Microsoft Event

Yesterday I got to go to a Microsoft Event. This is more or less a big commercial for the latest and greatest Microsoft stuff. They figure if they can talk us developers into making cool stuff with their new toys, then the general market will follow.

The presentation was 4 hours long. It was held in a theater at the AMC 20 in Tulsa. Farmer, Big Dawg and I got to go. Even better, we hooked up with Metacow and P-Ziddy! Big Dawg and I used to work with P-Ziddy and Metacow, so it was a nice reunion.

The presenter for our brainwashing / informational session was a bit of a dork. He was a cross between a bad comedian, a zealot, and an auctioneer. I kept expecting his heart to explode from all the caffeine he had 1) obviously already consumed, and 2) was constantly drinking.

He only had about 6 jokes, but he kept repeating them as if he thought they were still funny. They wern't all that good to start with. A few samples:

"... with these stupid things... and I mean stupid in the nicest sense of the word..."

"... this code is bangin' up against the database..."

"... and you can see this worked, birds are singing, kids are playing..."

"... I think I'm being visited by the Dark Angel Of Demo's."

I must admit, the only truely annoying part of his presentation had to do with "LINQ" and a variable in his sample code that he swore was not a "varient" data-type (don't worry if you don't know what that means).

I dunno. It sure looked like a varient to me. He loudly insisted that it was not. The reason that it was not a varient, according to him, was that it just simply wasn't a varient. See? Simple.

He talked about LINQ so long that I was wondering if Zelda would make an appearance. Alas, 'twas not to be.

Near the end, the acronym "POX" (Plain Old XML) came up on one of his slides. He asked if any of us knew what POX was. I quipped, "Yeah, I had a bad case of that when I was 4."

P-Ziddy and Big Dawg were the only ones who heard me. However, *lots* of people heard their snorting, gasping laughter.

Microsoft presenters must hate me. :)