Today is my birthday. I use these blog posts like open time capsules. They capture a moment in time at a specific time. Up to this point, birthday’s always felt like they were building up to some greater event. This year I feel like my birthday finds me in the middle of execution. That is glorious and frustrating.
Original post by Rob Mensching
Most of you aren’t my friend on Facebook. That’s okay, you’re not missing anything. In fact, my Facebook profile was completely dead until Twitter created the Facebook app that republished my tweets. Until yesterday, I basically added no additional content to Facebook than what I posted to Twitter. What changed yesterday?
Original post by Rob Mensching
Today, Jenny and I start the first leg of our flight to New Zealand. On March 1st we will arrive there without February 28th existing. The international date line is so cool.
We’ll be in New Zealand for two weeks. During that time I’ll have no electronic wizardry of any note with me (Jenny carries the camera). Thus I’ll be basically incommunicado.
Have a great couple weeks and keep coding, I’ll catch up when I get back!
Original post by Rob Mensching
Today I turned 0×21. For the non-geeks out there, that’s thirty three. The way 21 feels like a coming of age for many people (hey, I can drink now!), 33 feels like a huge step for me. If you follow me here, you know I talked about the end of the beginning quite a bit last year. Now I feel I’m absolutely at the beginning of the middle of life. Now I also feel I can reveal the surprise I mentioned on Hanselminutes last month.
At this point in time, my life is defined by two things: my wife and my work. My wife represents the center of my family. I recognized this a few years ago when our anniversary became a personal holiday for me. I don’t talk about this facet of my life here much because it is personal and private.
On the other hand, I use my work to express myself publicly. I want to create things that people find useful. I want to go out and explain how those things are created. I want to include others in the creation of things that are useful. And the things I create are written in software.
I also want my work to be a reflection of me. I’ve heard psychologists and sociologists say a man’s identity is often defined by his work. That is certainly true of me.
In general, I’m probably best known as a "setup geek". In Microsoft, sometimes I’m an "open source guy". But everywhere I’m the "WiX toolset benevolent dictator". Those are the things that identify me and I’m pretty comfortable about that.
But that identity represented only the work I did in my free time. There was a huge body of work that I did during the day that was important but over the years began to represent less of what I was about. After ten years the cognitive dissonance reached a point where I decided it was time to do something about it.
Last year my good friend Robert Flaming said to me, "You talk about setup and suggest how it should be better but hide behind the fact that getting the work done is just your night job." That stung a bit but mostly because it was true.
I took a week off at the end of August to think about whether I was going to do setup or not.
In September, I made the very big decision to join the Deployment Technology Group in Microsoft’s Developer Division. The Developer Division, or DevDiv, in Microsoft is primarily responsible for all things Visual Studio and .NET Framework. Historically when I’ve referred to "Visual Studio" it would have been more accurate to say "DevDiv".
The Deployment Technology Group, or DTG, is the team responsible for the setup of Visual Studio and .NET Framework. They also maintain the Setup and Deployment project in Visual Studio 2010. DTG is also the primary contributor to the WiX toolset. Historically, when I’ve referred to the "Visual Studio team contributing to the WiX toolset" it would have been more accurate to say "DTG".
Which brings me to the "surprise" I mentioned on Hanselminutes. When Scott Hanselman asked me if the WiX toolset was ever my day job, I kind of dodged the question and answered it like I wasn’t on the DTG team yet. At that moment, I was not mentally prepared to merge my night job identity with my day job identity and the questions I imagined people would start asking. So, I added the lame comment that essentially translated into, "Ask me again in a month. I’ll have it sorted out then."
My Product Unit Manager (my boss’s boss) and I had a similar conversation a month earlier when he asked why I hadn’t announced my move to DTG publicly. He was actually a bit miffed and asked if I lacked confidence in the team or something. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. I actually think DTG is going to be one of the best teams I’ve ever worked on in Microsoft. The reality is that it took time for me to understand my new role and what it means to me.
So what is my new role? Well, my Group Program Manager introduces me as "our Architect". That makes me smile but I’m not a high enough level to actually be an Architect at Microsoft yet so I like to say I’m an "Architect In Training". As a senior developer on DTG, I’m obviously focused on the technical aspects of setup in general and tools for setup in specific. Thus far I’ve spent almost all of my time in planning for the next version of Visual Studio. I’ve had basically zero impact on Visual Studio 2010. Everything else is yet to be defined.
So what is next? Well, WiX v3.5 is very important to me. The WiX toolset is still mostly a night job for me but I do spend quite a bit of time talking to people on my team about the work they do in the WiX toolset and how best to accomplish it. Remember, at this point in time, Votive is fully developed by a developer on the DTG team, Tony, and Burn’s new foundation came from the set of developers in DTG responsible for .NET Framework installation.
