How does it go again?  "The worst thing will happen at the worst possible time."  That's the most often-seen definition of Murphy's law, right?

Right.

So, imagine if you will.  You've been selected as a speaker at TechEd in Orlando, Florida.  You arrive on a Sunday, have a nice dinner and some drinks with friends you haven't seen in months (and may not see again until the next big conference), and unwind.  The hotel?  It's nice; it has its quirks, but it's Orlando and the hotel has lots of flowers around it and a nice fountain and ... you get the point.  That first day, the tension is already melting.  Good friends, good food, good drinks, good weather.  You go to bed the first night, ready and rarin' to start your week at Tech Ed with a bang.  The alarm is set for 7PM so you can shower and catch the keynote before hitting the expo floor for the morning's "swag tour".

Your phone, set to beep only if messages arrive from your spouse or from your server monitoring system, starts beeping before the sun even rises.

"Server down."

To quote Starbuck (and, well, pretty much every other lead character in Battlestar Galactica): "Frak me."

I don't know about you, but I hate waking up that way.  I prefer to wake up before the alarm goes off, slowly roll out of bed, and crawl into the shower.  I'm not a morning person at all.

I'll speed up the story now.  No sense reliving the whole tragedy.  Here's the fast-forward version: Server crashes, catastrophic RAID failure.  Backups, tested monthly (and last tested three weeks ago) are useless.  I rebuild the array and run some software that recovers files from their original stripes, and recover a surprising number of files.  They're all pretty mangled, and most of them are useless.  I don't really have the time or the focus to start new servers from scratch while I'm in Orlando.  Not that the servers were in my house or anything (they weren't, of course, we're not some fly-by-night operation here), but a hotel room with a slow network connection is not the best place to do your best technical work.

Thursday afternoon comes, and I'm dangerously close to a breakdown.  I've been knee-deep in server doo-doo for days.  Todd and Matt (two of the greatest trainers in the world, I should add) dive into the muck with me and both of them say (alternately), "Dude, take a break, we'll help you clean this up."  It's hard to let go, but I can see that I'm minutes away from a full-blown freak-out.  I quietly put down the laptop lid, put on some shorts and sandals, and drive to Epcot to ride Mission Space four times.  Then, off to the attendee party at Universal Studios Islands of Adventure.

Friday didn't seem as bad.  It got better, too, because my wife and son arrived to spend a long weekend with me in Florida.  We saw my mom and step-dad, went to a few tourist traps, and all-in-all had a great time.

When I get home, I have one full day before I need to leave again to teach a class.  SharePoint Experts and SharePoint Bootcamp come back online during that time.  Then, I spend my evenings and Father's Day weekend getting as much content back into SharePoint Blogs as possible (thanks again to Dan Larson and Glenn Barry from NewsGator for their help in recovering old content), and here we are.

I said that I hate Murphy, and I do: His laws suck out loud.  But YOU guys are another story; the readers and bloggers here at SharePoint Blogs are part of the the greatest technology community on this planet.  Every e-mail I've received has been supportive and appreciative.  Every phone call and blog comment cheers me on.  I can't thank you guys enough for your patience, your understanding, and your support!  It's been a bumpy road, and we still have some ways to go, but the outpouring of support I've received by e-mail has given me the energy to keep going. 

So, from the bottom of my heart, THANK YOU.

You guys rock.