I've been using Visual Studio 2005 now for a while. There are a lot of features that I really like--master pages, for example, or the various types of specialized collections and the 'contains' function that collections now have.

I do have to admit that I'm really looking forward to the Visual Studio Service Pack that is rumoured to be in the pipeline for the second half of this year. The Visual Studio IDE crashes on me *constantly* and these crashes are really annoying. The problem seems to occur most frequently after I execute a site in debug mode, then stop it and try to make a change to one of the solution's projects. It's almost as if debugging hasn't stopped...I've tried uninstalling all of the third-party components that I was using and have turned off SQL Server 2005 express edition. I've even killed the ASP.NET development server prior to making changes...and still the IDE is crashing.

This is why I had waited until VS2005 was formally released before I used it to develop software. I'm starting to think that perhaps I should have waited until after the first service pack...

I've just accepted a new job, and I'll be starting in a few weeks. The new job offers some exciting opportunities for personal growth: It's a small company that is involved with IVR technologies...I will be working with Microsoft Speech Server.

Moving to a different job has always been a bittersweet experience for me...I regret leaving behind the camaraderie of my coworkers, the opportunities left unrealized, the projects uncompleted at the same time that I look forward to the challenges and opportunities of the new position, and now is no different.