Getting Personal

Has it really been three months since I’ve posted? Well, it’s been threemonths since we went “on the clock” for the next version of Mac Office. Thereare two unfortunate consequences to this. One is that my workload tends toincrease, and, for this particular milestone, this was exacerbated by adependency that required a near doubling of the work I needed to do for aparticular feature—work that had already been slated to take an entiremilestone before we discovered the dependency.

The other unfortunate consequence is that all the stuff that I’m excitedabout, the things that I’d like to discuss, are either mostly personal innature or are issues I simply can’t discuss publicly. I’m either working onsomething that’s strategically important, working on something that could wellget cut from the final product, or working on something that involves Appletechnologies that are covered by a legally binding non-disclosure agreement. In order to stay out of trouble, I’ve chosen to not say anything at all, atleast not on a work-related blog.

Which brings me to today. Two things have rather serendipitously coincided. MSN Spaces Beta went live today, and, tomorrow, by wife and I will embark in ajourney to Haifa, Israel to visit the Bahá’í Holy places. So, I’ve started apersonal blog. I’mgoing to blog (or at least try to blog depending on the availability ofinternet access) our pilgrimage. I’d venture to guess that most of you won’tbe at all interested in this, but those of you who want to learn a bit moreabout me personally might want to follow along.

Clearly, I won’t be blogging very often about Mac Office until some time in January at the very earliest, but I hope to beable to discuss a few things soon. We’re trying some new process-orientedideas, and, while it’s too soon to say whether the impact on our products willbe positive or negative, I expect I’ll be able to talk about them in therelatively near future. So, stay tuned, if you can.

Rick