Microsoft Dynamics GP Technical Conference 2011 - Day minus 1
Wow, things can really get away from you when you are busy. This post is a little late, but here goes.
So, today is Monday, the day before the conference starts and the day after the Technical Issues. I do have an update on the constants issue, thanks to Patrick Roth for confirming it is a known issue.
It turns out that the missing constants issue affects all countries other than the US. This is because when the XXERR.CNK language chunk is applied for GP 2010 SP1, it is somehow damaging the DYNAMICS.DIC and blowing away some 2000 constants. This issue should be fixed soon, in the meantime it is possible to use the RTM Dynamics.dic to develop with and use the DEX.INI setting SkipVersionChecks=TRUE.
Monday started with breakfast at the Ramada. While that is not exciting, the restaurant area has windows that overlook the Ramada's Pool, Sauna and Gym area, and I find it amusing to have this indoor tropical paradise with snow and ice just outside.
Ramada's Pool: One day I have to try out that water slide.
After breakfast Mariano and I spent some time at our usual table in the bar area (the one that is close to the power points on the wall), and worked on finalising our demos for our sessions.... trying to make up for the time lost yesterday.
At lunchtime, the Ramada courtesy shuttle took Mariano and I into the Microsoft Fargo campus, where we met up with Babs Coler (the Technical Conference organiser) and then had some lunch.
Microsoft Fargo Campus: View from Commons to Vista building
Once we had had something to eat, I caught up with Patrick Roth and we went over the materials for our "Upgrading" session. We did a dry run of the presentation with Mariano as our audience. We managed to keep Mariano awake, so the session should be good.
Mariano and I then took some time to visit with the Developer Support, System Support and Escalation Engineering teams on campus. These are the guys I work with alot as part of my role in the Microsoft Dynamics GP support team in the APAC region and it is always good to see them in person.
We then went back to the presentation rooms to finalise our Technical Check (making sure our laptops work with the projectors), only to find that Mariano's super duper awesome massive latest technology 17" Dell XPS Kick Ass desktop replacement laptop was so amazing technologically advanced that it did not have a VGA port to connect to the projectors. It did have HDMI and mini DisplayPort, but not VGA which is still extremely common for projectors. You can read Mariano's post on his blog for the details.
Eventually, we gave up and Patrick dropped us back the hotel, where we retired back to the bar. I seem to be spending a very large amount of time in the bar recently, which is funny as all I am drinking was the latest 2011 vintage of H2O on the rocks.
After a little more work, Mark Rockwell, arrived at the hotel and joined us. As it was getting late, we sat down to have some food. This process took a while. All I can say is don't keep Mark from his food. I thought Mariano was bad, but Mark turns green and gets even taller.... Positively dangerous.
Mariano, Mark, David, Leslie & David
We had a great night of food, drink and good company. An added bonus was the fantastic service we had from Andrea on the bar staff. Andrea (pronounced by us as An-Drey-Argghhh) was a great sport and put up with our antics.
Thanks to Andrea for a fun night and great service.
The day was over and it was time to retire..... But then I had noticed a couple of changes I wanted to make to the Support Debugging Tool code before the presentation the next day. So.... a couple hours later and I went to sleep... with the wake up alarm time only 4 hours away.
Good night. See you at the conference in the morning.
David