Summer as expected has been non-stop craziness. cuddlyeconomist was out of town four times in the past two months on various trips so I was solo with Professor X a fair amount. Daycare kept me sane, but it was still a lot of work. How the heck do single working parent's survive? His birthday is Monday, and most of tomorrow will be spent in various celebrations.

Pumpkin has been in Seattle about a month. The house renovation planning hit a few twists and churns, so we went ahead and just did the traditional 'give up the office to give the boy his own room' thing in the meantime. We went to Ikea every day of several weekends, but the great shuffle is done. It's been good for the 10 year old to have his own space--he's clearly hitting his 'angst & moody teenager' stride early--and the two (2!) year old is enjoying having his own room as well. We've removed the gates in the living room, and reshuffled everything in there to make room for a dining table as well. Still a small house, but it's working out pretty well so far.

Hard to know what to say about the situation at Microsoft these days. I'm enjoying the work, my projects, and working with my team. It's certainly interesting times Chinese curse style. It will be months before the practical ramifications of Balmer's reorg trickle down and have any impact on day-to-day work at my level. Been doing my part contributing to Xbox One and Windows 8.1 as well as plugging away on my Codeplex projects, so that's really all an IC can do.

Two weekends back I took Pumpkin to Paizocon for some classic D&D (well, Pathfinder since D&D 3.5 is considered 'classic' these days). Good times, although being a family man means not staying to play 8 5+ hour slots and unofficial late-night slots to boot. My old roomie hackard was in town and we got to hang out a bit, which was a nice bonus.

We went camping last weekend--or should I say "kamping". The KOA does a great job of catering to the great American contradiction of both loving the out-of-doors and not wanting to suffer any real inconvenience in true wilderness. I've done the 50+ mile low-impact-camping hike thing, and with a toddler the KOA is definitely a pretty solid compromise. No TV, limited--cause you can't expect no--Internet, rustic cooking, and sleeping bag camping but with hot showers, flushing toilets, and a solid roof & walls to contain the boys. It's good to unplug for a while personally, and get the kids the heck out of the house too.

I was out of town all last week attending the Microsoft BUILD conference. Microsoft announced Windows 8, Windows 8 Server, DirectX 11.1, Metro style apps, .NET Framework 4.5, Xbox LIVE for Windows 8, and about a dozen other things. I was there supporting some talks on components I've spent the past year or so working on: XINPUT 1.4, XAUDIO 2.8, DirectXMath, and generally helping move bits of the DirectX SDK over to the Windows SDK for Windows 8. The show was successful overall, but I suspect the next few months will be a very busy time explaining, listening, and finishing things up.

My mom was in Seattle for the week meeting the Chase and keeping DrB company. I saw her for a day or two on either side, and she had a great time being charmed by the baby grandson. I came down with a cold, however, which I suppose isn't surprising given the stress of air travel and a show meeting thousands of strangers. I had to book my travel to the conference pretty late, and my flight back from Anaheim was far too long and far too exciting. I prefer my air travel boring.

Chase had his first full round of vaccinations yesterday. The eight diseases are really nasty, and all of them can leave your child scarred or dead, but he was an unhappy camper after getting stuck three times in the thigh. He ate, got a little Tylenol, and fell asleep on me while I was recovering myself on the couch. A few hours later, he woke up a happy baby again and he is doing great.

Microsoft Announces Retirement and Transition Plan for Robbie Bach

Microsoft also announced that J Allard, senior vice president of Design and Development for E&D, will be leaving Microsoft after 19 years, and will take an official role as an advisor in a strategic role for Ballmer and his leadership team.

You can read some background on J Allard and Robbie Bach from Wikipedia.

Update: here is a Q&A from Robbie about this announcement.

I recently started a 'professional' blog at work. It will of course be all technical, all the time, but I think several years of LiveJournal plus years of public communication in email and at conferences has properly prepared for the step. It is still a little nerve-wracking as I really don't want to end up having an uncomfortable meeting that includes PR, HR, and my manager should something I say upset an executive.

