Jeremy Collins's WebLog : Microsoft

Once again back is the incredible...

jeremycollins — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 02:33:00 GMT

I don't think that people really care what the story is when a blogger goes away for a while and suddenly comes back. So I won't bore you with one here. Suffice it to say, I've neglected my blog for far too long, and if anyone is left that might still check it then I thank you. I do hope to post at a frequency that is more worthy of your attention.

This week in the EEC is a bit nuts. I am lucky somewhat in that I'm not 'in the trenches' this week, but most of the rest of the team is. We're preparing to host an all-facility event for the MOM (Microsoft Operations Manager) team next week, with a total of 22 customers (companies) confirmed to attend. We're breaking it into two groups of 11, each group attending for two days (with a day of rest between). We occasionally do these kinds of events (we call them 'airlifts', an oft-used term at MS I'm sure), where instead of hosting a single company that tests several MS products (a "depth/1:1" engagement), we host one product team and 15-30 of their biggest customers (or TAP/early-adopter customers, anyway). Airlifts are easier for us in some ways - like the test environment specs are the same for each company, as they'll all be going through similar tests exercises going by a list of scenarios & tasks generated by the MOM team. What makes this harder than building a big ol' customized environment for a single customer, is that even though the airlift environments are smaller (11 servers plus 5 clients in this case), the EEC is building it out 11 times (and rebuilding them all in a day, before the second group arrives!). In the EEC's nearly-4 years in existence, we actually have gotten pretty good at standing up a lot of configured equipment at a fast pace. But I've learned this week (rather, was reminded of my long-possessed knowledge) that there are always devils in the details that prevent it from being as straightforward as the planning docs make it seem. (Like how to put 11 identical-but-separate test environments on the same network as a common fileserver, without having IP conflicts/replication errors/other similar nastiness. Or something like that. Something bad, like crossing the streams.) I'm nowhere near being an network engineer, but from what I've heard, the buildout team has had to dance around some stream-crossing trickiness like that in this final stretch before the event begins. At any rate, my hat is as always off to my teammates, the ones who actually install hardware in the boxes, stand them up with OSs and apps, network them together, and generlaly make it all hum and blink prettily in the data center. In particular I salute Stan who is driving this whole event as point-man, and is rocking the house (tho he may not realize it in his sleep-deprived state). Please go visit his blog and give him a hug in the comments.

My role in the whole deal next week is actually as a videographer. That's not my 'regular' job or at least not my primary role; though I've always run video cameras for our engagement kickoff meetings. That's where the customer visiting us presents their visit goals, current MS pain points at home, future plans, company profile, and any feedback at all about MS that they want us to hear. MS product team folks typically attend, but I videotape the presentations for later viewing by those who couldn't make it. Frequently a customer will have a choice quote in their presentation that warrants 'clipping' it out and sending around MS for folks to see. A quote to the effect of "I won't deploy product X unless it does Y," or, "if product X still has these problems at RTM we're going with competitor Z," tend to get a lot of MS-internal attention and can result in product changes that ultimately do benefit the customer(s). So I end up feeling pretty good about getting to play with video gear all day. (muahahaha...)

Lately, I've been doing more & more video work, now starting to include short 'films' that take more editing skill than I've employed before. These 'films' are generally humorous in nature and are almost always intended to be a morale-lightening nugget to show in a group meeting, or a funny internal-marketing tool. In addition to recording multiple presenations and customer feedback sessions for the upcoming MOM event, I'm also now doing their 'morale video'. On top of this I'm doing another, similar project for a former boss (still at MSFT, different group), and as the scheduling is working out all the principal photography for both projects has to happen next week. Add on the video capturing, editing, and rendering, and I'm in for some long nights myself in the coming weeks. Given that I don't charge for my video services, and that there's a whole MS department that specializes in making multimedia content that does charge, I might expect a surge of project requests; however, given my decidedly amateurish output, I don't expect any such surge to be sustained for long. MS Studios might break my kneecaps before too long, anyway.

I imagine that as time goes on and I need stuff to post about, I'll turn to A/V topics as there's always something to rant/rave or ask about there. I wish I could post some of my 'work' here, alas it's all MSFT-internal/confidential & such. (You're not missing much; my best piece is about a coupla geeks arguing over MSN/Google. You can guess how that ended.)

If you've read this far, thanks again. I'll be back soon. (Soon = ~weeks, not ~months...)

Easy Font Resizing trick

jeremycollins — Tue, 29 Mar 2005 20:17:00 GMT

I recently stumbled across a trick (er, I mean, Feature!) in many MS products that lets you resize the font size - and in some cases, zoom level. This works in IE, Word, Excel, Visio, and probably many other apps I haven't tried yet. I'm not sure what the minimum version is of the apps or OS that this works on, but give it a try:

Simply hold the Ctrl key and use the scroll wheel on your mouse (assuming you have such a mouse). In IE, the font size changes (where the page allows you to; some text won't resize if the size is hard-coded); in Excel and Word, the zoom level changes.

Many/most of you may already have found this. But after showing this to a few people who'd never heard of it, I wondered how many others haven't found this handy feature.

Let me know if this doesn't work for you, and if not, what version(s) of the OS and apps you're trying it on. It may only be XP and Office 2003 products, but I'd hope it works for some previous versions too.

De Facto Tech Support

jeremycollins — Thu, 23 Dec 2004 00:24:00 GMT

I’m sure that nearly all of you will relate to the fact that, if you’re employed anywhere near the computer industry, you are a de facto tech support technician for your non-techie family and friends. You may even find yourself occasionally giving pro-bono technical support to friends of friends, or other strangers to whom you have at best a tenuous social connection. Many people in this position either take on the role of “free tech support provider” begrudgingly, or find ways to duck out of doing it at all. There’s a half-gajillion stories on the web you could read on the topic; here’s a couple I found from PC World and Network Computing, and a couple of comment forums on the topic from Slashdot.

