The Wayward WebLog

I am going to tell you something that will disturb you. You might laugh, but it will be a cold uncertain laugh that will haunt you as you read on, because somewhere deep down you'll know it to be true. You might brush it off, get on with your day, yet sometime later, a week or a year, it will seep back in and unsettle you to the core. From that moment on you will be changed. You will think different, act different and will fundamentally be different. So take a moment to prepare yourself now, breath deeply, clear your mind and open up to the possibility that building software is hard. Read More...

I wasn’t always a proponent of Agile development practices. To tell you the truth, I didn’t even know what they were. Before I came to Microsoft I used to just do what I was told and simply worked the way everyone else worked. Read More...

Somewhere, out in the ether is a group think that judges just how transparent any given company is. Are the posts sincere or are they just market-speak? Read More...

Apparently Xena was not the only solar body renamed this week by the International Astronomical Union. In an attempt to align all planet and dwarf planet names along the Greek pantheon theme, a group of rather overzealous and somewhat tipsy astronomers Read More...

Now that the PDC announcement has been made revealing sessions covering the new C# 3.0 features causing speculation to run rampant, I figured it was time to go ahead and start outlining features of the next product. No reason to be stay focused on the Read More...

Everything always happens when I'm on vacation. I can't take a few weeks off to go snorkelling in the tropics without whidbey beta 2 sneaking out the door and into the eager hands of thousands of awaiting customers, end-users, pointy-haired managers and Read More...

I thought I'd let you all know about the project I've been working on for the last few months that has unfortunately kept me away from what I like to do best. It's the eve of the MSN Search engine release and soon all the world will know what I've been Read More...

Now I'm not one to spread conspiracy theories, but I just can't get over the feeling that the people of the USA are being lied too. And its not just by the administration this time, its by a wide body of industrialists, economists, politicians and even Read More...

In our never ending quest to provide you with better, faster, more powerful products and tools, we some time find it necessary to redo a little of what was done before, to revamp it so-to-speak, to spruce it up, to splash on a new coat of paint and add Read More...

It's been difficult to focus on work lately, let alone find the time to contemplate something worthy of a blog post. The distraction of the presidential race is too compelling. My wife and I are glued to the television, CNN, FOX, MSNBC. I'm starting to Read More...

This was supposed to be another "truth about" post, but I haven't had the time to finish it due to the turmoil caused by last weeks announcement. Up until that point a statistically enormous percentage of the company was working on or around features Read More...

I suppose you are wondering why the posts have been coming more infrequent, put up at irregulars hours, especially after that burst of activity in June. I suppose you are thinking that I'm losing my touch, or I just don't care as much as I once did. I Read More...

The top level management at Microsoft spend a lot of time keeping the rest of us focused on the mission, making sure that we never lose sight of the end goal, and that its all about the 'customer', not the fantastical whims of a few developers. Still, Read More...

Sometimes scientific discoveries are not made in the lab, sometimes they are born out of conjecture and backed up by observation alone. Thank goodness for that or I'd have never discovered the truth. I suppose many of you have thoughts on occasion that Read More...

It's true that some times when you hear about a patent, especially from a software company, it seems frivolous, unnecessary or just down right silly. In the news today is some discussion of a new Microsoft patent covering Personal Area Networks . These Read More...