I plan on seeing the following sessions, but as usual things will probably change.

Tuesday:
12:00-13:15    DEV381    J2EE & .NET Interoperability
14:45-16:00    DAT313    SQL Server 2005: Data Transformation Services
16:30-17:45    ARC402    Data in Services-Oriented Architecture
18:15-19:30    ARC302    Metropolis : Building Applications in the Service-Oriented Enterprise

Wednesday:
08:30-09:45    ARC307    Realizing Services-Oriented Architecture
10:15-11:30    ARC220    New Developments in Microsoft Solutions Framework
12:00-13:15    DEV301    Visual Studio 2005 Team System - Part 1
14:45-16:00    DEV302    Visual Studio 2005 Team System - Part 2
16:30-17:45    DAT328    SQL Server 2005 : Inside Analysis Services
18:15-19:30    DAT323    SQL Server 2005: What's New in Replication

I would love to see this as well, but Analysis Services comes first...
16:30-17:45    DEV303    Visual Studio 2005 Team System - Part 3

Thursday:
08:30-09:45    CTS300    Prescriptive Guidance for Building with Web Services
10:15-11:30    DAT315    Intelligent BI - Integrating Data Mining into OLAP, RS and DTS in SQL 2005
12:00-13:15    DEV307    21 Rules of thumb - how Microsoft develops its software
14:45-16:00    DAT431    High Availability Technologies in SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005
16:30-17:45    CTS304    Availability and Reliability - Failure Is Not An Option
18:15-19:30    DAT325    SQL Server 2005: SQL Service Broker

Friday:
08:30-09:45    DAT437    SQL Server Analysis Services 2000: Solving Business Problems using MDX
10:15-11:30    ARC406    Understanding the Grey area Between Service and OO Design
12:00-13:15    DAT329    SQL Server 2005: Web Services
14:45-16:00    DEV413    ASP.NET: Tips and Tricks for Building Server Controls
16:30-17:45    DAT335    Business Intelligence using SQL Server Analysis Services and Office 2003

I've finally managed to get TechEd sorted and paid for so I'll be in Amsterdam on Monday. I must say a big thanks to Tim Sneath helping to expedite things.

I wasn't very happy with the clunkyness of blogger, so I've moved over to dasBlog. But due to some constraints from hosting service, I have to move to the root of the site: http://www.jamessnape.me.uk/default.aspx. Hopefully this is the last switch.

Its nearly the end of the month and hence end of the current sprint. I was having a discussion with a developer this morning about the amount of work remaining on the list. The developer in question hasn't been able to spend a lot of time on the project this month due to higher priority customer needs and therefore won't be able to complete his agreed functionality.

According to Scrum, we have two seemingly opposing forces:

1. The end of sprint review where the team shows the progress for the sprint
2. The rule that "only potentially shippable code" should be shown

The problem is that his part of the system is the user interface and without it the sprint review will be mostly white-board and some of NUnit tests. Not very exciting and not liable to provoke much discussion. So he asked the question - "Should I just hack it to get something on screen"? I had to think about this for a while because its very tempting to say yes. I could almost justify it by saying that its demo code and will be thrown away.

After, musing for a couple of minutes I said no for the following reasons:

1. Rule (2) above
2. The sprint review is designed to show project progress and demo code is not progress
3. The act of hacking in demo code and pulling it out again tends to add entropy and hence bugs into the system

So a question for a future post should be "Why did I not clear the block (customer needs) for the developer?".

I've decided to host the blog in my own domain www.jamessnape.me.uk so I can include pictures more readily. You can find it at http://www.jamessnape.me.uk.

My new toy arrived today. A Toshiba Portege M200. Now if I can just get the TechEd fee paid I'll be sorted for next week.

Talk about a downer... England 1 up against France for 90 minutes and they score from a free kick and again from a penalty in extra time. Aggghhhh.

They say you need a little luck to win a tournament but England never seem to have any...

I thought my name was pretty unique... But when trying to Google for things I've written I have to wade past pages of Harry Potter related stuff. In Google groups the top hit for "Jim Snape" is pretty offensive and not related to me. Is this slander/libel? What if a prospective employer were to use Google to try and find background on me?

For reference, the best way to get the good hits is filter out the rubbish. The following work reasonably well:

This works, but there are quite a few other Snape's out there...
google: "Jim Snape" -webmaster -page-zone -admin.net -potter

This one brings back nearly all my newsgroup posts without any irrelevant pages.
google groups: "Jim Snape" -webmaster -page-zone -admin.net -potter