Who Stole Rob Caron?

Like tens of thousands of other people, I am an avid and daily reader of my good friend Rob Caron's VSTS blog. He is way plugged in, clearly. But Rob is more than that. He is a bloguoso.

Lately however, Rob hasn't seemed himself. As possibly occurred with with Raymond Chen's Old New Thing blog last year, Rob's latest blog posts appear to have been produced by a robot or blog double, on his behalf. The other day, I sent Rob a "Yo Dude" email and received a plain "I'm on vacation" email, in response. I tried to call him on his work phone and then his cell phone but was unable to connect to either. Troubling.

Today, while reading his blog, a dreadful explanation for his recent lack of blogélan and the other odd and seemingly disconnected facts and events I mention occurred to me:

Somebody stole Rob Caron.

Like the garden gnome in Amelie, a mysterious conspirator or group, possibly rabid fans of VSTFS, appears to have absconded with Rob. Worse, they appear to have hijacked his blog and possibly even his email account. Their modus operandi? I speculate that Rob's captor/s may be bent on conveying him to the "lighthouses that were the namesakes for several Team System features", photographing him in situ, and then whisking him away to the next site. Confirming my suspicion...

Here's Rob at Hatteras lighthouse, which was the namesake for VSTFS version control (my erstwhile project).

And here he is at Ocracoke lighthouse, the namesake for VSTFS test tools.

Where will they take Rob next? I'm putting my money on Currituck, which was the namesake for VSTFS work item tracking.