For the most part, moving during a Microsoft relocation is pretty stress-free. Last Thursday, two guys showed up at about 8:30 in the morning, and started packing in the garage. In my opinion, that was a genius move, since they were done with the garage by like 10, which means they weren’t out there in the 100° heat later that day. The packers packed just about everything in 4 hours. I thought they did a pretty good job, though I think the packers last time did a better job. These guys seemed to skip all the bathrooms; or at least parts of the bathrooms. They left the shower curtain, and silly as it sounds, like 12 rolls of toilet paper. I know, I’m cheap, but I made them pack it. They were done packing at about 3 PM. Unfortunately, my day wasn’t over. Just about the time the packers were done, the guys that were going to crate up my R/C planes showed up. It took them until almost 6 to finish their thing (boxed our small plasma tv, crated 3 planes and 4 wings, and prepped the washer/dryer for loading). So I was done around 6, and headed over to the house where we were staying until flying out.
Friday, the truck driver got to our place sometime before 7:45, with 2 guys to help load the truck. They immediately started emptying the house. They basically didn’t stop until 3PM, when the house was completely emptied.
The next day, Saturday, I got on a plane to Seattle, and I’ve been settling in since then. The temp housing this time around is a lot more convenient; I’m right next to campus, literally across the street. The apartment itself is a lot nicer, too, in my opinion.
Sunday, my wife called, to talk about how our cats were getting shipped (they were getting picked up Sunday in FL, and delivered to temp housing on Monday night). She told me the packers missed about half of our plates, by not packing half of a cabinet in the kitchen. Of course, I feel like an idiot for not seeing that, and now we’ll have to get new plates to replace them.
Tune in next time for my impressions of day 1 on a team that’s in the XBox org, and how that relates to day 1 on a team in Office/MBD.