shahine.com/omar/

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.

I'm not the only one who thinks the Comcast DVR with TV Guide software is buggy. I should call Comcast and ask for a refund. That will surely get them to notice the issues. Money talks...

I really need to read more, cause I really enjoy it. I picked up Ask the Pilot last week at the very excellent SeaTac Terminal A. It caught my eye, and after I read the description I had to have it.

You see, I have this thing about flying. I LOVE to fly. I mean every time I get in a plane and take off, I sort of still feel amazed and special. I've always loved flying since I was a kid and would travel to Egypt every summer for most of my life. I never got tired of it. I feel the same way about traveling to new places. Love it.

This book is like an FAQ about flying. It answers many obscure questions about take off, landing, planes, turbulence, automated landings, training, life as a pilot, the airline industry and so on. It's highly recommended if you are at all curios about what the airline industry is like, and what makes a plane go up and down .

This is just so funny to read, because my PSP came about in much the same way as Steve's. I just got up one day and got one after spending 2 minutes playing with one. I had ZERO plans to get one of these things and actually ignored 100% of the press on the thing. I think everyone who has played on my device thus far secretly wants one.

So far I own two games, Wipeout Pure and Untold Legends. I love Untold Legends, it's just like Dungeon Siege, which was a great game I was addicted to for 8 hours and then never touched it again. I just don't like sitting in front of my computer playing games, the PSP empowers me to do it anywhere I want.

Every few months, Outlook 2003 will get into a situation where it will no longer render images in the preview pane or the message window. If you reply to the message, then you will see the image.

Perplexed by the problem, I would take the brute force "Detect and Repair" solution but that isn't always desirable as it resets all the Outlook settings and takes a while. Months ago, some one posted to an internal DL that the problem can be fixed by deleting the Outlook Temporary Cache folder. Since then I had forgotten this solution, and noticed the problem re-appeared. I was talking to Reeves today and he mentioned that he is having the same problem.

Anyway, here is how you fix the problem.

1. Locate the Outlook Temporary Items folder by opening the Registry and locating HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Office\11.0\Outlook\Security\OutlookSecureTempFolder
2. Navigate to the value of this Key. It should be something like: %USERPROFILE%\Local Settings\Temporary Internet Files\OLK3D\ where OLK3D is some randomly generated string that always starts with OLK
3. Quit Outlook
4. Delete the contents of the folder
5. Launch Outlook

Problem solved! I could not locate a KB article on this topic.

Lisa Brummel was just named Vice President of Human Resources at Microsoft. Previous to this role Lisa was Corporate Vice President of the Home and Retail division, which is where the Mac Business Unit has been located for the past few years (before that, MacBU was in MSN for a few brief months, and before that in Business and Productivity Group or BPG).

What I found more interesting is that the mention that Ken DiPietro, the former VP of HR, was replaced is in the middle of the press release. It didn't say where he went or what happened to him. Not sure what to make of that. The only thing I remember about Ken was 1) He was the dude that changed our benefits last year by altering our ESPP program and altered our prescription drug program a bit, and 2) can't remember, but I think I took some on line training as a result of some email that was sent out.

"Brummel replaces Ken DiPietro, who served as corporate vice president for Human Resources for the past two years."

I think the cuts could have been a LOT worse. But needless to say they were not popular. As it stands, the ESPP program isn't really very worthwhile compared to the old program.

But anyway, Ken was in this role from Dec 2002 till now. He was hired outside Microsoft and is being replaced by a long time Microsoft veteran that Steve has a lot of respect for (you could tell from listening to Lisa that she was highly regarded by Steve and Co.).

I'm sure Lisa is excited about her new role, and well I wish her luck! She has lived and breathed working in Product Groups most of her Microsoft Career and probably understands us employees better than anyone.

