I'm attending the MSDN Developer Conference at the Westin Galleria on Monday, Jan. 26, which is sort of a mini-pdc covering topics in the areas of Azure Services Platform for Cloud Computing, Client and Presentation, and Tools, Languages and Framework.

My top sessions choices are:

• ASP.NET and JQuery
• Developing and Deploying Your First Azure Services
• A Lap Around the Live Framework and Mesh Services
• ASP.NET 4.0 Roadmap

Hopefully one of my colleagues can attend Building Business-Focused Applications Using Silverlight 2 and share the experience because I have an interest in learning silverlight after my brief, poor experience developing an mp3 music player in flash for Jessica Clemmon's site.

I decided to sign up to volunteer for a good cause as a developer for the The We Are Microsoft - Charity Challenge Weekend.

"This 3-day event matches developers with charities to develop applications for those charities. At the end of the 3 days, all of the participants will vote and the winners will be proclaimed champion coders., to help local charities with some website work."

There are some excellent people in Dallas who are organizing this event, where art is auctioned off for charity.

Several of my friends are amongst the 150 or so artists who will be working in shifts to complete their contributions.

Its an awesome way to support a good cause.

Last night we went to see a fashion art installation called BASE at Corinth Park.

They had some wire sculptures by Scott Horn, and recreation of the "high five" (where hwy 635 and 75 meet, in Dallas).

Yesterday I went to an awesome rock climbing with a friend at a gym called stoneworks, located in old grain silos in Carrollton, TX.  It was an amazing experience.  The interior of the space is really stunning.  Their routes are a good range of difficultly (from what I could tell), but as a beginner I still found a few that I was able to handle.  I may sign up for classes and try to visit this place once a week.

The Velvet Kittens Burlesque Dance Troupe are working on a new Website in Wordpress, with help from the lovely and talented Ms. Rose Dahling, who also does all their flyers.

The girls will be dancing twice monthly at Café Rembrandt in Dallas.

Earlier today I heard the Ultimate Texan Phrase: “Are ya’ll fixin’ to tailgate?”