While you could probably find technical discussions and previews of our new products on any of a bajillion blogs right now, I think there’s probably only one PDC Retrospective among them all which will include as much goodness and badness as my own.
To start, this PDC was difficult for me. Not because of the event itself, but because I’m still adjusting to my new anti-depressants, and, holy s***, they’re messing with me. I spent Wednesday morning on the phone with my shrink. I was having suicidal thoughts (I told you this would be a unique look back at the show). And not the “I want attention” kind of suicidal thoughts. If it’s attention I want, I think I’ve proven to myself that I can get it. What I really wanted on Wednesday was for my body to spontaneously disintegrate and get blown away in a strong gust of LA smogwind.
Cheery, I know.
I’ve felt better since, but my shrink says it could be a month before the drugs stabilize. In the meantime, her advice basically amounts to “Don’t drink caffeine, and try not to kill yourself.” I’ve managed to succeed on one of these counts. I’ll leave it to your powers of logic and deduction to figure out which.
It’s odd. I go through suicidal periods about every three years or so. There was a time in my life, actually, and this was pre-blog, when I thought that people who didn’t consider suicide on a daily basis were the crazy ones. I thought life was just that silly.
Fortunately, my funk has been coming and going. It was at its worst on Wednesday, and talking to my shrink seemed to help.
And here I am again on my blog, talking about things that are so personal I wouldn’t even tell my parents (although they’ll know now, won’t they?).
On the bright side, I had some great moments at the PDC this year. The best part of the conference was getting to see all the Geek Friends I only get to see at places like convention centers. I think I’ve known DonXML for a little over two years now, but I’ve never been to his house. It would feel strange to go to his house. For me, he’s someone who exists on a blog and at gigantic conventions.
Maybe I’m not the only one who thinks this way about it, but I feel that, when I leave a conference, all the people I leave behind are dehydrated, packed into trucks, moved to a new location, and reconstituted for the next conference. It’s kind of a comforting feeling (as long as you find the idea of people being dehydrated and reconstituted comforting, which I do).
Social matters aside, it was interesting getting to see the evolution of all the products from PDC 2003. Two years ago, most of the products shown were hardly even the spermatozoa of the ideas of the products into which they would eventually evolve. If I recall correctly, Longhorn, as announced at the 2003 PDC, was going to have transparency, a sidebar, a crazy new file system, ESP, a Diaper Changer Wizard, and it was going to be the first version of Windows to finally ship with ICBM launcher USB drivers for computers with Korean character sets.
Things have changed a little. What’s happened is Vista has been cultured from this little petri dish into a real operating system. The ESP is missing, it won’t change your baby’s diapers, and there’s a country a little west of here that’s going to be upset and probably switch to Linux so that they can use open source ICBM launcher USB drivers, but that’s all right. Operating systems, to put it lightly, are ambitious projects, and it’s incredible that anybody ever gets anything done ever. All said, Vista’s looking pretty good.
What didn’t work so well for me was the constant battery of superlatives. I think Vista is going to be the best release of Windows yet (it had bloody well better be, anyway), but that doesn’t mean I think we should assault customers with phrases like “IT’S THE MOSTEST INNOVATIVEIST BIGGEREST EXPLODINGIST MAJOR COMPUTAR PROGRAMS ON THE PLANET THAT WILLS MAKE YOUR EYES POPS OUT OF YOUR HEAD AND GIVES YOU A TESTICULAR HERNIA WHEN YOU USE THE MOUSE TO MAKES THE FOLDARS OPEN BIG AND INNOVATIVELY(EST)!!!!”
Anytime a statement can only be made in all caps and punctuated by two or more exclamation points, it needs to be rethought.
Vista isn’t a sexy operating system. It’s the next step in Windows. It’s going to be secure, stable, reliable, and easy to use. These are features the world needs in Windows, and I wish we’d let them speak for themselves. Stats, demos, and so on speak to developers more than pyrotechnic-laden adrenaline speeches.
I can understand everyone’s excitement, but, you know, we could, like, tone it down a notch or two or ten.
But, as exciting as the news desktop stuff is, people who know me know that I’m a gadget nerd, and for me the most exciting part of the conference was finally getting my hands on a Windows Mobile 5.0 device. I’ve been waiting, salivating, and other -ing words for months for this, and from what I’ve seen of 5.0, it’s a very significant release - for developers and users.
I’d write more about it here, but I’ll let it wait. Part of the PDC is meeting with people in hallways, and one of my meetings finalized my next project. Not sure exactly how everything’s going to work out in the end, but I can tell you this:
– It’s a podcast – and not one of those shitty ones done by other people – this thing’s going to rock your socks
– Carl Franklin will hopefully be involved in some capacity
– It’s going to be centered around Windows Mobile – primarily for developers, but there will also be talk aimed at consumers (since many mobile devs are themselves gadget freaks)
– It’s going to be done with Microsoft support, but it won’t be a Microsoft project, so it’s not going to have that Corped-UpTM feel
– The first episode is going to be recorded within a week and the guest is going to be Mike Hall – he’s a senior product manager for this stuff, and he knows what he’s talking about
– I have a wonderful limey friend who’s going to provide software and hardware reviews and commentary for the show to break up the tech talk – this will be a regular feature
It’ll be fun to get back into this intarwebs audio broadcasting thing. .NET Rocks was fun, but I always wanted to do more mobile stuff than we did.
So, yeah. That’s life right now. Some good, some bad, some great.
The best thing going on right now is that my relationship with Aydika is back on track. We had some problems after getting engaged (it turns out that you don’t know what getting engaged really means until you do it). We broke up for a little while, but we’ve been back together for a few weeks, and it’s been going much better this time around. So, just for kicks, and just because she’s so unnecessarily beautiful, I’m going to post a picture of her from a recent photo shoot she did in the Columbia Gorge.
This has nothing to do with the PDC.
I’ve been suicidal lately, but also quite glad to be alive.
Oh, and horny. I mean, look at that photo.
Jesus.
After Blog Mint [?] :
If you’d like some good blog coverage of PDC 2005, then you ought to check out what Steve Hartzog was up to in his regular PDC entries and also his “PDC Hotties” category :)