shahine.com/omar/

Recently, Hotmail launched the MSN Postmaster site. While this may not be of direct interest to our end users, it's a big deal for any ISP interested in helping curtail abuse on their networks, or for anyone interested in the efforts we take in providing a junk free environment.

A couple of weeks ago I got a demo of the Smart Network Data Services and was just floored at how cool it is. One of the things that I love about our service is that due to its size, you can do some really interesting work. This is just one example of how we, as one of the largest internet services on the planet, can aggregate and provide information that is of benefit to the larger ecosystem. If you own an IP that sends any mail, you can sign up for this service and see what is happening to that mail once it hits our network.

We also document all our Junk Mail fighting techniques. They include:

• SmartScreen
• Symantec Brightmail
• Custom Hotmail Junk Mail Filters
• User Controlled Filters
• Sender ID
• Bonded Sender

Anyway, there is a plethora of information on the MSN Postmaster site, so check it out.

Kevin Schofield (who is the General Manager of Microsoft Research) wrote a post detailing the potential horrors that await us with regards to Bird Flu.

I'm fortunate to have grown up in a world where I didn't have to worry about a host of diseases (no vaccination scars on my arm, like most of my cousins who are all 5-10 years older than me). Cancer, Aids, and our own fault are responsible for much of the misery our immune systems face. But having studied biology in college, I am familiar with the sorry state of vaccine R&D... I hope our best minds are hard at work to prevent us from all getting bird flu.

I almost forgot that I never finished my Treo Review Series. The device is so integrated into my habits now that I don't even notice how much I depend on and value the device. It's been over a month since the last review, and that's a good thing because I have finally settled on all the applications that I deem "core" to my Treo experience, and the stability of the device has gone up as a result since I don't install/uninstall programs daily.

If you missed it, here is Part 1, & Part 2

Applications

I thought I would tell you about all the Applications I use. Personally I do not feel that the value add of the Treo is solely based on what comes in the box. Much of it has to do with the fact that there are thousands of wonderful applications. Here is my short list of must have products and what they do.

Vindigo (24.95 a year)

Vindigo is an indispensable tool and one I have used off and on since they launched. They do not have an application for the Microsoft Smartphone, only Pocket PC and Palm. Vindigo lets you get location based information for food, bars, movies, weather, maps, museums etc. It's valuable for the city I live in and many cities that I travel to.

Bart Planner (free)

If you live in San Francisco, having access to Bart schedules is a must, and this application does not dissapoint.

Caltrain+ (free)

Ditto about this, but for Caltrain instead of Bart.

Directory Assistant (donation ware)

This is an excellent Yellow Pages search application that has nice integration with the Palm OS (to create new address book entries, copy info to the clipboard etc)

FileZ (free)

This is a freeware application for managing files, memory cards, and preferences for Palm applications. It's nice if you like to hack.

KeyCaps 650 (free)

This is an indispensable application that allows you to capitalize, and enter optional characters by simply holding down keys on the keyboard, or double pressing a key quickly. Wonderful for one handed use.

Slap ($10)

If you use Getting Things Done, this is a must have. Slap is like a limitless Note, that you can use to jot anything down quickly, and then later make that into a Contact, Appointment, Memo, or Task. It's like a Sticky Note. I use this all the time to quickly capture information to be processed later much like an Inbox.

Snap (free)

Simple application for taking screen shots on the Treo.

SplashID (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

From SplashData, a great program for managing all your passwords, credit cards, ID cards etc. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashMoney (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, a program for managing your finances. SplashMoney can connect to your bank and download transactions much like Microsoft Money and Quicken (bank must support statement download via OFX). This is excellent for knowing how much money I have when I am mobile. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashPhoto (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, this is a Album and Capture application that is far better than the built in Treo applications. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

SplashShopper (29.95 or part of SplashWallet)

Also from SplashData, this is a shopping list and general list program. Jot down all the groceries, gifts, books, wine, gear and other stuff you wish to purchase. It also allows you to keep such lists as travel checklists and can be customized to your liking. Comes with a companion desktop application and can be purchased in a bundle (SplashWallet).

