shahine.com/omar/

Well my second week in Hotmail has almost come to an end. There past two weeks were the busiest in the past few years. I am amazed by how much there is to do, and how excited I am. I really like the team I'm working with, love my new office, and have some great direct reports.

My experience can be summed up like this. Last Monday I came home to my wife and basically said “If I don't start getting my ass into work by 8:30 am I'm not going to survive”. Before this I never got to work before 10:00 am. The mere thought of getting up at 6:30 to catch the train to Mountain View was a non starter. Between 8:30 and 10 is pretty much the only time you will find me in my office. I only went to the cafeteria once in two weeks. This past week I had a total of 6 hours between 10 and 6 that did not have meetings . Most of the time I had two or three meetings going on at the same time!

Anyway, tomorrow I fly to Vancouver to spend the night and then off to Alaska on a cruise that my wife's grandparents are taking us on. So exciting!!! I can't wait to play with my Nikon D70. This is probably my first real vacation in a year?

In other news, I stopped home at Borders books today and randomly found three books in the aisle that I picked up.

• The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror - this looks interesting. Being Muslim and all, I don't read enough about Islamic history and particularly modern events that have pretty much shaped public perception (mostly negative, thanks Osama).
• A People's History of the United States : 1492-Present - Last year I read a book called the History of the 20th century or something and loved it. I never got past WWI in any of my studies, and would like a refresher on US history.
• Old School - I loved A Boy's Life which I read in high school. I heard this was good.