It has been a challenging couple of days. Today, Emily and I are flying to Sydney Australia for a little bit of vacation and so I can do a few presentations at the patterns and practices Summit. On Wednesday my parents flew in from Washington DC where they were taking care of my sister’s kid while she was in the Bahamas. (Yes, that’s pretty much what they do—fly around the country to play with their grandkids.)

We are really looking forward to the vacation part and I always love an opportunity to speak about geeky stuff in public. And since the kids aren’t coming with us (), we will do nothing but lay on the beach and wander around Sydney. All while my kids are busy tormenting their grandparents instead of us.

A few hours after Grammy and Bompie got here, though, Finn (the youngest one) came down with a puking stomache flu. Lovely. Emily has already blogged a bit about it, but she was surprisingly restrained. She has been puked on at least six or seven times. I’ve been lucky enough to only get it once. Fun.

But despite all of that, it is very nice to have my folks here. My dad always inspires me to do work around the house. When he isn’t chasing around the country visiting grandkids, he is rebuilding his house. So he always arrives looking for a project to do at my house. It is great.

But then last night we got handed a project I really didn’t need. The clothes dryer died. The washer was already on its way out, but now the dryer is dead. And we still have 19 loads of laundry to do before our trip. So now, in addition to all the other things we have to do for the trip, we have to run over to a laundromat to get our clothes clean. And possibly swing by Home Depot for a new set of laundry machines.

Like I said in the title… Good Time, Bad Times.

This shows how much I pay attention to things… apparently we blogged our family holiday card this year. Here is Emily’s original post:

I had every intention of getting a Christmas/New Years card out but it never happened and I’m not allowing myself to feel a shred of guilt about it. Here is a family picture which would have appeared on the card, which would have said the following:

Wishing you a shiny new year!

Peter+Emily+Hadley+Finn

A few weeks ago I saw some old friends who I hadn’t seen in a while. Some of them have been reading my blog since before it was a blog. One of them said to me, "You only write about .NET and technology these days... why don't you write about anything else anymore?" I didn’t really have a good answer, but I had noticed it myself. So I started writing a little more about me, my life, the world around me, etc. And for me, it has been refreshing. I was getting stuck in a rut and I've been enjoying writing about other things. Maybe I'll even write a post in my Haiku category again soon. Who knows?

My post titled "Intelligent Design Loses in Dover School District Case" was nothing more than me congratulating a team of hard-working people whose case I believed in; a case that I think has important ramifications to our society. But as always happens when the topic is religion or politics (or both as in this case), people have come insisting on arguing the creationist case and quoting verse. Oh well..

The first commenter quoted the bible. “Paul, the bondservant of Jesus Christ” wrote:

For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse: Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.

Our commenter is either St. Paul the apostle come back from the dead to comment on my blog, or just a plagiarist quoting Romans 1:20 and trying take credit for it. Other readers, however, wanted to argue. As an example consider this comment:

“FACT: evolution theory cannot explain a lot of things happening around us. In fact, life and everything around us, is so complicated, that still many questions can be asked. We already know however, that the evolution theory isn't the answer.

…

While it's a fact, proven, etc, that evolution cannot be the correct answer, even though it seems to go a far way."

As a scientist and a philosopher, I am excited about these kinds of statements. Wow. You have found evidence that proves that evolutionary theory is wrong? That is exciting. I would love to see those references. All I want is to have a better understanding of the world around me, so I'll take any scientific evidence you've got. But there won’t be any arguments that stand up to the standards of science.

But let me be clear about what I believe: I believe that the modern theories of evolutionary biology are correct. I believe they are facts.

Fact means, "the truth or actual existence of something, as opposed to the supposition of something or a belief about something". Notice that the definition of the word fact includes the idea that there is evidence to support it. Evolution has countless experimental and empirical studies to support it. I suppose I could spend a few hours digging up links to study after study, but I'm not going to.

You see, I don't think there is actually any point in doing that. Why? First of all, there are lots of other sites that do this much better than I ever could. But more importantly, in my experience people who disagree with evolutionary biology aren't going to be persuaded. In fact, I don't want to try to persuade them. If they want to actually do the research and find the information, it isn’t hard. Grab your favorite search engine and look it up. Go to the library. Or don’t. Keep believing what you believe. I don't care. All I care about is that people are happy with themselves. If it makes you happy to believe in creationism, great. I don't. No biggie. Be happy. Please.

If you really want to argue evolutionary biology, I would suggest that you visit any of the forums for such things. There are newsgroups, web forums, mailing lists, etc. that are much better suited to this topic. But let me be clear, this is my blog and I will write about things that interest me. Sometimes these things will be religious. Sometimes they will be political. Sometimes they will be about my family. Sometimes they will be about nothing. I'm not going to apologize for this.

This blog is mine and it is about me. I don’t go to creationists blogs and attack their beliefs. I would appreciate the same consideration here.

—Peter

PS. For what its worth, I’ve closed the comments on that post. If you really think you can prove Intelligent Design, get it published in Nature. It will be much more effective for both of us.

