I’ll be in Redmond this week for a Microsoft meeting. I expect there will be some cool new things, some of which I’ll be able to discuss, and much socializing with my ASPInsider buddies. I’ve been slacking on the blogging front lately. I taught an ASP.NET class last week in Columbus, OH, which went pretty well despite having been set up to use course materials from pre-release of ASP.NET 2.0 (not by my choice).

In other news, I recently received a Zune as a gift, and I’m digging it so far. I’ve never owned an iPod, so I can’t really compare the two except to say that the Zune is about the same size as my coworker’s iPod, but with a larger screen for video. It’s been painless to use thus far but I have a feeling I’m not going to be thrilled with the battery life compared to the 12 hours per AA battery I’m used to from my iRiver flash player (which holds 256mb vs. 30GB, however, and no video). Oh, and it comes with some sweet videos of mountain biking and snowboarding — the mountain biking video is amazing. I don’t use any of its pay-for service stuff (yet), but it synch’d up with my DRM-free MP3s extremely easily once I plugged it into my (XP Pro) laptop. I haven’t tried getting it to do anything with my Vista machine but that day is coming. It’s going to get me through my 7 hour trip to Seattle in a few minutes so I’ll have more experience with it very soon.