First of all, a big shout out to Adobe for creating an awesome upgrade for Digital Camera owners. I still don't understand why you insist on installing Adobe ImageReady when I never use it and curse it when I accidentally double click a PNG and watch it take forever to load. However, you fixed one of the biggest problems for me. Changes to Orientation of RAW files were never persisted to the XMP MetaData files, but thankfully you now write the tag:

<tiff:Orientation>8</tiff:Orientation>

Which makes a world of difference cause lots of my photos previously edited with Nikon Capture 4 trashed this data, and I was unable to fix the problem in Photoshop CS1 or Elements 3.0. Now these changes will persist across machines, and stick around with my photos.

First impressions. Adobe Picture bridge is worth the upgrade alone. The new Camera RAW editor is great. But best of all, THANK YOU for allowing me to use a product that is infinitely more usable and polished than every other product on the market that can edit RAW photos. They all suffer from any kind of normal and intuitive user interface.

The bottom line is that unfortunately for me, and fortunately for Adobe, I will continue to shell out money for every upgrade till I feel that the art of Digital Camera Workflow is mature in these products. I think CS2 is a huge step forward, especially with the guidance of many of the auto settings for editing RAW photos that are great for quick and dirty "make this not look like a raw file" type editing. But I still think we have a long way to go.

If you are currently an owner of a product that qualifies for an upgrade I would easily recommend the CS2 upgrade. If you are not an owner, and can't or don't want to shell out $500 for the full version, I suspect most of the core feature for managing Digital Photos will arrive in a new version of Photoshop Elements 3.0.

I can't even begin to explain how happy I am that we recently released the Office 2003 PIA download. I've known about this for a while but I had to keep my mouth shut . Why am I excited? Just read this and you will understand.

Not being able to install the PIAs is the single biggest deployment issue I've had with my Send to OneNote from Outlook PowerToy. I have about 10 emails in my inbox from users who could not install it and up till now I had nothing really to tell them except "sorry".

Well, I plan on releasing a new version of Send to OneNote from Outlook that includes the redistributable, as well as a few dozen bug fixes and minor features.

I really appreciate the work that the office folks did in releasing this. They listened to me yell and scream for a few months about this problem, and they fixed it. Thanks guys!

I just found this app called Image Converter 2 made by Sony, that will convert a wide variety of video and photos to playback on the PSP. It supports DVR-MS, the file format that Windows Media Center records TV. It costs $19.

Now all I need is a 1GB Memory Stick Duo. NEVER in my life did I think I would purchase a Memory Stick. Sigh...

Just got this email from Adobe. Wohooo!

Your Adobe Store order has shipped!

Product:	Adobe Photoshop CS2 Upgrade for Windows
Ship Date:	April 21, 2005
Quantity:	1
Price:
Price:$149.00
Item Subtotal:	US$149.00

Motorola finally cancelled the MPx [via Steve Makofsky]. I just pulled up this post I wrote last year on the subject:

I remember when I used to see announcements or rumors of Pocket PC and Smartphone devices and I would get so excited. I'm at the point now where I just don't care any more.

I've been dreaming of a smartphone or Pocket PC device like my wife's Treo 600. I desperately want a thumb keyboard since most of what I use my phone for is e-mail. So when I saw the Motorola MPX I was extatic, then today when I saw this new BenQ device I was, initially happy, then just plain depressed.

...

Hopefully in 2005 I can get a Windows Mobile powered device with a thumb keyboard for less than $500 dollars. I can dream can't I?

That was over a year ago that I wrote these words. Has the world changed in that year? Not really, except that I no longer use Windows Mobile and am loving my Treo 650. It's going to take a sub $500 device with a keyboard and a 320x320 screen that is as small or smaller than the Treo 650 to win me back.

Greg Hughes has a great write up on a bunch of "smartphone" PDA type devices. I have never used a Blackberry, and probably never will because it requires that middleware be installed, and Microsoft just isn't going to do that. So I am stuck to chose between Windows based Mobile devices and devices that support Exchange ActiveSync (The Treo 650 is one).

