Quality Milestone, Marriage, Star Trek and Pilchuck

It has been a while since I blogged.  One reason is that not much is going on.  Of course, at Microsoft that is a deceptive statement.  By "not much" I mean that not much immediately impacting the customer is going on.  We released VS 2005 and are starting work on the next version; however, before doing so we decided to take a break and improve our processes and infrastructure to make for a smoother release cycle than we had for VS 2005.  A lot of dust that had gotten under the carpet is being cleaned, some processes and practices are getting discarded and new ones being brought in.  It is amazing how "inefficiency" creeps in slowly over time; only when you step back and start asking "why the hell do we do this?" do you realize the baggage you have accumulated.

Additionally, I am getting married in March.  Now you know where I spent the time I would use earlier for blogs and newsgroups.  Given the time I used to hang out at the MS campus it is not overly surprising that my fiancee is also a Microsoftie.  I have gotten her interested in Star Trek: The Next Generation and hope to also develop her interest in Warcraft.  In turn, she has cured me of my habit of spending weekends in the office.

I went climbing Mt Pilchuck with some friends this weekend.  Just so you know, it is not an easy hike this time of year with all the snow.  Heck, it is not even an easy drive to get to the mountain.  A couple of cars got stuck in the snow and my friends and I helped push one poor guy's SUV out.  The fun part was that when the tires started rolling they sprayed snow all over Richard's trousers.

Finally, I discovered "The Picard Song" in January.  Apparently it has been out since 2003 only nobody told me.  It is quite addictive and I would recommend that you give it a hearing: https://thepicardsong.ytmnd.com/

Regards,
Deep