variation that overrides applications and/or device drivers that refuse to shutdown. I know a repave is in the near future when I’m find myself using shutdown! on a regular basis.

I’m surprised Wizmo didn’t make Scott’s Ultimate Power Tools list.

I just read Dare’s awesome article on C-Omega. If I had any time at all, I’d experiment with it to rewrite dasBlog (well, at least the back end parts of dasBlog anyway). Of course, I don’t have any time at all, so it’s not going to happen (well, at least I won’t make it happen)

I started reading The Nears after Sean linked to his comparison of Media Center Extenders. Today, there’s a great comparison of Media Center Extenders to Windows Media Connect devices. Very cool stuff. I’d love to have all my media on a central machine and then be able to listen to or watch it all over the house. The Nears linked to the Roku SoundBridge which plugs into your stereo system. Supports wired or 802.11b/g wireless in as well as analog, optical and coax audio out. Controllable via remote control or web app. Of course, what would be truly killer is web services support. Prices seem pretty reasonable. There are three different models with the same functionality – the only difference is the size and quality of the display. I think I need one or two of these…