Last year, Windows 7 ships, everyone at Microsoft gets a free copy. Earlier this year, Office 2010 ships, everyone at Microsoft gets a free copy. Later this year, Windows Phone 7 ships. Yep, everyone gets a free phone. Hey, Microsoft, I’m kinda liking this pattern. Feel free to keep it up in the future; I won’t mind.
I wrapped up the last bit of my electronics shopping today (online, but of course I managed to forget a couple things that I’ll just go to a physical store to find), so now it’s just a waiting game of getting everything delivered before I have the chance to play around with it all. This weekend is probably slightly too ambitious, but in a way, that’s ok. It won’t be a bad idea for me to have an organization system set up before I receive a kajillion little parts to keep track of, so that can be my shopping trip this weekend. It also means that I have the time to go see a movie or two (since my backlog is starting to get a little full again), something I definitely plan on taking advantage of.
Personal - Seattle
As hard as it might be to believe, it was a year ago that I started at Microsoft. The biggest change in the past year? Well, I guess it would be that I actually have something I’m responsible for now aside from reading email. Not that email wasn’t super fun my first couple of weeks, but I actually do like having a real job to do. Good thing too considering that I now have my month and a half of writing to get started on.
So, tomorrow is probably my most boring day of the week schedule wise, but I can hopefully put that free time to some good use. In fact, if I can’t, then I’m probably not trying hard enough. The last thing I need to do is start off my second year being a slacker; I had enough of that going on 365 days ago.
Personal - Seattle
I must say, this week is actually looking to be not entirely boring. A log meeting tomorrow afternoon should give me stuff to write during my free time the rest of the week, but I also have a nice assortment of presentations (both to give and attend) along with meetings to keep everything fresh and exciting. Of course, now that I’ve said that there will probably be massive cancellations or reshuffling that takes place, but at least for now I can remain happy.
Sooner rather than later I’m going to need to make a final decision about what I want to do with my apartment situation since if I’m going to move I have about three weeks at the most to decide. Right now I’m leaning towards that being a yes with a decently good idea of the new location, but nothing set in stone yet. The place at the top of my list is of course the most expensive of all the ones I’ve looked at (what can I say, I’m an HP kid?), but considering it would be less than a $200/month increase over what I’d have to pay for another year staying where I am right now, it’s really not that big of a jump.
Personal - Seattle
Ok, so let me just say for the record that I do know how a calendar works, and tonight was two and a half months from when I was at the Space Needle last, not just one and a half. That said, having never eaten in a spinning restaurant before (the observation deck doesn’t move, and my parents and I never went to the restaurant in Reunion Tower), it was an odd (but cool) experience. Of course, the first revolution you’re just entranced by the changing scenery, so lots of pictures get taken. Subsequent revolutions aren’t nearly as entertaining.
My dad foiled the plans of the traffic gods by offering to drive down there tonight, but the gods were definitely going to make me pay in the event that I did. I thought it was funny to leave my apartment at 5:45 for a 6:30 reservation, and although the highways were fine, the traffic gods had their smite stick in action all throughout downtown (where a good 20-30 minutes was spent just getting to the Space Needle from the highway). I’m guessing that this means my wish isn’t going to be granted, so I should probably be very, very careful the next time I need to venture into downtown in a car.
Personal - Seattle
Despicable Me got rave reviews from my Facebook feed, but I wouldn’t put it anywhere near Dragon on a quality scale. It was funny and had its moments, but I wasn’t overly impressed by it. Maybe it’s just because I’m not a big Steve Carrell fan normally. My parents both seemed to love it though, and last I checked, they weren’t either. My score: 7/10.
Tomorrow I have three things on my agenda: 1) Take my grandfather to Microsoft and give him a short building tour (the car tour was conducted today with my entire family in tow), 2) go to Fry’s for a little electronic parts shopping, and 3) have dinner at the Space Needle. 1 and 2 will be taken care of on the same car trip, and 3 is unfortunately another adventure into the downtown area. We can call that my final test of their trip, and if I pass, hopefully the traffic gods will grant me my wish of not needing to drive down there for the rest of the year (personally, I’d like to ask for all eternity, but I figure it’s best to not be too greedy).
