Pretty cool eh?

I had a really nice day today, so I figured I’d share.

It all started this morning. I was on the way to work and decided to call up Nokia to get the status of a repair. You see, last year I bought this cool device called the n770 Internet Tablet. It’s got a 640×480 pixel touch screen, bluetooth, wifi, runs a flavor of Debian linux, and has a large development community. I got it new from Woot.com for about $125. A couple of months ago, it stopped working. I could tell that it was on, but the screen appeared to be dead. I mailed it in for warranty repair and waited. Anyway, fast-forward two months; Nokia has had my repair status listed as “Waiting for Parts” since March 7th and I’m starting to miss the convenience of the device. So I called their customer care to ask what the story was. The 1st tier agent took my information and put me on hold for about 1 minute. He then came back and told me that he was researching and asked if he could put me on hold for another minute. One more minute later he came back and told me that he had Milton on the line from the Executive Resolutions department and that he’d take care of my problem. Milton greeted me and made sure that he understood my situation correctly. He then told me that, rather than making me wait any longer, they will send me an n800 tablet instead. The n800 is the next model up, came out about a year after the n770, and has much better hardware in it (including a faster cpu, and even a little camera). Naturally, I accepted the offer. That’s an epic win if I’ve ever seen one.

I got into work at around 10:45am and took care of some emails and questions from co-workers. Later, I went to get some teriyaki for lunch with Alex. After lunch, I went over to one of the buildings at Microsoft for interviewer training. A large part about working and advancing at Microsoft is helping in the hiring process. We take a lot of pride in hiring the “best and the brightest” people. The class was fairly interesting and flew by quickly (thank god since it was 4 hours long). Nothing scandalous to speak of…they just taught how to ask good open-ended questions and what kinds of things you shouldn’t ask about (race, religion, age, etc).

After training, I stopped by Alex‘s office to say hi and then left to head back to my office. I got outside and saw that it is a beautiful day: sunny, blue skies, and mid-60s. I couldn’t pass this up, so I took the long way (albeit not necessarily on purpose). I walked about one mile.

Right now, I’m relaxing in my office catching up with email. I’ll probably spend some time coding before I leave.

These are all the machines that I currently own or administer.

* I just sold my Powerbook G4 to my mother, but I kept the machine name for myself and intend to use it for my future MacBook Pro (whenever Jobsy decides to release new ones)

Regarding Astra: I know that it isn’t a star name…it was the first machine that I used the naming convention for and I didn’t feel like going to the trouble to change it.

My next major machine, likely a nice linux server, will be named Vega.

It’s starting to get dark early here in Seattle.  Makes work a bit boring toward the later part of the day.  Easy fix though…that’s why I’m writing this instead   Seriously though, work is going well.  I’m doing some cool features for SharePoint that I can’t wait to show off once we ship.

I’ve been travelling a lot recently: Two weeks ago I was in Orange County to help my bro-in-law Brian move his business to a new location.  It was right after the fires started to die down, so there were definitely points where I inhaled a healthy dose of ash (mmm, tastes like burning).  Last week, I went to New York City with Dwayne and Michael to go be tourists and check out the sights.  I’d only been to NYC once before, and I was about 18 months old, so I don’t remember it at all.  We saw the usual stuff: the Empire State Building, Battery Park, Ground Zero, Times Square; and some of the unusual stuff: the 5th Ave. Apple Glass Cube Store, the Nintendo World Store.  It was a fun trip and, at the very least, it got me out of Seattle for a weekend.

I’m going to be in Southern California twice more this year: once for Thanksgiving (11/21-11/26), and again for the holidays (12/19-1/6).  I’ll most likely stay in OC for the first trip, but I will definitely get down to San Diego for some chunk of the holiday trip, so #sdcolleges folks: prepare your booze and get ready to party.

As for this coming weekend, I’m booked up.  Tonight, I’m going to dinner with some friends at a German resturant in Seattle downtown, and then seeing a double feature of horror movies.  Tomorrow, I’m (in theory) taking Ruth and perhaps some others around Seattle to see the sights.  Then on Saturday night, I’m going to Ferdinand & Hitomi’s birthday party.  Sunday, I’m hanging out with Holly during the day, and then going to celebrate Michael’s birthday in some way, shape, or form.

I think I’ll try to post here a little more often now, so keep checking back or subscribe to the RSS feed.

http://www.microsoft.com/surface/

When I started at Microsoft, almost four weeks ago, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of trepidation. It seemed like it was only a temporary gig — a dream that could go away any minute. Now, after some time getting used to the job and the area, I feel much more at home. It’s really hitting me: I work for Microsoft. I’m doing some awesome stuff at work and I look forward to being in the office. I’m glad that I have that luxury.

Anyway, I just wanted to give out an update on my life since I’ve been a bit spartan in my posting habits lately.

It certainly gives me something to be entertained about while grading. And he got the year right this time.

I’ll be working in the User Experience team of the Office Sharepoint group — basically making some awesome web-based interfaces for web applications.

The next step is coordinating the relocation. I’ll be moving up to Redmond, WA.

I graduate on March 16th, so I’ll have a month to tie up loose ends and hang out with everyone.

Before you ask, here’s an FAQ:
Q: Aren’t you an anti-Microsoft Mac user?
A: I’m a mac user, but I was never anti-Microsoft. I really like some of the technologies Microsoft is rolling out, especially the .NET framework. Sure I’ve complained about Windows, but who hasn’t? It’s a big piece of software so it’s hard to make it perfect at every release.

Q: Are you moving up there for good?
A: I’m going there for a career, so I’m there until they get sick of me (or visa versa I guess)

Q: Are you going to meet Bill Gates?
A: Um, I dunno….maybe eventually.

UCLA – Accepted
UCSD – Accepted
UCR – Accepted with full-ride fellowship
UCI – Accepted
UC Berkeley – Not Accepted
Stanford – Not Accepted

I’ll update this entry as decisions come in.