Tetris (19.99)

Enough said. My wife is still addicted to Tetris.

TreoAlarm (free)

An Alarm clock with built in weather updates. Wakes me up every morning!

VeriChat (24.95 a year)

An indispensable multi-stack IM client that supports AOL, Yahoo, MSN. I LOVE this product. It works wonderfully, keeps me connected even with a spotty GPRS connection, and makes my Treo a fantastic IM tool.

FieldPlus (free)

It's shocking the Treo does not support shift-select, but FieldPlus will allow you to press the Shift Key and use the 5 way navigation pad to select text keeping the stylus or your fingers away from the screen. It also adds many other useful features like a Command Bar when you hold the menu button. This also improves one handed use.

Profiles (free)

It's also shocking that the Treo does not have profiles support like most mobile phones. The Pocket PC does not either, but one feature I loved in my Microsoft Smartphone was that it would automatically vibrate in meetings. Well, Profiles will allow you to define any number of profiles that can be invoked from a number of different triggers. One of those triggers can be the start/end of an appointment. No more embarrassing ringing in meetings!

Pocket Mirror XT Standard (29.95)

How do I say this... the Palm Conduits don't sync, they mostly duplicate. On the first hint of trouble, they duplicate data. No field level sync, nothing. I don't even think there is really any kind of algorithm for determining which record is the most recent as it seems random to me. I have absolutely zero confidence in the Palm sync software, and have gotten rid of it in favor of Pocket Mirror. It just works and I don't have to think about it.

Thankfully since VersaMail does Mail and Calendar I only have to worry about Contacts, Tasks and Notes. I just have Pocket Mirror do this. Since I managed the Entourage Sync Conduit for the Palm project (design, help dev, and test a lot of it) I have intimate knowledge of just how sorry building a sync conduit for HotSync can be. However, we optimized the heck out of our conduit to NOT DUPLICATE UNLESS ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY. You can always do a field level compare between records to eliminate 99% of duplications.

You must take care and ensure that you do not install the Calendar Sync conduit if you are using VersaMail to sync to Exchange.

Battery Life

Battery Life isn't amazing, but it's good. If you just use this as a Phone and PIM you'll get great battery life. However, if you are syncing mail ever 15 min, using Bluetooth and browsing the web a lot you'll get about as much battery life as a comparable Windows Pocket PC or Smartphone, which for me was 2-3 days max. I charge my device every night though.

Camera

The Camera is decent. Better than my Audiovox 5600, but still problematic. I wish it were a megapixel camera, but it's fairly decent for what I use it for.

Final Thoughts

I have gotten quite a bit of interest from folks inside Microsoft about my Treo experiences. A few folks I know have even purchased devices. In all cases I do not hesitate in recommending a Treo 650 to anyone who works at Microsoft, or anyone who cannot use a Blackberry but does have Exchange 2003. palmOne's support of Exchange, and our blessing, was the real tipping point for me even considering something I had previously ignored but secretly admired. My frustration and impatience of waiting for a Windows device with a similar form factor are no longer eating away at my geek persona. When and if one exists (for sale to Omar from my carrier) I'll happily consider that device.

The Treo does have its quirks, bugs and annoyances. You are really just trading one set of problems for another if you are considering switching from a Windows Mobile device. However, the form factor, and reliability are enough of a benefit for me to deal with the issues.

It's really hard to explain, but the Treo is a digital "companion". When I am traveling, or out and about, I have a world of handy tools at my fingertips. The ease of data entry has increased my usage of mobile IM, SMS, mapping and directory tools, mobile email, even access to all of Wikipedia via Wapedia. It's even improved my continued use of Getting Things Done as I can easily access my tasks by context, take notes in Slap, and file lots of tidbits into my Memos which prior to my Treo was akin to an empty parking lot in Outlook. Now it's buzzing with Reference material, Notes, Agendas, Lists etc.

