so that class has come to an end.  I'm completely exhausted.  I am mentally drained.  I almost wish I had next monday off, because I'm gonna be running around this weekend and I'll be wiped out at the start of next week.
I'm really excited about getting back to work on the project.  This class has really charged up the integration battery and now I'm ready to hit the track.  The final day was all lecture.  And I know what you're thinking..."didnt you complain about the deep dive class and its final two days of all lecture?"  and you would be right in asking.  Well today was different.  It was a mixture of 'these are a few things you should know before leave'...notably BAM and deployment.  But Mark Berry opened up the session for project related questions.  It was interesting to see how the product is being used in the various environments.  Amazingly, Mark had an appropriate path for everyone.
So my final thoughts on the class are:
Although it was exhausting, it was worth it.
The emphasis on lab-work was exactly what I needed.
I was impressed by the depth of expertise involved.
The facility was a nice place to work.  Lots of room, easy access to everything.
The hotel ended up being nice.

  Big suite and the hallway is quiet.  The housekeeper said that she was putting non-smoking sheets and pillows in my room for me, cause she knows that I'm not one.  That was nice.
I never did make it into Atlanta for anything.  Time constraints and the fact that its just too dang crowded precluded me from doing much of anything.  Often I wouldnt get back from class until 7:30 p.m. so I really just wanted to do my online thing, study some and crash.  So you'll not find any regional pictures on this trip.  maybe next time...
I will leave you with two images from the class:

Mark Berry at the Helm.  I apologize for the grain...I was trying to be quick and non-invasive.

And...Johnny Nobles on the left.  Thats Mark Dunn (The owner of Dunn training.  You'll recognize his name from dotnetrocks.) in the middle.  And one of the 10 other developers in the class.  And yes...Johnny is playing the guitar.  Thats how they do I.T. training down south.  "You Yankees just try too hard sometimes."

ok...so i didn't blog after day one, in the same fashion as the microsoft trip.  the classes run late and when i get back, i usually gotta scrounge up dinner somewhere and take care of personal business online.  by the time i'm online, i just wanna check mail and go.  on top of the biztalk bootcamp during the day, i'm working thru the AppDev Biztalk Server 2006 cds as well.  This is very much a saturation week for the product.  I'm filling in a lot of gaps that I had around the 2006 product, especially those where they differ from BTS 2004, which I've used before.
so a recap of current events...the hotel thing worked itself out.  As expected, my boss was all over it.  My understanding is...the hotel did in fact receive the proper paperwork, but failed to file it correctly.  However, the hold on my card is still in place.  No biggeee..I have cash to cover my expenses for the week.  So thats all squared away.
The class is awesome.  Mark Berry and Mark Dunn have a real talent for teaching and they're willing to stop and work thru everyone's questions.  They don't move on without everyone being finished.  And M. Berry laid out the curricullum for the week and actually asked what we would like to cover.  Something that didnt happen when i went to Redmond.  Now i dont want to get into a "this class is better than that class" kind of thing.  Because I've received valuable information from both.  And Jon Flanders is a stand up guy, with incredible Biztalk skills.  The current class differs in that they work everyone thru the examples.  With the redmond class, if you were lost, you were left. 
I will say that the documentation for both classes is a little dry.  M. Dunn has put out a considerable amount of step-by-steps for the lab, and thats a great start.  Ultimately, however, I hold everyone to the standard that Developmentor set with their documents.  In everyones defense...both of the classes that I've attended were "virgin" classes for the corresponding training company and so Beta material is being put together as the class progresses.  Kind of the price you pay when you're training new product.
In other news...I actually used the kitchen in my suite today.  I bought some chicken to heat up and some salad products.  As I was paying for the stuff, I realized...I ate chicken and salad for dinner yesterday.  Weird.

wahoo...I'm in Atlanta!
Its hot, muggy and crowded here.  So many people in a small amount of space.
And nobody here knows how to drive.

