shahine.com/omar/

I started working at Microsoft. Just as a data point, the “strike price” for my first option grant was $31.7250 (split adjusted). Today, the stock is trading around $26. At 7 years, there are two notable events:

• You start to accrue 4 weeks of vacation per year
• Your first stock option grant expires

So long option grant #1, I barely knew you . What are the chances the stock will shoot up 5 bucks in the next few hours so I can sell my grant?

On a more serious note, has the company really done so little in the last 7 years that the stock price warrants being down 19%? Will 2006 be the year MSFT rebounds? I sure hope so.

Anyway, it’s been a great 7 years. I look forward to the next few! Microsoft has been great to me over the years.

I’ve always wondered why I find it so hard for me to review tasks on my Outlook Task list. The view looks so busy to me when say compared to a web page. On the other hand, I have no problem looking at a task list on say Backpack or OneNote which is presented like any other web pages (font:Verdana, size:10pt).

Given that Outlook is infinitely customizable I set out to try and fix this. It took a few minutes, but now I have a view that looks just like a web page. You can do Customize Current View and set all the fonts to Verdana 10pt and remove the horrible grid lines. As you can see below, the After pic is easier to glance at. I also changed the By Category view to look like this. The large font gives you more white space (easier on the eyes) and removing the gridlines just takes away unnecessary stuff.

Before

After

Adobe has some really great PDFs on digital photography and “processing” photos with Photoshop CS.

I especially liked the downloadable action for converting color to black & white.

Trina found a great restaurant review site for San Fran folks:

We just found this site today:

sfsurvey.com.

It seems like a great site so far, and could come in really handy in the future :)

San Francisco Restaurant Reviews

My Dell D610 is just too dammed big and heavy. I am drooling over this. I can’t believe I would consider another Sony, but who else makes something that:

• Is Under 3 lbs
• Has a 1366 x 768 resolution 11.1 inch screen
• Gets 4 – 7.5 hours battery with the standard battery
• Has EDGE/Wifi
• Has a 90% Keyboard and a great trackpad
• Is slim, small and sexy

I’m thinking of getting the VGN-TX610P/B and upgrading the RAM to 1.5 GB myself (Sony charges 100% the cost of RAM from a third party). I get a 10% discount through Microsoft EPP Program and free Ground Shipping (which makes the price tag a bit more tolerable).

The downside is that I won’t get Aero Glass with Vista, but I suspect I won’t care that much.

I’m putting up my PSP for sale on ebay. I absolutely LOVE the device but I just don’t use it enough to justify keeping it around. You see I am waay to lazy to transcode TV onto the thing, and I haven’t really found any games that I really want to pick up and start playing when I have a few spare moments.

The reason that I have a PSP, other than the sheer coolness of the device, is that I sometimes panic that I will run out of stuff to do (like on a plane etc). So I lug the thing around with me all the time in my bag. In the past few months it’s traveled around the world and I’ve only used it once. I just don’t like the games that much. The one game that I do like (Untold Legends) I can’t pick up and play for a few moments cause I can never remember what I was doing the last time I played (it’s a role playing game).

Anyway, I am selling it + my 1GB Memory Stick and 3 games on ebay.

Oh, there is another reason I am selling it. I bought a Gameboy Micro. When I saw how small that thing is, and how inexpensive the games are I plunked down the $89.99 bucks for one and bought Zelda, Donkey Kong and Super Mario Brothers 3. Simply awesome as I love those games. The device is so small and takes so little space I can carry it around anywhere. For my needs, it’s a much better device than the PSP. I can just play for 5 min and do a few levels of Super Mario Brothers . The sad thing is, I still suck at that game .

You can see the difference in size between the PSP and the Micro here.

I think one of the most amazing stories of 2005 will be that of the Sony Rootkit. I think it’s a huge win for blogging and independent reporting. Mark documented the issue from start to finish and really had an impact as a blogger. Congrats to him for being so diligent and for the first Sony settlement only a few months after Mark first reported the issue.

“I’m proud to announce that a major step forward in the legal phase of Sony's rootkit: Scott Kamber and Sony have filed a proposed settlement for the national class-action suit brought by Scott. While I didn’t participate directly in the negotiations, I’m serving as an expert for Scott and provided input on the terms, which I think are a significant victory for the consumer.”

Mark's Sysinternals Blog: Sony Settles.

