I Hate Linux

Future of my Add-ins

2008-09-26T15:14:24Z

Traditionally most companies are fine with their employees making a buck on the side or donating their time or services just so long as doing so doesn't conflict of interest with the their day job either through causing ones work quality to go down or otherwise compete with the company. Microsoft is little different. Should I decide today to write a useful add-in or two for... Windows Live Messenger or Internet Explorer... so long as I don't use any inside information, am doing it on...(read more)

New Palin Conspiracy Theory

2008-09-04T02:24:23Z

What does a guy do when he’s going to take a break from some work for the evening? Sit down, watch a bit of TV and come up with conspiracy theories of course! They are all the rage right now aren’t they ? So I was going through tonight’s episode of Hannity & Colmes in preparation for the Sarah Palin speech later this evening and when responding to a question from Alan Colmes, Karl rove said in part: You cannot do anything about her fundamental record as somebody who stood up on the city council...(read more)

Must resist urge to spend money...

2008-08-29T05:51:40Z

My favorite Microsoft product (Windows Home Server) is made successful not only through great software, but also through the availability of inexpensive massive hard drives (and plenty of them) and last month when Seagate announced their upcoming 1.5 terabyte disk ... there were quite a few smiles to be seen as it was another sign of the importance of disk storage and how important a product like Windows Home Server is with effectively using it. <side note>... I really need to stop listening...(read more)

Time for a potentially career limiting move?

2008-08-15T15:04:08Z

After a (sarcastic) discussion last week about how soon everyone would be work for me one way or another I came to realize that I've come to learn much at Microsoft, and in that time have seen gaps that I believe only I can properly fill and as a result I think it is time to lead... not just a small group of developers, a team or even a division... but the entire company... something that if unsuccessful will almost certainly be a career limiting move. With that in mind, I am announcing today...(read more)

200

2008-08-10T15:26:07Z

...or "Two century club" ...or "longest 8 lbs ever!" My long running weight loss campaign has hit another milestone today with the scale telling me I'd reached 215 lbs, 200.2 lbs down from where I'd started back in May of 2006. Believe it or not... I don't mind it taking ~2 years to reach this milestone. I mind the fact that 3 months to lose the last 8 lbs to bring me to this point from the 2 year in blog post back in May . Why'd it take so long? Two reasons I...(read more)

Maybe this state isn't so bad

2008-08-08T02:13:39Z

Those who know me know I haven't been overly thrilled with the Seattle area and what I've seen of Washington in general as it's just too big/crowded/busy of a place. The news last week of the Washington Governor being refused entry to a bar because she didn't have an id on her I had to have faith... yesterday though I saw/heard awesomeness. Back in South Dakota it was not uncommon to walk out of my house and hear cows mooing in the distance... this evening after I walked out of Building...(read more)

Ooo what a savings

2008-08-02T03:10:07Z

The laptop I use today is a rather slow Gateway M275 tablet device which is really only useful to me as a remote desktop client to the faster PC in my second bedroom and when I got an email this evening advertising a great deal on a laptop I was interested... only to click to the page and find: And after clicking on Special Price we see that price to be... Ok... maybe that's not the stellar deal they think it is... I think I'll pass this time around....(read more)

Dead 360

2008-07-28T05:15:34Z

Grrr. Yesterday my Xbox 360 started to have some issues with 3d rendering (2d and overlays were still fine) when playing Call of Duty 4. This issue also manifested itself when testing with Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 and Halo 3 and quickly manifests itself even after a restart of the console. Today during some additional troubleshooting I removed the hard drive and found my console consistently giving me an E 74 error with a bit of text in 11 language telling me to contact Xbox support and now the console...(read more)

Not wanting to keep me as a customer

2008-07-27T04:47:57Z

Since starting at Microsoft I have found myself spending more time on email than ever before... so much so that I now find myself wanting a way to check my work email anytime/anywhere... the perfect job for a smartphone... so the hunt has been on and thus far I've encountered at least one company that just doesn't want to keep me as a customer. Having been with one particular wireless carrier for the last 6 years so figured I should give them the first chance to serve my needs... and after...(read more)

“I’m not at liberty to answer that question”

2008-06-28T07:19:41Z

Like many I wish our politicians could just get along and when they fly off the handle I too often times just shrug and wish I could vote them out... last night though I heard something that got my blood boiling and that couldn't be ignored. Last night when driving home I heard a clip from C-SPAN from that day when Congressman Bill Delahunt (D-MA) was asking questions of David Addington (chief of staff to the Vice-President) about "enhanced interrogation techniques" and waterboarding...(read more)

When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions

2008-06-16T06:18:07Z

Last weekend I ran across an episode of When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions and was... awestruck, completely and utterly dumbfounded... even as I (slowly) write this blog post I have to do so only during the commercials because the footage is incredible. I've seen plenty of old NASA footage... but some of this material is just... unbelievably beautiful. If you've got even a passing interest in the space program and access to the Discovery Channel (or Discovery HD (oh how I wish I had it...(read more)

Power Pack 1 and Tab Manager

2008-06-09T22:13:17Z

With the recent public release the Release Candidate of Windows Home Server Power Pack 1 it is imperative that any users of Tab Manager take special care when upgrading to avoid being incessantly nagged . Problem Due to changes in the way the Console in Power Pack 1 loads tabs and the way I hid tabs from the pre-PP1 tab loader, some add-ins may cause Tab Manager to crash on startup as well as see duplicate tabs within the console. This situation is especially likely if any Microsoft tabs were put...(read more)

Multiple-Voices

2008-06-09T16:41:53Z

What's worse than hearing multiple voices in your head? Trying to speak with multiple voices. The time has come to split my blogging as I now find myself having two separate voices... Brendan Grant, Software Development Engineer on the Windows Home Server team at Microsoft... and Brendan Grant who also happens to be a Software Development Engineer on the Windows Home Server team at Microsoft. In the first case it's a semi-official voice complete with @microsoft.com email address... while...(read more)

Weight Loss - 2 years in

2008-05-05T06:04:27Z

Yesterday a little known aniversery came and went with little notice in the blogsphere... largely because I was too busy to celebrate it... until now. What is this anniversary? Two years ago I began a weight loss campaign that has been fairly successful. On the morning I started I weighed 415.2, a year later I was down by 123.8 lbs to 291.4, yesterday I was down a further 68.2 to 223.2, a total loss of 192 lbs since I began this whole thing in May of 2006 and only 28 lbs away from my (perverted)...(read more)

One Month In

2008-04-25T16:02:03Z

This morning I realized that one month ago yesterday (3/24) I arrived bright and early to building 43 on the Microsoft campus to begin NEO ( New Employee Orientation ) and to begin my career with Microsoft. What a month it's been. While all of the 24th and a good chunk of the 25th were spent in NEO, it was afterwards I got to join the team officially, meet my new co-workers and begin to learn things behind the scenes details that I would have killed to have known (and blogged about) earlier....(read more)