Leaving Microsoft and Moving to San Francisco

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Hello, Friends!

Lots has happened since I last blogged.  For almost two years, I've worked on Cosmos, some of the plumbing for Bing.  It stores hundreds of petabytes of data on tens of thousands of computers.  Large scale batch processing using Dryad with a high-level language called SCOPE on top of it.  Working on this team (with some amazing colleagues and friends) has been one of the highlights of my career.

Last June, I was honored to be able to write a paper for the Communications of the ACM.  It is called "If You Have Too Much Data, then 'Good Enough' Is Good Enough" and can be found here: https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/6/108666-if-you-have-too-much-data-then-good-enough-is-good-enough/abstract.   If was quite an honor and a lot of fun.

Now for some big news, today is my last day at Microsoft after over 15 years (that's 17-1/2 minus the 2 years at Amazon).  My wife, Lisa, and I have decided to move to downtown San Franciso.  We will be only about 30 minutes drive from the grandkids, my daughter, and son-in-law.  We will be about an hour from two of my brothers.  Since my father passed away in April, 2010, there has not really been a close family tie to keep us in Seattle.  We are really longing to be down where we can see the grandkids.

While I will miss my wonderful colleagues on the Cosmos team, it is time to search for something new.  I don't have a new job lined up and plan to move to SF, help unpack, and attend the bi-annual High Performance Transaction Systems workshop (www.hpts.ws) in late October.  HPTS has been a big part of my life since 1985.  I will see my friends who work in scalable computing and look around to see what opportunities are available in the Bay Area.  I know there's lots going on and I am looking forward to returning to California after my 17+ years in the Seattle area.

It is my hope to get a new website and blog going at www.pathelland.com but there's nothing there yet.  It's amazing how busy you can be working at Microsoft and preparing to move to California!

If someone wants to contact me, my personal email is phelland0215@hotmail.com.  

Thank you all for your interest and kindness through the years...  I would really like to offer more thoughts and ideas moving forward but today I am off to my last day of work and my exit interview.  You'll hear more from me soon!

All my best,

Pat