microsoft company meeting by.peter
tue.sep.26

Last Thursday, Microsoft held its annual Company Meeting at Safeco Field in downtown Seattle. To cater for the event, 184 buses were organized to transport employees who didn’t want to drive into Seattle. Since buses leave around 8:30am, Cristina and I had to leave early in order for me to make it in time. We left at about 7:30am and headed south towards the I-90. It was raining, like it had been doing all week, and I heard on the radio that traffic around Safeco Field was congested because of a “Microsoft event”. Safeco Field is a baseball stadium with seating for almost 47,000 people. It also has a retractable roof which was good because the rain, though light, didn’t look like it was going to give up. I dropped Cristina off at her building in downtown Bellevue and made a quick dash to my office. I got there around 8:30am, the earliest I’ve ever been to work at Microsoft. The underground parking was mostly empty so most people either drove directly to Safeco Field or thought it was a good day off. As it turns out, only about 14,000 employees turned up to the Company Meeting so I guess the other half of the employees from Redmond did take the day off. I quickly hopped on one of the waiting buses and found a spare seat next to someone who worked in my building but whom I’ve never seen before. We struck a lengthy conversation for the 50 minute trip to Safeco Field. From the outside, Safeco Field looks like an old warehouse or prison facility with its grey skeletal scaffolding. You couldn’t tell it was built in 1999. I guess I’m too used to the style of Sydney’s Olympic park. As we entered the stadium, we were asked for our employee badges and reminded that cameras were not allowed. The few journalists allowed at the event were chaperoned by PR personnel.

There was a section where boxed lunches were handed out. I grabbed mine and went off to find where the CFS seats were allocated. A few minutes later I was joined by Sam, Mike and Victoria. The stadium was about a third full with employees sitting in their respective groups, some with colored scarves and beanies. In middle of the field, a stage was set up with large projection screens on either side of the stage. The theme of the Company Meeting “People Ready” was emblazoned across the background of the stage. One by one, the directors of each division made speeches and demonstrated some of the products their division had been working on. The obvious standouts were Windows Vista, Office 2007 and the Zune. We also got to look at some interesting things Microsoft’s research department had been working on, including PhotoSynth.

PhotoSynth video

Another announcement at the meeting was that Microsoft had reached its milestone of $2.5 billion in charitable donations. This doesn’t include the $30.1 billion from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Of the total donated, $233 million actually came out of employees pockets! A video was played to show the sort of work Microsoft was doing around the world. It focused on a 15 year old student and her mother from a poor remote region of China. It showed how Microsoft’s donations has allowed the students access to computers and given hope to the parents and students at the school. It was quite a moving story. After the video, we were told Microsoft had flown the family to attend the company meeting and the student was brought on stage for a brief interview. It drew a standing ovation from everyone in the stadium. The other standing ovation during the meeting was when Bill Gates came onto the stage. This was actually the first time I had seen Bill in person…and it was from 100 metres away. Bill made a speech to explain his plans to transition to philanthropy and concentrate on poverty in the developing world and education reform in the US.

The other famous personality to make a speech on the night was Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s CEO. Even though he was sick, he couldn’t help running out and prancing around the stage like a wrestler working up the audience before a match. With music blasting in the background Steve dashed around the field slapping the hands of those nearby and by the time he made it back on stage it took a good minute for him to gather his breath again. Of all the speakers, Steve was the most “energetic”. The meeting went from 9:30am to about 5pm so to keep employees interested and keen, there was plenty of entertainment dispersed through the day. During the breaks, the mascot of the Mariners baseball team, The Mariner Moose, came out with a gas powered cannon and shot rolled up t-shirts into the crowd. There was even a Microsoft Idol singing contest. But the best were the PC vs Mac comeback ads which parodied Apple’s own ads.I hope they release this to the public. After the company meeting, many of us made our way to the building across the street for the internal products fair where each team could demo their products in greater detail. It was another opportunity for a free feed, get some free things and catch up with friends from other teams. Then it was time to hop back on the bus and end the excursion.

 

caught up in american time by.cristina
mon.sep.25

i can't believe it slipped by ... happy birthday mike!! it's still your birthday here in the U.S.! ;-P

so i get a call from mum this evening ...

i'm about to board the plane so i can't talk long.
what? already? happy trip ma!
thanks. you didn't greet your brother on his birthday.

opps. so she's flying to the philippines today. i've been so distracted these days that i'm forgetting all sorts of important details. and peter keeps reminding me of my looming birthday ... which i haven't even thought of at all. i'm so not done being 26.

but work's been great. and busy. i'm expecting to put in long hours every day this week as i have a deadline this friday that i'm determined to meet. so i've stocked up on tea bags and muesli bars to sustain me through the long days. i have my own cubicle which is quite spacious and private (it has a sliding door i can close) ... and i'm fighting the urge to personalise my area like mad. lets see how long i can hold back eh?

