It’s been awhile since I’ve wasted your Friday…  I hope your pre-weekend productivity hasn’t been too high.

Doodle God – Combine elements to create new elements.
 http://www.avaloid.com/doodle-god?tab=flash
As a bonus….

check out http://store.steampowered.com/, lots of great games are on sale right now…  My picks for some “under $10 shark attack free indoor fun” are Plants Vs. Zombies (30% off), World of Goo (50% off), and Flotilla (50% off).

Office 2010 (O14* to the folks not in marketing) finally hit the streets earlier this week!   To commemorate the event I got a special version of Office Pro Plus with a note as well as a “ship-it” award.  They are awarded every time a product ships to everyone who worked on it. 

Ever since I started work at Microsoft as a contractor four years ago I coveted the plaques, they are just adhesive backed bits of metal  and frosted glass.  It wasn’t so much the physical object but what it represented…  sadly I was ineligible for one of these until now (only FTEs get them). 

Being involved with the RTM builds (Release To Market (or Manufacture, depending on who you talk to)) was a new challenge for me.  I’ve been on high visibility (read: stressful) builds before but nothing like RTM, thankfully I had a vast stockpile of caffeinated products and a forgiving wife to help me through the 18+ x 7 work weeks (I would work 18+ hour days from Monday through Sunday for a week at a time every few weeks).  The ability to work from home was certainly a blessing (as was my natural insomnia and aforementioned wife and caffeine stockpile), but now I’m in the market for a new chair since I literally wore the padding down with my butt (NOT a painless process I assure you).

Perhaps the most exciting part of the whole RTM process is now that we shipped we get to “re-ORG” (a reorganization of all the teams that make up Office), which among other things is a name change for the team (we are now the Engineering Build Team, previously known as PLEX Build), and hopefully a new office to call my own (I’ve been sharing an office for almost as long as I worked at Microsoft).

It’ll be a long time before I fill up the other spaces on that plaque.  Given the timing of previous releases, if I stay in Office it’ll be about 15 years until I fill it up, but for now I’ll keep it in a place of honor in my office… on the shelf right next to my toys.

* – our internal names for MS Office are pretty uninspiring, Office 2000 was O9, Office XP was O10, Office 2003 was O11, and Office 2007 was O12, (we skipped O13 for technical reasons) and are now starting work on O15…   seriously, we need to hire someone to give us codenames…  other Microsoft products have cool names like “Photon”, “Argo”, “Valhalla”, “Blackwater”, “Kahuna”, “Project 42″, “Starfighter”, “Whitehorse”, “Red Dog”, or even “Rome”.  It would be so awesome to be able to respond to a coworker when they ask what I’m doing this week and say “I’m building starfighter”.

The setting for the triathlon

The countdown begins.  Only 4 more weeks to go!

On June 26th I will be participating in my first Triathlon… a Sprint Triathlon that is.  For about 5 years I’ve been wanting to do one, but never committed to training.  But this year as I contemplated my 30 before 30 list, I knew this had to be included. 

I picked the Lake Padden Triathlon up in Bellingham because I used to run around the lake when I lived there.  I thought some familiarity with the area would help ease some nervousness about trying a new sport.  After I picked the race I drove to Bellingham for the day to spend time with a friend, while I was there I scouted out the bike course and kept thinking, “What did I just get myself into?!”

From that day on I knew I had to do some serious training.  I’ve been waking at 5:30 am for a spinning class twice a week.  I’m learning how to actually swim freestyle, thanks to my sister Amy (and some tips from my friend Joie). And I’ve started to run again.  I feel good about my progress so far.  But for the next 4 weeks I’ll be practicing doing one sport right after the other.  They say learning to transition is one of the hardest parts about being a Triathlete. 

My goal is to finish (oh, and to run the whole run portion).  I might just be the last one across the finish line, but I’ll finish!

When I lived in Monterey for a few months one summer I became really good friends with Shana and Jordan.  Lucky for them, they met each other and got married a year (or two) later.  I adore both of them.  This fall I was thrilled to find out they had adopted a little boy and was expecting their first daughter.  After the birth of Vivian Rose, I sent them a little package of ocean themed onesies, since we had all studied Marine Biology together that summer.  I thought they turned out pretty cute.

Here’s the latest from the garden (taken last week).  The peppers are in, can’t wait to eat those.  Plus on the other side of the garden bed I planted our first crop of carrots, broccoli, and few different types of lettuce.  I’ve never grown broccoli or lettuce.  Can’t wait to learn more about it this year.  I think it’s too late to plant my potatoes.  So I’m not sure what I’ll plant down there yet.  I’ll plant the beans in two weeks I think.

Abbie and I have decided to take our relationship to the next level…  and got a cat!  His prison name is “Sylvester”, which is either a clever reference to the obscure’ Sylvester of Assisi’ (companion and the first priest to join St. Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals) or a much less clever Looney Tunes reference…  I ruled out a Stalone reference due to his super mellow personality. 

According to the calendar I’m 29 1/2 today.  Halfway to turning 30.  Back on my 29th birthday I made a 30 Before 30 list.  30 things I wanted to do during my 30th year of life.  To be honest, Read more…

All right, I finally sat down Friday night and put together a plan on paper for our garden.  I’m sure things will change as I start to plant, but it’s always helpful to me to have a big picture as my guide.  This year I changed the layout of the garden bed to one long path down the middle.  With last years little indentations on the one side, I had a hard time reaching all parts of the bed.  Today I finished the wedding and reshaped the bed.  It’s all ready to be planted with the starts we bought on Saturday, but it’s a little chilly today, so I’m going to wait a few more days and then get going on the planting. I feel a bit behind this year, but that’s they way it is since I’m working full time this year.  I’m still really excited to have a garden again! Read more…

Mario Bros. without Mario?  It’s pretty awesome.  This one makes me wish I had a gamepad for the PC…

http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/534416

Happy payday before May Day!

Or in non-computer geek terms, “Think Globally, Act Locally” is our message to you this Earth Day!

What does that mean exactly?  For me, it’s a reminder that my actions to take care of my local environment; whatever that environment may consist of (skyscrapers, suburbia, open country), have an impact globally.  What you choose to eat, buy, drive, spray, pour, drop, toss and plant has an immediate impact on your local community and a cummulative impact on our global environment.

For example:

1.Buying more food grown locally-  Immediate local impact: more money is kept in your local economy, increasing the standard of living.  Global impact: less fossil fuel being used to transport and refrigerate the food.

2. Don’t litter/Pick up trash.  Immediate local impact: More beauty and less trash to look at.  Global impact: less trash (especially plastics that last for years) being washed in to our water ways, congregating out in our oceans…

Why? 
Why change habits that are deeply ingrained into our everyday living?  You’ll have to figure that one out for yourself.  Personally, it’s a combination of 3 things: 1.knowing and appreciating the environment I live in, 2. knowing that my choices, combined with others’ choices has an cumulative impact… for improvement.. or for harm and 3. Understanding how ecosystems work.

Don’t have a reason yet check out some of these documentaries to get motivated:
http://www.foodincmovie.com/
http://www.kingcorn.net/
http://www.flowthefilm.com/

Need help finding local food:
http://www.localharvest.org/