Hi all

Yesterday Fårup Sommerland (http://www.faarupsommerland.dk/) opened up for this season. We are lucky to have season tickets so we decided to go there for the opening.

It was a great trip. Andreas (6 years old) has no trouble laughing his way through the worst and most horrible amusement rides. Emil is a bit more careful and stays in the children’s area with smaller more slow amusement rides

The park itself is great. Lots of rides, large ice creams, huge aqua park which opens in June, and a large area with grills that are free to use to grill your own food.

We are probably going next weekend again

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eliasen

Hi all

We’ve spent the last 4 months renovating our house. We started on December 27’th where we started knocking down walls, breaking up floors and tearing down ceilings.

Now, 4 months later, our house has two new bathrooms, a new kitchen, a new roof, a new room for our older son, and heating in the floors in most of the house.

It’s almost over now, and it actually looks all right.

We’re happy it’s over and we’ll probably never do anything like this again!

On Tuesday an interior designer is coming to talk about our living room and what we can do with it.

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eliasen

Hi all

I took the exam (70-595) in BizTalk 2010 a couple of days ago.

This was my fifth exam in BizTalk, counting the exams in BizTalk 2000, BizTalk 2004, BizTalk 2006 and BizTalk 2006 R2.

And just to answer the most common questions:

• No, I didn’t prepare
• No, I can’t give you any pointers as to what to read

This completes my still perfect streak in BizTalk exams

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eliasen

Hi all

Just to let you all know that the next Danish BizTalk User Group event will take place on January 19’th 2011. You can find the invitation at http://www.dbug.dk/files/biztalk%20brugergruppe%20januar%202011.pdf

Cheers

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eliasen

Hi all

A couple of days ago, I gave my very first presentation outside Denmark. The Swedish BizTalk User Group had invited me to speak about transactions in orchestrations, and I happily accepted

I have given lots of presentations, both for customers and for the Danish BizTalk User Group and the Aalborg .NET User Group.

This one was different, though, since this time I was doing a focused technical presentation and someone even had to pay money to get me there. Not that I was paid, but they ended up paying maybe 1000 dollars in travel expenses and hotel.

It went well, I think…

I posted on my technical blog at http://blog.eliasen.dk/2010/11/20/SlidesAndCodeFromPresentation.aspx where I provided the slides and source code from my demo.

Thanks.

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eliasen

Hi all

As many of you have probably read in my last post (http://jan.eliasen.dk/post/2010/10/01/Passed-the-TOGAF-9-Foundation-Exam-today.aspx), I took both the TOGAF 9 foundation and certified exams last Friday. The results form the foundation exam were provided immediately, and I passed. The results from the certified exam weren’t due for 5-7 days, but luckily they arrived Monday afternoon.

So, basically, I passed this as well, and I am now TOGAF 9 Certified.

Yeah…

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eliasen

Hi all

This last week I have been taking a pretty intensive TOGAF 9 course. Today we took the exams, and I am happy to announce that I passed the Foundation exam.

After passing the foundation exam we all took the “TOGAF 9 Certified” exam, but unfortunately the result from this exam isn’t due for another 5-7 days… so basically I am just waiting… and waiting…

Perhaps, right now, you are thinking about what on earth a BizTalk developer/architect/MVP is doing taking a TOGAF certification, but this is simply me evolving into a more architecture like role…

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eliasen

Hi all

Yesterday the whole family (Wife, two kids and myself) went to an apple farm (http://www.frugtogmost.dk/) to get apples. I’ve never been to an apple farm before, but it was a great trip, even though it rained, and the kids loved it. The farm had a tractor that had some carts after it and we got a ride around the farm in one of the carts

We ended up picking (and hence buying) 7,5kg apples, 6kg pears and some plums. Oh yeah, and 3,75L apple juice

All in all a great trip… and most important to me, off course, is, that I had the time, since I no longer work that hard on the book.

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eliasen

Hi all

So I spent Wednesday and Thursday in this week in Sweden, which was a strange experience.

First of all, even though our languages are actually quite similar, I don’t understand a single word.

Secondly, even though Sweden are bragging that they are the country in the world where the most people have the fastest broadband internet connections (or something like that) they still have a very primitive way to handle train passengers that have bought a 10-ticket-strip. You need to go to an employee and get a manual stamp on the piece of paper.

And finally, a weird experience was when I got out of the airport in Stockholm and needed a cab to take me to my hotel. Funny thing was that there were cabs in 5 lines and the cab drivers from all the front row cabs and even some of the cabs in the second row were all shouting to make me choose that particular cab. I hate that – several people wanting me to choose them and having to reject some of them. And I wonder why on earth the cab drivers from the cabs in the second row were also shouting. I mean… their cabs couldn’t even get out! In Denmark, if you try to get in a cab that is not the cab that was first on the scene, the cab driver will tell you to go to the cab that was first on the scene. They make sure internally that cabs get customers in the same order the cabs arrived in.

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eliasen

Hi all

My older son started school a month ago, and we take our bikes to school every morning. It’s good exercise and it teaches him to do that instead of taking a car no matter where we are going.

But, his bike is rather small and he really must put in an effort to keep up with the rest of us

So today we got him a new larger bike. It has three gears and a hand brake, and he loves it. He is out riding it with his mother right now. I think they are getting a cake from the bakery actually, so we all get something from this

It’s just fantastic to watch him on his new bike, and Monday morning will be great, going to school

So if any of you wondered what the DKr 3000,- were to be used for, this is it!

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eliasen