 

my first week by.cristina
thu.sep.21

it hasn't ended yet, but so far my first week at work has left me with such good first impressions of my colleagues. most of the people working at the company are quite young, averaging in their mid 20s! i'm told even our ceo is only in his mid 30s! but best of all, they seem like genuinely kind people and getting to know them is a delight! i've had some one on one lunches with a couple of them and i can already tell good friendships will be made here :-). and although i worked from 8am till 7pm today (and most likely will for awhile), the time seemed to fly by! i think this week couldn't have gone any better :-).

thankfully lana has been coping with my starting work relatively well. peter set up a webcam so we can both observe her from work and she seems content playing with her toys, eating, drinking, and napping most of the day. i leave the radio on for her and we also doubled the size of her playpen so she has plenty of room to run around. not to mention, i wake up at 6am every day so i can spend at least an hour (usually more) in the morning exercising and playing with her before peter and i head out. whenever we get home from work she greets us with such enthusiasm and will happily sit in our arms to be cuddled ... and then the exercising and playing with her begins again hehe. peter and i were even contemplating putting her in doggy daycare (yes, they have plenty of those places here!) if she didn't cope well being left on her own. it's not an ideal situation by any means but she seems to be coping a lot better than we expected! even as i type this, she's happily chewing on her bbq chicken flavoured "nylabone", completely oblivious to my presence for the last hour! gosh, i hope she'll notice me soon ;-P

 

holiday over by.cristina
thu.sep.14

i had my very first US job interview yesterday! it was for a position as a "digital media producer" at a software company located in downtown bellevue. the interview went for an hour and a half during which i was given a variety of creative, organisational and written tasks to perform. i was interviewed by two people, one of which was the project manager. i came out of the interview feeling good about my performance, knowing i had done the best that i could. i spent the rest of the day shopping and even caught a movie as i had a few hours to kill before peter would be picking me up.

in the evening peter and i headed to kirkland as we were meeting up with the aussie group for dinner. sam, alice, boe, steve, morton and blaikie were there as well as blaikie's dad who had flown over from australia to visit him. blaikie thought it'd be nice if he introduced us all to his dad which was the reason for the dinner, and he seemed like a very funny and entertaining guy. we chose an indian restaurant this time round which was quite good. as expected, it was a night of laughs and good conversation. we said our goodbyes in the parking lot, but peter and i, along with sam and alice were the last ones left, chatting away in the cold air until the chill started getting to us. summer is definitely over. we're expecting a rapid drop in temperature from now on and we're excited for the ski trips to begin! the four of us ended up going to starbucks to continue our chat where we warmed up with cups of hot mocha ... mmm.

guess what? i received a call this afternoon from one of the guys who interviewed me yesterday saying they wanted to offer me the position! yaaaaay!! he explained the terms and the pay and i was thrilled with the offer! i told him i definitely wanted to accept! so i start next monday at 10am! wooohooo!! i'm am SO excited! (and a little pleased with myself hehe)

 

a big week by.peter
sun.sep.10

Last Friday we had a big Vista RC1 launch party on the sports fields. There was the usual free food, drinks, alcohol and give away frisbees. Everyone who had anything to do with Vista was there. I met up with the usual Aussie crew for the event. We stayed long enough to get our frisbees and free food then we headed back. Blaikie and I had more important things to do - we wanted to try out Starcraft which we had just picked up from Circuit City that week for $8. Unfortunately our plans were disrupted by the fact that Starcraft only worked on one of the machines – the one running Windows XP. The other three machines were running a private build of Longhorn server, Windows 2003 server and Ubuntu – none of which are good for games. With the long weekend coming up neither of us were in the mood to try very hard to make things work.

This was the first long weekend since we arrived in the US. Labor Day is a federal holiday falling on the first Monday of September and this year it fell on September 4. On Saturday evening we headed into the International District and visited the Vietnamese areas around Jackson Street. The area felt more like Sydney’s own Redfern than a Chinatown or Cabramatta. At about 10pm we stopped by a little restaurant and had Pho for dinner. By this time most things were closed, except for a reception across the road hosting two wedding receptions and the disco above us pumping out retro disco music.

