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Wow.  That is the only way to summarize the past two weeks.  First, we finally got our house! That's our new home up above. It is in a little town called Woodinville. It's just a few miles north of Redmond, where I will be working at Microsoft. A little known fact about this tiny town: There are no less than 30 - count 'em - THIRTY wineries and numerous brew houses in Woodinville. Check out the full list at: http://www.winesnw.com/woodinville.html

I suspect my wife and I are going to have some fun weekends up here. ;-) Aside from turning into winos, we are less than 30 minutes drive (east) to several ski resorts for you snow bunnies, approx. 20 minutes to downtown Seattle, and only a couple hours drive from Portland, OR to the south or Vancouver, B.C. to the north. I can't wait to get out and explore more.

If you haven't read about Week 1, just roll back to the post before this one for that story.  Week two was pretty interesting.  Things at Microsoft can get pretty overwhelming VERY quickly.  For most people, just trying to get the hang of how to find anything on this massive campus can be a daunting task.  The building I am in was designed like a maze for rats.  Add to that that there are really three or four buildings connected and throw in an underground parking garage that is several levels deep and covers all the buildings...lets just say you can lose your car (and your mind) pretty easily if you don't take a mental note of where the hell you parked.  But on the flip side, this place just simply rocks.  In my building I have TWO kitchens on every floor.  Each fully stocked with tons of drinks and a Starbucks machine that grinds and brews fresh coffee on demand.  It just doesn't get any better.  I have been warned about the "Microsoft 20" though.  That is apparently the term used for the 20 pounds you will gain when you first come to Microsoft!  I can certainly understand how.  There is a common cafeteria (1 of 23+ that I know of) that serves the 3 or 4 buildings in my little area and the food is not too bad.  And last, there are things like foos-ball, billiard tables and ping-pong tables all over the place for those impromptu sessions while you exercise your brains.

So back to the job.  My team wasted no time and threw me right into the mix.  It's like someone opened up a fire hose and I am sitting right in front of it with my mouth wide open.  I have been in meeting after meeting after meeting after meeting.  Hell, I have been in meetings about meetings.  There is one thing you can bet on around Microsoft, they get damn good use of their conference rooms!  My head is still spinning.  With all that information being thrown at you, you better be good at taking notes.  Everyone is really good about summarizing things though.  Usually a Program Manager will send out a re-cap of the important stuff and we have just massive amounts of resources internally.  Anything critical is posted on our internal team sites.  So finding things isn't too bad as long as you have somewhere to start from.  Another thing that Microsoft knows how to do well is usability studies.  Man, we have got some wicked nice labs. I have been in a bunch of usability studies this week working on a prototype for a very cool application.  There's just no better way to get this kind of feedback before going too far down the development process, and having a lab this well equipped is a dream. To the left you see my Usability Engineer conducting one of our sessions (our subject is behind the mirror and up on the plasma in the small window to the right.

I have to admit, I had no clue how complicated of a process it is to actually ship a piece of software at this level.  There are a million meetings because there is just literally an insane amount of work and coordination across teams that has to happen for all of this to work.  This makes web development pale in comparison.  The good thing is that you are given EVERYTHING you need to succeed.  And believe me, you get EVERYTHING.  I have been working off of my desktop for most of the week and I just got my new laptop yesterday (yes, most of us have 2 or more systems on our desks) and I have to admit, it's taking a bit of getting used to.  After so many years of schlepping around a Powerbook, it just feels weird to carry a PC.  But on the other hand, I actually forgot some of the nicer things about a PC.  First, let me start off by saying that I drank the Kool-Aid pretty damn hard this week.  My Apple peeps may need to sit down for this.  I can't believe I am going to say it....but...wait for it....wait...shhhhh: <whisper> Windows Vista is actually pretty COOL! </whisper>.  Wow.  There.  I said it.  Yes folks.  It's true.  Microsoft did a damn good job on Vista and I sincerely believe that it will sell well once people see it.  Office 2007 is nothing short of AMAZING.  I have been searching for a complete suite of tools that does everything I want for quite some time on the Mac, and there just really hasn't been a solution that met my needs.  I finally found it - Office 2007 Enterprise ROCKS.  Not only does it look good, but it works like a dream.  I can't believe how much I missed Outlook!

