Hey Slange, where have you been?

I received a few emails and tweets asking why my blog has been so quiet lately.  Well, I promise there’s a good reason.

My wife and I welcomed our second child into the world in March.  As a result, I was able to take advantage of a Microsoft benefit giving me 4 weeks of paid leave.  So, I went dark for all of April to adjust to life as a new dad (again).

So what about this leave?, some of you have asked me.  Well, let me explain further:

I know there are a few other companies out there that offer this, but I’ve never worked for any of them before.

When my wife and I had our first child, I worked for a different company.  I had done well to save up my vacation time so that I could take three weeks of to adjust to our new family lifestyle.  While it was vacation time well-spent, doing so drained my allotted vacation hours.  It was months before I could afford to take any more time off for family excursions, personal activities, or just plain R&R.

Enter my career at Microsoft.  Microsoft provides what’s called ICL, or Infant Care Leave, for both new mothers (as you’d expect) AND new fathers (very, very cool!).  I was provided four weeks of leave, paid, and the option to take an additional eight weeks (unpaid) if I so chose (I didn’t, as three months from work would probably give me the shakes).

However, I did work one day in April – the VS 2010 Launch event in Denver on April 22nd.  I delivered the Application Lifecycle Management session in the Developer track.  (Thanks to all of you who offered kind words after!).  My task list includes getting the content posted online soon, for those of you asking for it.

So, as of today (5/3), I’m back and digging out of my pile of email.  If you’ve sent me email, I promise I’ll find it and get back to you ASAP.  I also have some pending blog entries which I’ll get posted in the next couple weeks.