Business Trip (part 2) - The Training
Day 2
Today started the beginning of my training for the CMS 400 .Net v6. The setup was not all that I expected. It seems that they just started these trainings back in June, yet have a high request for them. Initially it was going to be once every other month.. . but now has pushed to about once a week. It is also not restricted to New Hampshire, they had one in L.A. and the UK. It began with a small room (in the Ektron space of about 8 rooms) with 8 computers. They added more, knocking down the wall next to it to have 5 rows of computers and 2 projectors.
As far as the CMS, it seems they set us up with MS Web Developer Express 2005.. (free).. and it seems to be handling well. We are simply integrating their CMS dll file for controls, then dragging and dropping. I have never been the one to do the WYSIWYG, but it works and is quick for the demo. For future times, this may be easier (if it integrates with the ColdFusion for in-house projects). The projects are in simple VB.Net .. never used it before, I would prefer C# and learn that. I may do that down the road. So Nic (guy here I work next to) and I sit and listen, go through the training exercises and start moding the code to our liking. I am on lunch break.. so I will be back later. Oh.. .and if you see the timestamp, it says 8:28am, it is 12:28pm here 
So then after the last part of introductions, we were given an invite to a Cocktail Reception at the Hunt Club in the nice Crown Plaza Hotel. I first stopped by an Antique shop and found some cool stuff, but everything was closing around 5pm! I drove to the reception and was able to eat some good finger foods along with chat time with the Sales Engineers. I also hung out with Tom from Chicago and Nic again from Indianapolis. The one thing about cocktails means Alcohol. I do not drink, so I requested Mt. Dew (the drink for real coders). Well the people saw me drinking that and suddenly requested that instead of more drinks. I was disappointed when no developers showed up, but we figured that they would think we would just complain because they were the ones that wrote the code OR they are locked up in their building getting ready for version 6.1 (with significant upgrades again after hearing the voice of the customers. To include a portal like setup right out of the box).
Anyways, one last rant. They have so many Dunkin’ Donuts around here. It is like Starbucks back in WA, they have about 4 between here and the training center (about 7 miles). I will have to stop by at least once before I leave on Friday.