TexBlog

My suitcase mysteriously arrived around midnight on my second day in Barcelona.  Thank God, because I was really not looking forward to hand-washing my unmentionables in bathroom again.  Clean clothes are definitely one of those things we take for granted.  And I'm glad I didn't have to buy new trousers of the prevailing local "low rise" style, which would have undoubtedly tended to demonstrate a certain amount of reverse-cleavage in a manner reminiscent of the local plumber.

Dang, I'm digressing again.  Anyhow, the conference was fantastic, and the Visual C++ content was very well received.  I wrote a blog entry about it over on the Visual C++ team blog if you'd like to read more.  One of the pleasant surprises of the conference was that a number of old friends and colleagues were also speakers who spent time at the Ask the Experts stand in the Microsoft booth.  Danny Thorpe and I hardly ever get to hang out anymore, so it was great to see him.  Danny even posted a picture of me on his blog -- I'm the bright dot in the middle (and it's good to know I was at least second on your list of sessions too see in my time slot, Danny... Ajax, schmayjax...  <g>).  It was great to catch up with pals from the UK, Brian Long and Guy Smith-Ferrier.  Brian's conversion to the C++ "dark side" is nearly complete, as I believe we convinced him that it's totally reasonable when VC++ floating point optimizations cause a very large number minus the same large number plus 10 to be equal to 0.  It was also good to see many the VC++ MVPs again as well as meet a few new ones.

I went out to dinner early in the week with Microsofties Ayman and Danny and MVPs Siddhartha Rao, Bruno van Dooren, and Marcus Heege.  Sadly, my Spanish seemed to be the least hideous, so I was designated communicator.  Nobody died or had to eat brains or anything like that, so I'm going to go ahead and deem it a success.  This is what 2 years of high school Spanish along with a steady stream of Dora the Explorer and Luis from Sesame Street buys you, kids.

Now it's time to Steve's travel trip of the week.  What to do when you're on the road and your shoes -- oh, how to put this delicately? -- begin to develop that not-so-fresh scent? If you're like me, you spray liberal amounts of the deodorant you purchased when your suitcase went missing into your shoes.  Not only am I no longer in danger of offending, but my feet kinda smell like SexyEuroGuy now.  Muy suave.

Now, on to the VC++ ISV dev lab in Huesca, about 1/2 way between Barcelona and Madrid.