If there were 4 things I could ask Palm to improve they would be:

1. Exchange Sync that's as good or better than Windows Mobile Devices. Fix your bugs (there are many sync related annoyances).
2. Fix the anemic PIM applications. They should round-trip all the same data found in Outlook. This includes fixing your busted Conduits.
3. Improve the flow between applications. Right now it feels like using a Macintosh before there was a multi-finder. Changing context between programs should not feel like you are quitting/relaunching all the time. This is especially important when moving between Email, Web, and PIM products.
4. Fix your bugs. 99% of the crashes that occur on my Treo are related to "Web", "VersaMail", "Applications", "Messaging". These are all Palm apps.

Dennis Cheung, someone that I interviewed for his first job out of college, and someone who I managed for a while in MacBU, announced that he is leaving the MacBU for the MSN Desktop Search Team.

I seriously dig the hard work and attitude of the Desktop Search Team. They run one of the best dogfood programs inside Microsoft. Many Microsoft teams open up their product to internal Microsoft folks for "dogfooding". For those of you unfamiliar with that word, it's essentially using pre-beta and sometimes outright buggy software on a daily basis in order to vet out bugs, design issues, and solicit feedback. Some programs are better than others, and excellent dogfood programs are a sign to me that the team is excited, committed, and interested in shipping the best product. Devoting resources to an internal dogfood program are not insignificant, but doing so successfully often means that when you ship you have an army of folks who not only love your product (because they feel that their hard work is also shipping) but are also evangelists for your product.

Anyway, I have a lot of respect for the team Dennis is moving to, and I really expect great things from that product in the future. As I've mentioned before, I feel really good when MacBU veterans leave for other groups at Microsoft because I know that they always take along the pixie dust that made MacBU products so special.

Some things really set me off. One of them is crap customer service. Many many months ago I purchased some furniture from this high end furniture establishment called Ligne Roset. They are a French Company that make very contemporary furniture. I actually think it's very similar to Ikea in that you can build pieces to your liking (like bookshelves), but it costs much more. And that is where the similarity ends. If you order something from this store, it takes 4 months for delivery.

Anyway, I ordered something on November 28th 2004. I also paid a 50% deposit and because I returned an item that was incorrectly ordered from a previous order I had a store credit there. Now it's been so long I almost forgot about this order. I emailed them asking when I would get my order, and after much confusion they said there was some mix up and that there was no order (it was cancelled).

You can imagine how utterly pissed I was. However, what pissed me off even more was that all they offered to do was place the order again, and have me wait 4 months. That would place the delivery 12 months after I placed the original order.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr..... How is this rocket science? I waited a few hours for the steam to evaporate from my head and then I composed a polite email indicating my dissatisfaction. I also gave them two options. Option 1 was to order the items now, expedite shipping (I wanted to suggest that they charter a Concorde from Charles De Gaulle if they had to) and waive the absurd $190 delivery charge or Option 2 to refund all my money plus interest and lose my business forever.

I faxed the store manager the copy of the email that I sent the sales person just to make sure he didn't get off scott free, and asked for the store manager to call me back. They left a message for me this morning (5 min after they opened up) letting me know the manager would be in on Sunday and call me then. I wonder what they will do to keep me a satisfied customer.

For a while now (since January 2004) I have been posting both to my personal blog (http://www.shahine.com/omar/) and another blog located at http://blogs.msdn.com/omars/. At the time there were about 140 Microsoft blogs on blogs.msdn.com. I don't actually post things twice, rather dasBlog can crosspost both to this blog and any number of other blogs that support the blogger APIs.

My main motivation for doing this was that I wanted to be part of the Microsoft blogger community. I also used to subscribe to the full blogs.msdn.com rss feed, and pretty much read what everyone there was posting. Finally, I also got a lot of great comments from folks on that blog (I supose because they did not specifically subscribe to my feed, but the blogs.msdn.com feed).

