Blogging About .NET : Work Related

New Vista & Office 2007 boxes

cchrism — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 04:17:00 GMT

Have you seen the design of Vista and Office boxes? Apparently I'm not the only one that after seeing the Vista and Office 2007 boxes thought that they look like the Office for Mac retail boxes.

In case you want to know more about Vista, you can use the "Windows Vista blog" to find out, as it's packed with a lot of useful information.

Drinking from the firehose - or the latest update on my status

cchrism — Tue, 23 May 2006 22:27:00 GMT

If you ever wondered why there isn't a lot of activity on this blog lately, even if I said that I will try to be more active, now I'm ready to share the news. Well, the unexpected hapenned and in the past 4 months I've gone through a relocation process to Redmond, WA, United States, and more specifically to Microsoft. If you ever relocated, even for a few miles, you know that there a lot of things to do, starting from giving notices to landlord and utilities, to packing and shipping things, and most important the order of packing things. Personally I learned the hard-way that if you have two types of freight, one that is faster one that is slower, think not twice, but ten times what you put in the faster freight. Now I'm renting houseware until my slower shippment arrives... A relocation that has left me without a computer and any other stuff for a few months, but otherwise a quite successful relocation.
Until I got here, and I was reading other bloggers posts that said about "drinking from the firehose" I thought: "Yeah, that can'be so bad, I mean they are humans too!". After my first days I realized that this is true, the quantity of information is huge and there is a lot to learn and to find. So, I am a Microsoft employee right now.

And as of today, a lot of things shipped as Beta2 (released at WINHEC2006):

WinFX Runtime Components
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=4A96661C-05FD-430C-BB52-2BA86F02F595&displaylang=en

Visual Studio Extensions
http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=5C080096-F3A0-4CE4-8830-1489D0215877&displaylang=en

Vista:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/windowsvista/downloads/products/getthebeta/default.aspx#downloadWindowsVista
You must have MSDN subscription or be part of the Beta program

Office 2007:
http://www.microsoft.com/office/preview/beta/getthebeta.mspx

Apparently there are other bits that were shipped today and I didn't know (http://blogs.msdn.com/mswanson/archive/2006/05/23/605150.aspx).

And if you will be relocating, and need some advice about what to ship first use the feedback form.
Right now I'm back on track so expect more frequent posting here. Keep tuned!

Flying back and forth

cchrism — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 18:04:00 GMT

Note: this is a prerecorded post. It has been started on the La Guardia airport while I was headed to Charlotte, NC (Sep 28).

Today I've actually flied around 5200 miles from Romania to Charlotte, via New York. I have to go to Charlotte to setup a temporary installation for one of division of our clients. Most likely, I will repeat this experience in about three weeks, when their brand new hardware will show up, to migrate the previous version of my company's tool to the "latest and greatest" version.

Now it's around 7pm ET, and I am awake for almost 24 hours. I need to sleep, but in the airport it's not a wise ideea, if you have a plane to catch up.

Trip to US - Impresii

cchrism — Thu, 25 Aug 2005 20:06:00 GMT

warning Post in Romanian:

