the tindog coffeehouse

It’s hard to believe, but it was 10 years ago this week that I first went to work at Microsoft, the ink on my new MCSE certification still fresh.  To this day, I’m still not sure how I made it through the rigorous interview process, but somehow I made it on as a “blue-badge” (a full-time Microsoft employee, as opposed to the “orange-badge” contractors that mostly walked through the door), hired to provide professional server support from the still-under-construction Las Colinas campus in Irving, Texas.

I arrived just as Windows 2000 was being released to manufacturing and just in time for Y2K.  It was also right before the dot-com bubble burst in early 2000.  Indeed, in the two years I worked there, I saw the glory days of the late ’90s — a time when working at Microsoft meant swimming in lucrative company stock options and bonuses and work was something you did between foosball tournaments — give way to the harsh realities of the falling stock market, before regaining a sense of hopeful optimism with the impending release of Windows XP.

It was from my cubicle that I watched the presidential debate between George W. Bush and Al Gore in which Gore touted his infamous “lockbox” and where I watched the ugliness of the 2000 election drag on with all its “hanging chads”.  And it was from my cubicle where I witnessed the horror of September 11th.  But it was also a place where I made numerous friendships and countless memories.

It was a stressful job, and I can’t say I fully miss it.  But I learned more there than I have at any other job I’ve ever had.  It provided invaluable experience that I’ve taken with me in the years since leaving, and I’m grateful for the time I was given there.

I was working at Microsoft at the time.  Usually I’d listen to the radio on the way to work, but for some reason on the morning of September 11, 2001, I didn’t.

I showed up for work a little before 8:00 AM, and the office was still pretty quiet.  I walked down the row of cubicles to say hi to my friend Larry, and I found him staring at his monitor.  “Did you hear about this?” he asked.  Of course I hadn’t.  “A plane crashed into the World Trade Center.”  Oh my God!  How awful!

I got back to my desk and pulled up any news website I could get, trying to find out what happened.  Normally, there were TVs at the end of the rows permanently tuned to MSNBC, but none of them had been working for a week or so.  And now I couldn’t reach any of the major news sites (msnbc.com, cnn.com, etc.) as they were all flooded with traffic.  I was able to get some information on the Dallas Morning News site, though, and kept reloading it over and over to try and get the latest updates.  This was a terrible accident!

Then came the news that another plane had hit the other tower, and we understood that it was no accident.

Within the hour, a third plane hit the Pentagon, and it was clear we were under attack.  By that time the TVs had been turned back on, and we split our attention between them and any other news we could get online.  Everything seemed to be pretty chaotic.

And then the south tower collapsed.

I couldn’t believe it.  It was all so surreal.  For a few moments I sat there thinking how there would only be a single World Trade Center building now and how strange that would be.  I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it.

Then came reports of a fourth plane down, this time in rural Pennsylvania, possibly the result of a hijacking that had been thwarted.  But when would it end?  How many more planes were still in the air, and what else could happen?  And then shortly after that, the north tower of the World Trade Center gave way.

Throughout the rest of the morning, we could only watch helplessly as we tried to grasp what had occurred in such a short amount of time.  The phones, which were typically pretty busy at that time of the day, were quiet, but there were a few calls coming in here and there.  We handled them the best we could, but our minds were clearly not on our work.  At lunch, everyone gathered in the cafeteria, where the company had agreed to buy everyone’s meal.  Everyone around me was angry and could only talk about getting revenge on the people who had carried out the attacks.  But I was silent, barely able to hold myself together.  After I was done eating, I went to my car and broke down in tears, and then I prayed; it was the only thing I could do.

I got home that evening and hugged and kissed my wife.  At that time we usually didn’t eat dinner at the table, but we did that night, turning the TV off in order to have a break from the news for a few minutes.  And I prayed again, for our nation, for the families of the victims, and for my daughter Megan, who was only 5 months old at the time.

It’s been 8 years since the attacks on September 11th, and I can still feel the gut-wrenching fear, confusion, and overwhelming sadness that I experienced on that day.  And that’s a good thing.  We should never forget.

God Bless America.

Apparently today is National Grouch Day.

Figures.

For the past couple of weeks, my eyes have been twitching like crazy.  Mainly my left eye, but my right one has been twitching some also.  (Thankfully, not both at the same time.)

Per EyeDoctorGuide.com, causes include:

• Corneal irritation or injury
• Stress
• Lack of sleep
• Fatigue
• Prolonged staring or eye strain
• Neurological disorders
• Possibly hereditary

Well, that doesn’t really help a whole lot.  Corneal irritation?  Probably not, but my eyes have been really dry and irritated lately due to allergies and air conditioning, and wearing my glasses instead of contacts hasn’t really helped.  Stress?  Yep.  Got plenty of that.  Lack of sleep and fatigue?  I’m exhausted.  Prolonged staring or eye strain?  I sit at a computer all day, so yeah.  Neurological disorders?  At this point, I wouldn’t rule it out.  Heredity?  Well, probably not, but who knows.

