Thank you to Microsoft and the Indianapolis .NET Developers Association (which I Googled for "indy nda" and got an ip address for the web site? strange) for my new shiny copy of Visual Studio 2008.  I was able to attend the Indianapolis InstallFest 2008, and it was a really enjoyable experience.

My sports fanatic brother-in-law asked about my whereabouts on Thursday evening and he couldn't understand why the heck I would be out of town at an InstallFest all evening.  Geeks sitting around installing software on their laptops.  Once my wife explained to him that it's like a geek football game he understood completely.

I had no trouble getting Visual Studio 2008 installed.  It seemed to take a really long time to install the second item (.NET 3.5 I think), but after that it seemed to move a bit faster.  I recommend getting the process started and leaving your computer alone.  Seeing the little faces on the right with little tidbits of information (which was hard for me to read because of the font and background colors) got boring really quickly.

The guy next to me had his install crash on the first time, but it installed fine after a reboot.  I guess the installer learned from it's mistake and didn't make it again.

The first project I opened up was my own web site.  I use some ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 stuff, and it was all referenced in the web.config.  I guess I removed the ASP.NET AJAX 1.0 stuff when I prepared for Visual Studio 2008, so my site would not work.  I removed the references to the version and such in web.config for the System.Web.Extensions entries, and tried the site again.  Still no go.  I restarted Visual Studio 2008, opened the properties of my site, and told it to target the .NET 3.5 framework.  My web site started up after that.  I checked my web.config, and it updated all my refences to the 3.5 components - that was pretty cool.

There were some demos.  The most amusing part was watching the first demonstrator try to use a hand held microphone and type on the keyboard at them same time. I took a picture with my phone of it, but now I don't see my picture any more.  Maybe the guy was really an uber hacker and was able to erase it from my phone.  I'm including a picture I took at a Colts game instead - I think that's Addai crossing the goal line behind that guy's head.

I hope to be able to make it to other Indy NDA events in the future.