I had a good time visiting Utah for the BYU Career Fair yesterday. I got to see some relatives (my sister and her husband, my brother-in-law and his family, and my... cousin...-in-law), and I saw several people who I studied with, worked with, or TAed for when I was a student. I also saw Viper (a.k.a. Michael Bailey), my teammate at the International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Let me say for a second that in the 4 or 5 minutes I'm talking to a person with their resume in hand, I'll tend to ask what areas they're interested in, or technologies/products they think they'd most enjoy working on. I don't ever want to hear the answer "anything." "Anything" means that you're really passionate about "nothing" and probably not particularly good at anything yet either. Maybe that's harsh, but I think the point where I could say "such-and-such is what I've been enjoying doing lately", also the point at which I was probably doing that thing when I should have been studying, was the point where I started to stand out among my peers, and once I actually learned how to put together a sane resume, I got my internship at Microsoft the next summer.

This being the first time I've ever traveled for business, and I swear I'm not making this up just to link to this video, I was a little wary when I had a strange experience in an elevator. I got in the elevator of the hotel I was staying in (Provo Marriott, right in what I suppose could be termed "downtown Provo") and pushed the button to go the 4th floor where my room was. It went up and dinged as it hit the 4th floor, but didn't stop. Then it continued to the 6th floor, where it opened about a foot and abruptly closed again. Afterwards, it went back down to the 4th floor and opened. I'll tell you what - I looked around to see if some snooty-looking guy in a suit was in the elevator with me so I could let him go out first. Thank you, Microsoft marketing, for making me superstitious.

And speaking of superstition, a little bit of random buzz has been about in the various divisions around Microsoft Office about how this year's release - codenamed "Office 12" (don't ask me how a version number became a "code name") - will be followed directly by "Office 14". When asked about it, Steven Sinofsky said that while it isn't rational, it's still not unprofessional to skip the number 13 because it's unlucky in western culture.

Whenever the subject of Office 14 comes up in conversation, I can't help but mention that we should skip 14 instead of 13 in the far east. The primary "unlucky" number in at least China and Japan is four, because the word for four in those languages sounds very much like the word for "death." Just as some buildings in the USA skip the 13th floor, some buildings in China don't have 4th floors, hospitals never have wards numbered "four", and sim cards are cheaper if their phone numbers have a 4 in them. One study (can't find it now, hopefully I'll find it later) even suggests that Chinese-Americans are more likely to die of heart attacks on the fourth day of the month. So my big proposal is to "localize" 14 to 13 in the Far East. 13 isn't unlucky for them, and 14 is (actually, I should add that my mother-in-law, raised in Hong Kong, considers 14 even more unlucky than four). Of course, in the end, it will take us 2 years to decide that's a good idea, and then someone will be in charge of changing the versions based on locale (hopefully not me).

Anyways, until next time, don't use version 13 of any software, and avoid elevators at all costs.