After getting up every day last week at what, for me, would have been 4:00 AM, and then spending the whole of each day in meetings, I flew out to Atlanta on Carl’s invitation to hang out and do some stuff or something (it was all rather vague). Hell – I was already tired, drug-withdrawaled-out, out of my element, my time zone, and my mind – might as well head off to do some stuff or something with an old friend.

Glen and I left the Microsoft office together, went to the airport, and flew to Atlanta (same time, but different flights – together, sort of).

An hour after landing, we arrived at the MS Atlanta office. The .NET Rocks RV was parked out front. Must be the place.

We went wandering through a bunch of hallways, turned a corner, and ran into Kirk Allen Evans. He looked at me with that “What are you doing here?” look and then asked, “What are you doing here?”

Before I had a chance to explain, I turned and spotted Marcie Robillard – known by most as “Datagrid Girl” because of her unhealthy devotion to that strange control. We all said our hello’s, Glen poured me a Coke, and we got on with life.

My way of getting on with life was to make fun of Marcie.

Me: So… Now that the DataGrid is being replaced by the GridView, are you going to change your name?

Marcie: Yeah.

Me: To what?

Marcie: “GridView Girl”.

Me: That doesn’t really flow, does it? You can’t say it fast – listen – GridView Girl, GrdVew Grl, GrdVeGrl, GrvGl, Grv, Grvvv…

Marcie: Can you think of something better?

Me: How about “Legacy Control Girl”?

Marcie: Have you thought about changing your name?

Me: To what?

Marcie: How about “Legacy .NET Rocks Co-Host”?

That was low, and I decked her. As a “thank you” for services rendered, she kicked me in the face.

While I was picking up my teeth and putting them back, we agreed to a truce and went to go find Carl.

He was in a room down the hallway giving a presentation to a group of geeks so dedicated to The Cause that they voluntarily placed their butts in seats to hear a guy ramble on about VS 2005 on a Friday night. One testament to the popularity of .NET Rocks is that, even though turnout wasn’t insane or anything, it was pretty bloody good for a Friday night. Advertise one of my talks for a Friday night, and I’ll be lucky if even I show up. It’s hard getting people out to talks even during normal business hours, so kudos to Carl and Richard for having an audience at a time when most other people are at home cursing their 9–5 corporate lives and looking at horse-pee-porn on the net with the mistaken belief that nobody else Knows (that’s right – for those of you who think that nobody can tell that you’re into horse-pee-porn, us Normal People can spot you freaks from a mile away, and we think you’re all sick).

Chris warned me over a year and a half ago that watching other speakers give presentations would become more and more difficult as I racked up more and more events. Chris, it turns out, is, like, psychic or something with ESP or something. His head is like a radio for listening to the future.

Watching other speakers is painful now. I can’t go thirty seconds without wanting to get up, yank the mic away, and give the presentation how I think it should be done. It’s pompous and arrogant, but it also goes with the territory. If you give a damn about communicating ideas to people, you develop a style, and you believe that Your Way is the Best Way and that other people should lay down, surrender, and adopt the One True Way by getting the hell out of the way.

Watching Carl, I didn’t have that problem. Same with Richard.

If I had to sum up the problems that I have with most speakers, I’d probably come up with a list like this one:

– They take themselves way too seriously

– They sometimes behave like what they’re talking about is rocket science (it isn’t)

– They complicate ideas with big, fancy words in attempts to appear more intelligent

Carl and Richard don’t do this.

Carl is very What You See is What You Get. Hanging out with him is kind of weird at first because he’s pretty much the exact same guy in person that he is on .NET Rocks and Mondays. There’s no artifice. He doesn’t use big words to look smart.

Richard, on the other hand, has a definite Presenter Mode. He’s like a different guy when he gets up in front of people. He’s slick. Slick like Scott. He can be funny, articulate, and informative at the same time. He’s also good at it. You can tell he’s good at it because it seems effortless. Some presenters seem like used car salesmen on stage, and that’s the mark of someone who isn’t terribly good at it.

Together, they work out well, and I think that Richard is a much better compliment to Carl on the show than I ever was. Carl and I have a great time when we hang out, but watching him with the current co-host, I can’t help but think that .NET Rocks is in a much better place than it was when I was on it. Not that I’m bad, mind you – just that Carl and Richard have better chemistry than Carl and I did. Carl is the honest, hard working guitar playing nut, and Richard is the slick gadget freak. It just works.

