cascadian telegrams

techy

as I expect to create a small torrent of developer and technical stuff, I've decided to split out that blog from our personal and family things: that blog, techy, can be found here: http://bvdk.typepad.com/techy/

note that cascadian telegrams isn't going anywhere -- just trying not to bore/bother those who don't care about software development musings!  What's that you say?  My other musings bore you as well?  Well, I hope you find a cure for your insomnia! :)

goog is my pilot

one of the really nice things about being a Microsoft employee is the really good level of IT infrastructure you come to expect and think of as normal; for example, if you have a “smart phone” (such as a Windows, Nokia, Blackberry or iPhone) you can get “push mail” from the corporate server and instant updates to your appointment calendar, contacts and more.  It is very handy when you’re trying to find a meeting place or if someone changes an appointment when you’re enroute, etc.  So when I left Microsoft I didn’t have any of those things any more (even though I still seem to have lots of appointments… “networking” is the term I believe :)).

Enter Google.  For no out-of-pocket cost you can set up email for your domain as well as shared contacts, calendars, documents and more, stored in the cloud and available anywhere.  If you have a smartphone like the iPhone, you also get “push mail” like the big companies have and “push calendar” via CALDAV (the calendar variant of WebDAV) for whichever calendars you choose (you can have many of them with different restrictions… I’ve got personal, family and one for our son’s little league team set up).  There’s a bit of initial configuration involved, but once it is set up, it works like a charm.  My email domain has been hosted on gmail for a few years now, but I’ve only now started using the calendar and other features.  Pretty slick.

Additionally, since I’m dividing my time between Windows and OS X, I can’t use OneNote for my “research notebooks” all the time as I was used to.  Google Docs is a decent facsimile and as a bonus lets me collaboratively edit with other people on the same document at the same time.  The editing affordances are rudimentary, but it is adequate for my needs.

The price for all this neat stuff is that Google is crawling your content stored on their servers and using it to improve AdSense etc.  It’s a little creepy when you’re discussing a mortgage or something in an email and an ad appears on the right-hand side from a mortgage bank.  Basically you are trusting Google (in the free case) to protect and not share your data without your consent.  For me, for now, I can live with that… but I can understand why some might not trust them. Presumably with the paid hosting plans you can opt out of crawling your data but I’m sticking with the free one.

Of course you can use IMAP or POP to access your mail and short-circuit the ads… that’s what I do, and I use a third-party app to synch my calendar and contacts.  But I wouldn’t be totally surprised if they pull the plug on that capability for the free product some time in future.

goodbye to all that

after ~11 years,  10 managers, 5 teams (and 3-4 different shipped products, depending on how you count), 3 patents, 2 continents and the birth of one son, I’m leaving Microsoft and moving onto other things.  Here’s how I described to friends there:

Hello! And Goodbye…

My seven year-old son likes to say that he will work at the Lego Factory when he grows up.
Well, after nearly 11 years at Microsoft I’ve decided that I’m actually happier building things with Legos rather than designing Legos or deciding how many red vs white pieces are in each kit, whether Lego ships a Batman or Avatar kit, the philosophy of Legos and so forth, so I’m going back to building things.  My last day at Microsoft is Friday April 9th 2010.

If you’re getting this mail, you are a friend and/or a colleague who has made my time at Microsoft a happy and fulfilling time.  Thank you.

On balance, it really was a happy and fulfilling time.  The last six months were not happy;  my English side is not comfortable airing laundry like that in public, so I’ll leave it at that.  Suffice to say that my current position was the impetus for leaving but not the reason… I’ve been talking about going for years. It wasn’t exactly how I envisioned leaving or when, but… the perfect time never arrives.  So I left.

I must say the the prospect of being unemployed scares the life out of me in some ways.  I’ve been unemployed precisely two weeks since 1987 (after we returned from our honeymoon in 1991, so… ages ago) which is effectively “never”.  It is very weird. 

I’ll stay in software and hopefully return to my original role as a developer (which I did for 13 years or so prior to becoming a ‘program manager’ at Microsoft).  I thought that point was plain enough with the “lego” and “building” metaphor in the goodbye email, but I still got some replies like

""what’s this stuff about Lego?”

“what do you mean building… like, carpentry?”

“does this mean you have more time for hockey now?”

“are we still on for lunch?”

Mmm hmm.  Glad to see that Microsoft continues to hire only the best and the brightest!

And of course the most popular response was:  “what are you doing next?”

Honestly I don’t know yet.  I’m going to write a few apps to blow the dust off of my coding skills, talk to as many smart people doing interesting things as I possibly can, and think about it for a little bit (if you know of interesting ideas, dear reader, my c.v. is here for context).  It’s a big world outside of the echo chamber, and I have a lot to learn…

Here’s my new office, which also happens to be ‘home’:

 

Allons-Y!

Michael

ps yes, Susan is staying put :)…