I’ve posted about ebooks before (e.g. I Hate Books). It sounds like the Amazon Kindle has some real potential. All we need is a product with enough critical mass to create a market and then we can have real competition ala the music player market.

Has anyone used an ebook reader before? I have some friends with the Sony version and they love it. Are we there yet? Does anyone have a Kindle?

From the Visual Studio home page:

• Learn more about Visual Studio 2008
• MSDN Subscribers: Get Visual Studio 2008
• Download Trial Editions of Visual Studio 2008
• Download Visual Studio 2008 Express Editions (and see Dan’s Top 15 Things to love about Visual Studio 2008 Express)
• Download the .NET Framework 3.5
• Download the Visual Studio 2008 1.0 SDK (includes all kinds of cool stuff for developing against VS itself, including the new Visual Studio Shell).

Enjoy! I know I have been.

As Don Box, Chris Anderson and Doug Purdy have mentioned, my team is hiring. We use agile methods and “everyone shovels,” i.e. everyone designs, codes, writes unit tests, gives presentations on their stuff and writes the core docs.

Presently, we need language designers and UI framework designers. Interested? Tell Doug I sent you.

P.S. Did I mention that the team includes Don Box, Chris Anderson and Doug Purdy as well as Martin Gudgin, Jeff Schlimmer and Clemens Szyperski, as well as a bunch more talented folks?

I just got a box full of free copies of Programming WPF from ORA.

If you want one, post a comment on this post with a) a reason why you deserve one and b) contact info so I can follow up for snail mail addresses.

That’s it! I’ll pick the top n folks based on how many books I’ve got when I unpack the boxes. : )

When I was a kid, Christmas was my favorite holiday because my entire family (grandparents, parents, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles) would get together at our lake cabin, chop wood for the fireplace by day and play games at night, culminating in an hours-long gift opening bonanza on Christmas Eve where each of us would watch the opener open a gift, youngest-to-oldest, one at a time. Did we like opening? Sure, but even better was seeing the look at the person’s face when you’d managed to get them just the right thing because you saw them all the time and you knew what they wanted.

Now, I’m building my own family in Oregon, but I still have parents and in-laws and grandparents that need Christmas presents. Do I know what they want and need? No, because I hardly ever see them. Do I get to see their faces when they open the gifts? No, because I’m in Oregon. Does that get me off the hook? No, because when the presents don’t show up in time, one or two have been known to call and complain. So, what’s a remote relative to do?

In the past, I’ve floated the idea of sending donations in their names to various charities, but that seems kind of like a cop out, as there’s no real thought or effort in it. Plus, it’s not every much fun to open.

This year, I thought I’d give an hour of volunteer service and then write a little story about it for them to read around the tree in our absence. I’ll pick an organization that fits their personality. For my step-mom, I might walk dogs at the local Humane Society (she likes dogs). For my Grandmother, I might volunteer to drive some elderly shut-in on her holiday errands (as I do for her when I can when I’m in town). Then, step-mom and Grandma can hear about how the hour went and share it with whoever they’re opening presents with by reading my description out loud. This way, someone gets something they need, I’ve put in the effort to show my loved on that they really are loved and there’s a little something under the tree.

Thoughts? Has anyone done something like this before? Does anyone have any ideas for Portland-area organizations that can help me get my volunteer hours in this holiday season?

I truly believe that the future of employment will be much more individualistic and that requiring people to move will be an anachronism. Right now, phone + LiveMeeting is about 50% as good as being there; you’re limited in what jobs you can do based on how much a part of your job “being there” actually is. We already have the pieces of technology to push “being there” to about 80%; we just haven’t put them together yet. When we do, a bunch more barriers are going to come down. Until then, some folks are on the bleeding edge and isn’t that what this whole industry is about anyway? : )

