Microsoft developer Vijaye Raji spends his free time working on software designed to help beginners learn the principles behind Basic, programming’s original language.
By John Van Vleet
August 5, 2008
The way Vijaye Raji sees it, future developers need to get back to the Basics—literally and figuratively. That explains why Raji, a senior software developer, has spent a large chunk of his free nights and weekends over the past year working on a pet project he calls Small Basic, a language variant of Basic designed to teach beginners the principles behind programming.
“If you take a quick poll around Microsoft of all the developers, and you ask them what they started programming with, it’s usually some kind of variant of Basic,” said Raji. “When MS-DOS came around, they introduced QBasic, and it became very popular. Everybody started programming in QBasic. The interesting thing is that everybody who is a super developer right now at Microsoft started with the same humble beginnings: Basic.”
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Earning a seat at the final table of a World Poker Tour tournament took more than winning cards for Jeff DeWitt. It included a philosophy on gaming and the support of the Microsoft poker community.
By Joshua Isaac
July 21, 2008
Jeff DeWitt held two pair with aces over fours. Odds favored his cards, and some calculated betting on his part made this a big pot. Already eight hours into this four-day tournament, he played most of it short stacked, or at a low chip-level disadvantage, and could finally start playing from a position of power. But when someone went all in on the final card—in Texas hold ‘em, it’s called the river card—DeWitt got an uneasy feeling.
If he calls and wins, he’s up big. But if he loses, his tournament is done. He chose another option and folded. Sometimes, winning in poker requires cutting your losses. “I later learned the guy who went all in had two more fours, or four of a kind,” said DeWitt.
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Bruce Dawson shows that he can go just as far, or farther, on one wheel. He commutes 15 miles a day to work and recently finished a 500-mile team unicycle relay race across Nova Scotia.
By Jennifer Warnick
July 3, 2008
A lot about Bruce Dawson’s life can be explained with numbers, starting with the number 1. That’s how many wheels Dawson, a software design engineer in the Games group, uses to commute almost eight miles each way to work on an Avondale Road bike path in Redmond.
He averages 12 to 14 miles per hour (19 to 23 kilometers per hour) on his unicycle. On a recent training ride in Fremont, he achieved speeds of 16 to 17 mph (26 to 27 km/h). When pedaling to work or on the Sammamish and Burke Gilman bike trails, he routinely passes bicycles. “Anybody out for a casual ride is likely to be passed,” Dawson said. “It’s kind of a cruel pleasure I allow myself.”
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Employees say 150-mile “run of misery” across the Gobi Desert will test their limits, march them closer to their customers.
By Robin Dalmas
MSW Senior Editor
June 2, 2008
A masochist’s dream starts June 8. That’s when employees Orlando Ayala, Debby Fry Wilson, and William Calarese will begin an epic 150-mile (241.4-km) foot race across the Gobi Desert, a grueling rite of passage journey from Gazi to Upal in China’s Xinjiang Province. It’s called the Gobi March, and it’s built for pain.
The Gobi will punish them with 40°F (4.4°C) nights and 100°F (37.8°C) days. Its 10,000-foot (3,048-meter) mountain passes will squeeze their lungs. Sudden sandstorms could choke their oxygen supply, blow away their tents, and render the course invisible. And there are no bathrooms.
“It’s pretty much a comfort-free activity,” said Debby Fry Wilson, team captain.
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Lloyd Scott, veteran of network TV programming, brings his video and TV savvy to Microsoft. He’s the newest addition to the Media & Entertainment Group.
By Steve Birge
May 30, 2008
Quick quiz: Who has the largest library of on-demand high definition (HD) programming available online? (It’s not the networks, not Hollywood studios, and not a cable company giant.)
The answer: Microsoft, with 1,600 hours of HD content among a library of 5,000 total hours of content. Microsoft is still a software company, have no fear. But it also is on its way to “defining the future of entertainment delivery,” behind such products as Xbox and Zune, and is building itself to further expand Redmond’s collection of world-class content.
The latest move in the Media & Entertainment Group (MEG) toward this end is the hiring of Lloyd Scott, an 18-year veteran of guiding networks, studios, and cable distributors through programming and acquisition of content. Scott serves as a business analyst in a MEG team assembled by Corporate Vice President Blair Westlake that already boasts phenomenal networks of contacts and experience in Hollywood and content centers around the world.
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Microspotting and its creator, Ariel Meadow Stallings, rely on social media marketing to attract job candidates who would probably never consider working for Microsoft.
Marketing Manager Ariel Meadow Stallings uses social media techniques to attract job candidates to Microsoft. Photo by Darryl Bernstein.
