As you can tell from the title of the blog, my name is Reid Gustin. I'm a software developer at Microsoft, working on the System Definition Model (SDM). SDM is part of the Dynamic Systems Initiative, working on making IT systems self-managing, and reducing the complexity of everything from datacenters to individual PCs. It's wonderful stuff, and I think in the next five to ten years, the output of our group is going to make its way into most of what Microsoft does.

In my spare time, I work on the Windows Installer XML (WiX) project, which was Microsoft's first Open Source project. It's basically five to ten of us who get together on Tuesday nights and write code. WiX is a toolset for building Windows Installer packages (MSIs), and is used by Office, SQL Server, parts of MSN, and lots of other groups around Microsoft.

I've been playing the guitar since I was nine (I'm 25 now... yikes!), love movies, and like playing video games. It seems likely that in addition to the books I'm reading, movies and video games are going to make their way into posts. So this is more likely to be "Reid's Distractions" than "Reid's Books".

If you want to know more, you'll need to ask for it.