10 Years of Blogging

I'm a little late, but it's time to celebrate anyway. Ten years ago, in March of 2004, I began blogging here. Hello World was, of course, my first post. You have embraced and sometimes challenged my words. Thank you for continuing to read and to engage with me. I learn a lot by writing. It is my hope you learn a fraction of that by reading.

After a long break where I published rarely and two years with no posts, you may have noticed that I am back. I waited to write this until I was sure I had some momentum. Last time I stated my return to blogging, I slacked off shortly after. Well, I'm back again and I have a lot I want to talk about. Those who continue to read after the hiatus, thank you for sticking around. I'll try to make it worth your while.

After four years as the Test Development Manager responsible for the Windows Runtime API, I am moving on to new things. I love what we did with the new API, but it is time for change. I will remain in the Operating Systems Group and in the Test Development discipline, but will be working to enable greater use of data in our testing processes.

For more than a year, I have been thinking about how to utilize data in our testing process. I have been inspired by the work of Seth Eliot, Brent Jensen, Ken Johnston, Alan Page, and others. They paint the picture of Data Driven Quality where we determine our success by observing users rather than by test pass rates. As you can see from my recent posts, I have joined their ranks.

No anniversary is complete without some stats. Over the past decade, I have written 418 posts. You have left 1194 comments. The most popular post was about how much memory Vista really needed. It garnered over 119,000 views.

A few have managed to miss my Twitter handle in the about me section. I can be found at @steverowe on Twitter if you want to engage with me there.

Follow my adventures at //build/

This week I'm attending the //build/ conference where Microsoft is revealing many of the details about Windows 8.  If you want to see what is going on, follow my Twitter feed at https://twitter.com/steverowe,  I'm posting some pictures, linking to summaries, etc.

Resolved: To Blog More in 2010

As the year closes I look back and see that my blogging really dropped off this past year.  I intend to try to blog more over this upcoming year.  My position at work has changed from a lead to a manager and that gives me a whole new perspective on things and a lot of new ideas to blog about. 

I hope your 2009 went well and that 2010 goes even better.  For those who are hurting in this bad economy, hang in there.  The sun always rises even if the night is long.  Don't give up improving your skills.  It will pay off in the long term.

I'll be posting on Twitter occasionally

As I surf the net I often run across articles of interest.  If I feel they warrant a comment, I'll post them on this blog, but most don't rise to that level.  I've decided to try using twitter as an outlet for such items.  If you want to see the articles I think are most interesting, feel free to follow me on twitter:  https://twitter.com/steve_rowe.

Hope You Had a Merry Christmas

The day's almost over.  Snow is still on the ground here although the temperature is going up and its days are numbered.  I spent most of today with family just hanging out.  I found it to be enjoyable and relaxing.  Didn't get much accomplished, but that's as it should be on a day like this.  I hope that your Christmas was a good one as well.

Happy Thanksgiving 2008!

Here's wishing everyone a happy Thanksgiving day.  It's a great time to reflect on the past year and all that has transpired. 

My PAX08 Experience

Penny Arcade Expo (PAX) is an annual gaming convension in Seattle put on by the guys at Penny Arcade.  It covers all aspects of gaming from consoles to PC games to roleplaying and tabletop games.  It is big.  Very big.  40,000 tickets pre-sold kind of big.  This was my second year attending.  Last year I dipped my toe in the water.  This year I came back and dove in fully.  I was there all 3 days for most of the time the doors were open.  I had a great time and intend on attending again next year.  Here are some of the highlights:

Felicia Day and The Guild.  The Guild is an online video series which pokes fun at MMORPG players.  I had only seen 2 episodes before coming to PAX.  We watched the whole thing and then it was followed by a Q&A afterwards.  The video is hilarious.  The Q&A great.  Felicia Day is a fun speaker and her cohorts were quick-witted, especially Sandeep who plays the "love interest" in the show.

Wil Wheaton.  Last year's keynote speaker was back.  He was available for book signings and was on 2 panels that I'm aware of.  I saw him on the "Is casual gaming killing hardcore?" panel and on his panel of one.  For his own panel he read a selection from his latest book and one of his ST:TNG reviews.  He then took Q&A from the audience.  If you ever get a chance to see him in person, jump at the opportunity.  I'm still kicking myself for missing his keynote last year.

The Expo Hall.  Filled with the latest in gaming goodness.  Gears of War 2?  Check.  Starcraft 2?  Check.  Fallout 3?  Check.  ChronoTrigger DS?  Check.  Even some board gaming companies like Wizards of the Coast and Fantasy Flight Games were there.