By Fred Albert
If an outgoing woman with a wide smile and braids the color of peppermint sticks sidles up to you in a Redmond cafeteria and starts asking about your life, there’s no need to call security. You’ve just attracted the attention of Ariel Meadow Stallings.Stallings is the pigtailed perpetrator behind Microspotting, a corporate blog that profiles some of the most interesting, passionate personalities at Microsoft. Launched last October under the auspices of the Staffing Marketing team, Microspotting feels anything but corporate, reflecting the offbeat, irreverent character of the writer/photographer and the all-around life force behind it.
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Temporary workspace in Seattle offers relief from an ugly drive to Redmond. Reserve a space, shorten your commute, and preserve your sanity.
By Steve Birge
May 2, 2008
Crossing the dreaded Lake Washington bridges to get to work in Redmond is a lot less painful if you stay in Seattle.
For many Seattle residents, the new Worklink Touchdown space in the Westlake/Terry building in downtown Seattle is a welcome relief. The new space opened April 14. It offers loads of airy temporary desk space, meeting rooms and collaboration areas, and enclosed phone/Live Meeting rooms. It’s located just downstairs from existing Microsoft offices in Seattle.
About 150 spaces are available for FTEs to reserve for up to five consecutive work days. The bright, collegial space is not meant to replace assigned offices, but rather to offer a workplace for the convenience of employees in Seattle, said Cindy Quitasol, development manager for Americas Real Estate.
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Microsoft’s Baudboys head to San Francisco this week to compete for national a cappella singing title.
By Fred Albert
April 29, 2008
The Baudboys have been performing around Microsoft since the early 1990s. The current group includes (back row) Graham Sheldon, Ric Lewis, Owen Braun, Elliot Lewis, Dave McEwen and (front row) Jon Schwartz, Mark Adolph, Paul Eng.
It has all the makings of a Hollywood hit: Eight nerds band together to form a singing group. On the eve of the big competition, one of the members breaks his back, but the show goes on, and in spite of seemingly insurmountable odds, the geeks beat out the pros to nab the grand prize. Microsoft’s own Baudboys, an eight-man a cappella singing group, took top honors March 8 at the Pacific Northwest Harmony Sweepstakes, besting more experienced groups for the title of top a cappella group in the region, despite the fact that first tenor Ric Lewis had to spend much of the concert confined to a chair due to a degenerate disc.
“The fact that we won Northwest Harmony Sweeps was the upset of the year, because we were going up against six other professional groups,” marveled Dave McEwen, Baudboys president and a content project manager for Developer and Platform Evangelism. “When they finally announced who won, we were all in shock.”
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New “vertical campus” in Boston area gives Microsoft a presence in a bustling tech community. Recruit-rich MIT and Harvard are nearby.
By Steve Birge
Microsoft’s new vertical campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, occupies this building very close to Harvard, MIT, and downtown Boston.
Microsoft is working to dispel the perception by many in the United States that it is a Seattle company.
It has development offices in Silicon Valley, North Dakota, North Carolina, and sales offices elsewhere in the U.S. Its extensive global presence includes development centers in India, Ireland, Israel, and China.
Now, in hopes of stepping even farther away from its Seattle-centric image, Microsoft is substantially expanding its presence in the Boston area. It opened offices there last fall and now is aggressively recruiting for a “vertical campus” in Cambridge, an office that will have many groups on separate floors in one building, as opposed to Redmond’s “horizontal” campus model. The new campus is located across the Charles River from downtown Boston, in the heart of the East Coast’s hottest technology center and down the road from technology powerhouses MIT and Harvard.
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Software Design Engineer Jeffrey Kafer parlayed an interest in acting into a part-time career doing voice-overs. His fledgling efforts have already earned him honors.
By Fred Albert
Jeffrey Kafer says that voice-over work gives him a creative outlet without taking him away from his family or his job as an SDET. It’s even earned him an award.
April 14, 2008
Jeffrey Kafer spends a lot of his time in the closet. And if he has his way, he won’t be coming out any time soon.
The closet in question is in Kafer’s Monroe, Washington, home. A scant four feet square, it doubles as a recording studio, where the 35-year-old software design engineer in test pursues his dream of becoming a voice-over artist. Poised at a microphone surrounded by sound-deadening sweaters and blankets, he records lines from commercials, films, software, and books, hoping to become the next James Earl Jones or—at the very least—Don Pardo. “I’ve been known to be in my closet for two or three hours every night,” Kafer laughed.
Kafer’s interest in voice-over work was a natural outgrowth of his involvement in theater. He started acting in his teens and participated in community theater and college improv groups for the next 20 years. But as he got older, other responsibilities took precedence. “I got married and had two kids and just couldn’t devote three or four nights a week to rehearsals,” Kafer explained.
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