Halloween At Microsoft

Well, one of the best things here at Microsoft is that (maybe contrary to common belief) it's never all work and no play.

Want proof? Let me introduce you to my manager:



No kidding, this is a photo of my manager, Vasili Zolotov, in his office working on Halloween day. I just took this a few minutes ago actually, you're getting this coverage in almost real-time :)

To those outside the US, October 31st marks halloween here. You surely have an idea about halloween seeing the movies and stuff. Today was my very first halloween in the US.

Microsoft had made preparations for employees to bring in their kids starting 3pm for some trick-or-treating here on campus. Our administrative assistant already had prepared signs for people who will be providing candies in their offices to hang on their doors while Microsoft catering provided guests with food and more candy stands on each floor.

All in all it was a very interesting experience. Definitely a very memorable Halloween.

Of course I had to forget the camera and keep on regretting it all day while I watch colleagues and cafeteria staff at lunch wearing all kinds of funny costumes, but by 3pm when the children started flowing and more costumes were on display I just had to get back home and bring my camera which I did.

So here you go some photos of what's happening right now as I write here at Microsoft's main campus in Redmond.
Happy Halloween!


Candies in front of offices waiting for little trick-or-treaters



The signs on the offices and the candy bowl. The funniest thing is that this hand in the middle of the candy bowl detects motion and slaps you on the hand when you're taking candy :D



Yet another sign for candy seekers



Little trick-or-treaters helping themselves to some candy.



Cute kids dressed in all kinds of costumes



Baby: Where is all the candy?



The ghastly candy stand on our floor



No, Bob Marley is still resting in peace, this is Roger Fleig, my manager's manager in the wig over there



Candy and food everywhere


P.S.
I apologize for the poor quality of some (or all) of the photos, the lighting was very faint and I had to do without a tripod.

The week in review

I've been getting lots of spam comments on the blog here from ad bots. And while the bots were courteous enough to tell me that my blog is great and that they will definitely bookmark me, I still prefer human commentators.

So unfortunately I will have to turn on word verification for comments on the blog. This will cause blogspot to ask you to write some word you see generated in an image just to make sure you're human. I have been trying to do without this for some time but it went up to 8 to 10 spam comments a day on various posts from spam bots and this seems like the only way to go. I'm sorry for any inconvenience and I hope it doesn't deter anyone from commenting whenever they feel like it:)

With that announcement done we could go on with the news. Last week has been eventful to say the least. One of the main highlights was a team lunch arranged by my lead. It turns out it's kinda MS tradition for the team to all go on a lunch or something similar (yes, paid by MS ;)) whenever a new member joins, or sometimes when there is an event to celebrate, like someone on the team having a baby or getting married. So this one was called for not only because of me joining the team but it also coincided with one of our team member having a baby.

We all went to a restaurant called Thai Ginger and it was maybe my first time to meet all of the team. It turned out we are a dozen or so (The Query Execution team) and everyone was just so cool. It also seems that there are many car enthusiasts in the team. One guy drives a corvette and I think the dev lead drives an Rx-8, I am definitely on the right team here :).

Other memorable events were us (Helal and I) getting our new and kinda permenant rental apartment. We should be moving there first week of november (we are currently in temp housing provided by Microsoft), and while I'm not particularily excited about the moving hassles, the apartment is just super cool. We were so very lucky to find a vacant apartment exactly to our spec, 2 bedroom 2 baths, 1100 square feet, perfect floorplan, but the best thing about it by far is the lake view. Out patio/deck would have direct view over lake Sammamish. The complex also has docks where you can park your boat/jet ski and is an excellent place to hang out a bit.

Of course this now means we should start looking for furniture/appliances for the apartment. We will try to pass by the nearest IKEA. Feel free to remind us of any things we might need with a comment down here :)

One big highlight of the week is having being able to secure tickets for Bon Jovi's have a nice day tour when it comes to Seattle next march. We got the presale password through Microsoft and got a couple of excellent seats. 1 day later and I found the tickets going on auction with bids starting at $110, I got ours for around $50 a piece :D

I'm gonna go and try to start being productive now :)
Ciao Ciao

Last weekend

Well, thought I'd give you (and maybe myself) a break from daily blog posts. That's why I hadn't posted the past few days.
But anyway, the break is over so here we go :)

I briefly mentioned how the last weekend was kinda busy and fun. I'm gonna elaborate on the subject a bit, and then maybe post a few lousy pics as usual :)

So last weekend we had a visitor actually, Helal's friend happened to be in Texas so he flew over for the weekend before he went back to Egypt.

Of course we'd only been here for less than a month, but we had to act like pros and show him around. That was quite a challenge actually seeing that we still get lost very easily around here and had only been to a handful of places.

So anyway, with the help of friends here we were able to come up with something.

We picked Murad up from Sea-Tac airport (his name is Murad and I'm gonna start using it now) and first went back home. It was already past 9 so any hopes of going somewhere in Redmond were long gone (except maybe the nearest safeway supermarket as it opens 24/7) We decided we'd hit a pub in Seattle. We looked around on the Internet (yeah, what's a geek to do) and found this place called delrey. Looked good so we took the 15 minute way to Seattle, spent 30 minutes looking for parking and we were there. The reality was just a teeny tiny bit different than what we had in our minds. I mean the site said "crowded: yes", instead it should have said "crowded: extremely beyond imagination" maybe.