Personal - Seattle
Yeah…totally didn’t do anything with my Zune today in my car, primarily because I remembered once I was already down in my car and didn’t have the time to go back up to my apartment to get it. Last time I checked neither sync nor my phone were going anywhere though, so I should have plenty of time to worry about such things in the future. Of course, if one of those things does go somewhere, then I’m just kinda screwed.
My parents arrive back tomorrow morning (extremely likely before I wake up), and then they’re thankfully staying in a hotel in Redmond for the next two nights. In addition, they’re renting a car, so I don’t even have to play chauffeur any. Of course, I’m sure I will be since I’m the one with the GPS, but it’s a small price to pay and a very fair trade for not having to drive back into Seattle or take them to the airport on Monday morning.
Personal - Seattle
So, aside from having my Zune hooked up on occasion, the level of usage of Sync in my car has been basically nil. I figured that I might as well take advantage of it with my phone (not to mention that it’s now illegal in Washington to talk on a phone in a car without a hands-free device), so I set it all up as I sat in the parking garage at Microsoft today. No one called me on my way home so I was unfortunately unable to test it (and my prime candidates for calling people all happen to be in places where their cell phones are not readily usable), so I’ll have to wait a little while longer to see exactly how it behaves in practice. Hmmm, I wonder what happens if I have my Zune and my phone connected at the same time? Looks like I have an experiment to perform tomorrow on my way to work.
Speaking of work, my day tomorrow didn’t get any less busy, so I just need to make sure that I wake up in time in order to get there for my 9:00 meeting. I’m sure my afternoon will be full of glorious things like watching Lost and playing WoW if for no other reason than to make up for the fact that I won’t exactly have a ton of time to do either this weekend. Actually, the only plans I know we have for the weekend at the moment are going to the Space Needle on Sunday night, but I’m sure there will be plenty of other things on the schedule once my parents and grandparents get back.
Personal - Seattle
So let’s see, of all the games I could have played this afternoon, which one did I go with? Burnout Paradise, a driving (yes, you can pick your jaw up off the ground) game that I got from one of Steam’s massive sales. I could have played WoW (and I actually did launch the beta, but it ended up patching rather than me playing), SC2, or even something on my 360 (my current game of choice happens to be Batman: Arkham Asylum). Nope, I go with a PC game from a genre I almost universally hate. Oh, and I also installed Half-Life 2 so I can play through it again and then maybe move onto Episode One and Episode Two.
My entertainment for tomorrow is now on Friday, so I just have a semi-interesting day tomorrow and then a very full day the next. I’m not sure if I’d rather have it this way or reversed, but I guess it really doesn’t matter since this is what I get. On the plus side, the stuff on Friday should result in some interesting things for me to do next week, so that’s at least one thing that I can look forward to.
Personal - Seattle
While having two email addresses and multiple Windows Live IDs is fun, it isn’t exactly the most productive way for me to live my online life. Not to mention the fact that I own JG.com but was using it for effectively nothing. Hopefully the transition won’t be too painful, and ideally by doing it *now*, I can also avoid any difficulties in the future when something happens (like say, no parents no longer having Verizon so I lose both that email and POP access to my Yahoo one). Of course, I’m not sure I know the best strategy for what to end up with yet, but I figure the more I change my mind, the better I’ll get at moving everything around.
I’ve managed to come up with at least a little more stuff to entertain me throughout the week with Thursday being my most interesting day as it stands right now (dare I even say not boring?). In the not at work entertainment realm, I’ve reinstalled the Starcraft 2 beta so I can play it again up until the game’s launch in a couple of weeks. That will need to fight with WoW for beta time, although I seem to be wanting to do things at my apartment that aren’t directly related to playing games on my computer as of late.
Personal - Seattle
Today hasn’t been a very kind day to Apple in the internet world. Of course, is this going to stop people from getting iPhones? For the vast majority of the market, no, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t take at least a little pleasure in seeing this happen to Apple. Of course, now nothing of this sort better happen with the WP7 launch in order to make this a net positive (however large or small it may end up being) for Microsoft.
Still nothing too interested to be looking forward to this week, although I have been playing with a bunch of various beta products and providing feedback on them. See, that at least allows me to harness my boredom and provide some benefit back to Microsoft. Also, I get the result of better software to use, so it ends up being a win for everyone.
Personal - Seattle