In December, Microsoft held community "Installfest" events for its launch of the Visual Studio 2008 IDE. For attending the event, all participants were given a key to get a full-version of Visual Studio 2008 Professional as well as a Visual Studio 2008 "t-shirt". Overall, it was a GREAT event, some seriously talented programmers gave short speeches about their experiences working with it while it was in Beta as well as the fact that they managed to tie in a Charitable cause along with the event, by giving away an Xbox360 Elite, the only catch was, you had to either bring in a receipt of a donation to "Toys for Tots", or bring in a Toy. I'm positive that the one XBox360 brought joy to a LOT of children considering the fact that they had at least 3 large tables completely COVERED in toys... Anyways, there was a giveaway, which, if you blogged about the event, you would be entered to win a Microsoft Zune 80gb. Here is a link to my post with a picture of my zune and the DHL package it came in.

This is funny, theregister is reporting that due to rain in india quite a FEW Tech Companies are out of commission, including but not limited to HP. You know, for as MUCH as the Tech Giants push their redundant technologies, and push their fault-tolerant products...its AMUSING to see that they don't "Practice what they Preach".
Here is the link:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/07/05/monsoon_call_center_floods/