I think Greg raises excellent concerns about the Audiovox 5600 and the Siemens SX66 (or whatever your carrier calls this thing, there are at least 3 different companies hocking this device, and none of the companies who place their name on the device actually make it).

Greg has this to say about the Audiovox 5600:

"But the software apps are a little glitchy, and I lost count of how many times this thing either reset itself or required me to pry the battery out of the back and replace it in order to get it started and working again."

"Audio quality was good. It's small and compact and has a certain "neato" quality. But it doesn't allow me to quickly and efficiently communicate, except via voice calls."

And this to say about the Siemens SX66:

"Bluetooth worked better than any of the other devices in hands-free mode, and the keyboard makes it more accessible and usable than the Audiovox device by far. But the keyboard's pimple-style chicklet bubble layout was painful to use in the real wold - keys are tiny and way too close together unless you;re six years old (probably not the target market). Battery life was pretty awful, especially if you use the WiFi at all.

"To top it all off, this morning I grabbed the device and went to turn it on, but it did not respond. Yet, the little green service light was flashing so I knew it had power to it. I pulled the battery put it back (the Windows Mobile version of CTRL-ALT-DEL), but still no response. I started driving to work and tried it again while I was stopped for coffee at the local store. Voila! Up it comes, but totally reset, nuked, blown away, default ROM settings - everything I had set and stored before was gone. Good thing the important stuff was on my SD card... I've read and heard rumors of serious software problems with this phone, and when you combine that with the lame keyboard that looks cool but isn't at all usable, well... Returned, with prejudice."

And this is my point. These devices are not reliable enough to use as a phone. My Treo has missed a single phone call in 30 days and that was due to some third party application that I run that is buggy (but I can't live without for now).

Greg was not a fan of the Treo 650, and I agree that they keyboard is a bit cramped, but the Blackberry is no option for me, and I happen to like the 650. The number of excellent applications available for the device + the form factor are what hold the device ahead of every available Windows Mobile device.

I do agree that the usability of the Palm OS could be better. It takes to may steps to do simple things, and the OS constantly launches and quits applications since you can only run one at a time. This makes multitasking or even doing a single task across multiple apps take longer than it should. Windows Mobile is much more efficient across applications.

Zinio released an updated version of their Magazine Reader. It's much improved over 2.0. One of the things I actually do religiously with my Tablet PC is read PC Magazine in Tablet mode. I can't tell you how cool it is to sit there and read the magazine, like on an airplane, or in bed. It's one of the few times I use my tablet in portrait mode.

I do still wish that Zinio used ClearType rather than Adobe's "Blurry Type" technology.

Nooooo!!! I could not resist (sorry Steve). I had to have one. Must purchase. Well, I was walking back from a Dr. Appt near Union Square 1 hour ago, and I figured I would stop by the Sony Store at the Metreon. If you are in need of a PSP and you live in San Francisco, the Sony Store got a shipment yesterday.

I don't have any games yet though. That's a problem I need to fix.

BTW - this device was $249. I never did purchase a Portable Media Center. $500 to essentially play audio and video seemed too steep for me (I don't have kids, and my tablet can play tv shows from my MCE box). But the price for this gizmo is in line with what a Creative Zen Micro or iPod mini costs. Compared to the PMC, the device is sexier, screen is more beautiful, and the entertainment is limitless. With WiFi built in, this thing will be cool. Now, I wish it could nativley play WMV so that I could more easily get my MCE TV shows on there.

I just noticed this warning when I saved a file:

So lets see. You are asking the user a question. Unchecking the checkbox above has no clear benefit to me. However, if I do uncheck it my file may not be compatible with future versions of Photoshop or other applications.

Not I undestand it may not be compatible with other applications, but not with future versions of Photoshop?