There is soooo much cool technology at this company that you just seriously have to sit back and just shake your head sometimes. Perfect example is my first all-hands meeting this week.  We have this HUGE conference center that has a multitude of...well, conference rooms!  But I am talking the BIG kind with full A/V capabilities like streaming the session across the entire campus.  And this isn't just any little meeting, it was fully catered with tasty eats and again, insane selection of beverages, some which left me saying "wow - we can drink that at work, and for free?!?!?!"  Just take a look at the conference room (to the right) where we had our groups quarterly update meeting.  Not only do you have pristine wireless access everywhere, the conference room has killer chairs and a desk with power outlet so you can actually be productive.  This is the way everything is done around this company.  I can't tell you how great it feels to work someplace that just "gets it."  I know some of you may be saying they DON'T get it, and that may be true in certain aspects, but they get how business should be done and how to treat their employees.

The amount of information just internally on our intranet sites is mind blowing.  And the sickest part is that you can install and play with just about anything.  UNLIKE Apple, exploration and "dogfooding" is encouraged at this company.  You are privy to internal confidential software and information that you would NEVER have access to at Apple.  You are trusted to use good judgement and treated as a professional, not like a 2 year old that will spill the beans if told a secret.  The culture is so awesome that it has literally made me stop and think to myself "WTF were you thinking Frank?"  I have no idea why I was so hung up on Apple as if it were the only place to work in the universe.  I got news for you people, there is life outside of and after Apple and it's pretty damn good!  That being said, Apple is still a great company to work for.  It's just a different culture, and they definitely "Think Different", but in a good way.  I just happen to like this new-found culture better.  Like anything else, a lot has to do with the team you work with, so your milage can vary at either company. I am VERY fortunate to be on what I believe (and have been told by many) is one of the best groups and teams within all of Microsoft.  I have great leadership and my peers are a hell of a bunch.  I would be completely and utterly lost if it weren't for my peer mentor.  Microsoft really makes it a point to make sure your "onboarding" process is a good one and you are brought up to speed and not just left to figure things out on your own.

So going back to the technology...here's one thing that Apple hasn't figured out...mobile devices.  I am tired of waiting for Apple to release what we have been asking for, the Apple Smartphone.  So tell ya what...my happy ass is going down to Cingular tomorrow and picking up what I think is one of the coolest phones on the market right now, the Cingular 8525 (HTC TyTN).  Yes, it runs Windows Mobile 5, and yes - it is WAY cool, and thanks to the Missing Sync, I can even sync it with my Mac's at home.  Internally we have access to not only a wealth of information on these mobile devices, we have tons of cool applications not available to the outside world.  My Palm Treo 650 is a bonafide P.O.S. compared to these Windows based phones.  And the added bonus for me will be having the ability to check email and calendar info at work without opening my laptop or PC.  I get real-time push email from Exchange Server to my phone and since the entire campus is WiFi enabled, I can even jump on internal websites and pull down anything I need access to.  The uber geek factor is high folks.

I'll end with today's Town Hall meeting.  This is very similar to what Apple does and is meant to give the troops a state-of-the-union of how the company is doing.  I finally got to see Steve Ballmer up close and in person for the first time.  The best way I can describe him is "animated."  Boy, he sure gets fired up and truly excited about this company.  :-)  I guess that's a good thing.  After sitting through the presentation and hearing about all the different things we are doing as a company, I can't help but feel that I really made the right decision.  Not that I have questioned it, but it is just simply reassuring to know that this company is doing well and heading in a good direction.  We have so many cool new things coming out that people will have no option but to take notice.  It's a great time to be a Microsoftie and apparently I am not the only one who feels that way.  Todays headline in the tech world is about well known Infoworld author John Udell.  He apparently drank the same Kool-Aid that I did and has now been assimilated by the borg as well.  This is a huge huge huge win for Microsoft and I can't wait to see what he does when he comes onboard.  His new boss, Jeff Sandquist (Rober Scoble's old boss), has a blurb about it here.  To hear the story straight from John's mouth, click here. For those of you who think I am nuts or sold out, I encourage you to re-evaluate your idea of what's important in today's world of technology. There is more than enough room for both Apple and Microsoft, and the other players in the world, to co-exist peacefully and work quite well together. There are tons of job openings here and if you think you can make a difference and want to give it a shot, drop me a line and I will see what I can do. I am loving my new gig, I'm sure you would too!

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