PPS. If you are only interested in my technology posts, then I would suggest you subscribe to my Technology feed (rss) or my Geek Notes feed (rss) and not the main feed. For a full list of the available categories/feeds (and their RSS URLs), visit the Archive.

Sixteen months ago, when I joined Microsoft, my good friend Scott Densmore taught me a simple creed to help me make decisions as a Microsoft employee:

Customer, Microsoft, Group, Self

Lately I’ve been finding myself explaining this to a number of people around the company and have learned that this seems to be something that most people in Microsoft haven’t heard before. This surprised me, because it is one of those simple little mental tricks that you can use to ensure that you are always focused on the right thing. I just assumed that it must have been covered during New Employee Orientation when I was napping.

I was wrong.

So let me give my take on this little rule and why I think everyone in the company (or any company for that matter) should print it out and hang it on the wall of their workspace. You will find that this rule can be applied when you have a hard decision to make, are in a discussion with someone else about what to do, or just about any time you or your team aren’t sure what to do.

Customer

If you don’t start here, you may as well get a new job. This goes along with the age-old idea “the customer is always right” or the way Burger King said it, “Have it your way.”

At work when I find myself in a quandry, having a hard time making a decision, the answer should always be the one that helps Microsoft’s customers the best. Since I’m in essentially a marketing and evangelism group [1], this is generally not a hard sell when you’re in an argument. The only time I have seen this one get compromised is when two people each think they have the customer’s interests at heart, but don’t agree how to do it.

Microsoft (aka Company)

If you can’t reach resolution purely by considering the customer, you next should be thinking about what is best for the company. In my case this is Microsoft, but the actual company doesn’t matter. These are the people who sign your paycheck, so you need to be thinking about what makes them successful.

When you can’t make a decision based solely on what is best for the customer, then and only then should you take in to consideration what is best for the company. Sometimes this will create conflict when you think that perhaps you should do what is best for your company first and the customer second. Resist this temptation. Do what is right. Do what is right for the customer and everything else will fall into place.

Sometimes I have found people higher up the management chain who have decided that the interests of the company trump those of the customer. That is their prerogative. It is not mine. I am a foot soldier. Senior officers much higher up the food chain are the people who’s job it is to decide hard decisions like that.

Group (aka Team, Project, Workgroup)

Suppose that in your attempt to reach conclusion on an issue, you have decided that the customer and the company are served regardless of your resolution. You still have to make a decision. What do you do?

At this point you can take into consideration the best interest of the group. Depending on the size of your company, what “group” means may be hard to decide. If you take me for example, I reside within the greater organization of Microsoft Server and Tools. Within that is MXPS which itself contains patterns & practices. Inside of p&p, I am a member of the Smart Client program and specifically the development lead for the Composite User Interface Application Block.

So which “group” am I talking about?

All of them. My experience has taught me that this outside-in approach to thinking about decision making should be continued down through each level of organization. It turns out that more often than not the best interests of all of those groups are served by the same decision, but when they aren’t, you should choose the one that affects the largest number of people.

Self

Finally we get to self. Me. You.

This one is last for a good reason. You should never choose to serve yourself before you choose to serve others. I firmly believe that if you serve the customer, then your company, then your team then you will find that good things come to you for free.

I must admit that I get startled when I find someone who is putting themselves ahead of their team. It happens all the time. I’ve seen it happen here at Microsoft and I’ve seen it happen at every employer I’ve ever had. You might think that this would frustrate me and cause me to bail on these rules, but honestly, the opposite occurs. Why? Because I have seen consistently that those people don’t win in the long run.

Only now, after I have confirmed that I have served the best interest of everyone upstream from me is it appropriate for me to think about what is best for me. Yeah, I know this sounds like a bunch of hippy socialist crap, but actually it works out for the best.

After talking about this post with Scott yesterday, he brought up an interesting point: If you reach a point where you feel that you absolutely must put yourself ahead of the others in this list, then you are really saying that you probably need to change jobs. You need to change your group, your company, or your customer so that you can get your motivations back in proper alignment. (Changing your customer might sounds like a strange idea, but really it isn’t that hard. If you were to switch from the SQL Server team to the Windows Live team, for example, you have changed customers. If you switch from a product company to a consulting company, you have changed customers. See what I mean?)

When you focus on the customer, that means that you will at all times be doing what is best for the company. After all, happy customers make profitable companies. And when the company does well, the group does well. When the team is seen as contributing to the success of the group, the team is recognized for its contribution. And when the team does well, it means that the individual does well at review time.

Review time. We had to end up there eventually. The Microsoft review system has been a hot topic ever since the anonoymous blogger known as Mini-Microsoft started a non-stop rant against the stack rank and the bell curve. Mini and others have contended that the Microsoft review system (or any one that uses stack ranks and grading on the curve) tends to encourage selfish competitive behavior. For a while I thought that this might actually be true. I’ve noticed people on occasion making selfish decisions. Choosing self over team. Not focusing on the customer.

But I have faith that management noticed the difference between people who execute this stack in the wrong direction. Selfish people tend to be very obvious within any organization. People don’t really want to work with them. They often isolate themselves as a nature of what they do. Fine. Let them. Continue to be a team player and you will do better.