Personally, I don’t mind being in such a position. Granted, my PC tech skills are pretty low compared to most anyone in the professional computer industry (I work more on the business side of things than the tech side), but I know a bit more than the average user and seem to have plenty enough knowledge to impress my parents when I get near their PC. (Tip: even if you hate providing free tech support, I strongly recommend helping Mom out when she needs it. Try to “teach her to fish” when you can, instead of “giving the fish away”; but in any case, it’s a good idea to keep Mom happy with her expensive email and picture toy.) Whenever I can help fix a problem, I receive gratitude and some elevation in my pride; and when I am confronted with a tech problem that I don’t know the answer to, I end up learning more about it and thus adding to my knowledge base. Fortunately I have been able to keep the pace of “support calls” pretty slow so I’m not overwhelmed or burned out by it. Many others however cannot claim the same thing, and end up charging their friends (and even their own mothers!) for the help they provide or simply not helping at all.

The holiday season being upon us now has reminded me again of this modern social phenomenon. Recently I enjoyed a very pleasant dinner at an excellent restaurant, courtesy of the company for whom my wife works, which was attended by a select group of high-level employees and their guests. It was partly a holiday gathering, and partly a year-end ‘thank you’ to those attending. The whole evening was very pleasant – great food, great wine, great company and great conversation were enjoyed by all. After about 2-1/2 hours I thought that I might actually get through the evening without any conversation about where I worked; I was surprised it didn’t come up earlier, but once other conversation had taken off I didn’t think we’d come back such standard ice-breaker topics. Alas, sometime between the main course and dessert, I was asked by one of the pleasant people at our table, “so where do you work, Jeremy?” To which I replied, with as much modesty as I could convey, “Microsoft.”

During the nearly 5 years that I’ve worked for Microsoft, I’ve always been proud of where I worked. However as time has gone on I’ve learned that – especially in the local area – not everyone I talk to is a fan of Microsoft. Some are even kind of hostile toward us. I’ve thankfully been able to avoid any fisticuffs over the issue, and at the worst I’ve always been able to escape any pointed questions with “I’m sorry, I’ve not heard of that person/product/bug. Have you tried calling tech support?...”. So whenever I tell someone where I work I try to play it down as much as I can – not that I’m not proud of my company, but I don’t want to appear smug about it. But no matter who asks or how I respond, what’s consistent in the reactions of all people who learn where I work, is the assumption that I, through my affiliation with such a legendary software development company, must be a Super Computer Genius. A flattering assumption, and one I’d milk for all it’s worth, if I wouldn’t be so easily found out as a fraud were I to try to perpetrate such a front.

The people with whom I was dining showed no hostility at all of course, and were very pleasant even when giving me some good-natured teasing about MS and our products. And inevitably, I was asked for some computer-related advice, as if I were the most knowledgeable person in the room on the topic. (I may well could have been; there were some super biotech geniuses in the room, not sure about their computer skills.) So I ended up: giving a personal recommendation on some laptop models to someone in the market for a new one; talking a little about the next OS release (nothing that’s not already in the press, Bill/Steve/Brian, I swear…); pointing some folks to the Microsoft.com site for some free downloads; preaching the Updates and Patches mantra; and giving a plug for the new Photo Story 3 download for XP/WMP10, which my wife had used to make some work presentations that dazzled them earlier in the week.

I suffered no tech-heavy “support calls” as many of you have undoubtedly dealt with, for which I was grateful. But, as is common with us Microsoft employees in social situations outside of work, I was serving as a Microsoft representative, and I did my best to represent us as the good and helpful people that we really are. We’re OK with answering questions about computers, our products, and technology in general. And when we don’t know the answer, we’re OK with admitting it, as long as we’re willing to help get the answer. Of course, that usually means pointing them to Tech Support.

Happy Holidays!

Community Contact

jeremycollins — Sat, 11 Dec 2004 07:57:00 GMT

I was pleasantly surprised recently when, only a day or two after first creating my blog, I was contacted through it by a member of the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) community. (An MVP is a non-Microsoft employee who is an advocate/evangelist/subject-matter-expert in Microsoft products and technologies, and who is selected to participate in the MVP program from Microsoft. More info here; and here.) I knew I had registered my blog so it would be visible to the world, but I was still shocked that someone paid me attention, and so quickly!

The interesting thing was, the MVP who contacted me is working alongside MSFT with a major Enterprise customer, to help the customer consolidate the several disparate test labs it has scattered across the country. They're looking to move to one central test facility, standardize on hardware and procedures, and ultimately save some money in the process. The MVP on the project happened to pick up the first entry in my blog, where I happened to talk about what we do at the EEC, and he gave me a quick ping to see if we could chat sometime about how the EEC does what it does and how he could learn from us to help his customer. Two days later, the MVP and I are on a concall along with some of the EEC's managers, discussing our best practices and lessons learned and how they may be applicable to this customer. He took several pages of notes in the short time we had on the call, and we followed up with other documentation in email. He was very optimistic that the info we provided him would help his customer greatly, and we're looking forward to hearing about the success of their lab consolidation project.

This isn't a usual case for the EEC; normally we're the test lab to which MSFT customers come to test out their deployment plans and integration scenarios. When a customer is so big that they warrant building their own test lab, that's a big deal. When that customer wants to model it after the EEC, that's huge - to me, anyway. This customer will be able to test its own custom LOB (line of business) applications in-house, isolated from their critical production environment, and do so more efficiently and accurately than before. We just hope they keep the EEC in mind when they're looking at MSFT product deployments and infrastructure upgrades - after all, we've got those test resources very handy.