In the past 16 months the blogs.msdn.com site has grown an order of magnitude. I no longer feel like my presence is part of a small community and many of the benefits I have felt by crossposting have been overshadowed by things don't care much for. Particularly the new Community Server product. It's made managing my blog, comments, and feedback much more difficult. So much so that I completely ignore the comments on my msdn blog because I find the product unusable. It takes 20 clicks and postbacks to do simple things. I find myself lost. Additionally, the community on blogs.msdn.com is big enough now that I don't think I need to cross post any longer. Don't get me wrong, I wish Scott and company the best of luck with CS, and the fact that is powers our employee blog property is cool, but it's an experiment that is not something I think I need to be a part of.

And just to be clear. I figure that I cross posted 80% of the content on my personal blog to my msdn blog. Anything technology related got crossposted, some personal rants and such did not.

So, my question is this. Does anyone care or even find it confusing that I even do this? Should I stop crossposting? I'm leaning to just mothballing my msdn blog (leaving all the content there, but no longer cross posting). Do people who subscribe to the msdn one want me to keep posting my tech stuff there? Does anyone even care ?

PS - Speaking of Community Server, and blogs.msdn.com, I just noticed that Dare also stopped crossposting from his blog to blogs.msdn.com.

I never thought it would happen, but thanks to Dan Crevier's recent patent, I was slashdotted because I have a blog post that gives some background on Dan (who to this day is still one of the smartest people I've had the honour of working with at Microsoft).

I haven't read all the commotion regarding the patent and I really don't care. Dan's a good guy and that's all that matters to me. Plus dasBlog didn't tip over .

Interesting indeed. I started using FeedDemon because I grew tired of having my RSS in Outlook (I do not think RSS belongs there for high volume RSS readers). Before using FeedDemon though I was using NewsGator Online, and then added FeedDemon because while I liked the benefits of online I did want a single offline client that sync'ed to NewsGator Online and well FeedDemon does this.

Congrats to Greg and Nick on the deal. I think it will result in really positive outcomes for both sides of the deal (and the customer, me!).

The other day I had an experience with my computer, and MSN's software that just made me smile. You see, for the past year or so folks on my team have been involved on a feature that took coordination from dozens of internal teams. This was a big feature, one that I have spent countless man hours involved in, and some of my directs and co-workers an order of magnitude more time working on. It took everything from sharp technical minds, good business practice, relationships with carriers, partners, and of course operations, user experience folks and the usual suspects for any feature (development, testing, program management).

For the first time ever, I was able to use this feature with my sister, and I felt empowered. It's the kind of feature that makes me so proud to work here because I fully understand the complexity of what we did, and the simplicity of the feature to the customer. It's really my favorite kind of work, and it's incredibly satisfying to have been a *small* part of it.

So what is this feature? Let me first explain the scenario.

Today, when two people have SMS enabled mobile phones, it's possible to send an SMS (Short Text Message) from one phone to another phone. This is a fairly old system that was built years ago and was initially a hallmark of the GSM mobile phone system pioneered in Europe. Many years later we finally have SMS between all sorts of different carriers and technologies and in most cases it works world wide.

SMS requires a lot of inter carrier technology, billing support, and queuing technology. It's a widely popular system and something I use a lot to communicate with my friends and family.

Now we also have this MSN Messenger thing which allows you to do many of the same types of things between two users sitting in front of a computer. Today it's not a queued system but one that requires both sides be "online" at the time. So if I want to send a short message to some one who is not signed into MSN Messenger I have two choices: to send them an email, or to wait till they return online. In many cases my communication is not appropriate for email as a communication medium, and if I wait, I might forget about it. The current system does not allow me to continue the conversation with the person (even though that person may have a mobile device capable of having a text based conversation).

In the past few years there have been an effort to port the IM stacks to mobile devices to enable the same experience as the PC. However, there are millions of mobile devices that do not have IM stacks, and even if they are available, it's sometimes too cumbersome to sign in to the mobile IM stack. Finally, that system suffers from the same problem as MSN Messenger on the PC. The communications require both parties be online.