We are a social species. We depend on having strong social relationships to be successful. This is why this set of guidelines resonantes so strongly with me. If you serve the people around you, you will be more successul than if you ignore them, burn your bridges and think only of yourself.

[1] Remember, patterns & practices is in the business of making it easier for developers to consume the platform. This is really just a very specialized form of marketing.

So my last post was about sunshine, but today’s post is about snow.

Today here in Seattle it snowed. And everyone is freaking out. People are cancelling meetings left and right and running home “in case the snow gets bad.”

Coming from Colorado, “snow gets bad” means more than a foot or so during the day. Anything less than that and you keep right on working.

But here, apparently, even the sight of snow send the locals into a panic. I’ve been told there are no snow-plows (I had to explain to someone today what one is), there are no sand/salt trucks. Nothing. So everyone just runs home.

Hilarious.

I guess I've been living in Seattle too long.

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday back in Denver and MAN is it sunny there. And dry. And cold. Our daughter Hadley kept saying, "Daddy, it sure is bright here."

"Yes, honey. It is."

Damn bright. And you know what? I don't miss it. Not one bit. I just kept having to look for the sunglasses I no longer own.

And not a tree in sight. I mean, they've got these little things they call trees, but they ain't nothin' like the 10' diameter beasts in my front and back yards. Sure, unlike Seattle, you can see a McDonalds coming for miles and miles, but is that really a good thing?

Seeing the family and friends was great, though. We got a nice turnout for our little get-together at Lounge on Colfax.

That's enough. I'm sure Emily's write-up will be better than mine though, so if you really want to know what we did, go read her blog.

You Are an Espresso

At your best, you are: straight shooting, ambitious, and energetic At your worst, you are: anxious and high strung You drink coffee when: anytime you're not sleeping Your caffeine addiction level: high

Sorry. I just saw this pic on my wife's blog and said, "Damn! She's hot. And she's my wife!" (Emily is the one in the white top.) Oh and while you're there, scroll down for a pic of my son in his princess outfit.

For some strange reason, I remember with fondness those state-fair-kind-of-things that I went to as a child. You know what I'm talking about, rides, fair food, drinks, kids everywhere, sun, water, sun, kids everywhere, more rides, etc.

But now I'm well into my 30-somethings and I've decided that I don't really like them anymore.

Today was Day 1 (of 2) of the Annual Microsoft Company Picnic. Thirty five thousand people (or so) attend this gala, each person picking one of the two days. And as far as I can tell, everyone picked today.

Emily is in Kansas City with her friends, so I packed up Finn and Hadley and headed over to Scott Densmore's house. Finn was napping right up till the last minute, so I didn't really get a chance to feed him (more on that later). At the Densmores' we met up with Jeff Sandquist (of Channel 9 fame) and his family, loaded the girls into Scott's new car (they have a DVD player and three rows of seats) and headed up to Mountain Meadows Farm in North Bend.

The drive up was uneventful with the exception that I had a hungry one year old in the back seat hollering for food. While rocking out to the tunes in my iPod Shuffle, I was handing raisins and crackers back to him every couple of minutes and occasionally digging his milk cup off the floor behind me. For the most part, it worked. But then we got outside North Bend and saw the line of cars to get in. This line took an hour to get through, and Finn wasn't getting any happier. I finally found a pack of Smarties in the center console and started feeding those to him. The first one caused a funny look on his face, followed shortly thereafter by a series of grunts--him asking for more.

Eventually we made it through the line, with me yelling at all the jackasses who were shooting up the right lane and cutting in at the front. Come on people, you think we're in this line for fun? It is always people like that who make the line slow for the rest of us. It drives me nuts.

We got in to the farm and joined the other 20,000 attendees who were milling around. There was lots to do... food, drinks, beer, kids everywhere, sun, water, kids everywhere... sound familiar?

Once we'd fed ourselves and the children it was time to take them to "do the rides". Rides in this case means those inflatable slides and trampolines that seem to have replaced the steel contraptions of yore. But the lines were terrible, the sun was hot, and the parents were starting to get cranky.

At some point, Laurie (Jeff's wife) said, "We should just go back to our house and let the kids loose in the kiddie pool."

Sheer genius!

So we bribed the kids with promises of swimming and ice cream and happily vacated the premises. Loaded the girls back in the Densmore's Family Truckster and headed back to good ol' Sammamish. (No traffic this time.)

On the way home Finn passed out as expected, so I went ahead and took him home for a nap. Once he got up, I fed him dinner and headed over to the Sandquists. The girls were going between the pool and the playroom upstairs and Finn was just being his cute self. Compared to the farm, it was heaven. It was a pleasure for me to get to know Jeff better and I always enjoy hanging out with Scott and Lisa. Jeff has been at Microsoft for a while (going on 9 years) and had a lot of history and wisdom to share.

All in all it was a good day, but I think we have decided that next year we will have a private "mini Microsoft Picnic" next year at one of our houses. That sounds like it would be even better.

Go checkout this picture that my wife just posted.

What you are seeing is my son, Finn, flying. I make a big pile of feather pillows and throw him into them. As you can see from the look on his face, he loves it.