Well, it's downloaded and installed. I tried Microsoft's site again and found an ISO file that can be used to make an install DVD, so I got that. I was in the bookstore the other day going through books about Visual Studio, .NET, and all that stuff, so now I have at least a general understanding of how all of Microsoft's developer tools fit together.
As for not having anything else on the CV, that's definitely not the case. I've got a master's degree in computer science. Strangely, few employers seem to care about degrees. They're more interested in certifications and what languages/technologies are hot right now. Alot of them mention Microsoft's development products, and I'd just like to be able to truthfully say I know how to use them. I've been working the same IT job for five years. Unfortunately, it's got me pigeonholed into one niche, making it hard to move on.
For my own project, at this point, I'm not entirely sure whether I'll be continuing with Perl or switching to C++. I just need to be able to figure out how to implement user interfaces reasonably quick. (My programs so far have been run as console scripts.)
Also, it needs to be able to use an ImageMagick API. Perl's is very good. Whoever took on Java's, dropped the ball and left it incomplete, so that ruled out using Java for this. I'll have to see what the APIs are like for C++, Visual Basic, etc. (ImageMagick's APIs make it easy to write image processing into your programs without having to actually know the algorithms for every type of image processing operation.)
Weird thing happened today. I was working with some images from one of my cameras. Turns out there's a filename extension conflict between Visual C++ and my Sony camera. They both have a type of file that uses extension ".SRF" For the Sony camera, it means "Sony Raw Format". For Visual C++, it means "Server Response File" or something like that. I clicked on a raw image file and it launched Visual C++, which subsequently crashed.