While I was in Texas, some friends were noting I was not posting much to LJ these days. Mostly I've just been really busy, and when I've not been busy I've not been inclined to sit down and write a blog entry. So in no particular order, here is what I've been up to lately:

Work: Most of the last few months of stress, coding, and way too many meetings has resulted in the DirectX SDK (August 2009) release, which marks the the "RTM" of DirectX11, and the related KB 971644 for getting DirectX 11 on a Windows Vista machine--it is built into Windows 7.

We are getting started on content for Gamefest 2010 happening in early February. This year I'm just speaking instead of running a track or the whole conference content, but I am giving three different talks.

Otherwise the usual churn, reorg madness, and change in priorties as usual keeping things 'lively'.

Home: cuddlyeconomist and I have been working on our fencing project. This year we are only doing the back (the side fences are in crap shape, but there is at least a fence; plus the back has no elevation changes). We made some good progress over the weekend, and then relized Monday night we had to pull of 19 boards and do them over to get it to work out correctly. We of course picked the most complicated fence that takes the most wood, but it should work out well given how exposed to windstorms that part of the fence is. The side fences may end up being either done by a contractor (in whole or in part) and likely will be a more traditional fence. Whatever the case, we have become fast friends with the people at Alki Lumber in West Seattle and have taken advantage of their $20 local delivery several times.

Digipen: I'm teaching at DigiPen this again this year. In previous years I just did the lab proctoring, and this year I'm teaching a whole section including grading, and doing most of the semester lectures for all the GAM400 (Senior project) sections. So far, so good, and the extra cash is defintely helpful with finishing up the backyard project over the winter--phase 2 is getting a bunch of flagstone patios and pathways put down.

It was another busy week last week. I have three 'critical path' projects all happening at once at work, plus about a dozen other things, all for the next release of the DirectX SDK. It will be the SDK release for the RTM of Direct3D 11 and Windows 7, and I've been trying to nail down all kinds of loose-ends and update several aspects of the documentation, samples, and tools over the past few months. I'm glad we didn't have Gamefest to contend with in the middle of it all. To top it all off, I-90 has been closed down from an effective 5 lanes to 2 for two weeks heading Westbound which has made getting home in the evening a real mess.

While I don't feel as sick this past week as I did on the 1st, I still have a lingering cough and sniffles. It's probably allergies, which makes me wonder if I have had 'summer colds' regularly and always thought they were allergies. I also got the impression that colds were a winter thing. cuddlyeconomist was also feeling under the weather by last weekend, so we spent most of it hanging around the house and recuperating. And by recuperating I mean a combination of Alton Brown French-toast breakfast, mowing, watering, weeding, playing Lego Indiana Jones on the Xbox 360, and playing with actual physical Legos. Throw in a few meals out and a trip to the mall. Somewhere in the past week I also managed to strain my left wrist. Thankfully it doesn't hurt to type, but I've been wearing a wrap when I don't manage to lose it--it's too much like a watch which I've not worn in a decade.

With cuddlyeconomist's birthday happening this week and Rhys heading home yesterday, we did an early dinner, cupcake, and presents. We'll be doing a b-day dinner with the two of us later this week before heading off to Summerstar this weekend, but Rhys was rather put-out at missing his mom's birthday so she ends up with two celebrations instead. Rhys went back to Houston on Sunday, and we had dinner that night with loree.

The yard is looking great, although the plants have a ways to go before they really fill the place in. We went to Alki Lumber today and researched fencing materials. I think we've landed on a design, the material, and a budget. We will probably get it started while Rhys is in town, but won't finish he first phase until later in the year. At this point, we will probably not do the 'shared' fence with the neighbors until next year, but it really depends on how soon the fall weather returns in force.

Windows Vista – 64 bit in the Mainstream (Channel 9) [channel9.msdn.com]

Be ready for 64-bit Windows Vista [www.microsoft.com]

Windows Vista 64-bit Adoption Growing [blogs.msdn.com]

Satchell: DirectX 11 Won't Have 'DX9/10 Discontinuity' [www.gamasutra.com]

Microsoft Drops Player Fees On Games For Windows Live [www.informationweek.com]

Interview: Microsoft's Chris Satchell Dissects Community Games' Business Model [www.gamedaily.com]

So after six months of preparation, this morning the Gamefest US event kicked off. I managed to get through my short & sweet keynote introduction in front of 1200 people mostly because the lights blinded me completely. Now I need to practice my own talk I'm giving this afternoon in the CPU & System Programming track, which I've not had much time to even look at in probably a month dealing with the other 108 talks. I did get the presentation deck in good shape early and it's basically a continuation of the topic I've been talking about for the past two+ years, so I'm not that worried about it. All eleven of the tracks have started, and my track coordinators appear to have the morning in hand so far.

