So, last week Frank Shaw, VP at Waggener Edstrom asked me to setup a dinner with Jim Allchin. Rules? Had to be less than 10 people. Had to be bloggers who live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

So, the dinner happened last night and Thomas Hawk has a full report on the dinner. Also, Evan Williams (the guy who started Blogger that later got sold to Google) reported on the dinner.

Lots of little tidbits are in Thomas' report, including some news about Media Center.

Yet another reason to start a blog and put your freaking email address on it! (It was amazing how many people I couldn't invite because I couldn't figure out how to get ahold of them).

Slashdot also linked to this stuff.

I have just been in a funk this week. Been really tired and just haven't been motivated to blog. But, now, I have a big backup of items. Will I post? Keep your aggregators ready.

Maryam is feeling a lot better now, though, and I find my mood is improving. Interesting how your relationships with other people can affect your ability to write.

I probably won't start posting a lot until this weekend, though. We have a slew of videos coming out today, including an entire hour with the Avalon team that really rocks (you just got a secret preview). They show off a lot of demos of what Avalon is in that video. It'll be up on Channel 9 this afternoon. I also have been working on our file formats and believe that the download file will work better on Macs than my previous files.

Update: the really sexy stuff in the Avalon demo video starts at 33:30. Arik Cohen shows off Avalon's new vector-based capabilities that make Windows resolution independent.

eWeek: why Longhorn Matters.

News.com: An early peek at Longhorn.

We're talking about it over on Channel 9 as well.

Of course, I answered with a crude "Longhorn hype knob" drawing over on Channel 9. :-)

As for myself, yeah, I've seen Longhorn and, yeah, I'm very excited to be working at Microsoft because of it (and other things). But, I'm going to keep my own personal hype knob down at one until you have bits. I hear that'll be soon, but I'd rather wait until then.

I can't wait to talk with you about it, though.