From -8419753581834168680 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: f78e5,9a6b7da9ba54eaea X-Google-Attributes: gidf78e5,public X-Google-ArrivalTime: 1993-07-12 01:30:02 PST Newsgroups: comp.std.c++ Path: gmd.de!xlink.net!howland.reston.ans.net!noc.near.net!uunet!mole-end!mat From: mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us Subject: Re: C++ Language Extensions Message-ID: <1993Jul11.093933.8871@mole-end.matawan.nj.us> Organization: : References: <25937@alice.att.com> <25972@alice.att.com> Date: Sun, 11 Jul 1993 09:39:33 GMT Lines: 69 In article <25972@alice.att.com>, ark@alice.att.com (Andrew Koenig) writes: > In article rfg@netcom.com (Ronald F. Guilmette) writes: > > So anyway, I really would love it if someone would buy me a fully company- > > expense-paid trip to Japan or Sweden or Munich or Hawaii, but unlike the > > vast majority of the people on the committee, I have no large company > > behind me who is willing and able to pay for me to take these little > > jet-set junkets. ... Yes, but what happens when that big company decides to send you on a trip you _don't_ want to take? You spend twelve days living in a lab in the basement of some customer's factory in Midville, Louisiana in August, with an occasional trip to the Holiday Inn for a shower ... and you realize that the reason the customer can't get your product to work is that they should be hiring chimpanzees instead of whoever they've managed to hire ... > > ... I'd gladly cut off my right arm for the opportunity to enjoy the > > beer halls of Munich ... When our X3J16/WG21 friends get back, let's see how many beer halls they had a chance to visit. There are four and a half days of meetings, with evening sessions scheduled for presentations on technical issues (sometimes two a night). And, given the stuff under discussion, catatonia is the order of the day. > > ... but alas, I have no such sugar-daddy, so I have to wait for those rare > > occasions when x3j16 comes to me rather than vise versa. Hey, if anybody has a spare sugar-daddy (_not_ a Sugar Daddy, Mikey!) I'll be happy to meet him/her/it. > Let's see if we can push aside resentment for a few moments and look at facts. > > Fact 1. When I go to standards meetings, I spend essentially all of my > time there inside the hotel. It is true that some hotels are > more comfortable than others, but if you gave me a choice between > holding a meeting in Murray Hill or anywhere else in the world, > I would pick Murray Hill. Instantly. The travel is just not > worth it. Never mind that hotels sometime provide conference facilities that stink. Seems to me in Portland we had meeting rooms in the basement, the third floor, and the twenty-Nth and twenty-Nth+1 floors. Meanwhile, there were two conventions that were holding balls day and night, and the elevators, inadequate to begin with, had three of the four cars jammed at all times with inane, vapid people wearing tuxes and gowns so that after you waited your twenty minutes for the elevator, you found that there was no room in the car, whether it was going up or down. (There were ballrooms both above and below.) The fourth car? Oh, it was out of service. And, as several people discovered, one of the emergency stairwells emerged in the hotel kitchen ... And we couldn't even _get_ coffee service anywhere but in the basement. It was on china, so it was hard to carry upstairs, and it was only there in the morning. Skip Hilton. Schedule the next one in a George Washington just off the Pennsylvania Turnpike. With luck, they'll appreciate the business. No, Ron, the travel isn't worth it--what is worth it is getting to work with the people: with Andy and Bjarne and Dag and Tom and Reg and all the rest. With luck, you even find a decent place for lunch. With better luck, you are having so much fun discussing the latest management gaff that you don't notice. -- (This man's opinions are his own.) From mole-end Mark Terribile mat@mole-end.matawan.nj.us, Somewhere in Matawan, NJ