Sun Breaks with a Chance of Showers

Another post where I just spew forth a lot of little random things that have been piling up vs. a bunch of little posts. Not exactly content free, but it's sort of like a colonic for my ragged, stained notepad that lets me move on.

Over at Proudly Serving, Mr. Barr provides the post 10 Slightly Unusual Ideas to Mildly Perturb Microsoft in response to the whole 10 Crazy Ideas thing. There are some good comments in there, too. I would love if this "ideas" caught on as a blogs.msdn.com meme and everyone took a chance to reflect on Microsoft changes they think would best suit the company, its employees, and shareholders. Use this to channel feedback as we prepare for the Company Meeting.

And as for the paper itself: true, not crazy ideas. But it's like the first crack in the rock. From what I understand, Gates did read the paper and provided feedback. Hopefully something better than TTSFTIEH.

Thank goodness the Company Meeting is back to being a real company meeting at SafeCo field! Now, why is Mr. Fire-Them-All so happy to blow money on the Company Meeting? Well, like I said when I bemoaned its weird replacement last year, I just love going in for the morale building influence of it. True!

But it makes me wonder... if we were going to have a button for the disgruntled to wear this year, what would it say?

• Easy: Proudly Serving my Corporate Masters
• Re-Org NOW
• You're FIRED!
• Rascal-Calvin-kid passing water on... hmm...
• BillG + SteveB
• BrianV
• WinFS + other cut Longhorn features
• CLR
• MSFT stock chart

I'm not too good at this. I'll have to think, but please feel free to post your suggestions here or in your blog.

Next item: kudos to the IE / RSS team for getting such a nice bit of consensus together around their future feature set. When I learned of the team, I was really worried (especially given at least one person on the team I know being an untalented cool-hunter). But they pulled it off, along with grudging kudos from the crowd who doesn't think Microsoft can ever do anything right. Obviously, due to our past excessive sins, we have a long road from perdition to hike just to make it to purgatory and hang out for a while. It's interesting that at the same time, Apple updated iTunes and just crapped XML-ish goo all over the RSS for blogcastin'. And the Alpha-Geek reaction to that was more measured, "Gee, I weally wish that Apple wouldn't do that."

Next... for some odd reason, I'm feeling more and more MSFT-Patriotic as of late. One thorn I'm really beginning to get tired of, strangely enough, is O'Reilly media. Ever since I was a long-haired Unix geek I relied on O'Reilly. But I'm just getting tired of their begrudging support of Microsoft while at the same time snarking at us from their blogs and conventions. Annoyed with us? Then do us a favor and don't go publishing anymore Microsoft-centric titles and make money elsewhere. As soon as I can find a reliable publisher that does as good a job of editing and producing texts, I'm switching. I really regret ever dollar now I spend towards buying an O'Reilly book when there's not a quality alternative. Oh, Addison & Wesley, get off the Agile Scrum scam-train and start publishing good, strong technical books again!

It's interesting to see Mr. Steven Sinofsky's Technical Career Forum blog. Now, I don't know much about Mr. Sinofsky. But earlier in the year I was over in the absolute worst and poorly designed building on campus - #36, the home to just about all things Office - and the discussion about the current and previous releases of Office came up. Mostly around how Windows had screwed Office really really well over constantly slipping and cutting features that Office was trying to synchronize a release with. One thing related to me, that I have great respect for Mr. Sinofsky if true, is that Sinofsky more or less told anyone hawking a .NET CLR integration demand on Office to take that CLR and JIT it up where the sun don't shine. I have great respect for that.

(flip, flip, flip) Oh, I should mention the comment from Microsophist saying all is cool with the former blogger and the transition to "Ex-Microsophist" was just a personal decision. In the meantime, I noticed that another blog has popped up worth mentioning: MSFT Bagholder. The feed is at http://msftbagholder.blogspot.com/atom.xml .

Next to last: my goodness, how are you going to keep them down on the farm when they see the cool things that Google is doing? Why, you're going to sue their ass! EricR had to be involved in that decision. Lawsuits certainly make our Microsoft v. Google competition all haired-over and grown-up now. While this is pending though, you'd best not wander over to Google unless they are hiring you to do something pretty damn different than you're doing now. It reminds me of how eventually groups in Microsoft blow their lid when the new sexy group ramping up hiring is grabbing all the good people they can find. Eventually, "Pouching!" is cried out and the sexy group is told to keep their hands off. Too bad for those left who wanted to go but just where too slow.

Last: while Todd Bishop's article about the software market heating up notes the sad fact about Microsoft hiring a bunch of people over the past year, there is a silver lining. Lots of local software companies are hiring. So as you look around and decide, "This is not my passion!" about what you're doing day to day, know that local, energized companies are ramping up their hiring. You finished your review feedback recently, so use that momentum to update your resume and CV and fish that around. Maybe those who bite won't be too interesting. But you just might find yourself pleasantly surprised in snagging a great position outside of Microsoft.

And since July 1st has passed, your review bonus is all yours.