So what to do? Enter MSN Messenger to SMS communications (we call this Enhanced mobile messaging). The feature we've been working on for the past year (or longer) was to allow a user of MSN Messenger on a PC to send a message to some one that is not signed into MSN Messenger but has an SMS enabled Mobile device AND to reply to that SMS message and have a real time chat (in otherwords, a two way conversation between MSN Messenger and Mobile phone using SMS as the wire protocol). This last part is important, but to understand it I need to explain one more thing.

For the past few years part of the scenario above has been available through what I will call a hack. Most phones that have SMS also have an email gateway that can take a message sent to a special email address and forward that message to the phone. For example, an email sent to <phone number>@mmode.com will forward that message via SMS to the <phone number> of an ATT Wireless subscriber. However, the user cannot reply to that email enabling a 2 way chat. Furthermore, it breaks the SMS user experience that mobile phone users are used to.

So, to fix this we set out to build all the necessary carrier infrastructure, SMS infrastructure, and build the technology and carrier relationships to ship the ability for users to have a two way conversation from MSN Messenger to a Mobile device that has nothing more than SMS capabilities (practically every singe phone on the planet). Not only that, but we support "Offline messages" so that if a Mobile phone device replies to an SMS from Messenger, and you have signed out of MSN Messenger, the next time you sign in the message will be delivered to you allowing you to continue the conversation. This is EXACTLY the same experience you get with a Mobile phone since it can queue SMS messages if your phone is off, and always deliver them when the phone is on. Now we have the same capability in MSN Messenger, and I'm happy to say that this is possible because of Hotmail's participation (we are the store for all these offline messages, as well as delivery of the messages to Messenger). As a result of all this, two days ago, when my sister was "offline" from MSN Messenger, I was able to have a conversation with her from my Desktop PC and I had no idea where she was. That is super powerful and empowered me to do something that was not previously possible, and something I wanted and makes sense to me as an end user. One of the many reasons I love building software.

I write this because a lot of what I do at Hotmail is this kind of work. This isn't a big splashy feature with a lot of chrome. But it took some super hard work from so many people across Microsoft, and shipping it is really a testament to how we can build interoperable features across organizations, technologies and overcome numerous obstacles to deliver something that makes a lot of sense to our users . This feature is particularly interesting as well due to the numerous SMS billing models world wide. In the US we have Recipient Party Pays (the person receiving the SMS gets billed) and in many other countries Calling Party Pays (where you must pay a small amount of money to send the mobile IM from Messenger to the SMS device). These two models are negotiated with the different carriers depending on the prevailing business model in that market. Today in the US this feature works for Verizon and T-Mobile users. It's coming soon to other carriers near you.

You can read about how to use this feature in the mobile messaging help topic.

I'm with Aditya. Alaska Airlines sucks. Here is why:

• at least 50% of my flights are delayed
• they fly their planes so hard, they break all the time
• they only schedule 30-45 min turns on the ground which means that when one flight is delayed, it cascades throughout the day
• their "flight attendants" are incessantly annoying about stupid crap like sitting in the exit row, wearing headphones w/o any audio plugged in, and stuff like that
• their planes have the cheapest airline seats available, which are less comfortable than sitting on a wooden stool for 2 hours (some of their planes have new leather seats which are nicer, but not enough of them).
• Most of the Alaska Airlines PAX are happy go lucky tourists. When I am getting up at 5 am to go to Redmond at 7 am, to then return the same day at 8 pm, I don't want to deal with this crowd. I'm not on vacation, and the flight sux. They don't seem to care, and act like they have never been on a plane before. Grrr (yes, I am being unreasonable, but I'm allowed to be selfish every once in a while). Compare a Alaska flight to a United flight where 80% of the travelers are business travelers (and most elites). They know how to get on an off a plane quickly, and don't bug you during the flight and share my same thinking about flight delays and general micky mouse activity on a flight.

