17 = XVII = 1001 = Big Day

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happy_anniversary_balloon 1991 was a big year for me.

I got married.

I bought a house.

My first child was born

AND

I joined Microsoft on May 20, 1991

Today marks my 17th year anniversary at Microsoft.

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17 - what a number! Some interesting facts (and not so interesting facts) about 17 :

Seventeen is the 7th prime number . The next prime is nineteen , with which it forms a twin prime . 17 is the sum of the first four primes. 17 is the sixth Mersenne prime exponent, yielding 131071. 17 is an Eisenstein prime with no imaginary part and real part of the form 3n − 1.

17 is the third Fermat prime, as it is of the form 2^{2^2} + 1, and it is also a Proth prime . Since 17 is a Fermat prime, heptadecagons can be drawn with compass and ruler . This was proven by Carl Friedrich Gauss . Another consequence of 17 being a Fermat prime is that it is not a Higgs prime for squares or cubes.

17 is the only positive Genocchi number that is prime, the only negative one being -3. It is also the third Stern prime .

As 17 is the least prime factor of the first twelve terms of the Euclid-Mullin sequence , it is the thirteenth term.

17 is the least random number, according to the Hacker 's Jargon File . There is an unproved conjecture that 17 is the value most likely to be picked as a " random " number when such is needed in journalism which is derived from the Feller number.

17! = 355687428096000

17 is the first number that can be written as the sum of a positive cube and a positive square in two different ways; that is, the smallest n such that x3 + y2 = n has two different solutions for x and y positive integers. The next such number is 65 .

I've reflected on my Microsoft anniversary in past posts (16. 15, 14, 13) and I'm still loving it. Pretty cheesy, but it's true!

Let's update the resume :

May 1991 Sep 1993 Microsoft Canberra, working as a Systems Engineer
Sep 1993 Aug 1994 Microsoft Corp, @ Executive Briefing Center
Aug 1994 Oct 1995 Microsoft Corp, in the Advanced Technology Group, working on Interactive TV
Nov 1995 May 1997 Microsoft Australia, MSN Technical Director
Jun 1997 Jun 1999 ninemsn CTO
Jun 1999 May 2001 Microsoft Region, Digital Media dude
May 2001 Aug 2007 Microsoft Australia, Developer & Platform Evangelism (DPE)
Aug 2007 Current Microsoft Corp, Director DPE Field Roles

Right now, I am running a team of folks who look after the different roles which sit within DPE.

It's an internal focused role, which for me is different. All my career, I had a customer (public) facing role. This is the first time I've had a 'behind the scenes' kind of job. But they impact is so much great as we are able to 'touch' everyone in DPE who are out there doing great things - such as the Aussie team with their recent ReMix event. That said, I'm always looking for a chance to get out and about, like I did with Mix08.

Enough reflecting. Back to work

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