Long story short, if you’ve been wanting to catch a good presentation, you ought to check out the .NET Rocks Roadshow schedule and see these guys when/if they come to your town. It’s worth it – especially if you’re interested in getting into the speaking thing. Watching these freaks and learning from them will get you started on the right foot.

An added bonus is that the content is good. It’s not really necessary when you’re an excellent speaker (Scott could get up in front of you, talk for an hour about beavers, and you’d probably walk away satisfied even though the talk’s title was “Obscure ASP.NET Errors That Only Scott Has Encountered”). I was pleased that Richard devoted his portion of the talk to Windows Mobile stuff. He gives a nice introduction to developing for devices – from PocketPCs to phones, stopping along the way to talk about the new managed APIs available to people developing against Windows Mobile 5.0 devices (the new bits, which I’ve been playing with, are just freaking awesome – being able to send a text message with about twelve seconds worth of coding effort is a beautiful thing). The topic is one which I’m generally excited about, and particularly so right now since I’m launching my Windows Mobile podcast this week (I’m teaming up with Carl to do some .NET Rocks co-branding stuff, so I need to work that out, but the show is pretty much ready to go – if you’d like to be on it, by the way, feel free to email me).

After the show, Carl and Richard took me for a drive in the RV. By the time we got in the Winnebago, I was out of my mind – sleep deprived and tired from parting with my anxiety drugs. Oddly enough, though, this was probably the perfect mindset for the drive. Richard, who had only driven the .NET Rocks Tour Machine on one previous occasion (they, believe it or not, hired a guy to drive the rig so that they could sit in back and shoot up without being disturbed) was hauling ass down the freeway at speeds in excess of 35 miles per hour. Meanwhile, Carl was cracking jokes from the co-pilot’s chair, and I couldn’t stop laughing. Something about Carl is that, around midnight, his sense of humor turns into something strange and unearthly. I’m a humor snob, and it takes a lot to get me going, but I couldn’t breathe by the time we parked the RV. I hadn’t laughed so hard in months, and it felt pretty god damned good.

A long drive and one hour later, we arrived at the spot where the post-show informal gathering (I’m hesitant to call it a “party”) was happening. The room was full of, well, nerds and stuff. In one corner, people were talking about Microsoft, in another they were arguing about which Linux distro is the bestest. Some kind words were spoken in favor of Gentoo and Ubuntu. Others liked Fedora, while others still preferred rarer and more arcane flavors of the Linux Kool-Aid.

All I had to add was that I had lost a lot of interest in Linux as a result of having purchased a few Apple notebooks. Linux really doesn’t have anything on OS X as a *nix (except for price), and you can argue with that however you like – you’ll still be wrong. Period. Sorry. Moving on…

I spent the rest of the night watching everybody around me get progressively drunker and drunker. I felt left out since alcohol gives me migraines, but between the lack of sleep and the MSG in the “Sour Milk and Brie” flavored potato chips (chip flavors are getting stranger as I get older), I was feeling pretty out of it myself. I don’t remember any particular stretch of conversation, but I know that we lingered a little too long on the subject of dog enemas, and whether or not it should be considered cruelty to animals if you’re giving them enemas in an effort to prolong their lives. I don’t think we resolved much, but, really, how could we, since not one person at the entire party had any statistics at hand concerning dog life expectancy as it relates to the giving or withholding of enemas.

Then, just before leaving, at what must have been about 3:00 AM, I gave an interview for .NET Rocks. As I sit and write, I have no recollection of what I said except that Carl and Richard both struck me as being highly accomplished in the skill of laugh fakery. Each time I said something, Carl laughed and then passed the mic to Richard, who just nanoseconds prior had been sitting stone-faced and staring at me, but who, on cue, burst into enthusiastic sounding laughter.

I wish I could get my audiences to do that.

All in all, it was the most entertaining and most genuine night of nerdery that I’ve had in a long time. It definitely made me miss Carl, and I even found a soft spot in my heart for the CANADIAN FREAK WHO STOLE MY FRIKKIN’ JOB. OH, LOOK AT ME, I’M A CANDIAN ON A .NET ROCKS MUG, OHHH, OH, OHHHHHHH.

Yes. That’s all behind me now.

Water under the bridge.

And stuff.