February 28th, 2006
3:51 pm
Man, you can sure fall behind when you travel as much as I have been lately. I’ve got hundreds of emails in my in-box, which I know is perfectly normal to many people here at Microsoft, but to me — a guy who has kept his email in-box pretty tidy for many years — this is uncharted territory. and I’m only in town for a few days, then gone again for a week, so I’m playing triage, and doing it at warp speed.
One fun break I took this morning was to go through all my blog feeds and mark everything as read, just to clean it up. In so doing, I came across a few links I’ll pass on, then back to the grindstone …
The most-forwarded and most-discussed link at Microsoft this week has to be OkayDave.com. This is simply the coolest portfolio site you’ve ever seen. And I still haven’t found anyone who knows what technologies are there behind the scenes, but I’m trying. I’ll pass on the details when I know them.
And speaking of cool, here’s a demo of some emerging Microsoft technology that’s pretty cool. Check it out: you can drive around downtown Seattle quickly and easily, without ever leaving your desk! For more information on how this works (for example, the fact that the database contains 10 million images of Seattle!), see this Channel 9 video. (Yeah, I know, Scoble already blogged about this today, but I had it in my list and I’m not dropping it just because he covered it. Hell, I have readers he’ll never have — Mom, for instance — and they might want to see it, too!)
Speaking of Microsoft bloggers, here’s a cool post by Microsoft blogging maven Betsy Aoki. We need more people who think and write like her, in my humble opinion.
Colligo is one of Microsoft’s favorite ISV partners. Well, mine anway — Nick is a really sweet, smart, easy-to-deal-with guy, and their technology is extremely impressive. If you’re interested in a way to work with Sharepoint data offline, check it out. I saw a cool demo of this product last November, and the next release is going to be a great thing for Sharepoint. It’s cool to see so many bloggers talking about Colligo this week; they deserve it.
Finally, here’s a great post by Omar Shahine on the abuse of “My Documents” by modern software. I could have written it myself, I so strongly agree — stay out of MY documents, you pesky pieces of third-party software! You tell ‘em, Omar.
Which reminds me …
Once I got my head shaved by a woman barber in Spokane. When I first saw her — tall, fashionable, sassy, and dark as coal — I said “you’re not from around here,” and she laughed and said “thank you, I’m from Los Angeles.” Anyway, after she smoothed my scalp she ran her fingers over it and said “Omar, ooh, Omar!” I think it was a reference to a bald rapper named Omar or something, but I never figured it out. Anybody know?
OK, gotta keep moving, I’ve got 48 hours to get my work life in order before I start living out of a suitcase again …
February 27th, 2006
10:08 pm
For everyone who has expressed interest in the parade photos, here they are: a few dozen of our favorites out of the 600+ photos I took during the 9 hours we were at the parade in the Sambodromo.
I don’t have time to arrange these in any sort of artistic fashion, so there are just a few pages, each with a bunch of photos on it. And organizing these into categories is open to lots of debate — is that a picture of a cool costume, a fleshy female, a parade float, a she-male, a cute guy, or all of the above? I just went with my first instinct, mostly because I’m really busy this week and this is the only way I’ll get them up on the web site for everyone to see.
So here are the categories …
Fleshy females. The most-requested category first — Paul and Phil, DON’T LOOK AT THESE! (OK, so that’s probably not going to stop them. Charlie and Nick, you guys should probably take cold showers, too.)
Cute guys, for Guillermo and the girls. Sorry if my definition of “cute” doesn’t match yours!
Parade floats. This is the biggest page, so go make yourself another drink while this one loads. Brazilian engineering at its finest.
Clever costumes. Every act had hundreds of costumes, usually appearing in waves of a few dozen of these, then a few dozen of those, usually with a fleshy female or two in between. Sort of like a palette-cleansing sorbet between courses of a fancy meal.
The fans in the stands. The guy in the white shirt and the girl in tight jeans and a white top (behind the railing) were our favorites. They should have taken a bow at the end of the night.
Interesting facial expressions. Of these, there were many.
Divas. Frankly, that word applies to a pretty high percentage of the women (and “women”) in the parade, but I thought these three should be included and I couldn’t decide where to put them.
She-males. I could be wrong about some of these, of course (sorry about that!), but others seem pretty clear.