• I used to drive up because it gave me the freedom of traveling whenever I wanted and I always had a car on the far end. Besides the speeding tickets, the other big problem was the amount of human energy it takes to drive back and forth so often.
• I’ve taken the train, which I love because of the comfy surroundings and the electron dispensers, but if I want to be at a 9:45am meeting on Monday morning, I have to leave on the 2pm train on Sunday, which really cuts into family time.
• Now I fly. The drive to the airport is only 30 minutes and I’ve never gotten a ticket along the way. When I get there, I use the express line to Seattle flights and get myself a Chai tea on the far side of security, itself made easy by long practice and my slip-off Crocs. The flight is short and I’ve long ago dropped off luggage that I leave in building 42, so I only have to bring clean undies in my laptop carry-on. When I land, instead of renting a car, I take a cab and get the benefit of the HOV lane when means I can take the 8am flight instead of the 7:30am flight, giving me 30 more minutes in bed. When I arrive, I have a junker freebie car I leave in the parking lot for tooling around town.
• I split my overnights between my long-time friend and mentor Don Box and a local hotel. I stay at the hotel because I don’t want to overstay my welcome and I stay at Don’s because he and his family have made me feel so at home that I can’t not stay there. As much as Don would prefer I be in WA, he has really gone a long way to enable my lifestyle and I love him for it.
• Sometimes when I’m on a roll, I’ll keep going long into the night, just like the old days at DM. And sometimes when I’m not feeling it, I’ll take the afternoon off and see a movie with my sweetie. It’s all about the balance.
• I’ve always had an office for when I’m in Redmond, but I’ve always made sure I was the first guy on the double-up list when things get tight. Now only does this give me more face time when I’m in town, but I look like a hero and the guy who rooms with me only has to put up with me 3 days out of 10. I also let the other guy decide how to lay out the office, since my real office is set up just how I like it at my house. I’ve worked on couches, in the hall, in conference rooms, in the care and at the local Starbucks on 156th. Give me a laptop and wi-fi and I’m good to go.
• Keep a machine setup inside the firewall. Every once in a while, VPN won’t let you do anything except terminal serve into a machine, at which point you can do anything just like you were there.
• Make Microsoft pay at least half of your phone and internet bills.
• Just because you’re working from home, you should expect adequate equipment to be supplied by your employer. Over a 4.5 year period, Microsoft has supplied me with two laptops, a 20″ LCD monitor and a printer-fax-scanner-copier, all in my home office.

Tomorrow, I’ll post the final entry in this series with my thoughts about the future of telecommuting.

When I went to work for Microsoft without moving up, I knew I was making a tradeoff. Before Microsoft, I spent a lot of time traveling, so MS meant staying home much more with my family. It also meant, because of MS’s cultural bias, that my rate of advancement would be considerably slower than it would be if I was local. In fact, I was prepared to be completely unpromoted as several senior folks I trusted at Microsoft promised I would be. As it turned out, even though I came into Microsoft at a fairly high level (high enough that it wouldn’t have been hard to not meet expectations even if I were local), I was promoted. I doubt seriously that I’ll be promoted again, but I never thought I would be promoted at all. In fact, I’ve often referred to my Microsoft job, especially my new one on a product team, as “the world’s greatest dead-end job.” : )

I know this sounds bad, but it gives me two freedoms. First, and most importantly, it gives me the freedom to spend evenings and weekends with my family (especially since I shipped the last book I plan on working on for a long, long time) and to put them first. This was the conscious decision I made going it and I’m happy every day that I made it. The second freedom that took me by surprise is that I can focus on the parts of my job that I really love without worrying about picking up tasks just because they’ll look good at review time. It’s almost like I’m one of those Microsofties with “fuck you money” without the actual money. : )

Because my current boss cares deeply about making me as successful as I can be, we’ve talked about me having direct reports. I’ve done it before and I believe I could do it effectively again, even remotely (I’ve run successful remote development teams all over the world). However, because of the strong MS bias, I told my boss that I’d only take direct reports that had bought into the downsides of being remote, even if they’re local. If I’m not perceived as effective because I’m remote, then by extension, neither will anyone that works for me. My boss hasn’t pushed it since our conversation on that matter and frankly, I don’t expect to get any reports, but he’s surprised me before, so we’ll see. : )

Tomorrow: Misc tips & tricks.