More from my dad on Bone Lick Park BBQ, and other new West Village eateries....

I spent all day today at the New York Microsoft office at a regional gathering of Microsoft MVPs (Most Valuable Professionals).  I have been a Visual Basic MVP for about a year now, in addition to being an RD (Regional Director) for about 3 years.  RDs were invited as well, though I was the only one in attendance.

This was a great opportunity to meet other MVPs from the New York/New Jersey region as well as to meet MVP program execs from Redmond, TechNet event staff, and Bob Suess (pronounced "cease" and not like the guy who wrote "Cat in the Hat") who is the new Regional DPE Director for the entire East region.  DPE stands for Developer Platform Evangelism, and despite the similarity in title, the Regional DPE Director is not an RD.

All Microsoft people present, both Redmond-based and NY/NJ-based, told us what they did, what their goals were and then very patiently listened to our feedback and ideas.  Let me just say that it was refreshing to have Redmond people come out to "the field" and also very encouraging to see that someone in the field like Bob Suess was clearly excited about working with developer influencers and building community.  Those of us who have been working for years to build successful user groups appreciate the local support and the opportunity to meet people from headquarters without having to get on a plane and go straight across the country and three timezones to do so.

I really know of no other software company that works so closely with 3rd party experts and enthusiasts.  I'd like to hear from anybody who knows otherwise, because I have to assume that IBM, Oracle, Sun, and other firms must at least have some initiatives in this area, even if they're smaller and less organized.

A new neighborhood place opened recently (in the West Village) and it turns out to be one of the only legal, authentic BBQ places in Manhattan.  It's called Bone Lick Park BBQ and it's at 75 Greenwich Avenue, between Bank and 11th (just northwest of the intersection of 7th Avenue and 11th Street, for those of you who find Village geography confusing).  My wife and I have been there once (and really liked it, except for the cornbread) on the advice of my dad, Norman.  He and my mom have now gone back a second time and he emailed me this review:

"We had dinner [at Bone Lick] tonite.  Your mother had the back ribs and I had a combo of beef ribs and chopped pork.  I am enormously impressed with this food because of its authenticity.  I asked and was told that the smoker is right in the basement.  I don't know how the hell they get away with this.  Danny Meyer spent two years trying to get the city to allow a smoker at Blue Smoke.  The BBQ style is Tennessee, which means they rely on the rub for the flavor instead of smothering it in sauce.  You can taste the wood smoke in every bite.
 
Although I still insist that the collards are timid and I agree that the cornbread is insipid, we tried two different sides tonite and were extremely pleased with the limas and the okra.  Makes you forget about the collards. 
 
The beef ribs look like they came off an elephant.  There's about a half pound of meat attached to each one.  They serve two on the combo plate and I could only eat one.  No prob with doggy bags.
 
I asked for the Tabasco and the waiter brought the McIlhenny along with a squirt bottle of their home-made.  This is not the stuff that's already out on the table.  Be sure to ask for it.
 
Finally, we shared a slice of key lime pie.  Wow!  The last time we had anything this good was when we were in Islamorada decades ago. They use real key limes (tart and bitter).  There's nothing like this in NYC."

For a neighborhood joint, this place is really good.  Go sample the fare if you have a chance.

Thankfully, Microsoft announced today that there will be an IE7, that it will designed for users of Windows XP, and that there will be a beta version by the summer.  The denialist rhetoric of promising us an amazing new browser, but tethering it to Longhorn without throwing us a bone beforehand is now over. 

IE's a great browser, and its security issues are more a byproduct of its ubiquity and role of high-value target than of deficient engineering.  On the other hand, the product's been in maintenance mode for a long time, remaining largely unchanged (though not unpatched) for years.  This has left Redmond incredibly vulnerable to attack by the Mozilla Foundation, or for that matter any programming team actually getting some substantive work done.  All the FireFox team had to do was catch up to IE, throw in a few easily implemented features (sorry, I'm a bit jaded) like RSS integration and multiple tabbed browser windows, and yee haw! The Browser Wars are back, and the slow news days at CMP and IDG give way to a festival of provocative headlines and a new round of predicting Microsoft's demise.

So Microsoft is fighting back, as it should (and indeed as it should have done more proactively beforehand) and we'll get some new stuff in the browser.  By the time it's all over, I suspect it will be a non-event.  We'll all revert back to our anxiety over the actual release of all the stuff we saw at PDC in 2003 (Yukon, Whidbey, and Longhorn).

But Microsoft will have learned a lesson, or at least reinforced one already learned: don't rest on your past victories, or customers will start getting impatient and resentful.  Even if it's just for effect, keep the new features coming.  The whole PC culture is built around an attitude of entitlement toward new features, and people get very upset when their entitlements are taken away.

When I have more time, I'll discuss Windows Media Center (I own the HP z545 Digital Entertainment Center and x5400 Media Center Extender), with which I have a love-hate relationship.  But no matter what type of home entertainment center you have, you should strongly consider buying a Harmony Universal Remote from Logitech (I have the 680).  If you don't know about these things, they are learning remotes, but the way you set them up is to connect them to your PC via a USB cable, and then connect to a mother ship Web site which has IR codes for virtually all VCRs, TVs, DVD players, PVRs, media PCs, cable/satellite set tops, tape decks, receivers, CD players, tuners, etc. ever made.  You just tell a browser-based Wizard what makes and models you own and how you have them connected and it will set up just about everything for you, including programming and labeling of configurable "soft buttons" at the top of the unit.  Yes, you will want to tweak the default set up a little and yes, you can teach it IR codes the old-fashioned way if you have to.

But when you're done with set up, ONE button for TV, Music, or DVD/VCR operations will turn EVERYTHING on and switch the inputs on everything and ONE button will turn everything off.  And guess what the latter button is labeled?  Yup...it just says "Off."  This remote is 100% spouse-proof and 100% baby-sitter friendly.  It's tactile (no screen based pronto-type stuff here) and it's back-lit and it's WAY smaller (and shaped like the TiVo "peanut" remote) than my two-handed Marantz RC 2000 Mk II was.  Get one!