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ALT.NET Conference: How Concurrency is Like a Killer Rabbit and Other True Tales

I know this is going to come as a shock to you, but there were a few places where I might have slightly exaggerated in my last post. For example, the Alt.NET exclusivity test we had to take really only had about 5,000 and not 6,000 questions on it and Scott Bellware did not actually carry a sword when he came out in his gladiator costume like the now famous photo suggests (the power of Photoshop). I sincerely apologize if I have shaken your faith in the veracity of my investigative reporting.

As a way to make it up to you, here are some highlights of things that actually did happen this last weekend.
  1. I got to sit next to Scott Guthrie and Martin Fowler at dinner on Saturday night. During a discussion about concurrency, Martin suddenly dropped his normal, reserved British demeanor and did a boisterous impression of the killer rabbit in the Montey Python 'Quest for the Holy Grail' movie in order to give a proper analogy on the dangers of multi-threading. His rendition even included sound effects and the two finger rabbit fangs trick. I kid you not. There is no way I could make that up.
  2. In between sessions, I saw Scott Hanselman sneak over and give Scott Bellware a hug. As suggested in this post where Hanselman refers to Bellware as his own personal evil Mr. Spock, the two Scotts appear to be polar opposites and exchanged quite a few witty barbs during the conference. This made the "surprise hug attack" all the more memorable.
  3. I witnessed Jeffrey Palermo do the Mr. Roboto dance at the bar. I'm not even sure he had anything to drink, so I can only imagine how much fun he is at the Party with Palermo events.
  4. I was coached up a climbing wall at some Entertainment Palace by Scott Hanselman. I'm sorry this picture is so blurry, but my forearms were probably shaking pretty badly when I took the picture with my camera phone. By the way, Scott did better at climbing than I did and James Kovacs climbed better than a monkey with fly paper gloves.
  5. I was handily beaten in a game of truly pathetic pool by Jean-Paul Boodhoo. Let's hope that neither one of us ever code as badly as we play pool. His wife was with us at the bar and managed to temporarily institute a techie-free talk zone, which probably was the only thing that prevented my brains from oozing out of my ears.
  6. During dinner, I also got to ask Scott Guthrie which Microsoft project he personally felt the most pride and investment in. He had to think for a minute, but he finally answered IIS 7 and the original .NET framework release.  He described the original plans for IIS 7 as being incredibly ambitious and the equivalent of performing open heart surgery on a patient and then not being sure whether you could put everything back together again. When he was talking about the .NET framework, he shared a particularly amusing story about Microsoft getting into an insane bidding war with a start-up over the ASP.NET domain name just weeks before they were scheduled to release. This all occurred while he was drinking a rather ominous looking Margarita contraption.
  7.  I got to pay off the beer that I owed Roy Osherove for his Caffeinated Codey award. There were several other people there that I owed beers to, but the awards were left undelivered because I didn't get a chance to talk to them while we were at the bar. I promise I'll track down more recipients at the next conference.
  8. Finally, I witnessed the ultimate party foul. What is wrong with this picture? Programming at a bar is like crying in baseball...it just shouldn't be done!
As you can imagine, I was a little star-struck during the whole event and struggled a little not to feel like a geek stalker. But as my mama always used to say, stalking is as stalking does...

Print | posted on Thursday, October 11, 2007 12:33 AM

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