It will all be over in 32 hours.

Because I have to be here bright and early both days, I've got a hotel room at the Sheraton. Well, more accurately I have a palatial suite. The hotel is more than pleased at having 700+ people book rooms at their hotel for two nights. Of course, cuddlyeconomist is getting more enjoyment out of the place than I am during the event, although the ridiculousness of the whole thing amuses me greatly.

Today was Bill Gates' last day as a full-time employee at Microsoft.

He's not really been that involved in the aspects of the company I deal with since before I started working there in 2004, and he hasn't technically been a corporate officer since 2006. While there was once a time when every new full-time employee meet Bill for dinner at his place, that tradition has been limited to interns only for many years so I've never actually met him or had any interaction with him at all. I've gotten two or three company-wide e-mails from him, and one of them was today. I've only seen him giving a few speeches at Windows launch events, and otherwise just interviews on TV.

The only time I recall having seen him live was when I went to a NT Developer Conference back in 1993 or so. At the time he didn’t have any visible security--it was before he was worried about being pied. It was a long time before he got an image consultant to get him to dress himself as a CEO instead of a nerd. I recall thinking at the time that all of his product speeches sound like a form-letter:

I'm super excited about the launch of _(fill in product name here)_. _(fill in product name here)_ is going to revolutionize the way that _(fill in industry/market)_ does business!

Over the years I've been annoyed by non-technical people praising Bill. He is absolutely an amazing shrewd business man, has had visionary insights and taken advantage of them, and been an 'industry leader' for three decades. On the other hand, he hasn't really written software since BASIC for the Altar. The initial PC-DOS was mostly the product of buying someone else's work and changing a few strings. Much of the first generation Windows is a limited implementation of GEM or early Mac as a facade over the venerable CPM-inspired PC-DOS.

The home computer industry wasn't invented or even started by Microsoft or the IBM PC, but the home computer became a standard appliance in our daily lives because of their product. I got my start in home computing when it was a 'hobby' and spent my youth as an "Atari user". I didn't get my first IBM PC until college, but I have spent my whole professional career writing software for Microsoft platforms. The Internet would still be just an academic network connecting a few campuses together if there wasn't millions of machines to access it. BBSs and Fidonet were cool, but were limited to toys for geeks. Microsoft has brought the technology to millions upon millions of people, and made using a computer a mainstream experience.

I probably would not have liked working for Microsoft in the early days. It made many people millionaires and billionaires, but it also chewed up people's lives in a relentless machine of driven workaholic behavior. The software wasn't terribly well crafted, as "good enough" didn't require it, and the place was riddled with Type A assholes. There are still plenty of those people at Microsoft, but the place seems more 'professional' now. Certainly too corporate in many ways, but less a cult of personality.

Nonetheless, I do sense that Microsoft has fundamentally changed with his departure. We have far too many 'managers' and far too few 'leaders' at work these days. I still think it's stupid how many people view Bill as if he reviewed every decision, approved every product, or even knows a substantial portion of what a company of 96,000 people is up to on a daily-basis. He has been, however, the 'face' of Microsoft and perhaps more importantly the technical 'soul'. I respect that Steve Ballmer has been there since the beginning, but he is much more a business/sales guy.

Microsoft is fundamentally a technical company. Our marketing is mostly outsourced, and often laughably bad. Our dabbling in hardware has had 'mixed' results for everything except mice and perhaps keyboards. Developers are in mass in Redmond, with the sales people spread out across the globe disconnected from the "Microsoft mothership". While the majority of Silicon Valley's players are in the hardware business, Microsoft is one of few software-centric companies. Most of the players in the PC industry are actually hardware companies, and it is a distinction that I think few people even in the industry really appreciate.

It will be interesting to see how the new executive leadership handle the wheel of this particular ship, but there's no doubt it will be a different place in ways both subtle and dramatic.