It’s not every day you write this sort of blog post. And you hope it’s not something you do so often that you ever get good at it. I’m certainly sucking up a storm here. Just last month I hit my four year mark at Microsoft. I reflected on the sheer joy I experienced working with such smart people on cool projects. I’ve been very lucky and fortunate to be able to speak about these projects at many conferences, meeting so many interesting attendees. It’s been a real blast. Today, I write a different sort of post. It...
No, I’m not talking about my mental age. My son turned four this past week which means I’m four years into my world domination plan. One of the gifts we gave my son was a toolbox with plastic toys so we can train him on building the mega-lasers and fortresses needed to take over the world. Turns out that before you start dominating the world, you have to start taking baby steps. And then toddler steps. And then 4-year old running terror steps. In these past four years, I’ve learned a lot. For example, you can get a...
I’m reading through the archives of a blog where the author posts something random every Friday (yesterday was Thursday, and tomorrow is Saturday). His Friday posts are completely unrelated to the main theme and content of his blog. I like that idea a lot. I don’t blog as much as I used to mostly because I feel the need to spend so much time on each blog post. A lot of the posts I write take a bit of research and experimentation before I’m ready to post them. But a random thought? I can pull one of those...
Every good developer knows to always have a backup. For example, over two years ago, I announced my world domination plans. But there was a single point of failure in me putting all my world domination plans on the tiny shoulders of just one progeny. My boy needs a partner in crime. So my wife and I conspired together and we’re happy to announce that baby #2 is on the way. Together, the two of them will be unstoppable! My wife is past her first trimester and we expect the baby to RTF (Release To Family) around...
It’s a quiet friday afternoon with all of our devs in training today, so I figured I’d take a breather and respond to this meme I’ve been tagged with by Simone, Keyvan, Steve and others. How Old Were You When You Started Programming? Have I even started really programming yet? I guess I got my first taste when I was around eight with my first computer, a TRS-80 Color Computer. That sucker could display 9 colors, all at once, believe it or not. My programming experience back then was pretty minimal. My dad and I mostly spent hours...
You don’t so much return from Las Vegas as you recover from Las Vegas. Right now, I am recovering from my Las Vegas trip. Recovering from Vegas Nose caused by the extremely dry air and massive second hand smoke inhalation. Recovering from the sensory onslaught they call casinos. Recovering from the fake kitschiness and manafactured excitement as people sit like zombies feeding machines their life savings. Yet despite all that, I still love the place. Maybe because despite the bad things, Vegas is really the Disneyland for adults with a slight bad streak inside that yearns to get...
Today my wife and I celebrate our fifth anniversary of being legally married. If you’ve read my blog long enough, you might have seen this post which suggests we were married June 14, not September 12. It’s all pretty simple, you see. We had our wedding ceremony on June 14 2003, but were secretly legally married on September 12, 2002. Ok perhaps the term secret marriage is a bit too strong. But it sounds cool, doesn’t it? The story is that at the time, my wife wanted to take a long trip back to Japan before our planned wedding....