Question: So, in reading this site, it seems that the shop in which I work does a lot of things wrong and some things right. How can I improve the code that I work with from my colleagues? The only thing I can think of is to lead by example - start using Boost, etc. Any other thoughts?

Answer: 
* Reading good programming books
* Learning from other's code - Open source projects are the best place to start
* Read good blogs and forums regularly - Sutter mill, Coding Horror, Martin fowler etc
* Code reviews
* Unit tests
* Using good libraries like Boost, STL. Also understanding their implementation
It's great that you recognize that there's room for improvement and have the desire to try to enact some change. I suggest reading James Shore's [19-week diary](http://jamesshore.com/Change-Diary/) where he documents the steps that he went through to enact agile development at his company. It's a hard fight, but his experience shows that you can make a difference.