Just recently my family and I moved from Portland, OR to Ananda Village in Nevada City, CA. In the process of moving, it struck me that we were directly experiencing what data goes through when trasnmitted over the Internet.

First, we set up the protocols of the transfer: closing up connections where we were, opening connections where we were going, and arranging the transfer pipeline (aka UHaul).

Second, we did a serious job of compressing the material totality of our three lives into a 20' truck (and the minivan). The compression algorithm had several stages: the small scale (local) compression of packing boxes, then the large-scale compression of stuffing those boxes into the truck. I've always had a pretty good spatial ability (e.g. 3D Tetris), and got the truck completely stuffed floor to ceiling and front to back. If we'd had one more box we might not have done it!

It was quite amazing, in fact, to see that everything we owned could be fit into a 16.75' x 7.75' x 7' volume (OK, so the wheelbarrow was strapped on top of the minivan...). But it really shows what happens during compression--when you remove the extra space that normally surrounds our stuff.

Third, we did the transfer of all this "data" by driving the truck and van the ~590 miles down I-5 from Portland to Red Bluff (spending nights in Eugene and Mt Shasta), Hwy 99 (through Chico and Oroville), then Hwy 20 (Grass Valley and Nevada City), Hwy 49, then Tyler Foote Road. It was a long haul, but certainly made much easier with compressed data!

Fourth, when we arrive at Ananda Village on August 13th, we then started the process of decompressing the data--expanding from the truck into the house, again through a multi-stage process of unloading the truck, then unloading the boxes. Transfer complete!

As a fifth point, it was certainly clear that the compression algorithm (packing) took considerably longer than decompression. That is, it takes more analysis to understand how to pack things efficiently, whereas unpacking is relatively mindless (except figuring out just where everything is going to go in the new place!).

I can also say that while I won't be desirous of making a long-distance move again anytime soon, our data fortunatly has no emotional involvement in such processes and is very happy to be squished and exploded over and over again. For myself, I've been thankful for the good nights' sleep I've been getting for the last week. Phew!

A short time ago, my young son and I noticed a sign on Portland's Sesame Donuts shop (very near our home) that June 3rd was "National Donut Day." That piece of news wasn't so inspiring as the fact that the store would be selling 25-cent donuts that day. So of course we make the short trip on that morning to participate in this celebration, and I checked in my location to Facebook with an appropriate comment about the event.

Not long after, a friend of mine in Europe commented on my post. "Do you really have a national donut day? I love America :-)". I had to reply honestly, and say that it was probably just a marketing scheme, albeit a tasty one!

It is true that many such special days on the American calendar are just marketing schemes cooked up one some retailing association or another to bump up sales. Retailers have invented days for giving gifts to just about anyone you might know--family, of course, but also secretaries, nannies, bosses/managers, your neighbor's pet Chihuahua, you name it. And most of the time we just roll our eyes at such things, which I would've naturally done with the donut thing except for the fact that the deal was too good to pass up.

At the same time, I started to reflect more on something more true about these fabricated events. Success in any endeavor always depends not just on skills and know-how, but on the ability to overcome inertia and move energy. Once a flow of energy has started, in other words, it's a dynamic force you can work with, shape, and direct, whereas energy that's frozen into a solid and unmoving form is there, certainly, but very static. We recognize this by celebrating when people who we'd normally expect to knuckle under or cave into their circumstances stand up and put out the energy to overcome their challenges. We admire people who rise out of poverty through will and perseverance more than those who became wealthy through inheritance or other "strokes of fortune." In fact, how often do we see people become rich through no real effort of their own, only to squander that wealth entirely!

This, then, is exactly what fabricated holidays accomplish: they serve to awaken and move energy in a particular direction. This can, and often does, stimulate a greater ongoing flow of energy in that same direction. I had to admit, that is, that without a National Donut Day, I would hardly have thought to visit Sesame Donuts on a Friday morning with my family. We'd actually only been there maybe twice in the last five years, but now what we (and especially my son) has had the experience, there's a good chance we'll visit more often. Fait accompli.

In this way, I have a new understanding and appreciation for these events. Though they perhaps soar to the heights of corniness, they yet embody that important relationship between success and energy. So though many such days are probably not created with much noble purpose in mind, they yet serve this noble purpose of generating and moving energy across the culture. They serve as a subtle reminder of this important principle to us all, and in the end, I think we're actually better off for it.

Now if only National Donut Day was a monthly event!

I searched the Washington Country Library system (in Oregon) with the words "back care basics," looking for a book with that title. I didn't just do a title search, however, and rather searched on "any field." It was funny to see the variety of books that were actually returned, in the following order:

1. The 20-Minute Gardener: The Garden of Your Dreams Without Giving Up our Life, Your Job, or Your Sanity
2. Accounting for Dummies
3. Back Care Basics: A Doctor's Gentle Yoga Program for Back and Neck Pain Relief (the one I was looking for)
4. C++ for Dummies
5. The Chemotherapy Survival Guide: Everything You Need to Know to Get Through Treatment
6. Complete Digital Photography
7. The Complete Guide to Growing Tomatoes: Everything You Need to Know Explained Simply
8. Country: Piano, Vocal, Guitar
9. The "I Have a Life" Guide to Baby's First Year: Get Through Your Baby's First 12 Months, Without Losing Your Life, or Your Mind
10. Jerry Baker's Gardening Wisdom

Go figure. Must be a curious database arrangement!

