Recently in Personal Category

Bill Anderson, one of the lead program managers just announced on his blog that the product I've spent the last 2 years working on just went gold. Right on schedule, too.

The last week was a whirlwind of craziness wrapping everything up, and it sure felt nice to end the week on a positive note. I came into the product team a few months before the Beta 1 release shipped, and it's been really being a part of seeing the product progress from that point to what was signed off on yesterday.

Yay.

So, yeah, I know I haven't updated in forever. It's not that I've been dead or anything, I've just been busy. But, if you need to get a hold of me, there's plenty of ways to find me and keep in touch.

You can find me on MySpace
You can find me on Flickr
You can find me on Last.FM
You can find me on Vox
You can find me on Delicious
You can find me on LinkedIn
You can find me on Xbox Live (gamertag: theficus)
You can find me on MSN Messenger (use my e-mail address)
You can find me on AIM (theCrufty1)
You can find me on my Wii (8750 4773 9605 7645)
You can find me on the Playstation Network (use my e-mail address)

So, I'm not dead. I just haven't updated this site in a while. But if you need to find me, you can.

Edit: Added Wii code and Playstation Network
Edit: Added LinkedIn
Edit: Added Xbox Live and Last.FM

I just can't take it anymore. Even with all of the anti-spam measures in place on my MovableType site, I'm still getting inundated with hundreds of spam comments a day, and am missing too many comments I want to read by either accidentally deleting them or missing them in my junk pile. So, I'm doing the only thing I can to keep comments flowing while not ripping my hair out trying to deal with the comment spam problem here, and that's requiring comment authentication.

I'm sorry for the extra step that will be required for leaving comments (LiveJournalers, obviously, this won't affect you :)), but it's necessary for my sanity.

I'm back after taking a long blog holiday. It's not that I haven't had anything interesting to write about, I have just been so busy with LifeCrap(tm), it's been hard to get motivated.

But, I'm back, and will try to make posts, well, a bit more frequently.

This was posted by someone on my learning team:

I made of couple of changes to my portion of the paper. I also corrected 2 or 3 grammatical errors in the paper. One was an apostrophe. The others were comma's [sic].

This was after proofreading a team paper that was so bad, it makes me wonder how these people ever graduated high school.

Fun stuff, not.

I've been so slammed with the new job. The work is hard and frustrating, and the hours are long, and that's just the beginning. I think things will start getting better soon, but it's kind of making me sad that I haven't coded anything in a couple of weeks. I picked up a Release Candidate for Visual Studio 2005 today, and I plan on giving it a spin over the weekend. Maybe I'll finally finish my Text Converter program and polish it off with some creamy .NET 2.0 Framework goodness.

Hopefully I'll get more time over the next few days to actually write a substantial update with some of the more interesting happenings and other crap that's been going on.

I have been working in various incarnations of MSN Operations for the last 8 years of my professional career. It's been a lot of fun, and quite the learning experience. However, it is time for me to move on and explore new opportunities within Microsoft.

On 9/2, I will have spent my last day in MSN Operations and will be moving into my new position as a System Development Engineer in Test for the Systems Management Server (SMS) product team. I'll be able to take with my my operational and development skills into something completely new for me. It will be quite a change, but I'm looking forward to the new opportunity and its challenges.

I want to thank everyone in MSN, MSNTV, WebTV, and the other MSN product teams that I have worked with in the past for making the whole experience so enjoyable. I'm sure I'll see and talk to you all in the near future, so this isn't goodbye so much as see you all later.

- Adam

And, with that, I exit MSN. I start my new job with SMS on Tuesday, and I can't wait.

After over 7 years toiling away in MSN under various titles to my current job working in the Network Operations group as a tools developer, I'm long overdue for a job change. After a long and stressful 7 hour interview, I was given an offer to go to the SMS group as a software tester. I gladly accepted. When I first approached the job, I was apprehensive. I figured, software tester, isn't that like doing QA and button pushing? Turns out it's much more than that. You get a unique opportunity to really go into the code and try to find and exploit problems in the name of ensuring that a quality product is shipped out. It looks like something that will be really fun and in the long run will teach me a lot about how to turn myself into a better developer.