I have flown American 50,000 miles a year for 7 years. I have never had a delay that wasn't due to weather. Never had a mechanical delay.

It's no secret to anyone that knows me, but I love Patagonia. They are one of the greatest outdoor and recreational clothing makers. They have the best warranty/return policy in the business and they are a company that cares deeply about the environment. Last winter my 9 year old Patagonia Gortex ski jacket failed and started leaking. I went back to the store at the end of the season and they gave me a gift card for 100% of the original value plus tax no questions asked. It was a $425 jacket, so it wasn't cheap, but I got a brand new state of the art ski jacket that I got to use this past season and it rocked. Got to love that, and I will keep rewarding them with my business.

I own half the Patagonia catalog (I worked there one summer and spent most of my disposable income on their stuff). It wasn't a good way to make money, but when I snowboard, ski, swim, and travel I am still using all the gear I purchased over 8 years ago. I continue to buy stuff from them. Even the things that matter most, like their Capilene Boxers. They aren't cheap, but they are seriously the most comfortable boxers I have ever owned in my life. It's all I wear now.

Over the past few years they have started to invest more and more in their women's line, and my wife just started buying a lot of their clothing for exercising, swimming, etc. It's the highest quality outerwear and layering out there.

Here is why Yahoo Music is cool. Yes I work for MSN, and sure I wish MSN Music had this same feature, but I'm super excited that Yahoo Music launched their business. Why? THEY ARE BUILT ON OUR PLATFORM! Let me explain.

A few months ago I wrote this post about Technology Camps. Let me point out my favorite paragraph:

"Now contrast this to Microsoft. For the past few years the focus has been on building a world class platform. From the codec's, to the encoding technology, to the protocol for moving bits from the computer to the device, to the encryption technology, policy enforcement of digital rights, and servers to manage those rights it's all been spec'ed and delivered in a manner that any software developer can utilize. You can create your own Music Store and sell content to anyone with a compatible device. You can build a device that can play rich video and audio. You can build software that can manipulate that music, and organize it for users, or even a new shell that can present that media to the user who is sitting on their couch and interacts via a remote control. You can even buy a cell phone that can consume these media files! Talk about a rich eco system. But that's what it is; a platform for anyone with a desire to build on. Microsoft participates in this eco system via the MSN Music Store, and other various properties, but we do not dictate how much you will pay, and what device you will use. We give you choice, and history has shown time and time again, that choice is always more powerful. Choice and flexibility always wins. Consumers want choice."

A bunch of people made some very valid comments about my perspective on how this all relates to Apple regarding Choice. I'm not going to disagree with them. However, this is so utterly cool because Yahoo was able to build and bring to market their own music store that leverages our platform end to end.

1. Microsoft Technology for encoding and DRM
2. Microsoft WMA 192 KBps 2-Pass CBR Encoded files (iTunes is STILL 128KBps AAC)
3. Janus to deliver subscription audio to PlaysForSure Compatible devices
4. Sync to those devices via Media Transport Protocol

And they offer this all for the cost of 3-4 music CDs a year with access to their entire Music collection. They are far cheaper than Napster-To-Go which I complained as being too expensive and buggy for my tastes.

Now how much do you want to bet that Apple is going to eventually have to offer subscriptions? I bet that the reason they have not yet done so is because Steve doesn't believe it makes sense.

"Steve Jobs, has dismissed the idea of subscription-based services, saying people want to own their music"

I'm not so sure about that. Me thinks that Apple is going down the exact same path with the iPod as they did with a Mac. They have build a phenomenally successful and wonderful CLOSED ecosystem. Just like the Mac. And we all know what happened there.

Yahoo does things that have potential positive revenue impact. They did not have to spend their resources building a platform, delivery mechanism, tools, services and whatnot to make this happen. They had to licence content, create a user experience and launch it. Anyone can do this.

