Rico Mariani has quite simply become one of my favorite people, professionally and personally.  Not long after I first met him, as we started working on the problem of fixing Visual Studio help, about a year ago, I would describe him to people as the "Energizer Bunny" and the Master of Analogy.  His energy and confidence are contagious. His technical chops are top notch, in depth and breadth, and even at this great company, not often matched. His ability to talk straight is refreshing.  He'll call anybody's BS, no matter who is in the room when he does it.  I've seen him seize moments to inspire people, and push people when they aren't pushing themselves hard enough (met with mixed reactions, depending on his tactics, my only minor criticism which I have to mention lest this become a complete suck-up post ;)).  He's one of the few people that I have seen master rapid context switching between the tactical and the strategic.  At the same time, Rico isn't one of these engineers that unhealthfully dedicates their entire 24/7 life to code.  He's a husband and father, and has hobbies that make great use of his creativity and gregarious nature (I'll let him disclose those!).

All of this said to point you to a group of recent posts about his long history with Visual Studio and dev tools in general.  I thought I'd highlight this one post that includes some fun C++ history:

http://blogs.msdn.com/ricom/archive/2009/10/06/my-history-of-visual-studio-part-2.aspx

Enjoy~

AprilR