With summer starting soon (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), work slows down as folks head out for vacation.  What better time to kick back and watch a TON of technical content from some of the smartest folks at Microsoft?

I’m not sure when Channel 9 got so awesome, but they have a killer platform. All of the videos are free and are available for streaming in HD, embeddable in HTML5 (via H.264 and WebM format), and downloadable as MP3s, WMVs, and MP4s. Most of the sessions even have the PowerPoint deck available for download.

http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/TechEd/NorthAmerica/2012 

• Top Rated Sessions
• Most Viewed Sessions
• All Sessions

What to watch? You can’t go wrong with any of the following. Post your favorites in the comments!

• Mark Russinovich (particularly his sessions on Windows Azure Internals and Windows Azure Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks)
• Scott Guthrie
• Jeff Woolsey (there are some passionate people at Microsoft, but Jeff is a powerhouse of excitement around Hyper-V in Windows Server 2012)
• Jeffrey Snover (the creater of PowerShell and the lead architect of Windows Server 2012)

Tracks:

• Office 365 and SharePoint (I particularly enjoyed the session on how we have deployed SharePoint internally at Microsoft)
• Windows Client/Server (make sure to watch the Windows PowerShell Crash Course)
• Windows Azure
• Developer Tools
• Exchange & Lync
• Management (System Center)
• Virtualization
• Security & Identity
• Databases and Business Intelligence
• Architecture & Practices
• Languages & Frameworks

I didn’t see this method in Paul Thurrott’s excellent Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Lock, Sign Off, Shut Down, Restart And Sleep article, so I thought I’d share.

A quick way to shut down, restart, or log out of Windows 8 is to click on the taskbar at the bottom of the screen, and hit Alt + F4.  Up pops the following dialogue, which will present you with all the options you could possibly need.

Cheers!