My iPod is an island. My Creative Zen Micro just had a new bridge built to Yahoo that gives me access to a million songs for 5 bucks a month. Apple isn't competing with Microsoft, they are competing with potentially dozens of companies, and now a big internet media powerhouse.

How do you like them Apples?

Well I returned from a 10 day break from work this past Saturday, and on Monday I hit the ground running. Of course before I left for work I made two big mistakes. I subscribed to these two mailing lists at work and I didn't want them filling up my inbox so I created some rules. Well I made a mistake, rather than filtering mail sent To a DL I filtered the mail From a DL. Well this is interesting in that if you do that and you get a message from some one who is a member of a DL, then the rule kicks in. I guess that makes sense, but the end result was hundreds of duplicate and redirected mail to these new folders. Ick...

Anyway, by the end of Monday I had managed to go from about 400 messages in my inbox to 5 messages. I did not check mail while on vacation. Not once, and that was the bomb. Not only did I go from 400 to 5, I did this on a rather busy meeting day. This was all possible because of:

1. Getting Things Done
2. ClearContext

Much of the email was thread based where I needed only the most recent version, so those were easy to delete. A bunch were questions I needed to answer, so I did. A big chunk were reference type information. This is where I love ClearContext. I can easily assign a topic to a message and hit Alt-M which files that message automatically to a topic based folder. This is FAST. No expanding folders, drag and dropping a message etc. Saved me a lot of time.

This made me realize something else. This was the second time this year I went 7 work days w/o checking email. You know what? It worked. I trust that when I get back to work I have a system that allows me to process all the stuff and get back in the game w/o increasing my stress level and ruining my vacation. Microsoft gives me 15 days a year where they pay me to do nothing... doing email on vacation is essentially losing out on time my mind needs to not do anything work related. I can tell you that I started Monday with a lot more energy and excitement specifically because I avoided thinking or doing work while relaxing.

Back to Maui. We thought we would do all this stuff on the island, but the place we stayed was in Kapalua which is about an hour north from the airport. Not close to anything really. So we basically sat on the beach, sat by the pool, drank good stuff, ate good stuff and had a good time hanging out.

Oh, and I learned to play Golf. I think I like it. I'm going to start going to the driving range near my apartment, maybe even get some clubs since I'm so tall and was told not to mess around with short clubs or I would develop bad habbits. My wife happens to be an excellent golfer (golfed since she was 8), so she is pretty happy about all this.

While reading this great Engadget Interview with Steve Heiner from Nikon, I noticed the mention of a new Nikon DX mount telephoto lens. I've been waiting for Nikon to release a lens like this for ages, and thankfully Amazon.com has it for sale (in stock soon). Soo exited. It's a 55-200 mm DX Lens.

I actually love how hard core the Engadget folks got when asking about DNG and the Encrypted White balance fiasco.

If you are trying to reach me over the next week, I will be unavailable. Many have asked me why I'm on vacation so much these past few weeks. Well, my wife has been in Oahu for the past 9 weeks doing a rotation at Kaiser Permanente. One of the things that a lot of residency programs do is "farm you out" so that you can get surgical and other experiences at other hospitals. Why Oahu? It's a long story, but I've been without a wife for the past 9 weeks and have been attempting to visit her as much as possible. After all, that is why we get 3 weeks vacation a year (next year I get 4 weeks, since it will be my 7th year at Microsoft).

Anyhow, I will be headed to Maui tomorrow for 6 days with my parents, and sister/boyfriend where I plan to learn how to play golf, and read a few books whilst soaking in the rays and getting a tan.

So, see you all when I get back. In the mean time do not expect any "online" activities from me.

BTW - I have to say. Hawaii is fantastic. This year was the first time I ever visited Hawaii, and I think I could easily live here. I feel so recharged when I get back to work. In fact I have been so much more productive the past few weeks, and I think that has a lot to do with relaxing in the sun, swimming in the ocean, and just being a bum. I haven't gone on a beach vacation in over 3 years and as a result I think my batteries weren't fully charged.