Posted to the articles section of my main website: http://www.kraigbrockschmidt.com/Pages.aspx?page=article_leavingamark. Comments are welcome here.

I was at a seminar yesterday with other attendees from various companies. Of course, introducing myself as a Microsoft employee, and compounded by the fact that the two instructors had worked with Microsoft in consulting capacities, I was automatically approached as an individual representative of the whole company. In this way, any reference that was made to Microsoft was addressed to me as if it was something personal. One of the instructors at one point asked my permission to tell a story about Microsoft that had nothing to do with me.

With this kind of response, which is just as true today as it was twenty years ago, I wondered if the same thing would happen if I was an employee of, say, Boeing. That is, would people expect me to be answerable or responsible for their experiences with a 737 in the same way they do about their experiences with a Windows PC? It didn't seem like it.

What I realized is that people approach Microsoft employees more personally because their own relationship to Microsoft is essentially a personal one--personal, daily, and often for-much-of-the-day interaction with a Windows computer of some kind. Their interaction with most other things, like a Boeing 737, is much more sporadic and much less personal (the airline owns and operates the airplane). And so the tendency is to then project that intimacy with one's computer--more speciifcally, the software--to a personal representative of the company that makes it.

It's also that 90% of computer users are on Windows, so any group that contains professionals--which are the kinds of people you meet in such seminars contains probably 90% Microsoft customers. And those who aren't probably have a strong opinion as to why, because of their intimate relationship with another computer system.

I have a hard time thinking of any other technological relationship that gets projected in this way. With automobiles, there is much more of a mixture--many manufacturers, many different models, so a representative from, say, Chevrolet, wouldn't have the same experience unless they were specifically attending a meeting of Chevrolet owners.

Personally, I'm not bothered by how people respond to learning that I'm employed by Microsoft. I'm not in the least way shamed by the relationship and, in fact, deeply honor it. Indeed, when I attend such seminars and hear some of what people experience in other workplaces, I'm increasingly grateful for the fabulous environment in which I'm blessed to spend my professional hours.

Written June 30^th, 2009

This is meant to be an insert within a forthcoming "What Exactly Does One Do With 'Oslo'?" article; originally it was part of that piece but tended to make the whole thing somewhat lengthy!

Some of you may remember the work I did in my "version 1.0" career at Microsoft, which spanned the years between 1990 and 1996. During most of that time I worked as a software engineer in the Developer Relations Group (which eventually turned into Developer & Platform Evangelism) with the purpose of helping developers outside of Microsoft understand and apply our technologies. In this capacity I ended up as the industry expert on the OLE and COM technologies. This put me on stage at many developer conferences and saw the publication of Inside OLE 2 (1993) and Inside OLE 2^nd Edition (1995).

At that time, the focus was pretty much on desktop applications; client-server applications were really just starting to hit the mainstream, including web applications. And that was the very point at which I retired from the high-tech scene altogether. (For the complete story of my first career, which many people tell me isn't actually boring at all, see my book, Mystic Microsoft.)

Thus I completely missed out on the evolution of Microsoft's component technologies beyond the desktop. While people like my friend Don Box were circling the globe talking about DCOM, .NET, and all kinds of new middle-tier and enterprise-level stuff like Microsoft Transaction Server, App Server, BizTalk Server, and what have you, I was off doing completely different things (see www.kraigbrockschmidt.com). To what extent I fiddled with technology, it was pretty much still limited to client apps, managing a few Access databases, and putting together some simple websites. What I learned of .NET was pretty slim, just enough to be mildly confused.

Ironically, the chap who was my direct manager when I wrote this, the very visible Chris Sells, got started in all this shortly before my exit. Having started his path with COM at one of my presentations, he eventually worked with Don Box at DevelopMentor where he earned his living, as he puts it, "telling people how to minimize round-trips in DCOM." Since then he's been pretty deeply immersed in the heart of efforts like Microsoft code name "Oslo."

More...

It's been a long time coming for me to finally get a blog going. That I've done it was pretty much motivated by the need to post materials related to my work at Microsoft, which will likely form the bulk of the first entries. But I'll also be using this space for non-Microsoft stuff too, things that aren't lengthy or polished enough to warrant being an article on my main website.

I've actually hesitated for a long time to create a blog because of the whole commenting business. Yes, I know this is a big part of the democratic information/web 2.0/social bit, but fact of the matter is that most comments on blog posts leave much to be desired where thoughfulness is concerned (and sometimes prove that the commenter didn't actually read the post). The last thing I really want when I post a carefully thought-out article is to have oft-random comments and rants carelessly negate the points I'm trying to communicate. In other words, I believe that an article should carry more weight than the comments, and that an article should be presented in its own context without the distraction of comments.

This way, the main part of kraigbrockschmidt.com is a resource for people who are interested in what I, individually, am sharing with them. Thus anything produced in that spirit will continue to go on that part of the site. I'll make a reference to that piece on this blog and invite comments here; that way, there is still a space for discussion that won't othewise interfere with the presentation of the work itself.

Most of my Microsoft-related stuff, on the other had, will go directly here because obtaining feedback is one of the primary reasons for writing such pieces in the first place. (A curious side-note is that at Microsoft I'm part of a group that's focused on 'modeling' where software engineering is concerned, while 'modeling' has another place in my life in terms of model rockets and trains, thanks to my almost three-year-old son.)

In any case, this blog is up and running now using BlogEngine.NET, which is an easy system to work with on an ASP.NET-oriented website.

For more about my intentions for the blog (any the name I chose for it), see the About "Luminarity" page.