This is a *VERY* exciting week for Gray's Matter and by extension the software industry in general, and not just because your role model is back from a 3 week vacation in the remotest regions of the planet, places where the internet is not only a foreign concept but in fact considered to be an urban myth.   To commemorate my courageously surviving while abroad we will be featuring not just one but *two* Winners At Life in the next seven days.  That's right, everyone is a winner this week. 

Most of you know that I - along with a previous Winner At Life, Peter Ritchie - am in charge of the Developer Foundations track for Microsoft's TechDays 2009.    Many of you *also* know how Justice Gray writes presentation abstracts.  Let me assure you that the only difference between the abstracts I have written in the past and the abstracts written for TechDays is that these ones actually focus on technical content rather than the history of Laurence Gowan's music or how to get past level 116 in Chip's Challenge.  You can imagine how concerned I was when finding out that my usual style of writing was up against a foe that even I might not be able to defeat - Microsoft legal.

This is where Damir Bersinic comes in.  You see, Damir for all intents and purposes *is* Microsoft legal.  Better yet, like myself he has incredibly good taste in presentation abstracts and thus not only are the session abstracts approved, but they were largely unaltered from their originals.  This was enough by itself to earn my respect, but Damir was was not satisified with merely respect and instead went one step further to earn my undying adulation.   Here is a look at a "before legal" and "after legal" version of one of the abstracts to show why Damir is my newest personal hero and thus your newest personal hero as well.

Here is one of the Developer Foundations sessions, after legal looked at it:

Session 2: Going from 0 to 100 Dollars per Hour with the .NET You Never Knew

Getting tired of seeing software developers lounging on yachts and sipping margaritas all day and wondering when the “good life” is coming your way? We’ll give you a hint, true software development success starts with understanding:

• How generics can be used for more than just collections
• The true power of lambdas and anonymous methods
• The ins and outs of LINQ to objects
• Proper error handling beyond try-catch-finally
• The importance of regular bathing

This presentation will give you guidance on everything else - and more - so that you too can say that .NET helped you retire by the time you were 30!

Here is that same session, *before* legal.  I have noted the sentence that was chopped out in bold italics.

• how generics can be used for more than just collections
• the true power of lambdas and anonymous methods
• the ins and outs of LINQ to objects
• proper error handling beyond try-catch-finally
• the importance of regular bathing

We're not legally allowed to show you how to do that last one at this conference, but this presentation will give you guidance on everything else - and more - so that you too can say that .NET helped *you* retire by the time you were 30!

Yes, you read that right.  Damir has not only left our presentation abstracts largely intact but in fact, he has changed the abstracts to allow things that *I* found legally questionable.  If there was any doubt in your mind that TechDays 2009 is going to be a conference to remember, this should erase all doubts.  And in the unlikely event that you are still unsure, tomorrow morning the other three sessions and their abstracts will be revealed.   Go to the TechDays site and get their early bird registration while you still can - tomorrow you will read these sessions and want to go to TechDays so badly that you may likely resort to selling yourself on the street to get a TechDays registration.  Knowing the average software developers build, I can tell you that prostitution is likely not your conference-going solution - you just don't have that kind of time!