After WiX v3.5 will be the next version of Visual Studio and WiX v4.0. As you can see the lines between my day job and night job are very blurry but for now it’s working.
In fact, every week for the last four months I’ve thought, "DTG was a great move for me." I now spend all of my time thinking about how to improve setup. Right now that constant attention is helping me recognize the depth of work needed to truly build a coherent story for setup development on the Windows platforms. From there I start to think about how to address the problems. Sometimes a solution can be built immediately into the WiX toolset and sometimes a solution is something we plan for later. The ability to tackle short term and long term problems is incredibly invigorating.
Ultimately, I write less code but (hopefully) have a greater and wider impact. Over a fantastic birthday dinner, I told Jenny that the last 33 years felt like I was building a foundation. Now, with her, we go build something cool.
Original post by Rob Mensching
Okay, last week I posted a video of Jonathan Coulton and Kid Beyond. I had never heard of Kid Beyond before but his beatbox skills impressed me so much that I immediately ordered the album. Well, the album showed up yesterday afternoon. I ran up to my office, popped it into my computer, ripped the CD and let it sync down to my Zune. I listened to the album while answering emails for a bit before going to bed. But it wasn’t until I was on the bus this morning with my headphones jacked in that I really came to appreciate Amplivate
Seriously, the only criticism I have of the album is that it isn’t a full length album. It’s an EP with 4 original songs and 4 remixes. I would love 8+ more songs to go with original 4 that were so awesome.
I think the part that impresses me most is that he creates the music from scratch. Remember, this album (at least the first 4 songs) are created solely by Kid Beyond’s beatbox, rap and midi loop skills. All of the sounds come out of his mouth then he loops them to create the music.
Want to see it happen live? Watch him build up Mothership below before he drops into the lyrics.
And for the geeks out there watch Kid Beyond describe the creation of "Deep Inside".
Original post by Rob Mensching
I’m not big on New Year Resolutions. Not even when the year begins a new decade. However, the typical days off around the holidays do provide some time to stop and reflect. And the one thing that keeps coming to mind is that there are a lot of thoughts in my head that I would like to blog.
Unfortunately, a typical blog entry takes me a couple hours to put together. I just don’t have those hours to spend like I used to. So, in the free time made available to me this holiday I’ve been thinking about why it takes me so long to write a blog entry and what to do about it.
After much thought, the issue comes down to quality. Quality is a tricky word. The depth of it is explored in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
But the desire to make each sentence "high quality" slows the whole writing process to a crawl and very little content comes of it. That leads to a frustrating back log of items to write. In turn, the frustration leads to a lack of desire to write. You can see how this gets us nowhere fast.
So, after much thought, I’ve decided to try a new tactic. I’m going to just write and post. That means that some ideas will end up here half baked. Other ideas might be missing the necessary back story for them to make much sense. Some yet might contain some serious grammar or sentence structure problems (comma splices are sure to be an issue).
However, my hope is that by relaxing a lot and simply getting the concepts written down, I will slowly improve my velocity at creating quality. Or maybe I’ll find that quality isn’t all that important. Either way, I hope to find more enjoyment in blogging.
I have not decided what velocity I should target. I’m thinking two blog posts in addition to the WiX Working Group video post on Thursday might round out the weeks well. I expect there will be quite a few more personal things posted but I hope to post more entries about setup and particularly the WiX toolset. Of course, responses to your questions or comments could easily turn into entries here as well. <smile/>
So here’s to my pseudo-New Year Resolution for 2010. Happy New Year and I hope to see you around here a bit more.
Original post by Rob Mensching
Almost exactly a year ago, on the anniversary where I declared November 4th a personal holiday, I said I felt like I was "at the end of the beginning". Today I decided that I have definitely completed the beginning. On Monday, I start the middle.
Just like always, all the change hit at the same time. In August, I did the work to start RobMensching.com LLC. It took two years of talking about it to finally sit down and make the company really happen. Little did I know that a few days later in September that I would decide to leave the Live Mesh team.
No, I did not decide to leave Microsoft. No, I’m not saying where I’m going yet. Suffice it to say that today was my last day on Live Mesh and on Monday I will take on new yet familiar challenges.
Now don’t take my decision to think there is anything wrong with Live Mesh. The team there was good. An opportunity just came up that looked like a fantastic opportunity for personal and professional growth.
Oh, and did I mention I got started and completed my first contract work under RobMensching.com LLC while all this was going? Yeah.
Anyway, so now you know why I went dark.exe for a while. All is well. I’m looking forward to November 4th where I’ll spend the day walking around the neighborhood reflecting on the last year and the year to come.
In the meantime, keep coding. You know I am. <smile/>
Original post by Rob Mensching