What do you do when you suddenly realize that the man who invented multi-track recording, delay, reverb, and the solid-body electric guitar is 93 years old and still hasn't signed your guitar which bears his name? You take a ride down to the Iridium Jazz Club in New York where Les Paul plays every Monday to ask him for a signature.

Les is my hero. He inspired me as a child to use both halves of my brain. He showed me that you could be technical and creative at the same time. That's where innovation comes from. I was attending my grandfather-in-law's 90th birthday party and I guess it hit me on the ride home... you know, I really ought to get my act together and go get my guitar signed by the man himself. So I did.

The Les Paul Trio (Lou Pallo-guitar, John Colianni-piano, and Les Paul) was recently expanded to include Nicki Parrott, an incredibly talented and beautiful bass player and singer. They played a bunch of standard jazz tunes, and Les pointed out the different members of the band, who all got to showcase their talents. As for him, he's still got it. He's not as fast as he used to be, but his chops are still as sweet and tasty as ever.

I can't say it was a cheap night, $50 cover for each set (I stayed for both) and a $25 food/drink minimum (also per set) but getting my guitar signed by the Wizard of Waukesha was well worth every penny.

After he signed my guitar the guy in the white shirt standing to the left in the picture said "it's kind of like getting Alexander Graham Bell to sign your telephone, isn't it?" Yup!

I also invited him to be a guest on .NET Rocks! We'll see how that turns out, but I think his stories would be more than inspirational to our listeners.

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<Dare Obasanjo on Social Networking/>

Scott sits down with Dare Obasanjo and they chat about the interesting problems that Social Networking sites face.

http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=141

<BabySmash!/>

Scott introduces Carl to BabySmash for the first time, and they chat about some of the services available to MicroISVs, as well as the joys of coding in WPF.

http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=140

<LineRider - Porting a Flash Game to Silverlight 2/>

In this episode, Scott talks to Rick Barraza, an Experience Architect from Synergy with a background in Flash, and Bryan Perfetto, a Developer from Inxile writing his first Silverlight application. They chat about how and why they ported the popular Flash Game LineRider.com to Silverlight 2. Rick Barraza -

http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=139

This makes me proud of my town!

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/travel/escapes/04short.html?ref=escapes

<The Odd Couple - A Developer and a Designer talk about working with XAML/>

Richard is a dev that spends most of his time in the presentation layer and Felix is a designer. Richard is focused on the Xaml and code, unlike Felix who is a tragically hip and talented designer who is focused on design and user experience. Can Xaml bring this odd couple together?

http://hanselminutes.com/default.aspx?showID=138