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The end is the beginning
What a long day. Today I closed a chapter in my career and started writing the next.
As many of you know for the last 4+ years I’ve been on (or leading) the ops team for the Windows Live (aka MSN) Messenger server platform. In the last year we’ve also launched the Windows Notification Service that powers live tiles and messages delivered to modern apps on Windows 8. And oh by they way we’ve also leveraged our Messenger platform to power Skype.
What a wild ride and a lot of work. I’m both incredibly proud of the products we’ve delivered and continually humbled by the amazing talent that I get to call my friends and peers at work. I want to extend a huge thanks to everyone on the Messenger/WNS team for making the last 4 years so enjoyable, especially Seth and Curtis for giving me a shot at it in the first place and mentoring me along the way. I’ve made some great friendships that I will always cherish.
That being said, the great news is that I’m not going too far! Moving forward I’ll be leading the service engineering team powering the address book, account profile, and social network feeds that light up your Microsoft Account across nearly every major property and device Microsoft offers.
No pressure. 
But between now and Monday I’m a free man! I’m not on call for my old team, I’m not ramped up on my new team, and I’ve unsubscribed from all the email lists I don’t need to be on anymore. I don’t think my phone will know what to do without all those emails flooding in. Time to relax and celebrate my son’s first birthday this weekend!
Onwards and upwards to new challenges!
College is finally over
My wife informed me a couple days ago that my final college loan payment was made a few weeks ago, and we just received an official letter stating the loan is paid off and closed. Wow. At 32 years old I’m finally done with college!
It’s nice to have that paid off, but at the same time it was kind of my last connection with being a decade younger than I am now. 🙂
My career seems to be taking me in a more technical direction than I once hoped, and where I used to think that getting my Masters some day was good goal, now I’m not so sure. Sure I could be wrong, but at this point I don’t really see a big benefit.
So here’s to the good old days of just worrying about making it to classes and determining the best strategy for winning a game of Spades at 3am. But at the time, here’s to having a few glasses of a nice merlot while answering the door on Halloween while my wife and daughter are out raking in the goods!
Of course I just thought of another interesting tidbit: I’ve come full circle. When I was in college I thought it would be the coolest thing to work at Microsoft, but knew it was pretty darn hard to get hired there. In the last 10 years I’ve done a lot, and even reached the point where I thought Microsoft wouldn’t be the right place for me. Today I can’t think of anywhere else, or another team I’d rather work on than Messenger Ops at Microsoft.
That deserves another glass of merlot.
Going to my happy place
It’s been a long day. 2 days. 3 days … week. We’re doing A LOT of work this week and, unfortunately, we’ve got some dependencies on new circuits being delivered for new/enhanced services to our Baltimore office. Nothing seems to go well on this trip, and we’ve been running into issues at every turn.
But a few minutes ago I was able to go to my “happy place” because of an email I got … announcing I could check in for my flight home tomorrow evening.
From here on out, no matter what happens, I’ve got my ticket outta here – literally. 😀
Dead man walking
It’s my last day on the job today; I start at Microsoft on Monday. The atypical part of the story is, though, that I’m traveling this week and look to be putting in about 80 hours on the clock. Usually folks check out at the end of their stay … I guess I’m still emotionally invested in making this place successful.
I’m super-tired today, having pulled a couple of 18 hour days and a 12 hour travel day since Tuesday. Today looks like more of the same (guessing 15+ hours).
As I was walking out to our rental car from the hotel this morning I turned to my good friend and boss Brian and said, “dead man walking.” Oh how true on at least a couple different levels.
Looking forward to starting my new adventure next week at the same time. A couple days of official orientation, and then some settling in, etc. I’m really jumping off a cliff with this change in my career, and that’s both exciting and scary at the same time. Here’s hoping I remembered the parachute!
Adventures in the UK
Driving over here in England is “great fun”. I’ve actually gotten to the point where I’m comfortable driving on the wrong side of the road, and on the wrong side of the car. I can even take roundabouts at maximum speed! 🙂
The flat I’m staying at in Reading is across the street from a major mall with lots of restaurants, so that’s nice and convenient! Ironically there’s a Chili’s, Starbucks, Pizza Hut, McDonalds, and even a Krispy Kreme, along with a handful of other restaurants lining both sides of the river next to the mall, so a taste of home is not too far away. I’m still getting my morning Starbucks hot chocolate!
This morning on the drive to the office (in Kingsclere – about 25 minutes south on a bunch of back roads) we discovered a new style of music on the radio I’ve never heard before: punk rock with bagpipes. Only in the UK!
Well, back to work! If you’d like to catch up with the travels of one of Kaitlyn’s favourite toys, Milk Dud, keep an eye on http://novaks.smugmug.com/gallery/4450616_eVN9K#261634527.
I got your crazy right here
The little guy
At my company, management has been talking for months that they were going to fix our insurance.
Unfortunately all they did was change insurance providers. Same unimpressive benefit levels … and we have to pay more for it.
Sure there are good excuses, but does that make us peons feel better about it?
Not so much.
I thought this picture was rather appropriate for my feelings on the subject. 🙂
Nathan's Occasional Blog 