I am now giving my blog the code name 'Rome'

Parking at the convention center: 12 bucks

Cheeseburger and fries inside the convention center: 10 bucks

Seeing hundreds of IT and CAD worker bees get giddy over software with cool code names like 'Athens': Pathetic.

What happened to fixing a product that is not working properly now? Why is it 'Oh well in Vista we have changed that, if you upgrade it will be more secure' or 'That has been spoken about at the Athens round table discussion we just had and that feature will work as planned if you upgrade" The worst part is tech people ohh and ahhh over the software because it's new and has a sweet name. All techs are guilty of wanting the latest and greatest but why bother if it makes your job even more complicated and/or difficult? If XP is running just fine why get Vista? If V8 XM is getting more stable and users are finally starting to embrace this why go to Athens? Who cares about Avalon and besides that name doesn't even sound that cool. Windows Longhorn? Sweet if you are a redneck or a 12 year old boy who makes junk jokes. IT worker bees should not be salivating at being sold on the next version. They should be fuming that they have to do another big upgrade just for software to be more stable, more secure, or just work as the software company said it would.

On another note, learning new ways to approach software and best practices are useful. So while there was a lot of brainwashed IT managers and CAD managers itching to drop another house payment on code named software at the BE conference in LA there was alot to get out of it.