The Left Lane is the Passing Lane 9:50 AM, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 28, 2006 ...not for you to put your car under cruise control at 50mph and cruise along! And yes, it does rain in Seattle. Learn to deal with it. If you can't drive in the rain, stay home or move to Utah. Sorry, this is my rant for the day. PERMALINK | 2 COMMENT(S)

Microspeak I 12:42 PM, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2006 Recently, I was talking to this person at a party and mentioning how I like working late at night because it's easier to concentrate and how there's a lot less randomization than during the day. That person stopped me at that point and asked what I meant by "randomization." I was quite surprised at that moment, but soon realized that there're a lot of such words that have become part of my everyday vocabulary - words that are used in Microsoft (or any other software company) but not outside. So, I decided to make a list of such common Microsoft words. Internally, we call this the Microspeak and if you do a web-search, you'll probably find more of such words, but here's a start. 1:1 (one on one) A meeting where you meet just one other person (usually your manager). Have you set up your 1:1 with your manager yet? 2.5 (two five) A poor performer. He was a 2.5 and we had to let him go. Alias Your email address without the @microsoft.com part. Look his alias up on the GAC and send him an email. Alpha A piece of software at an early stage of development. This app is so buggy that it can't even be alpha. App Any software application. Bandwidth Time or energy There's not much that we can squeeze from that developer's bandwidth. Big R Reply all to an email. Why don't you big-R to that email and let everyone know your decision. Bug Broken functionality in software. This is a nasty bug and I'm not sure where to start the fix. Cycles Time If you have some spare cycles, can you take care of this bug? DL (distribution list) An email address that distributes emails to a wide audience. If you have a question on Windows, you should ask it in the Windows DL. Dogfood Using pre-release software internally We eat our own dogfood before we release it outside. To be Continued... PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

Work and Play 11:33 PM, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2006 The last two weeks have been pretty hectic at work. Our team has been working on this incubation project for about two years now and today marked the day when we officially presented our results, findings, progress and mistakes to the bigger team, Visual Studio Tools Platform. We had a workshop following the presentations, where we had people from other teams get a hands-on experience with our platform. And for the last two weeks, we have been working in making this workshop happen and a lot of us spent sleepless nights at work getting ready tools, samples and walkthroughs. It was a good change for some of us (or at least me) and I'm looking forward to more short crunches like these. It's all about the feeling of satisfaction at the end. Tomorrow, we're celebrating this launch by spending the afternoon at Gameworks, Seattle. And oh, by the way, my office is moving again (I'll describe about Microsoft Office Moves in a separate post). This time, I'm getting a window office, again. PERMALINK | 5 COMMENT(S)

Pictures Updated 1:10 AM, SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2006 Finally, I have uploaded the first batch of pictures from my vacation last year. Check it out: Singapore Visit PERMALINK | 3 COMMENT(S)

Live Local 12:13 AM, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 09, 2006 Microsoft had recently unveiled a new aerial map service named Live Local (http://local.live.com) that not only shows a satellite view of the US, but also provides bird's eye view of certain parts of the country. These high resolution pictures were taken from a plane and were stitched together by software. They provide amazing details, as evident from the picture above (picture of my home). Update: To see this in action, check out the Space Needle. PERMALINK | 9 COMMENT(S)

Party Photos 1:18 AM, SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 04, 2006 Jessie has some photos from the Chinese New Year party in her site. Go Check it out! PERMALINK | 15 COMMENT(S)

How Products are Made 1:51 PM, THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 02, 2006 Here's a cool website that describes (in detail) how products are made. Go check it out. PERMALINK | 1 COMMENT(S)