Did she just meow?! I think she did.

I'm listening to Jennifer Marsman's XNA Development walkthrough on The Code to Live Show. Ah, now I can say I knew her when. ;-) The presentation is only 12 minutes long, so almost short enough for me to watch in its entirety! It's also convenient that I found this today, as we're just getting started with our Imagine Cup Game Design competition. For the next two weeks, I'll be visiting schools in New York and New Jersey to promote the XNA and the competition and to throw some Halo 3 tournaments/parties.

There should have been a class in school about how to manage coordinating dates/times/availability. I do consider myself very organized and am definitely getting better at this, but I will admit that I woke up at 7AM thinking "which event did I commit to on October 2^nd?!" Fortunately, Gus Weber and I are sharing NYC academic events this year, so at least we have each other for back-up.

The good news for my readers – I'll be travelling A LOT starting very soon. I think my blog is more interesting when I travel. It certainly gets more traffic. From Monday to approximately Thanksgiving, I'll be away from home pretty frequently, speaking about XNA, promoting Imagine Cup, throwing Halo 3 parties, attending Grace Hopper, and swinging past CCSC with Alfred.

Last week we kicked off the alpha of the new student program I'm working on. One of the students accepted into the alpha is making himself a costume for a Halo 3 party at his school. I actually laughed out loud. Awesome.

I applied to be an official blogger for the Grace Hopper Conference again this year, and was excited to hear that I'll be doing it again. Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to find some time to sneak off to visit Disney. (I've never been, and I told Stephanie I'd get her the ears hat.)

Looking for ways to get involved? Even if you're not attending you may want to check out these:

• Joining the GHC Facebook group (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2211268257)
• Becoming a friend of GHC on MySpace (http://www.myspace.com/gracehoppercelebration)
• Following the GHC Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/ghc)

www.TheUltimateSteal.com is a new way to buy Office 2007 Ultimate, targeted specifically at college students.  Any college student with a university email address will be able to purchase, either by download or by delivery of a packaged product. For US students, it's only $59.95 for full Microsoft Office 2007 Ultimate.

There's also a blogging contest where you can win a $3000 vacation, $1000 gift card or an Xbox 360 for blogging about how you'll use Office in your studies.

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2360656655 There are only 183 group members right now and I know more than 183 of us will be there. :-)

http://www.microsoft4me.com/shhhhhhh/

Not the website design, the new US student program we're starting…

How is that not a win-win proposition?

It's a rainy day here in New Haven, and I can't say I'm feeling like leaving the house at all. (wow, just as I typed that it really started pouring) Fortunately I have lots of work to do and have joined the Live Search Club.

This is seriously fun. I played Chicktionary to "research" the site. (AKA procrastinate some email writing) I earned some points and found out I can actually get real stuff with the points. Like at the arcade!

Most of the games seem like good procrastination games and the prizes vary from a ring tone to an Xbox 360! Admittedly you'd be playing a lot of games to get that 360. I'm saving up for a tshirt. Check it out at http://club.live.com/home.aspx and let me know what you think.