Parade organizers. These are the people who help keep the parade moving, running around amongst the dancers and singers and pushing them into line or prodding them along. Their exuberance was fun to watch. I’ve also included here people like the street-sweeper girl who dressed up in various outfits and danced while her colleagues cleaned up after each act. Note her official Sambodromo photo ID card, like all the other employees.
Hey, if you appreciate all the work it took to get this together, feel free to post a comment. (I’m just trying to build as much traffic as Scoble so I can be an A-list blogger.) 
Oh yeah, we were there, too.
February 26th, 2006
12:30 pm
I don’t have time to post a bunch of photos from Carnival before we head for the airport, so I’ve just put up the photo collage to the right (click on it for a bigger version). More to come later.
It was a great thing to see in person. We were there from 9:00PM to 4:00AM, and we left when the party really started going strong. The music is rock-concert loud the whole time, so our ears are ringing today.
We’re off to the airport, headed for home …
February 25th, 2006
7:26 am
I haven’t posted for a couple of days, so I thought I should put something up today before we get caught up in Carnival. We don’t want our mothers to worry about us, you know. Bom Dia, Mom!
The workshop ended Thursday, and I never got a complete group photo although we took a photo of the people still around an hour after we were done. I’ll email it to you guys (and Juliana and Aline :-)) next week as I said I would, but here it is for any of you who drop in on my blog before then.
Yesterday, Renato and I went to pick up the tickets for the parade. Like the purchase of the tickets on Tuesday, it was a clumsy bureaucratic process that would have been even more stressful and time-consuming if he hadn’t been there to help. It’s easy to see why few tourists buy tickets themselves for the event. (I’ve read that most tourists obtain their tickets through agencies that charge a fee for handling the details.) First off, it’s a multi-step process: buy the tickets (which must be done in person if you have a non-Brazilian credit card), then come back to get the tickets, then wait in line for somebody to verify you have a valid receipt and your tickets are available, then get a slip of paper, then take that slip of paper to another spot, where they check your photo ID and — hopefully — give you your tickets.
We waited in line for about 90 minutes, to get to the little window where a young lady inside (yes, I stuck my camera through the slot to take this picture) looks around for your tickets. Many people in the line grew very frustrated, especially when the line mysteriously stopped moving for 30 minutes and people started chanting “give us our tickets” in Portugese. Another interesting moment was when a fender-bender happened nearby, the crowd cheered, then the two cars simply drove off in opposite directions with big dents. I guess in a culture where lawsuits are rare (and perhaps insurance, too?), there’s not much to talk about after a traffic accident!
As it turned out, I never got to go through the ticket-locating process because Renato, being Brazilian and familiar with “the way,” managed to bribe a girl working behind the steel grate into giving him my tickets. The funny thing is, the bribe took just as long to work as the line itself, and he got the tickets at almost the same moment I finally reached the front of the line. (In case you’re wondering: the photo taken through the slot above was of a German man’s passport while they looked for his tickets. He’s the guy in the lower left in the photo of the waiting line, and he had bought his tickets on-line but still had to come wait in line to show the credit card he had used.)
Another funny thing was the amount of the bribe: I gave Renato a 50R note to use, but when he got a commitment from the girl he came back and got a 20R note from me, because that was all she wanted. Hey, the first rule of corruption is “make a lot of money,” doesn’t she know that?
Anyway, we’re going to the parade tonight, and Renato and his girlfriend are going to come back from the beach (where they are now) to join us. I had purchased a table for 4, and wanted to do something for him for all his help in getting the tickets.
Last night we took a cab to Terrago Italia, the restaurant at the top of Sao Paulo’s tallest building. We had intended to go to Figueira Rubayata, a restaurant that my manager Mauricio had recommended, but decided to have a view of the city instead. It was very nice, and we got there early enough to watch the city slowing change from daylight to darkness.
Well, we better get moving because we have a lot to do today. We’re going shopping, and going to visit the nearby art museum. It’s a cool structure, with the first floor missing and the rest of the building supported on four big red pillars. The opening underneath is a handy place to wait out rain showers, and behind the building there’s a concrete bench/ledge with a nice view, which I’ve noticed is a popular makeout spot late at night. As for us, we do our making out at the hotel bars, but we’re tourists so what do you expect?
