On the way to lunch today, I was approached by someone with a small black device just a bit too large to fit in your shirt pocket. It turns out that it is an OQO , a device she billed as "the smallest Vista PC in the world". This thing was pretty amazing, featuring 1GB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive,...

I consider myself a pretty typical PM, and like most PMs at Microsoft, I like to unwind by playing bass drum in a bagpipe band. You can see me doing just that with my band, the Keith Highlanders Pipe Band , in this photo .

There's been a lot of buzz around Microsoft regarding the Microsoft Surface announcement today. I had seen this a while back at TechFest, the internal event put on by Microsoft Research every year. At the time I thought it was really cool. But I've got to say, checking out the videos at http://www.microsoft...

There's nothing like handing off to the Release Manager and being "done" with your project. After many months and lots of twists and turns, I've handed the final pieces of the Data Encryption Toolkit for Mobile PCs off to Karina (our RM) who is taking what we created and getting "out there". We haven...

I will be going to Tech Ed again this year. I'll be working at our "Security & Compliance" booth, and presenting a chalk talk on the first day of the show. I'm also conducting a side meeting to discuss problems related to secure collaboration that our customers are having. I love going to Tech...

If you IM, you can make it count more by using Windows Live Messenger. Basically, Microsoft will share a portion of the advertising revenue with one of several major charities. Participating is a breeze, just change your display name in the Live Messenger client. Visit im.live.com to learn more about...

If you are familiar with SourceForge, you might want to check out CodePlex. According to their website, CodePlex ( www.codeplex.com ) is "Microsoft's open source project hosting web site." It has a lot of the features that SourceForge provides (issue tracker, discussions, source code distribution, etc...

One of the cool things about working at Microsoft (a lot of my posts begin this way, don't they?) is that they encourage you to file patents on cool ideas that you've had. I've had lots of (I think) great ideas throughout my life (haven't we all), but since I've been at Microsoft, I've filed two of them...

I am in training to run a marathon. I will (hopefully) be running the Spirit of St. Louis Marathon on April 15th of this year. I'm 9 weeks into my training program, and am blogging my program at http://2020program.blogspot.com .

I just sat in on a presentation about the launch plans for Windows Vista. All I can say is "Wow!" You should definitely plan to pick up your personal copy of Vista (I recommend Home Premium for most home users and Ultimate for the uber-geeks) on January 30th when the launch is in full swing...

I've been running more and more recent versions of Windows Vista, and each one just gets better and better. At this point they are putting in a lot of the fit and finish things that really make the system nice to use. I suggest that you keep an eye on http://download.windowsvista.com/preview/rc1/en...

Last year we got a really nice new hi-def TV . Unfortunately, we have an old non-progressive scan, non-up-converting DVD player. So, we need a new DVD player anyway, so how about getting an Xbox 360 to fill in as DVD player? In addition, the DVD player can also act as a media extender, and can: ...

I am no developer, but I've been playing around with VS2005 and it rocks! I am not much of a programmer, but I've been able to create some pretty cool web pages using VS2005, with very little coding. I strongly encourage you to check out the new Visual Studio, even if you aren't a hard-core developer...

This happened a few days ago. The announcement is on the homepage of Groove's website ( http://www.groove.net/home/index.cfm ). One of the big pieces of this acquisition is that Ray Ozzie comes with it. Ray was the creator of Lotus Notes. I don't know too much about Groove Networks, but it looks like...

Some guy is blogging about his planned trip to the World Cup next year...

After not travelling once in 1.5 years at my previous job, I am on the road at customer meetings for two days in New York. I like being in New York, but I don't like travelling there because of the 3 hour time difference. Also, I flew into Newark, and had a 1.5 hour Supershuttle odyssey to get to my...

This weekend I picked up a new 52" JVC D-ILA television. It is an 3-chip LCoS microdevice reverse projection tabletop television, similar to the DLP TVs that have taken the market by storm. The difference with LCoS is that there is no spinning color wheel, and thus no possibility of seeing the color...

With everyone back from vacation, my project has kicked into high gear. I've not been as good as I should be on posting, but things are a little crazy. I will fill you in on a training session that I am going to tomorrow. It is called "Cross-group Collaboration" and is apparently one of the hottest classes...

This is my last post this year, and as such it is a good time to reflect on the last roughly two months at Microsoft. Here's what I've learned so far: Relationships are extremely important, and you should never burn any bridges. People move around here a lot, so just because you are leaving a group to...

When I first decided I wanted to land a job at Microsoft, I decided that I would blog my job search. I knew that I was interested in knowing a) how to get a job at Microsoft, and 2) what the interview process was like. I figured there were other people like me that would also want to know this information...

Well, that's two milestones out of the way: I've already been linked to by Robert Scoble ( http://scoble.weblogs.com ), and now I've gotten linked to by the Moon Gals, Gretchen and Zoe( http://blogs.msdn.com/jobsblog )! I'm on a roll, baby!

I just noticed today that on my Comcast DVR box, when you go to the My DVR menu, there is a little Microsoft TV logo up in the right top corner of the screen. I think this is new, because I had heard that they had done no Microsoft branding on the box when it was launched. I had never noticed it before...

Today I was at the Pro Club in Bellevue, a gym to which almost everyone at Microsoft belongs. I arrived at around 7:15am and as I walked into the locker room I saw Steve Ballmer (or someone that looks remarkably like him!) pulling on his pants! In case you don't know, Steve Ballmer is the CEO of Microsoft...

Well, I'm back from a nice trip to visit family in beatiful Scottsdale, Arizona. I lived in Scottsdale for about 5 years prior to moving to the Seattle area. The Valley of the Sun is about the nicest place on earth this time of year, with high temperatures in the low 70s and lows that get down into the...

I saw "National Treasure" with one of my kids this weekend. I love movies that have conspiracies, secret societies, etc. such as this. If the conspiracies involve the Knights Templar or the Freemasons (and don't most of them?!), even better. I strongly recommend that you see this movie, it's fun, has...