Ice Cavern Studios

I need to get away. Seriously, I was on vacation two weeks ago, and after a week and a half of being back. I already need to get away. This is the part of working in software, and Microsoft, that isn’t all rosy. This…is the shitty part. Pardon my language, but there really isn’t any other way to describe this. It’s shitty. It’s long, stressful hours. It’s the kind of thing that leaves you unable to do much else. I’ve been walking around like a zombie (braaaaaaiiiiinnnnsssss) since I left the office. I’ve had multiple people remark I seem out of it.

I’m already feeling fried.

And it’s only Wednesday.

I need to get back into a routine. Today was a good step. I worked out and left at a normal time. I went out and was social. But I had some time to myself. Sigh…thank God for this weekend.

Speaking of the Gym, it’s going well. I’ve had to miss some days due to exhaustion caused by the Job, but when I”ve gone in, I’ve found myself lifting more weight with greater ease. So progress is being made, I’m about to kick up my weight in a bunch of excersizes. That’s pretty exciting, really. I generally feel better, and I think I’m begining to look it as well. I’ve also been throwing and hitting better; which has been a nice bonus. Especially as the season has gone on.

I’m not where I want to be. But I’m making progress. Now all I need to do is get back into my routine. And I’m golden.

I just have to get there…

Groove, Life and Times, Microsoft, Path to Fitness, Work

My comment spam program owns you. Seriously. You might as well just go home. 95 of your comments have gotten caught.

*smiles*

Prepping old blog for importation: $0 x 2 hours
Installing and testing new system: $0 x 4 hours
Taking my website back from the spammers: Priceless

*smiles*

Security, The Internet, Web Development

I have two pounds of M&M’s candies outside my office in a bowl. What does this mean? Well, at Microsoft, it means that today is my two year anniversary. Pretty cool, huh?

Groove, Life and Times, Microsoft, Work

Seriously, I need a vacation. After the past week or two, I am stressed, tired, and just ready to get away from work. Which is exactly what I’m going to be doing. Starting tonight, I’m going to be on vacation for just over a week, and the idea is simply glorious.

So where am I going?

The first stop is the coast of Rhode Island. Nicole’s family has graciously invited me to spend some time with them down on the beach. I’m incredibly excited, as is Nicole. Almost every bit communication, be it phone, IM, face to face, has had some mention of the beach in the past week. We’re looking that forward to getting away.

After that, I’m driving down to North Carolina for my family reunion. This is a yearly event (although not always in NC) that is always a blast. I miss my cousins and I love getting to see them every year. The other awesome part about my reunions is that I’m going to be visiting some people on the way down. I’m planning on stopping in Princeton for the night on the way down, and I’m going to be coming up through Bethesda, MD/DC on the way back up. The stops will be brief, but it will be nice to see some of my friends.

Oh man. I’m almost there. I just have get through today at work, and I am free for 11 days. Oh man, It’s gonna be sweet. Simply sweet.

Groove, Life and Times, Microsoft, Work

A lot of people ask what my current job is. Immediately after asking this, I get asked what exactly it entails. I figure, now is as good as any time as any to explain what it is.

Firstly, I work for Microsoft. More specifically, I’m a Software Design Engineer in Test working on the Groove Relay Server. What the product does is a post for another time.

Anyway, what does an SDET (shorthand for my job) do. Well, to be honest, it depends on the group, the person, and what they have tailored their career path to be. There are some SDETs who are focused primarily with security testing; others are more concerned with Performance and Stress testing; still others spend more time designing and implementing test tools and harnesses. No matter what an SDET does specifically, it is always related to the testing of software.

So what do I do? Well, that’s kind of an interesting question. Right now, I am in an interesting situation. Right now, I’m both a test focused SDET and a pseudo Test Architect. Basically, I spend part of my day performing tests on the product, and another part of the day writing specs and thinking of ways of doing the current testing better. I spend very little of my time actually writing code at this point. This is very different from a couple of months ago, where I was writing a good deal of code. It really depends on the needs of Groove.

At the moment, I spend a lot of time trying to figure out the best way to get the people on my team automating. This is a problem unusual to MS in that most of Groove’s test team really doesn’t know how to program. A large number of my cycles are spent figuring out how to deal with this. Plus there are the problems of getting us better integrated with Microsoft.

Oh yeah, I’m supposed to help with the integration of Groove into Microsoft. As anyone who has ever worked in corporate America probably knows, acquisition transitions are fun. And this is no exception. There are systems to integrate into; data to transfer; and problems of being remote that have to be solved. And all of that is also on my plate. Thankfully I’m not the only one, but still, it’s a lot.

So yeah, that’s currently what my job at Microsoft is about. Pretty interesting, eh? Well, I find it interesting at least.

Groove, Microsoft, Work