So lets see. Here is what I know:

• Unchecking Maximize compatibility has no clear benefits
• Unchecking Maximize compatability may render this file unusable in other applications
• Unchecking Maximize compatability may render this file unusable in the next version of Photoshop

HELLO! Adobe? What is the point of asking me this when I save a PSD file? If I were the PM for this feature, I would have cut the thing entirely.

I just played with a friend's PSP. OMG it rocks. I have an Xbox and I play it like once a month. I have a feeling I would use a PSP a lot more. I could play in bed, on the plane or on the train. The last portable game device I used was an Atari Lynx. Great device but horrible battery life. I was also a gameboy addict (the original version). But I quit video games cold turkey after high school.

Oh, well, there goes a bunch of dough.

From a co-worker:

A funny flash video of Hitachi's new Perpendicular drive technology. Very funny.

I can't wait till I can purchase a 1 TB drive.

Last week I hopped over the pond (the other one) to visit my wife again, and had a great time in Oahu. Going back in 2 weeks and then off to Maui with my family for 6 days. After that my wife comes back home with me . Living alone is for the birds.

Two of the highlights:

Turtle Beach (click to see the full album)

A bunch of folks hanging out with 4 sea turtles. Everyone was so happy.

Isn't he cute?

USS Arizona Memorial (click to see the full album)

The inside of the memorial.

The ship is still leaking fuel. It's a realy somber experience watching the oil bubble up. Since the ship is an official Tomb, and final resting place for over 1000 people, they cannot actually enter the ship to investigate the fuel leak. Furtheremore, a lot of folks are opposed to them doing anything about it as they feel the ship is "crying".

It's been a month now since I received my Treo 650, and I couldn't be more happy. There are some minor warts on this device, but I firmly believe this is the best and most usable PDA/Phone device I have used. It easily meets my needs better than any of my previous Windows Mobile devices, and while it has a few shortfalls, they pale in comparison to the positive features I've come to rely on.

If you missed it, here is Part 1

PIM

The PIM applications are probably the one weak area of this device. I have a rather high bar for these types of things as I like my data to round trip from desktop to device and back. The most frustrating aspect of the device has been that not all the data in Outlook maps to the Palm. The specific shortfalls are mentioned below. In Part 3 I will talk about some third part applications that circumvent some of these issues.

Categories

This is the biggest limitation I have experienced on the device. I am a heavy user of Categories, and have about 25 categories in my task list. These are the categories I use to define my Getting Things Done projects. Most are greater than 15 characters each. The Palm limits me to 15 characters per category, and a total of 15 categories per Palm Application. This means that once you reach 15 characters it truncates. Also, once you reach 15 categories it stops sync'ing the 16 onward.

Contacts

In previous versions of the Palm OS you were limited to a single postal address for a contact as well as 5 phone/email addresses. Palm finally addressed this limitation and allows you 3 postal addresses and more phone numbers and email addresses. However, they do not support synchronization of many other contact fields.

Calendar

In previous versions of the Palm OS you could not have All Day events that spanned multiple days. For example, I may have a vacation event that starts on a Monday and ends on a Thursday. The Palm conduit will break these up into 4 individual events. This is problematic because sometimes it will actually span an extra day and end create an event for Friday. This has not been resolved in the Treo 650.

Support for recurring events with exceptions has improved, but they did not add features such as "Accepted", "Tentative" accept statuses for meetings. The Calendar views have not fundamentally changed, but a new "Agenda" view was added which is a bit like the Today page on Windows Mobile.

Tasks

I am a big user of tasks, and while I find that Tasks feature to be fairly usable, the category limitation really makes it painful for me. Furthermore, there is no way to set a reminder for a task on the Treo. This is a huge limitation. I don't understand why Microsoft and Palm pimp tasks so much on their respective mobile platforms.