Stiu ca nu am mai postat de mult timp si imi cer scuze pentru acest lucru, dar munca la serviciu nu mi-a mai lasat timp si pentru asa ceva.
In aceasta luna (august) am fost plecat in US, pentru o calatorie in interes de serviciu, ocazie cu care am mai strans vreo 12000 de mile.
Am vazut New YOrk, Washington DC si Jacksonville, FL. Pana acum am tras cateva concluzii interesante: In primul si in primul rand nu e ca in Europa. In SUA este extrem de diferit fata de Europa. Totul. Clima, mancare, stil. In al doilea rand cel putin pe coasta de est vara daca nu stai la aer conditionat esti mort. Este o umezeala ingrozitoare, cu care in Romania nu m-am mai intalnit niciodata, si sper nici sa nu ma intalnesc. Il al treilea rand in majoritatea oraselor este obligatoriu sa ai masina. Punct. Altfel mori de foame. Vezi la 200m alimentara/store-ul, ce o fi, si mori de foame, ca intre tine si el este o autostrada, pe care bineinteles nu o poti strabate cu piciorul. Afirmatia nu este valabila pentru Manhattan, unde in general daca ai masina degeaba o ai, ca mai mult te incurca. In zona centrala parkingul este ceva de genul 7.49+TAX / jumatate de ora. Bineinteles ca daca inchiriezi pe perioade mai mari e mai ieftin, dar totusi...
M-a intrebat cineva daca mi-a placut Jacksonville. Ei bine, habar n-am stiut ce sa raspund. Pentru ca nu stiu daca am vazut orasul sau nu. Am vazut niste case si niste fast-fooduri, o chestie gen ca la tara la noi, bineinteles un pic mai aranjat. Eu am crezut ca alea sunt doar suburbiile, dar am inteles ca Jacksonville (where Florida begins, dupa cum zic ei) nu prea are parte de oras propriu-zis. Aceeasi senzatie mi-a lasat si Charlotte, oras destul de mare, dar in care daca vrei sa strabati cu piciorul centrul nu ai nevoie de mai mult de o ora, admirand si peisajul intre timp. Dupa ce ai iesit din centru, trebuie deja sa ai masina, ca altfel nu rezolvi nimic.
Apoi partile rele... si ei au homeless (cel putin in New York) care cersesc pe strada, poate nu la fel de agresiv ca la noi, dar ei exista. Apoi, este la fel de murdar, daca nu chiar mai murdar pe strada. Si la ei sunt strazile ca vai de capul lor, cu bump-uri naturale, sau mai putin naturale. Asadar care e diferenta? Ca se traieste mai bine? Oare? Am intalnit un coleg plecat la doctorat. Si imi spunea ca nu e chiar asa pe cum se crede, ca sunt cainii cu covrigi in coada. Castigi cateva mii de dolari pe luna, si ii vezi cum se duc: taxe (la ei taxele din salariu sunt oprite de angajator ca la noi, dar la ei se negociaza salariu brut), apoi chirie (in Manhattan intr-o zona mai ieftina ~1200 dolari pe luna o chestie gen garsoniera), mai trebuie sa dai pe transport (ca o fi el taxi, tren, metrou sau benzina), si vezi ca la urma nu-ti mai ramane mare lucru.
O alta concluzie la care am ajuns este faptul ca toata lumea are iPod. Unde te uiti pe strada toti asculta la iPod-ul. Cred ca e un fel de isterie nationala. TOate magazinele vand accesorii de iPod. Carcase, holdere, cabluri, orice, daca esti magazin de electronice sau audio-video daca nu ai accesorii de iPod nu existi. E trendy sa ai iPod. Nu conteaza ca esti la costum, sau iti faci alergarea de dimineata, iPod rocks.

Oricum concluzia pe care am tras-o este ca nu ma prea vad traind in America. O fi el pamantul fagaduintei, dar nu ma impresioneaza prea tare.

Long time no see

cchrism — Thu, 02 Jun 2005 08:10:00 GMT

I agree with you. I didn't post here for quite a long time. Actually my schedule was very busy, because I'm trying to graduate my master, and do something useful at work.

In the last period many things happened: we had a major release (although labeled as minor, for marketing purposes), we are running an optimization iteration, I've been evaluating Visual Studio Beta 2 (BTW, very nice look). I'll try to improve my post rate, but don't hold your breath...

My next post should be about trying to convert the product I'm working for to .NET Framework Beta 2 and Visual Studio 2005.

I attended MSF Course 1846

cchrism — Thu, 18 Nov 2004 21:29:00 GMT

My blog was quite inactive for a while, and the primary reason is the fact that I find very little free time. Usually, the finish of the year is quite crowded by the work related tasks that are waiting to be finished.

Last week I attended a Microsoft Course, to be more specific “1846A - Microsoft Solutions Framework Essentials”. It was a great offer from Microsoft Romania, offer presented at MSDN Briefing this fall: the only two certified trainers in MSF are working for Microsoft, and they wanted to promote MSF in Romania, and the course was FREE. Yes, you've read correctly, three full days, for FREE. The typical fee for a course like this I've heard that is around 400-500 USD.

This course can be used in order to achieve the 70-301 exam, a brand new exam, that is for MSF 3.0, and replaces 70-300 exam.

The course was presented in the Microsoft Romania meeting room, in Bucharest. With this ocasion we could see (we were around 25 people) how is Microsoft Romania from inside. Just like you've heard: there are free beverages, but I couldn't find Coca Cola. Only Pepsi was present in the refrigerator. Maybe people at Microsoft Romania don't like Coca Cola, who knows.

Well after attending this course many things were clarified to me. The most important thing: you cannot have great products if the whole team doesn't agree on all the aspects. Actually this is the first rule of MSF: all team members (I'm talking about MSF team here) are equally important, and they must agree. If they don't agree, the project is a “No-go” without any doubt.

One week after... the release day

cchrism — Mon, 19 Jul 2004 22:27:00 GMT

The release for UAT from previous Monday had around 80 bugs, with almost 40 marked for future release (almost all of the 40 bugs are feature requests, more or less). Pretty much ok, but this area still needs improving.

Monday is the DAY!

cchrism — Sat, 10 Jul 2004 05:01:00 GMT

Monday is the day of the RELEASE. Monday is the day set for the start of the UAT (User acceptance test). The project where I wrote code, and helped for the specs, and made the design of the security subsystem and ... a lot else is approaching very fast to be released for UAT. Today when I left there were 104 bugs with status open, or fixed not assigned. This is the metric I'm using to find the status of the project. My target is zero bugs opened, but since there are a few with disposition “for next release”, I suppose that this isn't possible. But Saturday and Sunday are long days... let's hope for the best.

Me going to sleep, tomorrow will start early. Wish me luck!