I've been playing with Windows Live Spaces recently, and have decided to migrate my blog there.  (There's so much flexibility and I can easily upload so many photos!!)  I'm sure I'll post here occasionally, but I'll also be putting fun stuff at http://dianecu.spaces.live.com/

I've gotten pretty used to Office 2007.  (So much so that I was on the phone helping someone through an Outlook task and was confused that she didn't have an option.  I even asked "do you have the most recent version?" to which she answered yes.  It took me a few minutes to realize that I'm not running the most recent version... I'm running the next version.)  I'm just starting to use Vista more and finished my first recorded demo last night.  Alfred and I did a demo on how to better share and create class notes with Windows Live Spaces, Vista and Office 2007. 

Anyway, I like when I get addicted to new features.  For instance, I can't imagine not getting rss feeds in Outlook.  That's especially rewarding when I'm developing them, but it's also fun when it's something that I'm going to be using every day.  

Today is Tom's 24th birthday!  (Actually, it's not yet his birthday where I live, but it is where *he* lives, and isn't that what's important?)  You can wish him a happy birthday here. :-D 

As some of you know, I love coffee. (Some call it an "addiction" but I feel like that puts my true feelings for coffee in a very negative light.)  Anyway, on my daily trip to Starbucks (as there is no good coffee in New Haven), I found out that the pumpkin spiced latte is BACK for fall.  Woot!

Mmm... This being September 1st, I may have to transition from my "Iced Venti Nonfat Chai" morning beverage to the "Grande Skim Pumpkin Spiced Latte."  And, yes, how I refer to non-fat or skim milk does change based on what I order, and so does the size.  :-) 

First, I will note that I know that I haven't written since returning from the Imagine Cup Finals in India.  I appreciate your reminders that I'm being a bad blogger. :-P

Now, Imagine Cup 2006.

My first year working on Imagine Cup is behind me.  Whew!  I had a GREAT time.  I saw really amazing projects (in all of the US rounds and in India) and met some amazing students and Microsoft Partners.  I've uploaded some of my pictures on thespoke, but found it much easier to upload them to my spaces page at http://dianecu.spaces.live.com.  (that's a work in progress, btw.  and feel free to add me to your spaces friends list!) 

My top ten favorite things about Imagine Cup 2006:

10. India!

9.  Seeing new technologies with potential to make such an impact 

8.  Watching extremely passionate students present their ideas 

7. Really innovative applications (I love the broad theme which meant so many things to so many different people.  The University of Washington was a great example.)

6.  I wonder if anyone will notice that I skipped one.

5.  Mentoring two US teams in the US rounds was a GREAT experience.  Both teams were bright, passionate and great to work with.

4.  Doing restoration work. Seriously, when will construction ever be part of my job?! :-) (Given the quality of my work, the answer should be "never.")

3. Working with other Microsofties to be part of such a unique event.

2. Meeting impressive technology students from all over the world. 

1. Imagine Cup 2006 brings us to Imagine Cup 2007!  (YAY!)

I think many of you wanted a play-by-play of the trip.  More info about the flight issues or how I'm allergic to some bug bites I got in India. (I didn't realize until I was on the flight home!)  It really flew past, and I'm going to point to Tom's summary as a pretty good summation of my experiences as well: http://thespoke.net/blogs/tjrandell/archive/2006/08/14/966884.aspx  Don't hate me! :-)

I'm a Daily Show fan.  It's true.  That's probably why I enjoyed the clip Alfred posted with Ed Helms.  I know I've seen it before, but it still cracks me up.  I like that I know some of the interns/recruiters as well.  Very fun. 

Some of the Imagine Cup finalists flew to Redmond this week to meet up with Bill and show him their projects.  The US team (missing Will) are pictured here.  Very cool. 

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing will be held this October.  Registration is now open.  If you're a student and missed the scholarship deadline, you can still get a reduced rate.  I'd also check with your department... some schools have funding for students to go to conferences like this.  Registration is here. 

I'm also happy to say that I'll be speaking on a panel at the conference.  The other women on the panel work at IBM, Google and Dolby.  It's really interesting, very diverse crowd.  Two of us work remotely.  One of us is in a PhD program and works part time.  We'll be speaking October 5th about "Succeeding in Industry Jobs: Straight Talk about the First Five Years."

One more thing!  Facebook.  This is mostly interesting to students in the US and some in the UK, but we started a group on Facebook not too long ago.  Daryll, Cristina and I monitor the message board there.  Good times. :-)  If you'd like to add yourself, search for the Microsoft Student Group.  Not surprisingly, we're a sponsored group.

First, I'm really excited to say that I'm going to be taking the winning team from the US Software Design Invitational to the Imagine Cup Finals in India.  This is very exciting, both because it will be my first Imagine Cup finals and because the team is great.  We won't be flying from the same airport since they're in Virginia, but we'll meet up in Newark to take the VERY LONG direct flight to New Delhi. 

I'm going to be sending my passport off later this week so that I can get a visa for this trip.  Does it make anyone else really nervous to think about their passport being in the mail?  I guess it's a federal offense to mess with the mail, but still...

Microsoft Mobile & Embedded DevCon 2006 is ramping up.  The event is May 8-11 in Vegas.  Two interesting blogs you may consider monitoring if you're interested in mobile/embedded development are:

• Mike Hall's Blog:  Embedded Stuff.  I'm jealous about Brain at Microsoft.com.  Very Jealous.
• Backstage at MEDC:  the real dirt on MEDC. :-)

It's a Day in the Life of three recent UW CSE grads.  The young women now work at Microsoft, Google and Amazon (listed in reverse-alphabetical order ;-)).  It gives a good overview of what your first couple of years after graduation could look like in a "typical" software engineering position.  Very cool for people considering software as a field.