Notes

Thankfully the Palm OS has better support for Notes than the Windows Mobile platform. Notes are real first class citizens, and not objects that live in the file system like Windows Mobile. I use notes a lot more (much like I would use paper in a Moleskine) to jot down all sorts of random things. Because the Find feature of the Palm is pretty decent it means I can find all sorts of stuff easily. It's super easy to "filter" the list down to what you are looking for by typing the first few characters of the note.

Mail

Mail is where the Treo shines. The included Mail application, Versa Mail, is hands down a winner over Windows Mobile. Not only can you see much more data on the screen, but small things that DRIVE ME NUTS about the Windows Mobile mail experience don't exist on the Palm. The best example is that with a Windows Mobile device, when you reply all to an email via your Exchange account, your email address is included in the reply. The excuse that I've been given over the years is that Windows Mobile doesn' t know your email address in order to remove it from replies. Well, Palm solved this by asking for my email address during account set up. Imagine that! Seriously, if you work in the Mobile group and are listening, this is one thing that should have been fixed long ago.

The Palm mail app supports your normal options like Signatures, reply options, folders, and HTML! Yes, that's right, you can use HTML markup. Sadly this is not supported if you are using Exchange ActiveSync.

Exchange

Lets be honest. The only reason I even considered buying this device is because of Exchange ActiveSync now found in the Treo. This keeps my device in sync with my corporate exchange box 24/7. This makes my device incredibly useful as I can keep connected to work when I'm mobile. When compared to the Windows Mobile platforms, Palm has a long way to go, but the good news is they have a baseline set of features that suffice for now, and the hardware makes writing emails a real joy (compared to using T9 or a stylus).

All synchronization is managed via VersaMail. You can configure the device to sync ever x minutes and define peak times for synchronizations. VersaMail can sync in the background, however, any manual sync must occur as a modal process (not sure why). Finally, VersaMail does not support Automatic Up-to-Date whereby the Exchange server can send SMS notifications to your device that there is new data waiting and that the device should sync. This is not a true push model, but it's pretty close and I used to use this feature on my Windows Mobile devices.

Sadly, there is no support for Contacts synchronization at this time. There is obviously no support for Tasks or Notes sync since Exchange does not yet support synchronization of these PIM apps.

The supported PIM apps are:

Mail Sync

You can synchronize your inbox to the Treo. Sadly you cannot synchronize other folder, nor can you move messages to folders on the server. This is a bummer as I used to file a lot of messages on my Audiovox 5600. By default the first 5 k of messages is downloaded (Windows Mobile is .5 k). Also the default reply options do not use the Smart Reply feature of the platform. Smart Reply is an EAS feature where the reply you compose does not quote any of the text in the original message. When the client uploads to the server it appends the original message to your reply. This is more efficient then quoting the original message (if it is large) and uploading the whole thing to the server. To use this feature you must change the default reply options.

Calendar Sync

Calendar sync works fairly well. On occasion I have seen exceptions to recurring events not sync to the client till I forced a manual sync. Not sure why this is the case.

Sync Issues

I have on occasion experienced the random sync problem. It seems that once a week I get a message from the device that an error occurred on the last sync to the server. The device then forces me to re-download all the mail and calendar events from the servers. This isn't so bad except that if you were to create a new calendar appointment after the error occurred and before the resync, you would lose that event and likely not notice it.

I've also seen the inbox get out of sync with the server such that I had to delete my Exchange account and recreate it to get the right inbox contents.

Just finished watching Battlestar Galactica that I borrowed from Mike. I don't normally like Sci-Fi, but I loved this "mini-series". Not sure what a mini-series is, except that this was a 3 hour movie. I enjoyed it a bunch though. Now to netflix to get the first season from TV.

