Back from Seattle

Just got back from MVP Global Summit 2007 in Seattle. Among usual things, like watching Bill’s keynote, meeting other MVPs, DirectX/XNA guys, getting a grip of some NDA information and such, here are some of the other highlights:

Amsterdam airport:

Officer: You speak English sir?
Me: Yeah.
O (takes a look at my passport): Ah, you speak Russian of course!
M: No, not really.
O: But your language is very similar to Russian, right?
M: Hm…

Well, here we know who gets the Linguist of the Year award.

Seattle-Tahoma airport, lady at checkin: “what kind of passport is that?”. It also takes 5 times to enter my last name properly, from the printed letters in the passport. Each time trying to persuade me that I did change the ticket date of course!

Seattle-Tahoma airport, security: “sir, you have been selected for additional screening”. Do they randomly select people for that quite involved process? Why this “selection” happens immediately after they take a look at my passport?

Random quotes:

Ten minutes walk is a long distance! Ten minutes of walking distance in the States is a very good reason to buy a car. At least SUV; preferably a Hummer.

DirectX SDK is the source of all sorts of high frequency goodness.

Sony is always good at announcements.

No? Rumours on the internet? Shock! Horror!