What's New?

Wow, it's been a week since I've posted anything here. What the heck is going on?

I've found that when life gets busy, blog gets deprived. Sad. :-(

Emotionally, I'm in a weird, transient place. Seattle is finally starting to feel like home after almost 6 months. On a high note, there's nowhere I'd rather call home right now. I love this city! On another high note, I've made a cool network of friends I enjoy spending time with outside of work (though a large number of the friends do happen to work for Microsoft with me, which I suppose is to be expected around here). On a low note, I'm still not at the point where I've made close friends with whom I can bare my soul in desperate moments. But I'm getting there. Hopefully. I've also been dating a bit, which is always.. interesting. Dating and I have a love/hate relationship. Nuff said.

Professionally, things are beginning to settle down. Work has become comfortable. I had a hypothetical conversation with a coworker today that went something along the lines of, "If you could work at any company, including this one, on any project, would you make the move today?" We both sort-of shrugged in uncertainty. It'd have to really be something special. I recently met someone who told me his motto in life is "defeat complacency". I like that. My biggest fear is that I'm beginning to feel complacent with work, and I'm finding myself having to challenge that feeling more and more every day.

If you've been watching my moblog, you've probably seen some fun random pics recently. Here's one of my coworker Ben and I after carving a pumpkin for our team. Here's another one of my management wearing togas around our hallways. And there are a bunch more like this one from a team offsite to the go-cart track today. Oh yes, and to top it all off, Margaritas in the office.

In the words of Steve Ballmer, I love this company!

But in all seriousness (i.e. removing the kool-aid filled feeding tube from my throat for just a moment), one thing that's been on my mind is the desire to write a "Six Months at Microsoft: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly" post soon -- before I become old, jaded, out of touch with reality, take the cool things for granted, etc. Hmm.. I'll have to ponder further.

I think that's about all for now. I've got a bunch of links I wanted to blog about in a text file at work, but they'll have to wait awhile. Happy Halloween!