I have been using your new fangled High Definition PVR with two tuners for a few months now. Let me tell you, this is the buggiest piece of consumer electronics I have ever used (note: this is the version with the TV Guide Software, not the Microsoft Foundation). I can't believe that you are making me pay to use this device as it does not function most of the time. Here is a list of my complaints:

1. Every so often, the devices forgets that I get ABC in high definition and proceeds to record shows like Alias in Standard Definition. To correct this I must delete the recording, and create a new one. Of course I'd rather hurl the box from the window before going through the 20 step process to do this.
2. At least 3 times a week, the box records a show for 0 minutes, 5 minutes, or 49 minutes, but not the full hour. The box has no idea that it did this.
3. At least once a week, there is no audio that comes out of the box, so I must powercycle it. If it is recording something, I must wait for it to finish before being able to powercycle and hear the audio.
4. If I use the power on/off feature of the box, 99% of the time, there is no video or audio when I turn it back on. I need to start a pre-recorded show then go back to live tv
5. The UI is HORRIBLE. Who designed this software? It sucks.
   1. Adding a new recording is like a 20 step process.
   2. Anytime you make a mistake you have to start over
   3. None of the controls for the PVR (to go to the recorded TV list and start a show) work from the on demand application
6. The box can't deal with some really basic conflicts
7. I have no way of knowing what shows I actually watched from the recorded TV list
8. Your box didn't even handle Daylight Savings time correctly. It updated a day late!!!

It's truly appalling what a buggy product this is. If TiVo shipped this product back in 1999, they would have gone out of business in their first year. It's amazing that 6 years later, you have produced a product that is 100% worse than TiVo or Windows Media Center. This box is so unreliable, that I cannot count on it to be anything fancier than a dual HiDef Cable box. I actually have to watch the shows I really care about when they are on TV.

One day, I hope to have support in my Windows Media Center box for CableCard so that I can go back to my trusty and reliable Windows Media Center to record TV. When that day comes, it will be a joyous one. I cannot wait to call you up to come pick up this box.

Yes, we are spoiled rotten in the US. I hope Gas prices keep going up. It's the only way we will understand what it is like to drive a car outside the US where it can cost $50 to fill up a small compact. It's the only way that car companies will actually treat fuel efficiency as a problem to solve. Our combustion engine technology hasn't fundamentally changed since the beginning.

So the next time you go and buy a car, take the gas mileage into account, or quit your whining.

One interesting thing I did not know. My buddy Mike let me know that a lot of gas stations won't allow you to pump more than $50 of gas at once. You must stop, pay, and then continue. This is a problem for people with cars that have gas tanks > 14 gallons.

Found this great tip from Ed Bott. You can take advantage of the explorer.exe command line switches to scope a view to only contain the subfolders. For example:

explorer.exe /e,/root,"C:\Windows"

will open the Explorer Shell showing the Windows directory and all it's subfolders while hiding the other namespaces.

Why doesn't Shutdown work? Shutting down Windows and Shutting down Outlook requires user intervention 80% of the time for me. Yes I run Add-ins in Outlook, so what? I also run software in Windows. I don't care that an Add-in might be holding an Outlook resource, or that some Windows process won't go away. Last time I checked I was the boss of the computer. When I say shut down it should do everything in it's binary powers to exit. I mean if I can go into task manager and end processes forcibly, or hard power down my computer, I should be entitled that when I issue the same command that the software honor my request. Why is this so hard?

It's gotten so grim that I am considering buying this. What is the world coming to such that I have to pay good money for Outlook to shutdown? But my options are to run Outlook without any Addins (including my own), or paying money for another add-in to take care of business. Oh the irony. Anyone know of a similar tool for XP?

Now I understand why Cingular hasn't launched the Audiovox 5600 Smartphone that AT&T was selling. Audiovox is exiting the mobile phone business and selling to UTStarcom, Inc.

Now I've never heard of UTStarcom, and I'm not sure this helps our effort to increase sales of MS Smartphones as consumers are brand focused, and probably know Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, but also never heard of UTStarcom.

