Category Informational

There’s still time to register!

Special location based events whether you’re in Chicago or Downers Grove!

Chicago: 7:45 p.m. System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2 Overview
Downers Grove: Resume and Job Interviewing tips

Event URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413068&Culture=en-US
Event Title : CWUG: April Meeting – Chicago Loop
Event Date: Thursday, April 16th
Event Address : 200 E. Randolph, Suite 200, Chicago, IL 60601

Event URL: http://msevents.microsoft.com/CUI/EventDetail.aspx?EventID=1032413069&Culture=en-US
Event Title : CWUG: April Meeting – Downers Grove
Event Date: Thursday, April 16th
Event Address : 3025 Highland Pkwy. Suite 300, Downers Grove, IL 60515

5:00 – 5:30 p.m. Networking
5:30 – 6:00 p.m. Room Introductions
6:00 – 6:15 p.m. Meeting kick off
6:15 – 7:30 p.m. Windows Gone Mobile (Windows mobile, netbooks, and multitouch devices)
7:30 – 7:45 p.m. break
7:45 – 9:00 p.m. Hands On Lab (Bitlocker To Go – bring your own USB Stick)

Join our group on Facebook
Follow CWUG on Twitter
And don’t forget to visit the main site for the CWUG!

If you remember my past posts on Elevate America, there are now some updates to this!

Through a simple clickable map you can find out information on how to obtain YOUR voucher!

This information really speaks to the heart of the issue

The vouchers are part of a new national program Microsoft announced at the National Governors Conference in February. Elevate America hopes to offer job training to as many as 2 million Americans over the next three years.

And if you’re like Sue T. Carter, this comes at the best time possible

Sue T. Carter of Bellevue picked up one of the first vouchers. She said she has been working part time for more than two years and really needs to find a job that will help her pay her rent, because she is less than a month away from eviction.

Special thanks to our friends at the MS Learning Community for the heads up on this

If you remember that “Get On The Bus” Promotion I spoke about before, they’ve changed the game a bit more now! Now it’s not only easier, but it’s even easier than that!

Now, you have the opportunity to be rewarded like so:

• Free admission to TechEd 2009
• Hotel stay during the conference
• Return airfare from Los Angeles to your nearest major airport
• Your choice of:
• Airfare from your closest major airport to your choice of cities on the Career Express tour route, where you’ll meet the bus and ride the rest of the way to TechEd, or
• Airfare directly from your closest major airport to Los Angeles

That’s right! You can be flown to “get on the bus” *or!* You can get flown directly to TechEd itself! How’s that for amazing! It’s like winning one of those raffle contests we’ve all hoped and dreamed to win as children!

So, what does it take to win given light of the news of “I can go directly to TechEd!”

• Send us an e-mail with your name, MCP ID, and preferred contact info. Include a link to the essay we asked for (“Why I’m Passionate about Microsoft Learning and Certification”) and an optional video URL.
• You have until 9am Pacific time on Monday, April 20th to enter; we’ll select and notify up to 5 winners the next day.
• Full legal rules and restrictions here.

And let me break that down for you a bit if you’re at all misunderstanding:

You are required to:

• BE an MCP – Meaning you have an MCP ID, No ID, No Soup for you
• Provide a link to an essay you wrote about “Why you’re passionate about MS Learning and Certification”
• An essay does not mean, a resume, your webpage when it doesn’t include an Essay, or any other form of situation where in the end it does not equal your essay.  If you want an example of what an essay looks like, read mine here:
• Get on the Bus: You mean I have to write an essay?!
• (Optional) Include a link to a Video, further stating your passion for MS Learning and Certification.  Again, here is another example :)
• Get On The Bus: The Video

Do all of this by April 20th and you’re in business! So, it’s never been so easy!

If you want to find more information about this – Read the source article from the Microsoft Learning Communities Blog Another Chance to Get on the Bus (or Fly Directly to TechEd!)

Whether you fly direct, or get on the bus – This will be an opportunity you’ll never forget!

Extra! Extra! New Post! – Zynga Mafia Wars – How to win a fight, best weapons, armor and vehicles

So, by now some of you may have noticed some cool new features, enhanced gifting, asking mafia members for help, etc.   So here are some of those items broken down a bit!

Helping your family out! This is a cool feature.  From what I can tell – you publish your need to help complete a job, and all they need to do is click on it and wondrous things can happen, both for you and the person clicking on it!

It doesn’t require you to use up any of your energy or anything, you just earn experience and money for clicking on something, effectively helping out your community!

That said, there is a lot of value to be derived both for you in completing the job, the mafia member you’re helping, and Zynga from a viral spread into the community perspective, so a tip of the hat to them for introducing this :)

In the realm of Gifting, I’m sure we’ve all seen this lovely new icon:

Yes, it is the little package, and yes I have a lot of horses :) Though that said, I’ll publish a list of what outstanding items I have that I’m glad to give away if anyone is in need :)

Also, here is a breakdown of the Loot and the bonus you get from them

If you happen to have pictures of the missing bonuses (and the missing bonuses) let me know!  Or if I’m missing anything in general :)

	Collection	Bonus
	Diamond Flush Collection	+1 energy
	Heart Flush Collection	???
	Sculptures Collection	+3 defense
	Poker Chips Collection
	Club Flush Collection	???
	Cigars Collection
	Spade Flush Collection	+2 stamina
	Rings Collection
	Ties Collection	+6 defense
	Paintings Collection
	Cufflinks Collection
	Great Race Horse Collection

And what is the greatest addition to gifting? You can now gift items you win from doing jobs! Items such as Blackmail Photos, Computer Set-Up’s, and the ever elusive Untraceable Cellphone (A day doesn’t go by where I don’t get a request for those, as I use them all up myself too :))

If you’re looking for other information on Mafia wars, check out my other post :)

And as always, feel free to add me on Facebook, Mafia Wars, and on Twitter :)

Extra! Extra! New Post! – Zynga Mafia Wars – How to win a fight, best weapons, armor and vehicles

Wow! New Version of TweetDeck! Lots of new Features! Lots to get used to, and some things to get annoyed by!

Firstly.. there is a new Icon! And to tell you the truth, I keep losing it in my application list! doh!  But once I get past that (Yes I keep trying to get past it) I am fine!

Many people are really intrigued by the “Facebook” integration, though that has been there since v0.22b, so I’m not really going to talk about it too much here! – Just to say you’ll end up seeing this:   which will show your friends status on Facebook below it! – You are limited to a single Facebook account (FYI :)) Oh, and part of that is the functionality to post to Twitter, Facebook or both!   Again, not a big deal to me – especially as I use the Facebook plugin app to auto-pull my tweets and update my status (To the semi-annoyance of my Facebook friends, but I use Twitter more formally anyway, so people need to get over that :))

On to Options! (re: Settings)

Look at some of these new settings!.. The big ones is really.. “Show preview information for short URLs” which looks something like this:

So, that is pretty cool, and yes I have that enabled so I can see what kind of content it will be! When you do click on the URL it will still launch via the ‘short’ URL meaning if it’s an Adjix, Bit.ly or other type of ‘tracking’ link, it’ll still get the tracking on it

Oh, and last but not least.. If you’ve ever heard me complain about the Resource Usage of TweetDeck, and how it will tend to eat up >1gb of ram on my system.  Well, it seems the memory leak is fixed (for the moment.. I’ll leave it on over night and see how much I rack up) but it’s been going pretty good to stay in the ~200mb range!

So, good luck out there on your upgrades – Upgrade now! I’ll continue to monitor my resources and more, and if I find out anything new that I’d really like to complain about.. I will :)