FYI, the next 24-36 hours are going to be nuts, with the parade going until 6:00AM and probably a big hassle to get back to the hotel after that, so our final Sao Paulo post may not show up here until Monday …
February 23rd, 2006
8:50 am
This post is for Office 12 developers in the TAP and Ascend program. If you’re not in those programs, this doesn’t apply. (And no, I can’t get you into them at this point.)
You must fill out your Office 12 Nomination form on BetaPlace (http://beta.microsoft.com) in order to maintain access to any materials posted there between now and the public beta. I can’t post instructions here on a public forum, but since some of you guys drop in here I’m just posting a reminder. If you have questions, send me an email at my dmahugh@ alias.
CLARIFICATION added 02/28: if you’ve ever filled out the Nomination form before, or you’ve downloaded the beta bits (which required filling out the form), then there’s nothing you need to do. The only people who need to fill out the Nomination form to have future access are those who have never done so in the past.
I just gave a presentation on this to the Office 12 developers here in Sao Paulo. The deadline for complying with this requirement is March 1, which is coming fast.
February 22nd, 2006
10:46 pm
A few of my friends back in the US (guy friends, of course) have emailed me this week and said “please send photos of all the hot women down there.” And it’s true, there are certainly a lot of beautiful women in Brazil. And they’re not real shy about dressing the part, either.
But I haven’t taken a single picture of one. Yet. Well, maybe a couple have slipped into the background of some shots. And it will probably be hard to do the Carnaval parade justice without including one or two, but I’m not going to go out of my way to photograph any before then. I’m happily engaged, my fiancee Megan is arriving tomorrow morning, and — having already made just about every mistake a man can make in life — I don’t feel any particular need to prove anything.
So just to frustrate the boys, this post includes only photos of Brazilian men.
First we have Renato at lunch yesterday. He’s eating a sorbet of acia, a very tasty purple berry-like fruit that grows north of here, near the Amazon forest. They’re delicious — I had an Acia shake at lunch myself.
We were on the way back from getting tickets for the Carnaval parade. I could never have done it without him. Even with Renato’s command of Portugese it was time-consuming and confusing. They wouldn’t let us buy them by phone because my credit card is from out of the country. So we had to catch a taxi across town to buy them at the Sambadrome, where they said my credit card wouldn’t go through. We went to two banks before we found a place I could get a bunch of cash (off the same card, of course), then we went back and finally completed the transaction.
Megan and I will be sharing a VIP table for 4, which leaves room for all my camera gear and lots of food and drink. We’ll get there around midnight Saturday, and after some warmup acts the best groups are scheduled for between 3:00AM and 5:00AM. I suspect this is going to be a party unlike anything we have ever seen. Thanks to Marcelo Negrini for telling me about it!
The next photo is a young man waiting to cross the street while walking east on Paulista Avenue this evening.
I took a long walk along Paulista Avenue, and on the way back I wandered into a store and looked around, came out on the sidewalk and heard somebody yell “Doug!” It was Renato, walking his girlfriend from the bus station, where she had just arrived from their hometown to stay with him in Sao Paulo for a couple of days. A city of 17 million, and I run into Renato.
This shot is a guy in a newstand. He had hundreds of magazines, but only one in English — Newsweek — so I bought a copy. He’s trying to give me 4 reais change, and I’m saying “no sir, you must be mistaken, I think it cost more than that.”
Then I walked back toward the hotel, and after sweating for hours I felt a refreshing cool breeze spring up. As soon as it hit, everyone on the sidewalk started walking much faster, and within a minute the skies opened and it suddenly rained very hard for a few minutes. I stood under a sheltered area with a few other people and waited it out, while these guys tried to catch taxis.
Megan’s somewhere over the Carribean right now, headed this way. I’m typing this in the hotel bar, which is dark except for stained-glass lamps on the tables and two bright disco balls spinning at the back of a checkerboard dance floor. there’s a black walnut grand piano in the corner, and on a large projection screen rock videos fron the 80s are playing — Robert Palmer, Marillion, REM, Phil Collins — while Brazilian love songs are playing extremely loud on the stereo. A cool effect, actually — I love the way Robert Palmer is belting out a jazzy number in Portugese, wearing his usual dapper suit.