I’ve also seen some sites that say it can be caused by a vitamin deficiency (magnesium and potassium).  That seems plausible too.

So I guess I just need to eat a banana and go to bed.  Sounds like a plan to me.

About 400 of our employees were randomly selected to complete a survey about our jobs for Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For. I was one of those “lucky” few.

I hate surveys like this. It just seems pointless. I mean, who’s really going to give their company all A’s? Nobody loves their job that much. Right? OK, maybe some people do, I guess. But then you have the permanently disgruntled employees who constantly think the world is out to get them, and they see a survey like this as a way to stick it to management. Yeah, go on, fight the power!

I don’t hate my job, I really don’t. But I’m not in love with it either. Would I say this is one of the best companies to work for? Honestly, I would say it’s about average. Most of the stuff that I tend to complain about is stuff that exists anywhere you go in the corporate world.

Coincidentally, I took a day off yesterday, and we headed to Six Flags. While standing in line for the Roaring Rapids, the guy in front of us was wearing a shirt for a, well, post-mortem cleaning company. “Accidental death, murder, suicide, call 817…” Advertising a company like that on the same ride where someone drowned in 1999? Now there’s a guy who likes his job!

It’s been a very draining week in more ways than one.

At work, we’ve had two UPS units fail in our server room. One of them, deployed before I took over support for that group, backs up a file and print server. During the storms that crashed through the area the other night, the building temporarily lost power and the server went down, and it was down for about 5 hours before I could get to work and bring it back online. As a result, I have to go in on Sunday morning and replace that unit and another similar one with units that have a higher capacity.

The other failed UPS was a telco-owned unit that backs up an IMUX. I opened the door to the server room earlier to the horrific smell of ozone (smells like sulfur). At first I didn’t know what it was, and my initial thought was, “Oh, crap! What did I do?” A tech was eventually able to get out to replace the batteries but not before they stunk up the whole office and a rumor had spread that the server room had caught on fire. (Hopefully that rumor doesn’t make it on to my performance review.) Even though everything is fine now, I’m still feeling nauseous from inhaling all the fumes.

Also related to the recent storms, our home Internet service has been out for two days. Very frustrating, but at least we didn’t get the kind of property damage so many others did. I guess I would rather trade losing my roof for the relative minor inconvenience of being without Internet service.

But I’ve also just been really wiped out this week personally. For the past few days, I’ve had no energy and admittedly have been quite irritable. It’s also been a difficult week at work, and the storms the other night certainly didn’t help things.

I’m looking forward to getting some well-needed sleep and hopefully next week won’t be quite so turbulent.

Well, I’ve been using my company-issued CrackBerry for a few days now, and if I thought it would allow me to finally retire my beloved Sony Clie PDA, I was wrong.

Traditionally, I’ve used the PDA to sync Outlook data (contacts, calendar, etc.) between my home and work computers. The problem with the BlackBerry is, I can’t really sync it with Outlook on my home computer. Oh, I tried. And… it didn’t go so well. Screwed up my Outlook contacts and part of my calendar on my home computer and really screwed up the Blackberry. I had to wipe the Blackberry and have my corporate Blackberry server account reset, then redo all the settings. What a pain!

Now, I know what you’re saying. Yes, I’m sure there is a way to sync the BlackBerry with a corporate Exchange mailbox and a personal PST file. Well, phooey! I don’t care. It’s too much trouble. My handy-dandy PDA works just fine for that function, albeit with less-than-stellar battery life.

And yes, I know I have other choices. For example, I could forgo Outlook altogether in favor of web-based email services such those from Google or Yahoo. I could use the portable version of Thunderbird (at least for the contacts part). I could even use a web-based service such as AirSet to sync Outlook over the Internet. So, yes, I do have other alternatives. I just don’t like any of them. None of them do what I need to do as easily as my old PDA. The closest choice would be AirSet, but I can automatically rule that one out because of the bandwidth requirements, which wouldn’t fly with my Big Brother employer.

So at least for now, I’ll keep my Clie on hand to sync between my home and work computers. It’s not a perfect solution, but as long as the battery is charged, it’s a reliable one.

Not even 30 minutes after I posted my last post about how my rarely-used PDA is on life support and I don’t have a BlackBerry or smartphone, a box shows up at work containing a… (wait for it) …BlackBerry!

OK, so it’s not really mine officially, it’s the company’s to be used for business purposes, but still.

Hmm… What do I do now? Just send my dear old Sony Clie to the farm where old gadgets go to retire? (That’s a real place, right?) Still, I can’t imagine carrying yet another device around. (For the record, I’m still keeping my personal cell phone: a Samsung flip-phone that I absolutely love. Besides, the BlackBerry doesn’t have a camera; what’s that about?)