Tuesday, October 28, 2003

Today was a very cool day. Besides expanding my wardrobe with three free T-Shirts, I had a great time playing with probably the coolest geek today on the market today. My colleague, Ivy, and I were able to ride the new Segways!


Ivy enjoys inner geekdom


While I haven't really figured out how I'd ever really use one of these on a day to day basis, it was great fun just being able to play with it for a few minutes. What's funny is that as soon as you step on to it, your natural reaction is to try and balance. Well, that actually makes it difficult to ride, when all you need to do is just stand there. Also, your natural reaction is to look down, which is also bad, as it's much easier to ride just looking out in front of you.


How not to ride a Segway: Don't look down!


It took both Ivy and I only a couple of minutes to get somewhat comfortable with the machine to be able to move it around the little roped off area they provided. It does have a very impressive turning radius, and is very responsive. If you ever have the opportunity, I highly recommend giving one of these a spin if only for the novelty!

Monday, October 27, 2003

Ah, Fall, the time of year when a young man’s thoughts turn to code. This week, I’m one of 7000 code monkeys enjoying Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) here in Los Angeles.


The brown tint from the photo is from the smoke in the air.


Microsoft only holds these conferences when it has a major release, so this is the first PDC in three years. The conference is centered around Windows “Longhorn” which is the next release of the Windows platform. All I can say is that Microsoft is certainly getting the job done with this new version that looks spectacular and more importantly, really unifies all the data on your computer and network into data that is so easy to find that it almost finds you! Of course, these were controlled demos.


How many people can we fit in one room? All of them.


The 3 ½ hour keynote presentation was long, but it was packed with great information. One highlight was a very well produced “Behind the Technology” video ala VH1. Microsoft really poked fun at themselves and Apple and Oracle in the video, and it included humorous interviews with Bill Clinton, Warren Buffet and P. Diddy.


The Uber-Geek, Mr. Bill.


Bill Gates spoke to the attendees for about 45 minutes and gave an overview of Microsoft’s direction of the various new initiatives within the company. Gates is a very good speaker, and I especially appreciate his no nonsense approach to delivering the details to the developers. Other conferences that I attend tend to get too wrapped up in their own hype, but this one so far has set a very cautious and realistic tone with an underlying current of excitement.

The biggest surprise was rifling through the myriad of junk given in my conference materials to find a full version of Microsoft Office Professional 2003. That’s right, a full version. Schwing! We also received the latest build of Windows Longhorn, which I may get around to running if I can find some time.

I’m looking forward to the next 3 days!

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

One month to the day. Yep, what a loser. Truth is that this last month has been wrought with personal discovery and exploration. Whatever the hell that means. Actually, the last 5 years of my life have largely been focused on a divorce that almost happened, reconciliation, two wonderful children, and finally the divorce that did happen. Recently, I realized that my life was on hold for those 5 years, and in fact, whatever motivation and potential I did possess had been completely sapped. So, the last month was time to reflect on the past and the future, and I had some great help from my close friends on the issue.

To this end, I have made one decision in my professional life. I concluded that sitting through a college level programming course would be the equivalent of slashing my wrists with razors over, and over, and over. In what should have been obvious, the reason I haven’t been moving toward my educational goals is simply because I found no enjoyment in them whatsoever. So, I changed the goals. I’m now focused on completing a Bachelors of Science degree in Physiological Science. I haven’t been this excited about my education in, well, I never have been this excited about my education. Of course, my sentiment will likely change after the first few chemistry, biology and physics courses. We’ll see.

Diet update: Surprise! I’m still on the Atkins diet, and we’re now in Week 7. Who would have thunk it?

Start weight: 236 lbs.
Current weight: 214 lbs.
Total loss: 22 lbs.