Following Rory’s example, my worst job was where I spent two weeks with a friend working for his dad where the best of our two duties was to mow the doll factory’s lawn (we used to fight over who’s turn it was). The worst of the two duties was to sort leather remnants from the manufacture of furniture and car upholstery by color and texture into giant boxes, from which the underpaid immigrant women would construct dolls.

Talk about mind numbing… It drove home just how important it was to have a college degree.

I quit after two weeks because the amount of money I got for labor of that kind was nowhere near the degree of pain and suffering I endured, especially when I could just hang out at home for the summer. My friend, however, didn’t get that choice. Poor bastard…

The channel 9 guy starts on the road to the PDC. Random fun (1 of 3).

accounting is to mathematics as engineering is to computer science.

I’m an accountant sitting in a meeting run by mathematicians. Unless I can use the math to do my double-entry book-keeping, I just don’t care. A mathematician cares only for the power of ideas and never needs to see the numbers.

As an accountant, I’ve read papers written by mathematicians and applied their ideas sparingly, but I’ve never seen a quorum of them discuss things before.

Fun. : )

Dear Diary, this is how I spent my Father’s Day weekend:

• Friday, 7:30am, dropped my family off at the airport so that they could visit relatives in MN
• Saturday, 1am, sent around the check-in notice for my day job and went to bed
• Saturday, 11am, woke up in book avoidance mode
• Saturday, 3pm, started porting styles chapter to Avalon b1
• Sunday, 4:30am, heard birds chirping, thought it would be a good idea to go to bed, still not done porting styles chapter and my butt hurts from sitting, plan to bring in a butt pillow tomorrow
• Sunday, 4:31am, reflected on why I’m working so hard on a book when my readers feel the need to compare me unfavorably to certain rotund movie characters, resolve to stop writing books so I can have a life back that includes exercise (and doesn’t include reviewer feedback)
• Sunday, 9:30am, woke up, called my Dad to wish him a happy father’s day, called my kids to hear them do the same for me
• Sunday, 10:30am, back at it porting styles chapter (butt pillow in place)
• Sunday, 1:30pm, finished porting styles chapter, started applying reviewer feedback
• Sunday, 3:30pm, shipped out 2nd draft of styles chapter for 48-hour quick-turn review, started reading data binding chapter reviews
• Sunday, 10:30pm, went to bed with data binding chapter only 1/3rd finalized
• Monday, 5:30am, got up to make the trip to Redmond, didn’t finalize both chapters as per this weekend’s plan, but I’m so happy to not be applying reviewer feedback right now that I have a hard time caring
• Monday, 1:33pm, composed this silly entry and working happily at my day job where reviewer feedback is not currently a part of my life

This one made me laugh out loud:

Today is Sara Williams’s last day. Sara was the first Microsoft employee that I met. In fact, she was the first MS employee that a lot of people met. She’s been at Microsoft for 14 years, which was long before it was cool for employees to talk to the outside world. She was a key part of MS’s Developer Relations Group, whose job it was to do the outside world stuff while the rest of MS stayed inside and slid flat food under the door to each other.

Eventually, like others, Sara grew tired of Microsoft’s insular-ism and specifically our developer network’s unwillingness to embrace the community, so she launched GotDotNet which, inevitably, lead to her taking over MSDN altogether, which she developed Developer Centers and pushed a whole new way for Microsoft to embrace 3rd parties.

However, by far her most benevolent act was to hire me, a guy that refused to buckle to the pressure to move to Redmond and then she let me run roughshod over my colleagues putting up the Longhorn DevCenter and re-launching the Smart Client DevCenter. This set the stage for me proving myself in a remote-hostile environment and allowed me to eventually get myself onto an honest to gosh product team. It was all her.

Her departure from MSDN will leave an indelible mark on that organization and I can’t say that it didn’t play a factor my own decision to leave. Her departure from Microsoft is unbelievably sad. In many ways, Sara is Microsoft to me. She embodies each employee’s personal responsibility to our customers. She’s certainly not alone in her thinking at Microsoft, but that makes me no less sad to see her go.

Thanks very much, Sara. You made quite an impact on me. I wish you all the best and my undying adoration.

XXOO,
Chris

The boys and I went to ROTS on the 2nd night and our local theater had some auspicious guests that I made stand around while my son took the picture (neither of them asked to be in a similar picture, btw : ).

I was at Episode IV in 1977 when I was 8 years old, so this has been quite the journey. You’d think I’d be bored, but I’ve actually been following threads on the web lately like the “3 more episodes” rumors and The Sith Explained on howstuffworks.com.

I took a quick glance at some reviewer feedback for the Avalon book and already I’m trying hard not to hate the folks that send it in. Mean, hateful things like “who is this guy?!?” and “well, he’s never written a book” spring immediately to mind.

The thing is, reviewer feedback, especially harsh, blunt, spit-in-your-face reviewer feedback, is an extremely critical part of the book writing process (although, ironically, I most hate the reviews that sound like stuff I would write when I review…). Without reviews, authors don’t have any idea how their writing will be received ’til it’s published and we’re bound to do all kinds of stuff that’s reader or subject hostile that need correcting. Please, feel free to hit me with both barrels when you’re reviewing my stuff; I won’t promise to act on all the feedback, but I promise to consider all of it seriously.

I do have one request, however. This is something I try to do when I’m reviewing (and I’ve been known to make grown men cry): please start with something nice. This does two things:

1. Gives the author a little ego boost before you chop his legs out from under him.
2. Establishes your credibility as a reviewer. If you say something nice, especially if it’s insightful, e.g. “Avalon data binding is a large topic, but I really love how this chapter presents practically all of it in an easy to follow manner,” then I’m much more willing to take feedback like, “don’t let the sample app drive the chapter, make the technology coverage drive the sample” (not to pick on anyone in particular : ).

Of the two things, establishing your credibility as a reviewer is by far the most important because w/o it, there’s a good chance that the careful thought you put into your reviewer comments will not be fully considered (who wants to listen to a curmudgeon?).

Anyway, if you encounter me in the next month and I’m grumpty, it’s ’cuz I’m spending my weekends dealing with reviews. I might be crabby and violent, but at least I’m slow and easy to see coming. : )