I’m back after taking the month of December off.   It’s always hard to come back.  I love my job.  I’ve been doing it for 13 years and plan to keep doing it for a long time to come.  But working just isn’t the same as snowboarding with my son six times in the last two weeks.  (-: 

On my vacation last year I wrote a lot of code for my smartphones.  This year I was far less productive.  Aside from copious amounts of snowboarding, I played a lot of Gears of War and, surprisingly, even more Viva Piñata.  A giant windstorm in which a million people in Washington lost power removed all my electronic diversions for a good (good?) five days.  I spent most of that time reading, including two books I loved (Holly Lisle’s Talyn and Marie Brennan’s Warrior and Witch--the sequel to one of my favorites, Doppelganger).  I also spent a fair amount of time writing (science fiction, not code).  I don’t publish anymore, because the reward/frustration ratio is just too low for me (that and the fact that I suck at the 50% of being a successful writer that doesn’t involve writing).  But writers write, and I still do that.  The closest thing to work that I did was to drop in here quickly and post a link to my interview with Channel 9. 

It’s the new year, I’m back at work, and things aren’t too terribly busy yet.   I’m looking at the section of my whiteboards where I keep a list of things I might write about on the blog, and none of them look particularly interesting.  So I’m going to open the floor to suggestions from you folks.  What would you like for me to write about next?  Are there aspects of mobile devices that you’ve always wondered about?  More general computing stuff that has at least some sort of applicability to Windows Mobile?  I wouldn’t mind writing about something a little less controversial than my last few entries, but I won’t shy away from the controversial stuff if that’s what you folks really want to know about.  Note that I can’t tell you about unannounced features of future releases or unannounced future devices.  That’s marketing’s domain, and I won’t tread there.

I don’t promise to answer all of your questions.  I’m more interested in doing general topics that a lot of people can learn from than very specific problem solving.  But I do promise to at least consider all of them.  Fire away.

Mike Calligaro