So the week is starting off on the wrong foot.
I get to the hotel and check in.  My room is supposed to already be paid for and all set.
It's not.  She doesn't show any paperwork from my company anywhere.  O.k.  no problem.  I'll just have the office fax everything over in the morning.  nope...she cant let me check in without any kind payment.  sure.  i can understand that.  call my boss.  voice mail.  o.k....understandable..its the weekend, people have lives.  so she tells me that she can take my card and imprint it for the night.  fine.  and all she has is a smoking room left.  most of you know, i have vicious allergies and so that really sets off some alarms for me.  so my company has booked me in a smoking room...well the room checks out o.k.  no strong smells.  she cant offer me anything else cause the hotel is booked.  i can roll with that.
so i'm off to eat.  stop at someplace called "Houlihans".  Order the steak and shrimp.  I'm low carbing and its the only thing i can eat on the menu.  The food shows up..i'm munchin away, head in the clouds, still kinda angry about the hotel thing..but hey..things happen for a reason...so we'll see how this pans out.  I finish eating and realize...I didnt get the shrimp.  They charged me for it..but didnt deliver.  Awesome.  So the waitress goes back to the kitchen and starts screaming at the cook.  I felt kinda bad for her.  The place was empty, btw.  which is odd for Sunday at 6 p.m.  But it was close to the hotel.
So I'm off to walmarts (again...right down the road).  Need to pick up some water bottles and low-carb friendly snacks for the hotel room.
Get in line to pay for stuff.  My card is declined.
AWESOME!
see..the card i took is a mastercard debit for an account that we just opened.  I threw $1000 into that account just for this trip..figuring..no way am i gonna use it, but we'll be on the safe side.
I had to rent a car because the train going back to the airport wouldn't have got me back to the gates in time for my flight out.  And theres nothing within walking distance of the hotel for food and supplies.  I didn't want to have to use the shuttle in the morning to get to class, have to call for a ride back...call again to go eat and then call again to get picked up.  Thats a bit ridiculous, even if its a "complimentary service".
so anyway...back to the card...
so the car set my card back $300.  so why is my card declining?  because the girl at the front desk has cleared the entire week (or put a hold) against my card. so strike another 700 off of the card.
so here i am on the other side of the country, with no money.
but all is not lost.  I can call the bank and work something out.  Hopefully my company can actually pay for the room, now that I'm sleeping in it.  It wont help my card tho.  Its been my experience that when hotels remove the hold (or refund), it typically takes a few days.
so the trip is on a bumpy road.  but i'm still excited.  I have so much that i want to know by the end of the week.  I'm not gonna let these setbacks weigh me down.

those of you that know me...know that I've certainly been thru worse. 

The final day of Biztalk class has come and gone.  The final day was all lecture and NO labs.  Which didnt surprise me because Thursday was all lecture and about 15 minutes of lab work.  The class had fallen so far behind that after Wednesday, he had to basically spend the entire day in lecture mode so that he could cover all of the subjects on the curriculum.  I spent most of Friday in a "shock and awe" phase, because so much was coming at me and we weren't able to digest it with labwork.  I'm very much a "learn by doing" kind of person.  So 5 hours of lecture is pretty tough to work through in the brain if I dont have a chance to see it in action.
But it's over now.  I'll spend the next few weeks taking a look at the labs and manual that Jim W. picked up from his class at Developmentor.  They have a really nice set of labs and I'll be able to fill in the many gaps that were forged throughout the week.
After class we had a chance to check out the Microsoft store, wherein I purchased the usual swag.
Flew out to Seattle right after that to visit some of the typical "you gotta do this if you visit Seattle" locations.
First up...the Space Needle:

I really lucked out on my trip, for pretty much the whole week.  Typically it rains in Seattle, ALOT.  But on the days that I went out it was usually awesome weather.  The Space Needle trip was no exception.  A little overcast, but I was still able to take some really good pictures of the surrounding area: 

Downtown Seattle from the Space Needle.


