It’s been a while – a long while since I’ve posted regularly here.
Recently, I met Jeff Atwood at SDWest and he encouraged me to start up again. I’d been thinking about it for a while, and that was possibly the point that tipped it for me – at least enough to start the process of updating the server with the latest WordPress software (my existing blog site had become a magnet for comment spam, and my apologies to anyone who’s tried posting a comment that never was displayed – it was lost in the flood of messages in the moderation queue).
So where have I been? The best way to describe it is I guess a sort of Sabbatical. It actually took me a while to remember the word sabbatical – it’s not a word that often appears in the vocabulary of software developers (a topic on which I will write more on later).
The idea of a Sabbatical is simple – we get so caught up in the day to day activities of life and career (what my sister calls the “muck and mire of daily life”) that it’s hard sometimes to have time to just think – to gain perspective.
I can’t say that what I had was a true sabbatical – because I was still working. The point is – I was working less. Just a few conferences a year. No new books. Mostly handling Desaware and a few small consulting gigs (mostly to keep learning and keep my software development skills sharp). In short – my typical work hours in a week were what I think most Americans would call a “normal work week” (as compared to what what I, and many people I know, have grown accustomed to).
On the other hand, it was a long Sabbatical, and I do feel “recharged” so to speak. What I’m charged up for I’m not entirely sure yet, but returning to this blog is a part of that process. It’s nice to be back.
[…] This is the continuation of my post “Being In Microsoft – 1” actually when I started writing my previous post I was going to tell you things in Microsoft that make me proud that I am the part of such a company , but somewhere along the way, I got distracted from the main topic. In this post I will try my best not do get distracted, but before that let me tell you one more interesting thing that reinforced my thought of being in Microsoft. Reinforcement Of Thought When I was learning implementing COM using VB, I came across a book by Dan Appleman. If you have ever read his book the only thing you can say is he can never improve, because its hard to improve perfection (by the way if you were his blog reader a good news for you is he restarted blogging, thank Jeff Atwood for that ). Apart from COM I read I few interesting stuff in that book, one incident that he tells in his book reinforced my thought of joining Microsoft. In his own words. When people ask me how do you feel working with the biggest fish in the pond (i.e. Microsoft) , I tell them Microsoft is not the biggest fish in the pond; itââ¬â¢s the pond. So yes, itââ¬â¢s the pond..! Although I have many experiences in Microsoft in these 2 years of job, that I can dedicate an entire website with those, but to keep it simple, I will tell you the latest one. Experience Of Support Generally when I talk of support I talk of support that I we (our team or other teams in developer support) give to our customers, but this time the story was different I was asking for support. Yesterday I checked that RSS feeds on my MSDN blog were not working, so I promptly wrote a mail to msdn blogs support and I went to sleep, I was expecting a reply in a couple of days as it was a weekend, but after a few hrs maybe three when I checked my mailbox , there was a mail from Jana, who is working in Microsoft communities(she is in Microsoft even before I started dreaming of Microsoft , yes more then 7 years) and the issue was resolved !! on a weekend ! in a few hrs. When she read the mail , she immediately escalated the issue to telligent, the community server people (in case you don’t know MSDN Blogs is hosted on community server) and even the support guy also started working on it even though it was a weekend, and issue was resolved..!! Thanks Jana .. Thanks Microsoft ..Thanks Dan ..Thanks Jeff ..Thanks everybody who is associated with Microsoft in any capacity. […]