Shacknews.com is giving me stuff!

I just discovered that I am a winner in a Shacknews competition to win a free copy of Command and Conquer 3: Kane’s Wrath for the Xbox 360!  I’m apparently also receiving a Kane bobble-head, a t-shirt, and possible other unnamed stuff!  Yay!  Everyone go to Shacknews and read their awesomely-written articles, click on their advertisers’ links, and watch the crazy videos on the Replay Couch!

My Trip to Microsoft: Day 2

There are no white headphones at Microsoft.  White head phones have become ubiquitous as the Apple iPod has grown in popularity over the last few years, but they are not to be found here in the land of Zune.  I’ve been consciously looking for them and haven’t seen a single pair.  Talk about loyalty to your company!  Down with iPod!  Long live Zune!

On my first day here, I noticed that there was an enormous effort being made to keep the company as environmentally aware as possible.  Every trash can was accompanied by an aluminum-can recycling bin.  And each of those with a can for polystyrenes.  Light switches have little signs, elegant ones I might add, that read “Please conserve energy.”  Its a wonderful series of touches that more of America should adopt.  Today, however, the campus’ real “green” initiative kicked off.  There are no more recyling bins for aluminum only, or polystyrene-based goods.  Instead, there is a recycling bin that accepts ALL recyclable goods.  There is still a trash can, but only for things like used ketchup-packets and other plastic wrappers.  The polystyrene plates, forks and knives are a thing of the past.  Now they are using fully biodegradable utencils and plates. 

Did you get that?  Biodegradable forks, spoons and knives!!  I’m bringing some home to plant at the base of a tree so that they can feed the tree and I can observe how long they take to biodegrade.  This is fascinating.  I can’t state strongly enough how much I’m digging this.

Also, there was some interesting commentary regarding the product battle between SQL Server and Oracle.  The statement was made by one developer that it was easier to convert the average person to be specifically a Republican Catholic than to switch an Oracle user to SQL Server or vice versa.  That prompted me to comment on how hard it would be to convert someone to a Republican Catholic Oracle developer.  Now I’m just curious, are there any Republican Catholic Oracle developers reading this?

My Trip to Microsoft: Day 1

I’m fortunate enough to be spending this week at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond testing out different feature configurations of the new SQL Server 2008 database server as well as configuration of the new Sync Framework for ADO.NET. 

This is my first trip to MS and hopefully not the last.  The “campus” here is beautiful and full of all sorts of nerd amenities.  Foosball, ping-pong, Starbucks-ish coffee, and break areas with scenic views are a stone’s throw from our lab room in the SQL building.  Having previously worked at the FedEx World Technology Center, I’m not unacustomed to the grandiose presentation of workspace, but the sheer scale of this facility is mindboggling.  Gates didn’t create an international company, he created a small city that is centered around the central goal of providing software to the world. 

I find myself in complete agreement with Douglas Coupland (author of Microserfs and JPOD) that corporate America’s development of the “campus,” rather than the typical concept of an office, is a devious means of keeping workers in a perpetual adolescance so that they see work as play, and therefore intertwine their lives more deeply with their work than otherwise.  I don’t think this is a good thing.  I believe that as an individual, my activities and decisions outside of work are what define me as a person, not so much my career despite the time and effort I put into it.  However, after being here for only one day, I can easily see how the campus mentality and office-with-a-playground mode of work are appealing, much more so even than at the luxurious FedEx campus back home in Memphis.

Its simply a pleasure being here surrounded by the finely-tuned minds that produced the majority of the software I use.  Today I’ve gotten to meet some of the people behind SQL Server, NUMA architecture, and Sync Services.  And this has only been the start!

I’ll try to keep posting this week on the activities that I am getting to participate in.  Hopefully there will even be pictures!