Did you know that if you hold down the SHIFT key when selecting Thumbnails View or opening a folder, the Filenames for the items will not be displayed? I didn't, but just found out because for some reason I had no filenames in any of my Thumbnails view and could not figure out why. This seems like an obscure feature since I could find no mention of it anywhere, and it took me 15 min to search for the answer on the web.

Here is an example. While this is usefull for Picture Views, it's usless for looking at folders/files.

[via MalekTips]

Is the tech job market heating up? Hell yes. In the last 4 months I've been cold called by 3 recruiters. Additionally, there is a lot of new headcount on the Microsoft Silicon Valley Campus. However, since my time in Hotmail I've personally hired 2 folks and they were both internal hires. Why? Because there are a lot of people in the company who have been doing the same product or discipline for 5+ years. After doing something that long, it's only natural to want to try something different. For me there were a lot of reasons to move from the MacBU, but the big three were 1) new career growth opportunities, 2) working in a super competitive and exciting technology segment, 3) increasing my scope of influence and impact within the company... In that time a lot of people I worked closely with in the last 6.5 years in the company have also changed jobs, and some are even working with me again. The Microsoft workforce is staying with the company longer and there are a lot of folks reaching their 5 year anniversary in the same team.

I think that's one of the coolest things about Microsoft. As a Program Manager, Developer, Tester, Product Manager etc you have the core competencies go to work on pretty much any product group in the company. You also see a lot of folks switching disciplines say from Test to PM, from Dev to PM, from PM to Dev. In fact some of our most recent Hotmail hires did just that!

Personally I can't see myself working on any given product for less than say 3 years, but once you get to 5-6 there are just so many interesting opportunities either at Microsoft or elsewhere. On our campus, Silicon Valley, there is of course a very limited number of product groups (less than 12) so you tend to see folks doing the same job in the same group for longer than you might in Redmond.

So it comes as no surprise that I read this earlier today. You know, it's a lot easier to make a hiring decision when that person has a proven track record within the company. The internal candidates for jobs are usually a the top of the fold when interviewing for job positions as they have a lot going for them (usually). I suspect that due to the difficulty in finding good external candidates in the tech industry, there is a lot more internal transfers happening.

A couple of people made some comments in my 35 hour work week post asking what it is my wife does that requires that she work 80 hours a week (and why she gets paid for only 40). I will clarify here.

My wife is a Doctor. When you graduate from Medical School in this country you cannot practice medicine till you get board certified. Board certification is actually a 4 step process. Here is how becoming a doctor works:

1. In College you usually take 5 courses, each 1 year to be considered "pre-med". These are Biology, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Bio-Chemistry and Physics.
2. In your junior year you take the MCAT, a standardized test that lasts 8 hours for which you prepare for 1 year. It's fairly grueling.
3. You then apply and pray that you get into Medical School.
4. If you get in, you then spend 4 years in Medical School till you graduate with a Medical Degree (MD). You now have "Dr." in your title, and the average medical student now has $180,000 in school debt. You also take what is known as USMLE Step 1 and Step 2 in medical school. Passing these is required to graduate, and the year after you graduate you take the final Step 3.
5. In your 4th year of medical school you apply to a residency program. Each medical field has various programs throughout the country. Each program has a very specific number of spots. These spots are determined by how the program is accredited and how much funding they get per resident. It's a little known fact that Medicare actually funds the Residency programs in the US.
6. If you get "matched" into a Residency program, you then spend 3 - 8 years there.
7. In your first year of residency you take USMLE Step 3. If you pass you are now certified to practice medicine. However, you must still apply for state certification in the state you are working, and you still must apply for a licence to prescribe medication from the DEA.
8. Still with me? Ok, during your residency you work about 80 hours a week. This is actually an improvement as 2 years ago the American Medical Board started to enforce work hours that require that:
   1. In a 4 week period a resident cannot average more than 80 hours a week.
   2. In a 36 hour period, you cannot work more than 24 hours.
   3. In a one week period you are required to have 24 hours off.
9. When you graduate from your residency program, you take a final exam where you get board certified in whatever your are doing your residency in. This allows you to go work as an MD in a practice, teaching institution or hospital. Many residents go on to do Fellowships (more specialization) that basically extends this process but isn't quite as harsh in terms of work hours and pay (but not good either).