Northern Seattle area with the mountains in the background. 

Of course, I would be less-nerdy if I didnt stop by the Science Fiction Museum:

I was really impressed by the SFM.  They had a ton of Battlestar Galactica, Bladerunner, Star Trek and Aliens artifacts.  Its not a terribly large museum, but they make up for it with content.  They even have the original Starship Enterprise bridge chair and controls panels.  It was pretty cool and I've undoubtedly added about 25 points to my geek-resume'.  I didnt visit the EMP (Experience Music Project) right next door.  I was somewhat pressed for time and had to move on.
I headed out to the Fish Club restaurant for dinner (which was quite tasty) and then back to the hotel to pack for an early flight.  I ended not sleeping that night because the hotel front desk clerk called the room at 9:30 p.m. (I had been sleeping for an hour and a half or so) to verify that I had indeed asked his previous shift's clerk for a 4 a.m. wake up call (which I had).  I couldn't get back to sleep after that, so I just stayed up and took off for the airport at 2 a.m.
The flight from Seattle to chicago went quickly.  I couldnt sleep on the jet, but i was able to do a small amount of reading in Thomas Erl's "Service Oriented Architecture."  A book that I've taken a liking to but find I have a limited amount of time to devote to it.
The flight from Chicago to Grand Rapids was delayed an hour or so.  We had to change planes, as ours was "unworking".  They swapped out the jet and an hour later, we were "wheels up" to Michigan.
It was a good trip.  Despite the chaos of the class, I dont feel that it was a wasted week.  It was more like a week long exam, wherein I was able to identify my weaknesses for review later.  And Seattle was incredible.  I think I'll lay off of seafood for a while though.
I'm definitely ready to get back to Spout and finishing up the data integration conversions. 

today was mostly lecture.
we covered advanced orchestrations, correllation sets, convoys and error handling.  i understood todays topics but putting the concepts into execution was a serious problem.  a bunch of guys just skipped the lab entirely.  A bunch of people were still working on yesterdays lab and probably wont get to the lab from today.  Tommorow I believe we'll be covering web services and business rules.  Not sure what I'm going to do tommorow after we get wrapped up with the class at 3 or so.  I may just come back to the room and work on the book.  I need to get caught up and finished with the edit process.  I seriously thought that I would have more time after class, but this class is so draining that i really only look forward to just sleeping off the days chaos.  :)
One more day of Microsoft and then back to the Midwest.

Day 3 has come and gone.  and wow.
Biztalk 2k6 is awesome.  There is so much to learn and I'm not sure that I'll ever become comfortable with my knowledge of the product.  Todays class was hugely overwhelming.  I didnt finish my lab (many didnt) and the documentation that QuickLearn provides is incredibly lacking.  Fortunately, Jon and Rob are more than willing to stop by and help, however, so many people are in need of help that it could take a while for them to make their rounds.  I feel bad for them, but if the documentation was a little more detailed, we could have handled a majority of the issues ourselves.
This class is like having someone throw a set of encyclopedias at your head and then asking you ten minutes later, "explain chapter 5 in book 12".
:)

Pretty intense, but an awesome opportunity.

After class, I jetted out to Seattle.  Went to eat at Elliots Oyster House.  It was quite possibly the best seafood that I've ever had.  I ordered the Alder Planked Alaskan King Salmon and it was so good.  I actually took small bites, just to make it last longer.  The place was packed, but worth the wait.
I took a few pictures from the Elliots dock:

i apologize for the dark downtown shot, but i didnt get downtown till late.