Some of you may recall that I’ve blogged a bit here and there about Backpack, which is sort of a personal WiKi etc. My Wife and I use it as our personal dashboard for domestic chores and notes that we need to share. To find out how Backpack can relate to Getting Things Done I’d recommend reading Backpack and GTD on the What's the next action blog.

While I’d love to use OneNote for this type of thing, Backpack is pretty rich and allows access from anywhere including mobile devices. For that reason it wins for this sort of thing.

Another good site to check out is Remember The Milk. There are some things I prefer about Remember the Milk like being able to assign tasks to different people, but it doesn’t have any real notes support for dashboard type information.

Over at the excellent Thinking Faster blog, there is a post on Meetings which I found interesting. I often ponder about how work days at Microsoft are fairly broken. Between email and meetings it’s amazing that I can actually do any work. If I go to meetings, I get behind on mail. If I am not behind on mail I am behind on work or late for a meeting. Invariably everyone in the meeting is doing mail so that they don’t get behind on mail.

We’ve tried some things at work like meeting free Tues/Wed for the development team, but I don’t think it works very well.

“I find myself saying this more and more, as my calendar becomes more and more crowded with events, meetings and conversations put there by other people.  Don't get me wrong, there are good reasons for meetings, but I feel like my work life is becoming secondary to my meeting life.

Getting a meeting request used to be a sign that you were somebody.  Someone wanted your opinion on a matter of great urgency for the firm.  Now it seems that the email CC: phenomena has migrated from email to meetings:  the basic rule of thumb - invite everyone to every meeting.  It's a wonder anything gets done during "normal" working hours.”

Thinking Faster: Do we really need to meet?

Well, the folks who create ClearContext have announced a beta of version 2. I've been testing it now for a few weeks. Before that I exchanged quite a bit of mail with Deva, Brad and Frank (as well as some brunches and dinners!). They took a lot of my feedback, suggestions and bug reports to heart.

There are quite a few new features in this version, but probably the biggest changes are targeted at folks who use some form of Getting Things Done. However, the product is very generic by not adhering to some of the more unfortunate aspects of GTD that the Netcentrics software is unforgiving about.

I'll highlight some of the feature's that I've found myself using the most:

Defer

In Getting Things Done you learn about the tickler file. Well the NetCentrics software doesn't really even attempt to solve this problem, it only allows you to snooze a message for a certain number of days. ClearContext v2 allows you to defer a message by a number of days, or to a specific day and time. This has come in really handy for me for the following types of emails:

1. I have to follow up on something at a certain date/time. I've either asked some one else to do something or I just won't get to something till later. This acts as a great reminder system. Since my inbox has few few messages in it then I notice these reminders quickly.
2. Shipping noticed and the like. Typically I want to discard these emails, but I need them for a short period of time. This way I can just make it go away for a while and when it comes back I can defer it again, or delete it.

This feature helps me keep both my inbox and my task list clean of clutter. In the "classic" GTD way, you must add such an item to your calendar or task list. No thanks, because I am poor about doing my weekly review, these things get lost in my task list.

I think this feature alone is worth the upgrade. It works well, and helps me manage my inbox.

Task

This feature is almost 100% identical to the program I wrote to simply create a task from an email. The method is far cleaner than the NetCentrics GTD addin for the following reasons:

1. The original email is attached to the task. This allows you to later reply or reference the email from within the task. No funny linking stuff that Netcentrics does.
2. A small snippet of text from the email is included in the body of the task. This allows you to quickly understand the context. Also if you sync tasks to your Pocket PC/Smartphone you can also get an idea of what the task is.
3. You can assign a topic to a task. I then use categories to assign the Action like @Home, @Office etc and use the standard Outlook views to see your tasks grouped by Action.
4. The subject of the task is canonical (stripped of RE:, FW: etc).
5. You can optionally then delete the email from the task, or file it to the Topic folder.

This feature is pretty much implemented the way I want. All that is needed is a few small tweaks (I would like Topic to be replicated to the Category field as well so it appears on my Pocket PC.

Schedule

Like task you can turn an email into an Appointment. I don't use this much (never have). My Calendar is way to busy, and blocking off time to do things never works at Microsoft.

Action View

This is a huge part of the upgrade. I haven't really spent enough time in this feature yet as it's incredibly feature rich. I plan on doing so in the coming weeks.

Misc

Other than the things I've mentioned, there are many bug fixes, and changes under the hood. I've found CC v2 to be as stable if not more stable than v1. The Views support was beefed up, and I have access to more reliable and desirable default views. I haven't had to mess with them at all yet.

