• Grad School – That’s right. Grad School. As of today, I have officially turned in my application for the professional masters program in CS at the University of Washington. I’d been doing a lot of thinking over the past six months about how I was wondering what I would do as far as my future career is concerned. After talking with some friends and thinking about it, I decided that I would like to open a bunch of possible doors and the best way to do that would be to further my education. Since UW has a masters program at night for professionals in the industry, and since Microsoft will pay for it…let’s do it. So yeah, I’ve applied to go to school part time.
• I’m leaving Zune – Big thing number two, I’ve left the Zune team. I’m still at Microsoft, mind you, but I’ve left Zune. I don’t want to go into all of the specific reasons why, but I will say, I came to the realization that I was ready to go tackle some new challenges. So where am I headed? Microsoft’s just announced hotness. It’s more cloud/internet/services stuff, but it’s a new thing for MS and it’s a pretty sweet idea. So yeah, after a year and a half, I’m leaving the social for new digs.

So those are the big big changes.
I also spent about five days back on the east coast in NJ/NYC. I was there doing some recruiting stuff and I got to visit Syd and my friend Lisa in NYC. It was pretty fun and I’m really glad I went. I may write more on that later, but for now, I want to get back to enjoying my “staycation.”