MVP For Me

A week ago, on Tuesday, July 1st, I received a strange email. I should have known it was going to be a strange day. I was wearing my Ohio Linux Fest 2006 t-shirt. I had just listened to Java Posse podcast and was listening to Mac Break Weekly. Since I don’t write java code and I don’t own a mac, I should have know I was playing with fate.

This email might have been a joke. It was short and to the point, exactly the opposite I would expect for an email of this subject matter. It should have been some crazy HTML formatted table of disgustingness which I would have initially dismissed as spam. It should have had embedded images and fancy fonts. It had none of these things.

The email subject said very simply and plainly, “Congratulations! you have received the Microsoft MVP Award”. Surely someone was playing a trick on me. It was probably one of my old Linux buddies making fun of me for using so much Microsoft software these days.

I opened the message to read, “Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2008 Microsoft® MVP Award! The MVP Award is our way to say thank you for promoting the spirit of community and improving people’s lives and the industry’s success every day. We appreciate your extraordinary efforts in Visual C# technical communities during the past year….”

It looks legit. I don’t know what I did to deserve such an award, but I’m grateful for it. I plan on continuing doing whatever it I’ve been doing.

Who knew that an perl loving, linux loving, python loving, linux kernel hacking, mono loving, C# loving, boo loving, F# loving, wife loving baby loving insane hacker could be a C# MVP. I sure didn’t.

Thanks to anyone who put in a good word about me.