I’ve worked at Microsoft for 1 year today (well, 1 year 3 months if you include that internship thing).
I can now officially quit without repaying various things. It’s a good thing to know.
Just in case.
Well, since everyone else on the internet is doing it, please click the links below and let me know the secrets hidden inside my soul.
Johari window - pick 6 words that you feel describe me best.
Nohari window - pick 6 negative words that you feel describe me best.
I wake up from my dreams and think about them, looking back upon the sequence of events that unfolded overnight. “Wow,” I think, “what a random and circuitous sequence of events. So much unbelievable coincidence. Even asleep, it seems strange I could possibly believe such oddity could pass as reality.”
Today, after doing that, I stopped and thought back on my life, looking back upon the sequence of events that unfolded the past years. “Wow,” I think, “what a random and circuitous sequence of events. So much unbelievable coincidence.”
(note: while typing, I originally typed “thinked” instead of “thought”)
And while we’re on a deep, philisophical level, I also thought up these two nuggets:
1: First impressions are funny because you never know when you’re going to make one. It’s usually not the first time you meet someone.
2: It’s easiest to feel lonely when surrounded by many others.
Now I’m going to ponder the thought of one hand clapping, and some other zen crap.
Yeah, that just about says it all.
I was going down a blue and somehow fell directly onto my butt without losing balance. So, I was squatted on my skiis, butt dragging in the snow… but not slowing down. About 3/4 down the hill, tears freezing to my face and my voice scratchy from crying to Amy for help, I hit that tree.
Amy was busy taking the picture; as such she didn’t help me (the picture, I need to stress, is not posed at all).
The same thing happened when Alfonso found me stuck in my chair. People in Washington are mean.
Joss Whedon was a contributor to the Toy Story screenplay.
Seriously, this guy needs to stop hogging all the awesome, and let some of us plebs have some.
In honor of my first attempt at snowboarding today, a link to my first skiing experience. Skiing, a Rant.
Interestingly enough snowboarding is hard and painful. As is the snow. Ha! Fortunately this time it was windy and snowing causing me to get pelted with painful, painful ice.
On the plus side, before the snowboarding lesson I was able to ski for a couple hours. Awesome snow (again, except for being pelted in the face with ice) and that was fun. Not only that, I also had the most spectacular fall of my life (tied for first, I guess, with the time I fell bowling and backflipped because I crossed the foul line. That lane is slippery!). This time I was skiing, hit some clump of snow, fell forward. Just about when I thought it was over I realized my body was actually going into a front roll — if I knew I wasn’t going to break my neck I would have enjoyed it.
Well, I’m going at least twice more — I prepaid for three days (three days including lesson, lift ticket, and rental is only $99 — quite the bargain).
In a tradition that now spans the two times I’ve been to Snoqualmie, I got to eat pancakes. This time I got to ski first though, which was a plus.
Here we go, I’ve been frustrated by these long enough that I can’t quietly suffer anymore. Here are things that some PM needs to be kicked in the head for. These only work on Windows, obviously.
1) Hit Windows-F. Up pops Windows Find. Windows Find took a book out of Office’s “Book of Crap” and has some stupid animated character show up to “help” you search. In the default instance it is a dog. The dog walks up and asks you what you want to search for. A cute little animation. A cute little animation that blocks the use of the search menu until the animation is complete. At what point did someone decide the animation was more important than usability? Oh and the best part is when you realize this is why those links don’t work, and you disable the stupid dog, you have to watch a 6 second animated clip of the dog going away before you can use find. Oh man, oh man, I hate that dog.
2) I forgot number 2 because I had to reenable the dog to see how long the dog walking away took, and it pissed me off.
3) Everything has a tooltip. Let me tell you something: tooltips are mostly useless. For example, Communicator (an IM program like AIM) does not need to tell me, if my mouse happens to be over the message pane, that these are the “messages that have been sent and received.” To be honest, anyone who doesn’t realize that’s what is going on probably shouldn’t be on the internet anyway. All the tooltip does is cover up text I may be trying to look at and OH MAN I JUST THOUGHT ABOUT THAT STUPID DOG AGAIN.