Ken Levine's keynote.  The lead designer of Bioshock gave the keynote.  I didn't really know much about him beforehand and didn't expect a whole lot.  He exceeded my expectations and gave a great speech.  Mostly it was a humorous approach to his biography.  He tells of when he first encountered D&D, first got hired at Looking Glass and found people like him, etc.  If you can find the audio of this online, give it a listen.

Omegathon.  The Omegathon is a 6-round competition through all aspects of gaming.  This year involved Peggle, Pictionary, Geometry Wars, Rock Band 2, Jenga, and Vs. Excitebike (on a 1986 Nintendo Home Computer no less).  Watching 3,000 people cheer for Vs. Excitebike is an experience like none other. 

Overall, it was great fun.  I'll definitely be going again next year.

What Won't Our Kids Ever Know?

A friend of mine just posted an interesting anecdote about the difference in the world we grew up in and the one our kids are growing up in.  In his case, his son didn't know what a stereo was.  He'd never seen one.  Music in his world comes from an iPod/Zune or from a computer.  That got me thinking.  Technology is changing the world quite drastically.  What other things that were common in my childhood will my kids never know about?

They won't know telephones that have wires.  All of ours are cordless (or cellular).

They won't know a world where you only have a handful of TV channels.  We visited my grandparents' and they were perplexed by the fact that there were only 3.5 channels.

They don't understand live TV.  Everything in their world is timeshifted by Media Center.  TV schedules are an unknown to them.

They won't ever have to think about long distance phone calls.  Calling Florida is no more expensive than calling next door.

They'll never know a world where the internet is not at their fingertips at all times.  Modems?  What are those?  Encyclopedias?  What are those?

No Saturday morning cartoons.  This doesn't really fit the list, but it's true.

 

I'm sure there's a lot more that could be added to this list.  What other things will kids of this generation never experience?

Slow blogging season

I apologize for the very light blogging of late.  I've been busy working on the project for my latest class at the University of Illinois.  CS classes really take a lot of time at the end of the semester.  At the beginning you just have reading, homework, and lectures.  At the end they pile a project on top of that.  Depending on the class, that can mean a lot of work.  This isn't the worst, but I'm adding code to a large codebase which means a lot of time spent understanding it and a little time coding.  It's a lot simpler to write a project from scratch than to add functionality to something large.  As I'm taking a 500-level OS class, we're modifying an OS (Windows CE 6.0) and thus the code base is pretty big. 

It's coming together and I hope to get back to blogging more soon.  I just took a Microsoft class for Senior SDETs and have a lot of interesting ideas to blog about...

Ten Years Later...

It was ten years ago today that I joined Microsoft as a full time employee.  When I started we were just finishing Windows 98.  Microsoft was around 25,000 employees.  My first job was testing DVD playback in the operating system.  Since then I've reported to 5 managers, resided in 5 buildings, occupied 8 different offices, and shipped 6 operating systems.  I also had a hand in shipping several versions each of IE, Windows Media Player, and Windows Media Center.  Ten years later, something like 17 products under my belt, and I'm still having fun.  I guess I chose the right profession.

Four Years and 300 Posts Later

It was four years and approximately 300 posts ago that I began this blog with a simple hello world.  Thanks to everyone who has taken the time to followed me during that time.  It has been an honor to write for you and to receive feedback on my ideas.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming...

Let It Snow!

Here's my white Christmas:

Merry Christmas To All!

Merry Christmas everyone.  I hope you are all able to spend some good time with family and friends.  I'm off to see what Santa brought me.

[2 hours later]  We finished opening presents and it started to snow!  Not a little snow, but a lot of snow.  Large flakes fill the air.  A white Christmas in Washington.  Uncommon but very cool.

Happy Halloween!

It is once again Halloween which, here in the U.S. means a time when all the kids dress up in costumes and go door-to-door "trick or treating" (which means begging for Candy).  I like this holiday.  It's fun to see everyone dressed up at the door.  Unfortunately around here at least, the tradition seems to be waning.  Malls, businesses, churches, etc. all have their own trick-or-treat times and few kids come to the door.  I can count on my fingers the number of groups we see in my neighborhood.  Sigh.  The upside is that with so few kids, we give out full-sized candy bars.  :)

Microsoft of course is one of those businesses which offer trick-or-treating.  The kids get dressed up and walk office to office.  Most people bring in candy.  It feels a lot like cheating.  When I was a kid we had to work for our candy.  Now, they get a whole bag-full in less than an hour.  Kids these days...