I was the only person in here when I arrived, but now there are two Brazilian women sitting at the table next to me. I think, based on what I’ve picked up (they’re talking in English), that the tall thin one in the tight white slacks and sleeveless blouse is staying at the hotel, and the short shapely one in black is her friend from Sao Paulo who has come to have a drink with her. I just looked over and smiled, and they smiled back, then the tall one said something to the short one and they both giggled.
Eat your hearts out, boys. Just paint the picture in your mind, that’s all the satisfaction you’ll get from me tonight.
OK, this is funny (well, after a few caipirinhas anyway) … just now the girls said something to the bartender, and he turned off the Brazilian music and put on Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” live video. I want my Megan!
February 21st, 2006
11:09 pm
Tonight was the night to take the Ascend attendees out for a few drinks. We called it “happy hour,” although it lasted nearly 4 hours actually. Aline from the São Paulo office was our hostess, and we all had a great time.
I don’t remember exactly what we talked about that was so funny, but the Caipirinha sure tasted great! I also snapped a few photos earlier in the day …
The food in the break room. Does your break room have a view like this?
Women and children strolling down the street after a brief rainstorm.
A taxi driver and some motorcycles. I said he looked like Nelson Mandela, he just laughed.
U2 on the cover of the newspaper in a grocery store.
OK, what is it with me and security guards?
I met several on Sunday, trying to get into the Microsoft building. Then, this afternoon, I stepped outside to take a picture of the Microsoft building and a security guard from the nearby World Trade Center building rushed over to chant “no photo” in my face for a while.
Then, just a few minutes ago, I came down from my hotel room to use the business center (since none of the other internet options here work reliably), and I decided to get off on the 2nd floor rather than get off at the lobby and walk back up the stairs. But the 2nd floor is a conference center, shut off from the rest of the world, and when I was walking back to the elevator a security guard came rushing to see what I was up to, so suspiciously wandering around a deserted conference room.
Oh well, I’m going to post this and take a late-night walk, see if I can meet some local cops. Is it me?
February 20th, 2006
6:19 pm
When in Brazil, unless you’re a vegetarian, you have to try the churrascaria: skewers of meat grilled over an open flame on long swords and served by the slice at your table. Tonight was our night.
Renato, the proctor for this week’s event, was our tour guide. He was also our translator and bodyguard. Since he’s a black belt in Brazilian Jujitsu, which for you Americans is essentially an extreme form of “ultimate fighting,” we felt pretty safe with him on our team. His command of Portugese, Spanish and English also came in quite handy this evening.
Without further adeiu, and because it’s getting late, here are the photos …
On the way to the restaurant, we passed a record store. For those under 40, this is a place where they sell platters of pressed vinyl with grooved spirals on the surface, which people spin on “turntables” to generate scratchy noisy reproductions of musical performances.
At the restaurant, Ted posed with the beef out front. Or vice versa.
At our table, Ted, Renato, and I enjoyed delicious Argentinian Cabernet and the healthy salad bar (yes, that huge bowl is a solid chunk of cheese) while devouring huge quantities of meat, sliced at our table in the traditional style.
We were so charming that the maitre de all but insisted on taking us into the kitchen (no restrictive Health Department regulations here!), where Ted and I showed the chefs a few tricks regarding presentation of their wares. We then proceeded to the wine cellar, where Doug enjoyed pretending he was the wine steward. Such fantasies they let us play out!
We ate like pigs and drank like fish, then it was time for Ted to pick up the check, followed by a courtesy van ride through the streets of Sao Paulo back to our hotel. Hey, somebody’s gotta do it. Good night.
February 20th, 2006
12:55 pm
The new ribbon interface in Office 12 — er, Office 2007 — is really handy, but it can be frustrating, too. It’s context-sensitive, meaning it shows you the commands relative to what you’re doing, but that makes it hard to browse around and look at ever command. So sometimes I’ve wasted minutes looking for a command that I knew well in previous versions of Office — “where did that command go?”
Turns out there’s a tool for exactly this situation, publicly available on Microsoft.com. It lets you click on a command in the old menus, and it shows you exactly where that command appears in the new interface. Click here to check it out.
February 20th, 2006
6:29 am
There’s so much new functionality coming in the next version of Sharepoint that it can be hard to keep track of it all. Sharepoint MVP Dustin Miller has compiled a great list of what’s been announced so far, with links to the blogs where you can learn more about each item.
