At last, after a long semester, the summer holidays are just around the corner for many Australian education institutions (or may even have started if you're lucky). In my experience, the last couple of days before the students finish, and the first couple of weeks of the holiday tend to be manic – lots of last minute projects, plus a bunch of new projects that absolutely have to be kicked off in time to deliver for when the students return next year.
But then things start to ease up, and you get the chance to have a go at side projects. With no students and staff constantly asking for support, you often get a chance to geek out for a half day. And so here's my suggestion for a great little project:
See what Windows Server 2012 and System Center 2012 have to offer, and enter to win an Xbox Halo 4 limited edition package
The server team in Australia are running a simple competition – download a free evaluation copy of one or both of their new shiny products, and they'll enter you into the draw to win a customised Xbox 360 package, with Halo 4 branding all over it, and customised controllers.
The details of how to enter are over on the competition home page, which is open to Australian residents (and, sadly, not Microsoft staff or our geeky spouses/children). All you need to do it download either (or both) and then send in a screenshot of the completed download. Both gets you two entries.
And to make your experience even better, you could download the free Microsoft Press 'Introducing Windows Server 2012' ebook for PDF or Kindle too, so that you can have some guidance as you run up your new Windows Server 2012 evaluation
Find out more about the competition, and get the download links