Here's the job description from Microsoft's career site:

Are you interested in what it takes to successfully manage and deploy thousands of PC's? Do you want to help define the way the top businesses around the world manage the computers in their enterprises? The Windows Enterprise Management Division has already established Systems Management Server 2003 as the industry leader in systems management and is currently looking to expand its test team as it takes on its next set of challenges. Technologies you'd be working with include: Active Directory, SQL, XML/HTTP, WMI, Group Policy, Windows Security and much more. We are looking for a talented and highly motivated tester and coder. Qualifications required include an eagerness to learn new technologies, the ability to understand how these technologies could be applied to the problem at hand, good communication skills, and the ability to dig in and really understand how you can test one of the most complex products Microsoft ships. Primary responsibilities include writing test automation and designing and executing test cases. Requirements: Candidate should have a working knowledge of Windows 2003, XP & 2000. A minimum 4 years of software testing experience in a professional environment, BS in Computer Science or comparable experience in the software industry. Preferred: Knowledge of Systems Management Server, Enterprise-level Computer Administration experience, Networking, C#, VB, C++, VB.NET, .NET Framework, Win32, and COM/DCOM.

Hell yeah. I'm up to the challenge. Now it's up to the new management and my old management to negotiate the terms for my transfer. That should be interesting..

It's a little more than a week, but here's a review.

Saturday 8/6: Help my friend Jay move. Spend almost 8 hours lifting furniture and moving boxes around. Fun stuff. Massive pain.
Sunday 8/7 9am: In pain. Works calls. Shit is broken. Try to fix.
Monday 8/7 4am: Still working. Get shit into a less broken state.
Monday 8/8 12pm: Go to work after a little sleep. Everybody is pissed because shit is broken.
Tuesday 8/9: I am given an interview schedule for another group. Yay. Shit is still broken.

The interview is on Wednesday. Tomorrow.

Wednesday 8/10 8:30am: Go to building 43 to start interview
Wednesday 8/10 4:30pm: Finish interview. Love those 9 hour interviews! At least I had lunch.

Thursday 8/11: Another shitty day at work. Manager is mad at me because I didn't tell him I'd be interviewing.
Friday 8/12 8am: Conference call about shit being broken. Yay. Not.
Friday 8/12: I'm given a job offer for the group that I interviewed at. Much rejoicing.
Saturday 8/13: Begin to pack office. Take home lots of personal items (such as books that I didn't expense) to eBay them.

Hopefully this coming week will be more positive. More about the job offer in another entry.

That just about says it all.

I spent the weekend doing car stuff. Got quite a bit of work done. Finally got the holes where trim used to be fixed, repaired some rust damage in the rear window area, applied weather stripping to the trunk, fixed the fuel line, adjusted the clutch, painted the back deck, applied some new window felts, washed the car (a few times, and it is still dirty).

Naturally, I'm now sore as hell and sunburned to hell as well. But, at least my car doesn't leak (internally or externally) anymore!

Leslie took some pictures and put them in her Gallery. Fun stuff.

I spent much of Saturday helping one of my friends work on his car. Saturday and Sunday mornings were spent playing DDR. Playing V Oni I managed to tweak out my back somehow and it still hurts. Tomorrow I'm all tied up at work for meetings. Bleah.

I'll update when I can.

My old MSN IM contact name was forced to change to a new one (long story), and because I refuse to use such a stupid e-mail address for IM, I'm moving all of my MSN IM contacts over to my personal e-mail address.

So, if you see a request from adam AT theficus DOT com asking to add you as a contact, don't worry, it's just me. Also, if you want to add me to your contact list, please feel free.

Hopefully this will fend off some of the, "who the fuck are you and why are you adding me as a contact" messages that I'm bound to get today.

I went down to the parking garage. I was in a good mood, so I figured I'd drive the Firebird into work. I fixed the driver's side door lock (long story, don't ask), wiped the dust off the windows and some of the body, and got inside to drive to work.

I turned the key, and.. nothing. The battery was completely dead.

Now I'm in a bad mood because I have to go and recharge the battery. :( Stupid slow leaks.

One of my friends and co-workers invited me over to his place to work on my car during the weekend. A very welcome proposition. I can finally fix the clutch and fuel pump. Yay! So that makes me happy at least.