Damn, I wish I knew that Don Box “gets” Rory’s humor, and reads his blog. I was reading DB’s blog today and saw this post linking back to 2 of his favorite Rory posts. I wonder if DB has read Rory’s XML for the Non-Tech Types article to learn what XML is used for? My favorite Rory line, “XML is Rogaine for developers”, is in that article. It is a classic, and I highly suggest that, if you work in IT, you print out a copy of that article and make your management read it (it's not like they read stuff on the internet or anything like that).
Why am I pissed that I didn’t know that Don Box reads Rory’s blog? Well, it starts with Rory’s little rant just before the PDC. It seems that Chris Sells and Don Box are filling up his answering machine with questions like “How do you make C# go beep?”. Then while waiting at LAX on Thursday night (after the PDC was over), I’m sitting at the airport bar (hanging with Drew Marsh and waiting for our flight back to NJ) and who walks in and sits down next to us, but Don Box and a bunch of other MS folks (is that his entourage?). We exchange pleasantries, and go back to our previous discussions.
A couple minutes later I get this incredibly funny idea. Wouldn’t it be great if I ask Don Box to call Rory’s cell phone (which he emailed me so that we could hook up at the PDC), and ask him how to make C# go beep? It would absolutely blow Rory’s mind. I asked Drew what he thought about the idea, and he didn’t say I was totally nuts. But I really don’t “know” DB. I mean, I know he knows who I am (how can he not when lot of folks confuse me with him, but more on that in a different post), but we don’t exchange email or anything like that. So rather than risk just annoying him with something that would only be funny to Rory, myself and maybe a few others, I figure that maybe it isn’t such a great idea to bother him. Plus, I know how tired I am from everything that went on at the PDC, and since he was one of the stars of the show, and had been working for months getting ready for it, I figure he must be like a million times more tired than me. So I ditched the idea, and it became just another “wouldn’t be funny if” stories.
DonXML