VB sniffles and a new hat for Betsy

Have you ever had a head cold so bad that made video games swith spiky helmeted demons seem realistic? Gone through a box of Kleenex in a weekend and it wasn't all Chick Flick night or some weepy barroom confidence? Felt like dying was perhaps something that other lucky people got to do, and you had to live on with a throat turning into oak bark?

And THEN tried to look at some code?

I don't know... I have heard people swear that drinking beer makes them code better. I have heard of people who have to put their headphones at "11" and then they can summon the mysterious vital forces of syntax and logic and code like a demon. Some people only code after midnight. I don't want to speculate on how many people can program in altered states (indeed, the act of programming may well BE an altered state).

But oy, to be trying to look at Visual Basic code - examples I wrote myself, when my brain wasn't diseased, so that I can submit them to MSDN in the form of beginner VB articles....ugh. I went home sick Friday, slept most of Saturday, and tried  Sunday to cope with minor life details like laundry and three  VB-related articles I promised so that folks could review them. It helped that I was on my new Dell Inspiron XPS, the very fat (and phat) gaming laptop and my pal Ari had helped me jigger my wireless router so that it worked again. It helped that I had laid in a supply of Chinese food for the weekend, knowing I'd never go out again, and a supply of coffee to apply artificial focus to a delirious brain.But oh, all the side jokes and code impertinences were completely lost. I can only deal with code when I'm well. Nyquil and for-next loops don't mix.

Speaking of what's in the mix, I officially changed hats today from Web site management to being a community program manager. I have a lot of the same things on my plate - Gotdotnet, blogs.msdn.com, etc -  but I get to approach them in a slightly different way and under a different team's aegis. What I like about this is that the pm track at Microsoft encourages you (and forces you) to become more technical. Not that site management won't do that too, but site management is a newer discipline here than pm. (You may remember a few blogs back how I talked about participating in one that set up Web site competencies for community here).

It's all community of course, at the end of the day.

Live it vivid!