What’s that, Robin? MVC is in danger? Quick! To the bat cave…

Oh wait, wrong guy.

What I meant to say was, “It’s a bird, It’s a plane, It’s Super…Megan!!” (What? You didn’t know Superman was secretly transgender?)

So last week, I did the unthinkable. (No, I didn’t buy a Mac, calm down. I’ll never stoop that low.)

Instead, I did something slightly less brazen. What’s that you ask? I permanently traded in my Ann Taylor twinset for a super elegant, super trendy…cape. Yep. That’s right. I’m now sporting a cape. (And it looks pretty freaking good, too.)

Don’t be jealous.

I bet you are thinking, “Really, Megan? Everyone always said you are weird, but really, why do you have to take it to the next level? A cape? How did this happen?”

Well, my three readers, funny you should ask. It was a dark Wednesday afternoon…or maybe it was Thursday (all of my days at The Force tend to run together) and I was minding my own business and doing a little tweeting on Twitter. Nothing exceptionally great was happening that day and I was anxiously waiting for the day to end. I was tired from rescuing a few children from a burning building the night before. I think I might have even deactivated a few bombs, too, but I can’t be certain. Like I said, I was tired. So anyway, I was just about to wrap up for the day when I saw an innocent tweet for help from David Hayden!

Fortunately, he was not stuck under a car….unfortunately, it was much, MUCH more serious.

POW! ZAP! WHAM!

“KForce is not sponsoring this month’s meeting, so MVC needs a new sponsor!”

BANG! CRASH!

“Who wants to sponsor Tampa MVC for the next six months straight?”

Sh*t! Hit! The! Fan! W...ango, T…ango, F...oxtrot, Batman!!

I felt my face go green with anger (and trust me, you wouldn’t like me when I’m angry), my lilac cardigan started to get tight on my biceps, my feet began to pop out of my heels…and…crap, wrong guy. Again. Seriously, though, I was pissed. These were my people and I didn’t like anyone messing with my people. (You say territorial, I say love.) I had to get to the bottom of it…and fast.

Before I set my sights on discovering the identity of my very own Lex Luthor (I had a pretty good idea where to find him, anyway), I put out a bat tweet to my damsel in distress, David Hayden, and told him to worry not…for I, Megan “look at me in my bada** cape” Hopkins, would provide MVC with all of the pizza and coke they desired, even if I had to trade my bat mobile in for a Kia to pay for it. He was most appreciative and graciously accepted my offer. He even let me address the crowd with a homework assignment so they could get to know me (the real, I wanted to be a deer…and Hulk Hogan… when I grew up, me) better. Usually whenever I save the world all I get are people hounding me trying to snap photos and vilify me so this was a real treat. Mr. Hayden knows how to pay it forward. Maybe I’ll let him wear my cape next time I’m in town.

In any event, now that the sponsorship crisis was solved, all I had to do was locate Mr. Luthor. Rumor had it that Luthor has recently packed his bags and relocated to the busy city of Tampa. Apparently, he thought Smallville was lame. The folks at my office say one of my best talents is stalking (nice, huh?) so I decided to put that to good use, and in no time, I located my nemesis sitting in his evil cube. What happened next is too gory to blog about…but you can use your imaginations.

By time the clock struck 5:00pm, MVC had been saved from certain disaster and all was well in the world of Microsoft technologies once more.

Ok, in all seriousness, I had the great pleasure (I’m serious. It freaking rocked my world.) of attending the MVC meeting at Microsoft’s office in Tampa. At this meeting, the topic covered was ASP.Net MVC Extensibility…and how awesome KForce is. During this two hour MVC love fest, four speakers spread the good word (referring to MVC, of course) and explained how to customize and extend the MVC Framework for real-world development. The four gurus that took the stage for the MVC variety show were: David Hayden, Jim Zimmerman, Will Green, and Kevin Wolf. All four of these gents had an interesting topic but the one that caught my attention the most was Kevin Wolf because he spoke about two of my favorite things in the entire flipping world…any guesses??? (Keep it clean, people. Keep it clean.)

Geeks….and bars!!!!!! What else could a girl want??? (For me, absolutely nothing. Except for my cape, of course.) Kevin came up with the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen and you can check it out at www.geeksatbars.com. If you like to talk tech…and you like to drink, well, Kevin should be your new favorite person because this site has it all. Plus, it features web slices….and that is enough to please even the toughest critic. Check it out!!!!!!

I can’t stress enough to anyone that actually reads this blog (hopefully more than three people but I don’t want to get too greedy) what an awesome group MVC is. I sponsor a lot of groups in Central Florida and this is definitely one of my favorites. Everyone that knows me knows I get completely jazzed when I meet folks that are passionate about technology and the MVC group offers a huge room of tech centric people that I can call my new friends and teach me something new about technology….and it is at the Microsoft office which makes me even more smitten. Meetings are held once a month (next month’s date is TBD) and KForce provides pizza, coke, and phenomenal entertainment. For more information on this FREAKIN’ AWESOME group, please check out http://www.tampadev.org .

If you haven’t checked this group out before, please make sure you give it a shot at least once. After all, you know what they say…once you go MVC you never go back.

And if you still refuse to give MVC a whirl, well, please don’t count on me to come rescue you next time you are stuck in a tree or under a semi. I may be nice...but a girl has got standards.

PS. Thanks to @NikitaP for the wicked Photoshop job!