After dinner we decided to see what Mercer Island had to offer at this time of night. Mercer Island sits in the middle of Lake Washington with only the I-90 leading in and out. We entered the island on the west entrance and headed south. Without any clue what to expect we followed the road as close to the water as possible. Surely there would be some waterfront café or something. What we got was a winding, unlit road surrounded by trees on both sides. The first 10 minutes it seemed like a nice drive with the trees, the water and the moon. Nice wasn’t gonna cut it for me so I made it a little more exciting. I looked at Cristina and started pondering ideas of what would happen if our car broke down – it’ll be just like that movie “Wrong Turn”. After about 20 minutes it felt like we were going around in circles with every turn looking the same. By this time Cristina was totally freaked out and would occasionally scream when our high beams lit up a strange looking tree hehe. Mercer Island had suddenly become The Island of Dr. Moreau that Cristina just wanted to leave behind and never visit again. After more than 30 minutes following the perimeter of the island we finally reached the east exit of the island and headed home.

Sunday was a quiet and mostly a relaxing day for us. However, I logged into work to try and resolve a number of build issues I was having. The typical cycle would be to make a 15 minute change then kick off a build. Come back 4-5 hours later to see if the build had failed or succeeded. If it failed I start again. If it succeeds I kick of the building test then come back again in 2 hours to see if the build was any good. I repeat this cycle almost 10 times over the duration of the long weekend. It was during one of these cycles that I read the news on Sydney Morning Herald that Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin, was killed by a stingray. The news had just broken in Australia but it didn’t take long for it to reach the US. Soon the internet and news agencies would be buzzing with tributes to Steve. The story was so big it was causing network problems for many of the news sites. I felt really sad for his wife and kids.

On Monday, Labor Day, we headed down to the Kent’s Great Wall Shopping Mall – a mall specializing in Asian shops. I was told this was where I could find my pickled baby eggplants. We found them and I got 4 jars for good measure. We also filled out trolleys with Asian food and groceries as if we were preparing for some sort of natural disaster. Yes, if Seattle goes under 10feet of water I’ll be fine coz I’ll have my prawn crackers. We found lots of Vietnamese shops and even a Filipino store.

When we got home I continued logged back into work to repeat the build/test cycles. I wanted to have it working by Tuesday and I was getting very close. I stayed up until 6am on Tuesday doing this but there was always something that broke. The problem was that the build was having problems with a new and poorly documented feature and the only way to get it to work was to exhaustively try different combinations. I stayed up until 6am on Tuesday morning to try and get it to work but it still didn’t. I decided there was little point heading into the office and emailed my manager to tell him I was going to work from home that day. I continued the cycle, getting several hours of sleep in between builds. Tuesday ended and I still hadn’t gotten it to work.

On Wednesday we had a team meeting to catch up on where everyone was up to. I explained I was getting very little help from the Windows build and setup teams. They were too busy with Vista and Longhorn server, the project I was having issues with, is a lower priority for them. My manager knew exactly how I felt. So when the option of go-kart or skirmish came up during discussion for the next team bonding exercise, he understood why I picked skirmish. He even asked if I wanted to invite the build and setup teams. Bring it on! Luckily, Wednesday afternoon I finally tried a combination of changes that got everything working. A heavy weight had been lifted off my shoulders.

I got it working just in time too because Thursday was the CFS picnic and now I could enjoy the picnic without having to think about work. The picnic was held at Vasa Park in Bellevue, on the south west shore of Lake Sammamish.

There was soccer, laser tag, badminton, basketball, volleyball and best of all – jet skis! I’ve never been on a jet ski before so this was certainly the main attraction for me. As soon as I ate I headed straight to the lake, signed a long waiver contract and put on my life-vests. I got my 10 second instructions on how to use a jet ski and off I went. I was given two keys, one to limit it to 15 mph and a second with no limits. I had no idea how powerful these things really were. I tried the slow key to get a feel for the controls. 2 minutes of that was enough, time for the real key. WOW! 185 horse power and I’m told it can reach 60mph. For comparison, a Mazda 3 has only 150 hp. I can confirm that if you keep very low and stay very straight you can reach 66mph :). At that speed it feels like you are in a wind tunnel. That’s 106kmph with nothing holding you to the machine! I can’t even legally do that speed on most of the freeways in the area in my car with seat belts and airbags.

However, there’s only so much fun you can have doing high speeds in a straight line on calm water. I worked out it was a lot more fun if you tried to ride the jet ski in a figure ‘8’ as fast as you can and keeping the radius as small as you can. When you reach about 45mph doing that you can create enough turbulence in the water so that for brief moments your jet ski is technically airborne and you can hear a different pitch in the engine as the propeller cuts through nothing but air.

Jet skiing would probably count as one of the most exciting experiences of my life. The last time I had this much fun was when I went skiing. Now I can’t wait until ski season here during Christmas.

 

father's day by.peter.cristina
sat.sep.2 (sep.3 in aus)

Wishing our Dads a Happy Father's Day!
Love, Peter & Cristina