To make matters worse, payroll departments pay you for 40 hours of work, and on average residents make between 35K and 45K a year. Now the harshness of the work week is a tad better since the new rules went into affect, as before my wife could easily work 100 hours a week and spend 36 hours straight in the hospital. That's about $10 AN HOUR!!! to save people's lives, to do surgery, to care for us in our greatest times of need! ($20 an hour if you assume 40).

Now compare this to Nursing. Nurses typically work 3-4 days a week in anywhere from 8-12 hour shifts and get paid substantially more.

So the next time you go to the doctor/hospital and you are being treated by a Resident (most likely the first person you'll see that is an MD), remember, they aren't in this for the money. They are there because they are willing to go through steps 1-9 and still spend a substantial part of their lives making a rather significant sacrifice (time, money, lifestyle) to care for your health.

We would not have the health care system we have in this country if it weren't for the hundreds of thousands of sleep deprived, low paid residents that take care of us regardless of our ability to pay for that care (a big % of Americans do not have Insurance, yet Hospitals are obligated to treat them, and that money comes from somewhere, usually in the form of blood, sweat and tears of our Residents).

When my wife is completely done with her training, she will have spent 11 years as a medical student, resident, fellow working for little to no pay commiserate to what she actually does every day.

PS - for the curious, I actually made it to step 3 (I was pre-med, took my MCATs and applied to medical school) and am thankful that Microsoft found me before I went down the path my wife has. I know I was not cut out to be a Doctor, and as a result, have an immense respect for the work our residents do in this world.

PPS - My personal opinion is that this is a totally screwed up system that does not operate under a free market system. Residents are screwed from the get go because they are at the mercy of dozens of licensing boards, government institutions and funding programs that are not adequate. Hospitals do not need to compete for residents and they will work for whatever the pay is because they have to in order to practice medicine. Finally, the # of MDs that this country produces each year is artificially controlled (indirectly) by Medicare which in tern dictates how may slots we have in Medical Schools and Residency programs.

note: if any of my facts are incorrect, please correct them in the comments. Most of this is based on my own first hand knowledge and I'm sure there are residents out there that have some corrections to what I think.

I didn't know France had a 35 hour work week till I was in Paris 2 years ago reading my Lonely Planet in Napoleon's bedroom at the Louvre. 35 hours!!! Well, France finally got rid of it. Now it's 39 hours and there are a million caveats. I think they still get 5 weeks vacation and retire with 80% of their last year's salary in whatever job they are employed. About 1/4 of the working population in France works for the government according to Lonely Planet. Women in France also get up to 3 years off work for maternity leave. In the US you are lucky to get 6 weeks! (Microsoft is very generous and give 12 weeks I think, and men can take 4 weeks paid paternity or 8 weeks with 4 unpaid). I think 6 months maternity leave is probably more appropriate given what it is you are doing.

Well France, welcome to a brave new world...

"Last year, a parliamentary committee reported that the 35-hour week cost France more than $13 billion a year, casting doubt on a labor ministry study that suggested it had created 350,000 jobs between 1998 and 2002.

Some also argued that the shorter week hurt living standards because employers froze salaries to make up for lost labor.

According to a 2003 OECD survey of 25 industrialized countries, only Norwegian and Dutch employees worked less time each year than the French, who worked an average 1,431 hours. German workers put in 1,446 hours, British 1,673 hours, Americans 1,792 hours and Koreans 2,390 hours."

[MSNBC]

35 hours. Sheesh! My wife has a mandatory 80 hour work week and she gets paid (very little) for 40 of them! How do you like them Apples!