Last year on Christmas Eve we had an unusual dump of snow for the West (Wet) Coast of Canada.  See the picture I posted in last year’s Christmas blog.

While it is not unusual for central Canada and the Prairies to have a lot of snow at this time of year, rain is our normal weather for the Christmas season.

This year we are back to normal, as shown in the same view taken from my porch this afternoon.

So, while the snow kept us from going to church to celebrate the season last year, we will be off (in a couple of hours) to Midnight Mass this year.  For those of you who are Christian like us, we wish you a Merry Christmas, and for everyone we wish you the best this holiday season.

Last week my Dell XPS M1330 laptop died.

After searching the internet I discovered that the problem was a faulty NVidea graphics card, which was quite a well-known problem. 

On Thursday, I called Dell’s Canadian XPS Customer Support line and the representative immediately recognised the problem and arranged to have a box shipped to me so I could pack it up and send it to their Canadian Service Centre in Newmarket, Ontario.

The box arrived Friday morning, and I packed the laptop into it and dropped it off at the local Purolator office in Langley.

Yesterday, I was surprised when a Purolator delivery man knocked on my door with my laptop, and its running great now!!

So Kudos to Dell, who expedited this repair taking 4 business days to ship a box 3 times across the country as well as repairing my computer.

It is dinner time on New Years Eve, here on the Wet Coast.  Most of the world is already celebrating the New Year, but as in many things we are a bit late here in North America.

Looking Back

2008 has been a challenging year for many people as the financial crisis struck.  Many retired people or people approaching retirement took a big hit in their income as their savings were decimated.  Thankfully, I still have a few years to go, for my retirement savings to recover.

For me 2008 was quite a good year.  In January, my Microsoft MVP award was renewed for a 2nd year, and a month later I was nominated to the prestigious ASPInsiders group.  Both of these “groups” held summits in Seattle and I met a lot of other ASP.NET developers who I respect. 

In June, my wife Eileen and I celebrated our 25th Wedding Anniversary by travelling to Italy for 17 days.  I have blogged about this in some depth.

The fall was full of speaking engagements.  It began with Open Force Europe in the Netherlands in early October, followed by a trip to England to visit family.  In November I spoke at the .NET BC User Group meeting at BCIT and at Open Force North America/DevConnections in Las Vegas.

Finally, in late November, DotNetNuke Corporation received Series A Venture Financing which hopefully will allow us to grow, both the company and the community.

Looking Forward – 2009

2009 starts tomorrow.  For me, January 1st sees me start a new job as I become a salaried employee of DotNetNuke Corporation (I had previously been working on a personal services contract).  We have already hired a few new developers that will also be starting early in the new year, and in February or March we should be able to open an office, somewhere in the Fraser Valley, just east of Vancouver. 

It will feel strange to go back to commuting to work again – I have worked from home since 1995 – but I am looking forward to working closely with a team of excellent programmers as we grow DotNetNuke.

We don’t have any travel plans (yet) this year, although I expect I will be at one or both Open Force conferences.  I would really like to travel to Australia (hint, hint).

To conclude, I wish everybody a Happy New Year.  If 2008 was bad for you, I hope 2009 will be better.  If 2008 was good for you, I hope 2009 will continue that trend.