Patrick Cauldwell, the last presenter of the conference, just wrapped up his talk.

His was unique in that, while most of us write software that does silly little things, Patrick's software helps keep all these freaky boxes all over the world from exploding.

His talk was titled, "XML on Large Power Transformers and Industrial Batteries," and I'm going to remember it.

Whenever I'm saying something good about .NET in the presence of the type of people who refer to Microsoft as "M$," I'm always asked "Great, but who's using it for anything important?"

Well, I'd say Serveron (the company for which Patrick works) is using it for something rather important.

In fact, after Patrick's talk, I think Serveron should adopt the following slogan:

    Serveron: Using .NET to keep the whole god damned world from catching on fire

The only bad part about the talk had nothing at all to do with Patrick - About half of the attendees left just before his talk. That was pretty lame.

It's like they were thinking that, just because it was the last talk of the day, that it somehow wasn't as important as the rest, which is perfectly ridiculous.

It reminds me of a strange thing that my girlfriend does with the microwave: No matter how long she sticks something in for, she always removes the food item when there are only 15 seconds left on the clock. It doesn't matter if the food is done or not. She just simply will not wait.

I guess these people couldn't wait either.