Saying Goodbye to Illinois

I'm about to head out from my trip to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC).  I've enjoyed my trip.  I was able to interview 23 bright students.  The quality was very high.  The school should be proud.  I also had a chance to see the places and some of the people I've heretofore only seen on the grainy end of a web broadcast.  It was fun to get to see the rooms where my classes are being held and to meet some of the professors I've had the opportunity to take classes from.  During my stay I had a chance to try some of the local cuisine.  Timpone's is a fancy Italian resaturant with a great atmosphere and good food.  I also tried Papa Del's pizza.  The deep dish is amazing.  Bring a big stomach though.  Finally, I grabbed lunch one day at Zorba's.  They specialize in gyros and have a fun local atmosphere.  Lots of college students seem to eat there and the walls are covered with newspaper clippings of the UIUC sports teams.

Enjoying Pandora

 

I've really been enjoying listening to Pandora lately.  It is a net radio service that builds a "station" for you based on your tastes.  You begin by entering a song or an artist you like.  It then plays music it thinks is similar.  You are allowed to give the selections a thumbs up or thumbs down.  Based on your input, it refines the programming.  This is a great way to discover new music.  Today I started with Evanescence and discovered Leaves' Eyes and Nightwish.  Now if someone just would just make a full-featured Pandora module for Media Center...

Visiting UIUC

If you follow this blog, you'll know that I'm currently working on my Masters in Computer Science through the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.  I really like the program I'm in.  Most classes are real.  There are real people meeting on campus 3 times a week in a classroom and those of us online get to join in via a camera.  It's strange though taking classes at a school you've never been to.  You see the whiteboards in plenty of rooms you've never set foot in.  Next week I'll have the opportunity to change that.  I'm going back as part of a recruiting trip to UIUC and I'll get to spend a few days on the campus.  I look forward to getting a better feel for where things located and just experiencing the campus and surrounding area.  I might also try to go look up a professor or two that I've taken classes from.  Should be fun.

Penny Arcade Expo

This past weekend Seattle hosted what is reportedly the biggest video games expo in the United States.  That honor used to belong to E3 but they changed their format this year.  Now that title belongs to Penny Arcade Expo (PAX).  Unlike E3, PAX is aimed at consumers, not journalists.  It reportedly had about 30,000 attendees throughout the weekend.  I didn't make it on Friday but Wil Wheaton's keynote was hailed as amazing.  I went on Saturday with some friends.  It was a good time.  We attended a few panels.  One was on the subject of blogs and podcasts and the other was an attempt to make a game in an hour.  The first was moderated by Major Nelson and had representatives from Joystiq, Slashdot, Ubisoft, and a gaming podcast I'm not familiar with.  Here is a photo of the panel.  There was some good discussion about the power of the blogs and their relationship with major media.  The second was someone from Popcap games writing a combat-esque game in about an hour using the popcap games framework.  Trying to write a game in C++ in an hour is no small feat and they fell short.  Still, it was fun to watch them try.  They did come pretty close.

The remainder of the day was spent perusing the expo floor and hanging out in the tabletop games area.  The show floor contained demos of Mass Effect, Rock Band, SingStar, and numerous other video games.  There were also a good number of board game companies present.  Among them was Fantasy Flight.  They were demoing the new StarCraft board game.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get close enough to hear the description.

My favorite T-shirt of the event:  "Real Gamers Shower."

Here are some pictures if you want to see what it was like.

My Team Got Me

It's a tradition at Microsoft that when someone leaves for a while, their office is vandalized in one way or another.  Sometimes it is something big like moving the office into the hall or covering it in post-it notes.  Other times, it's something more subtle.  For me, it was subtle.  I returned from a short trip to California and all seemed well in my office.  Then I heard it.  A short high pitched squeal.  Almost as if one of my monitors was not quite in sync.  Seemingly every 15-20 minutes the same noise or something similar but shorter pierced the room.  I tried to localize the sound but it was difficult because it was so short and came unexpectedly.  After 2 days (much of which I wasn't in my office), I had it narrowed down to one corner but hadn't found it yet.  I'd looked inside the computers, underneath the desk, in the legs of the desk.  Still nothing.  I knew it was something my team had done because of their reactions.  When I was in 1:1s with them and the sound happened, they ignored it.  Still, I hadn't been able to figure out quite what it was.  This evening they revealed it to me.  I think I would have found it within another day or so but it was hidden well.  It turns out they had put a small circuit board called an Annoy-a-tron under the leg of my desk.  It puts out a 2 kHz or 12 kHz sound at random intervals.  Well done guys.  My hat is off to you.

Summer Vacation Here I Come

I just turned in the project for my summer class.  If you want to take a look, you can find it here.  That means I'm now on summer vacation.  I liked the class but it's nice to have it over with.  Now I can get to some of that reading I didn't have time for.  First up is On the Edge which is the story of Commodore.  I cut my teeth on the C= 128 and grew up with the Amiga.  If it's a good read, I'll let you know.  Of course, my next class starts on August 22nd so it's a pretty short summer.  I better make the most of it.