The bottom line for me is that this upgrade has allowed me to completely ditch my own GTD software that I wrote (I didn't need yet another piece of software I developed to deal with) as well as the Netcentrics GTD add-in which I stopped using long ago (I find it overbearing and too prescriptive for how I work).

If you are a current ClearContext user, try the beta. If not, there will be a few different versions of the product to chose from in the future, and one of them will be free!

Thanks to Scott Hanselman, I have put Adobe Acrobat reader out of its misery. Good riddens! I won’t miss your long boot times, amazingly bad updating story, and endless prompts to download other random Adobe software I don’t want. Plus I won’t have an aggravating experience viewing PDFs in IE.

Foxit is great.

Ever since I built my new Silverstone pc, I’ve been struggling with a really bad problem. My Pentium D 820 is HOT, and I mean HOT. The poor Intel Heatsink is noisy and constantly revving from idle to 2000–3000 RPMs. Since it has a small itty bitty fan on it, this can get quite loud and annoying.

Over the past few months I have tried 4 different cpu heatsinks. Each was a disaster. Some were too loud (louder than the stock Intel) and others were ineffective allowing my CPU to overhead and the motherboard to shut down the machine.

The problem I have is that my case is rather small and will not allow for some of the monster heatsinks out there that operate at very low dBA (under 20 dBA). A few months ago I was researching a new Power Supply as my brand new el cheapo started clanking, and came upon a new CPU Heatsink from Coolermaster, the Hyper L3. This is a “low profile” heatsink meaning it’s big, but not huge. Also many heatsinks out there require you to even remove your motherboard and mount a supporting plate underneath. Since the Intel Pentium D uses the LGA775 mount (a clip in) this is an extra pain. So the good news was that this new Coolermaster used the existing LGA775 clip system (no motherboard removal) and was short enough to fit in my case. On top of that it uses the Intel 4 PIN power connector allowing the motherboard to control the RPMs.

Anyway, this new heatsink is the bomb. It’s so quiet I can barely hear it. The only other fan in my PC is the one in the Power Supply, and that’s ultra quiet running at 16 dBAs. The Coolermaster Hyper L3 runs at 18 dBA making my PC really silent. Just for fun I ran maxcpu to stress both processors and while the fan kicked in, it’s much larger than the Intel fan (80mm fan vs 60mm) so it produces much less noise and it kept the temp under 70 degrees C. I bet I could get a fanless CPU but the one I got pushes hot air off my cpu fan so that helps cool the PC, which is a good thing for me.

Here are my updated specs:

• Silverstone SG01 $188.00 
• RADEON 550 256M $79.00 
• DVD+/-RW 16X Sony DRU800A $84.99 
• Intel Pentium D 820 (2.8 GHZ) $245.99 
• Intel 945G D945GTPLKR $126.00 
• Nexus NX-4090 400 watt PSU $94.95
• Coolermaster Hyper L3 $34.95
• DDR2 1 GB Kit (two 512 Dimms) $173.43 

Eric Lawrence has updated my favorite windows application with some great little tweaks. If you aren’t using SlickRun you are missing out. Slickrun is like the “address bar” you can enable in the task menu but far more powerfull. I use it dozens of times a day.

+ Autocomplete of filenames as parameters to MagicWords
+ Hit CTRL+F or CTRL+I to insert filename(s) in command line
+ ESC (or ESC,ESC) activates last active window instead of no window
+ Added SmartPaste (trims pasted text, removes crlf,etc)
+ Prompt before "Undo changes" in Jot
+ _STARTUP MagicWord executes on startup
+ _DISPLAYCHANGE MagicWord executes on display resolution change
+ New NoMouseActivation setting in [General] section of SlickRun.ini for those who don't want to be able to Activate Slickrun via click

Bayden Systems: Minor new SlickRun Beta.

New TSA Rules finally bring some sanity back to air travel.

Now if they would just get rid of the retarded laptop removal and shoe removal policies. Maybe I should print this out and show it to the next Security Screener that asks me to remove my shoes?

I feel like going and getting a small swiss army knife tomorrow just so I can take it through security again. Or maybe some nail clippers! Oooh ooh, can't get too excited.

updated: thanks to all who noted, knives are still not allowed, making the swiss army knife contraband... darn.

Clemens Vasters just announced that he'll be joining Microsoft. For those of you that don't know, Clemens is the "papa" of dasBlog. There is an eweek story covering the announcement. I'm sure he is excited, but Microsoft is very lucky to have him.