Just had lunch with DonXML, Stuart, Chris Brumme, Drew Marsh, some CLR guys, and a bunch of people named Jeff.

Now I'm sitting in an Avalon session with Stuart. The more I see, the more excited I am, and the more irritated I am that Longhorn is so far out from release. One of the greatest things Apple did for OS X was build the UI on a vector-based system, and I'm just happy as a hallucinating sleep-deprived numb-faced starving developer could be about it.

The other thing I'm realizing is how little I really knew about Longhorn/Avalon/etc. before coming. I know that's sort of a given, but I really didn't expect any of what I'm seeing. I had been asking people for months if Avalon was going to be vector based, and couldn't get a response.

Hey - Stuart just started gasping. Looking up, I see that he's really enjoying the idea of being able to create a widget that a user can interact with (rotate, move, etc.) via a couple of XAML attributes. This is really cool. Doing this with GDI+, as so many of you are aware, isn't exactly easy. Here, it's like blinking.

Yup. I can't see straight right now, but I'm still pumped.

I wish I had the code to post right now. The presenter just created a video clip that can be sized and rotated by the user with about five lines of code. It's awesome. I honestly don't want to sound like I'm part of the hype machine, but MS is really changing the way things are going to be done. Apple should really be taking some hints from this conference. I love my Mac, but OS X dev tools are so far behind what I'm seeing here that it's mind-boggling. I haven't played with X-Code yet, but hopefully it's a step in the right direction.

Also, if you're looking for a nice clean bathroom, Drew tested the ones near the food-eating area, and they're good. Not as clean as I'd like, but you get your own urinal, and the sink is one of those sweet motion-activated jobs that were made for people with OCD.