Seriously, the place was full of people, everyone standing (no places to sit) and just having drinks and talking. It was extremely noisy too. And you'd stand in line for the bar tender to wait on you for like 15 minutes. Anyway it was still fun, very different, would have been even more fun with a bit "softer" group, if you know what I mean, but anyway. We stayed for like 2 hours and then went back.

Next day was shopping day, Murad needed to go shop for stuff for himself and people back in Egypt and of course I am always up for shopping. We went to this huge place called Seattle Premium outlets. I'd seen some outlets here before but this is like a horizontal mall of outlets, they had virtually everything, I mean cloths-wise you could find Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Burberry, Tommy Hilfiger, Gap, Levi's, Dockers, Aeropostale, Quiksilver, Nike, Adidas, Banana Republic, and that's just off the top of my head.
So we spent from noon to 7 pm shopping, came back home, had some dinner/late lunch. We were then too tired to go elsewhere so we just stayed in, invited a couple of friends and had an intense Xbox gaming session. Dead Or Alive and Burnout are always so much fun in multiplayer modes.

Next day we were planning a hike, we'd originally planned on going to Mount Rainier national park, but we woke up late and we'd made reservations at Skycity in Seattle's space needle for dinner. So we had to be back at home at 5 to change (business casual dress code is in effect at skycity).

So we decided on Marymoor park instead, as it's very close to where we live. Marymoor park turned out to be a very good park indeed. They have one of the very few off-leash dog areas in the states. And it's not too small either. I also found out that Microsoft covers every acre of Marymoor park with free wifi internet access. Really dunno how or why they did that but it's just the facts.
So we played with the dogs, walked along the well treaded path for the best part of 3 hours and then went back home.

We made it at Skycity just in time for our reservations. We were 5 people. Skycity is probably the American version of the revolving restaurant in Grand Hayat in Egypt for the Egyptians amongst you. Actually the revolving restaurant might be the Egyptian version of Skycity, but anyway, you get the idea.

Food was good enough, the appetizers were exceptionally good though. We had a fun dinner looking at an extremely nice view of Seattle city. We went back home and I wrote the blog post that appears just below this one :)

So this turned out to be kinda prequel post.

Anyway, I'll leave you with some photos of Marymoor park and will "see" you soon in a later post.


Helal, Mustafa, and I (left to right) at marymoor park



Mustafa, Helal, and Murad walking down the trail.






The four of us at the end of the trail, behind us is lake Sammamish



More nature at marymoor park, you probably noticed I'm always behind. That's because of all the pics I take, they'd just stopped waiting for me, arghhhhh.


And of course, the post wouldn't be complete without a photo of my new girlfriend :)



See? I'm a good sportsman and I let my friends photograph with her :)



See you guys.

Inside Microsoft Photos

It's been an exhausting but really nice weekend. It's coming to an end now that it's Monday 1 am. I'm dead tired and sleepy right now and will have to wake up again in 3 hours to drive a friend to the airport for his flight to Egypt, so I'll most probably skip on the narration this time and maybe tell you all about it sometime later.

For now I thought I'd give you some photos that I'd promised long ago and didn't deliver (till now that is). Photos of how Microsoft looks like. Of course not all of Microsoft, most of these photos were taken in building 35 (which is where my office happens to be, along with the rest of people working on SQL Server), and the building 34 cafeteria which is the closest cafeteria to my office.

So there goes the photos, I'll try to throw in some explanation too.



The building has many glass wall, and this is how it looks like outside one of them



One of the many many alleys inside any given building at Microsoft, this specific one is in my building, building 35.



Now you know why I still get lost inside my building



One side of the kitchen, there is one of these on every floor in every building, yes all drinks are free, and there is even popcorn too :)



A sort of a lounge area, you can just relax here or use your laptop and the corporate wifi inside all buildings to work.



That's what is on the table in the previous photo, a glass chess.



Foosball tables, lots of those lying around in every building, and they're pretty popular too, I'd seen some very intense games and I must admit, I never thought there could be that much skill involved in that game.



And of course, how could I work for a company that doesn't have a ping pong table ;) (an ITWorx joke if you will)



And that's the building on the outside, well a part of it.



Lots of parts around the campus are just like this one, thankfully :)



A section of the nearest cafeteria, yes a section, to get an idea of how big it is I have to tell you that the maximum occupancy for this one is 900 people. It's one of many cafeterias scattered around the campus. Lovely food too.


And never say that MS people are not fun. Those 2 photos are just samples of what people hang on the doors and windows of their offices :)

(Slightly) Better Photos Of My Car

First of all I must thank you all for the warm congrats and responses I got on the last thread. It really felt amazing. I can probably never thank you enough guys.

So both you and I know the previous photos were not that good, I tried to rectify that and took some photos (again in a real hurry) that I think might be better if only for the daylight. She's probably gonna be the subject of many photos to come but I promise from now on I'll spare you the bad ones at least :)

So there they go
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

I G O T T H I S !!!

I am just speechless right now and I do wanna tell you guys about it and celebrate, the thing in these pics is now mine and parked right outside my apartment!!!

So I'll skip the words I can't find and present you a few photos for now!

This baby is mine! Woohoooo!!!











I apologize for the bad photos, the conditions were not that good and I didn't have a tripod, will take more and better photos tomorrow morning isa.