Heres a shot of the bay, right behind Elliots:

once again, it was beautiful weather.  a few spots of rain here and there.
if you ever come to Seattle, NEVER ask someone how to get somewhere.  Everybody has a different opinion on how to get to point B.  And nobody seems to get it right.  The guy at the hotel told me to take 522 west to highway 5 if i wanted to get downtown.  Normally you would take 520, but it was backed up into Redmond.  I asked him "Is 522 a highway or a road?"  "Oh its definitely a highway" he replied.  Lies.  it was a stop and go road.  Once again, I took the scenic route.  It was actually kind of nice.  It put me downtown a little behind schedule from what i had originally anticipated, but thats o.k.
Downtown Seattle is amazing.  

End of day two.
Things are starting to get hectic.
We covered alot of ground today:  xml interchanges, mapping and functioids, schemas and creating/consuming infopath forms.
I really wish that the documentation provided was a little more detailed.  The class is SERIOUSLY designed for someone with a lot of Biztalk experience.  The instructors are more than willing to help out, but after asking questions so often, I (and many others) are beginning to feel overwhelmed.  Theres some good stuff here, but having to constantly catch up doesnt give you much time to really absorb what it is you've learned.  And with the documentation being so weak, I cant go back to the hotel and review.
I think when the class ends, I'll have to do a serious amount of self-study just to make sense of what happened this week.

 
< i didnt know this many people even knew about Biztalk 2006 >
:)

springtime in Redmond.  It was absolutely beautiful out today.  Warm wind.
The sound of "Virtual Server R2" flags flapping in the breeze.  aaaah...

one of the many Microsoft campus signs:



Building 40.  This is where my Biztalk class is:


Its cloudy over the mountains, so no really good shots today:

end of day one.
the class is outstanding.  Jon Flanders (www.masteringbiztalk.com) knows his stuff.
We cover alot of ground in a short amount of time and theres little room for inattention. 
I was somewhat confused when he went in depth on the topic of custom property schemas.  i would have understood the topic a little more had we actually worked through some examples.  alot of the stuff that we blow through, i kind of wish we could pause and demo it.  but i realize that theres tons more to cover and that time is limited.  i've been taking pretty good notes in OneNote, and I can definitely see that I'll need to revisit some topics to pick up the loose ends.
after class, i drove around redmond/kirkland - looking to do some sight seeing.  about 15 minutes into it, it started raining.   go figure.  rain in seattle?  no way.
and then i got lost.  :)
I bought a seattle map, took it to the car and found out that redmond/kirkland isnt on a seattle map.  good grief.  it was fun just trying to find my way back to hwy 405.  the roads in redmond/kirkland are goofy.
i'm thinking that i won't really have time to do much seattle related stuff while i'm here.
my flight arrived too late on sunday to do anything, class runs late so doing something afterwards isnt going to happen and saturday my flight is at 6 a.m.  so i dont really get to take in much of seattle.  i wish i could have scheduled my return flight for sunday so that i would have had at least one day to check some stuff out.  but i didnt book the flight.

tommorow will be the first day that we really start to get lab-intensive, so i'll probably be exhausted tommorow night.
good times.

so i'm halfway thru day 1.  the class is going to be awesome.  we're still very much into the lecture part (whats new in 2k6) and we're getting ready to move into installation.

i do have some issues with the Microsoft campus.  I feel almost as if I'm not wanted here.  I asked for a campus map and was told by the receptionist that without a Microsoft badge, I'm not allowed to have one.  o.k.  i guess i just have to wander aimlessly until I find what I'm looking for.

The class I'm attending does not provide meals or anything for us.  So we have to use one of the Microsoft cafes.  Access to which, (yup you guessed it) is restricted to members only.  so if i want to eat while i'm here, i have to beg my way in with a badge carrying member.
The Microsoft store is restricted to badge carriers only.  no visitors.  so it doesnt look like i'll be scoring any awesome Microsoft shirts to commemorate my visit to the Microsoft campus.
Like i said, the class is cool.  and its what i'm here for. 
I'm a little disappointed in the campus experience so far.  Being my first time here, I thought it was going to be different.