Sorry about that. It’s been a busy time.  Right now I’m in Russia (and have been for the past week).  I’m doing VS 2010 launch events across Eastern Europe.  Before that I had to take some time off to handle the spring farm work 🙂  And then I was busy getting ready to leave for this trip. The last week has been a ton of fun.  I’ve never been to Russia (or Eastern Europe for that matter) before.  I’ve been impressed by many things.  The people I’ve met have been incredibly friendly.  They’ve been eager to get the opportunity to talk with me and excited about what we are doing with Visual Studio 2010.  I’ve been quite surprised how many of them speak English quite well.  Somehow with the cold war and all, I think I expected there to not be much interest in learning English.  This is also the first time that I’ve worked extensively with a translator.  It’s pretty wierd to speak in short phrases and then pause while someone translates what you’ve said.  On the other hand, the two guys I’ve worked with have been really good so it’s been fun. I’ve been picking up a few words of Russian too 🙂  One of my goals in life is to learn to count to 10 everywhere I go.  So far English, German, Spanish, French, Japanese and now Russian.  I missed out on Italian while I was in Italy and I need to go back and pick that one up. The country here is also very beautiful.  We took the train from Moscow to St. Petersburg and it was a terrific trip.  I also got a few hours to tour St. Petersburg.  What a beautiful city!  It would rival any of the wonderful European cities I’ve been to.  Right now I’m in Ekaterinburg.  I’d never even heard of it before this trip (and it took me several days to finally learn how to pronounce it :)).  It’s a pretty big city, very modern and very nice. Soon I’ll be heading for the second half of my trip – Czech Republic, Croatia and Bulgaria.  I’ve never been to any of those countries either and I’m really looking forward to it. Once I get back and things settle down a little, I’ll pick back up my blogging where I left off.

Brian