I finally received my Developer Preview account invitation for Googles new communication tool. I have to say this looks pretty dang cool. It is obviously a bit buggy right now but I think it is really promising. Plus the name is inspired from Joss Whedon’s Firefly series. Anyway, if you want to see what it’s about, check out this video.

Ok, so I didn’t go across Middle Earth but I did go across the country.  I had a meeting for work that was in Cambridge, MD.  The meeting was a User Group meeting for Traction Software.  We just started using it at work.  It is an Enterprise blog/wiki/knowledge management package.

Anyway, I am not much of a people person and was going to be travelling by myself so I asked Kami if she wanted to go with me.  Despite her fear of flying she agreed that it would be fun.  We talked to Jake and Carolyn and they agreed to watch the kids for us for 5 days.  We owe them soooo much.

It was really nice to get away for a few days.  We left on Sunday morning, flew to Seattle on a small turboprop, then to Chicago and then to Baltimore.  From there we drove a rental car to Cambridge, about 2 hours away.  It was 1:00am EDT by the time we got to the hotel.

Monday and Tuesday I had meetings until 5 or so.  Kami drove around the town and did some writing.  You can read about it on her blog.  After my meetings we went out and got some food and then back to the hotel to hang out.  Wednesday was a short day so we had some time to see the few sites around the area.

Thursday we drove back to Baltimore and began the trek home.  This time we flew to Denver and then to Spokane so that was very nice.  We also got home by 9:00.  We really missed the kids.  They seemed to have quite a good time with their Aunt and Uncle.  I’m so glad we could work this out.  Thanks Jake and Carolyn.

Just an update on the microblogging site I set up.  I was able to get XMPP support.  That means that I can post by sending an Instant Message to an account on my server.  So here are the instructions to post to your profile from google talk.  There are only a couple of requirements.

Prerequisits

1. A google account so you can use google talk.  A gmail account should already be set up for that.
2. An account on my micro blog at micro.notsopc.com
3. An IM client.  I use Pidgin for mine since it supports all of the IM services (including google talk.

Steps

1. Open Pidgin
2. Setup your google talk account
3. Add update@notsopc.com as a buddy to your account.
4. Log in to your account on micro.notsopc.com
5. Click Settings
6. Click IM
7. Enter your google talk user name
8. Click Add
9. After a minute or so you should get a message from update@notsopc.com with a link.  Follow the link

That should be all.  You should be able to send a message to update@notsopc.com and have it show up in your profile on the site.