brian's blog

Fun email I received:

Subject: STOP THIS
This must stop ASAP. This is not wanted. And I have created this email
account JUST for you. And furthermore, you are not to sell or give this
email address to anyone. If I get any mail from anyone- I will then know
where it came from and I will sue you. Trust me when I say this. Many have challenged and many have lost.

Reverend V.Thomas Clark
United Life Church
Youth Minister

He then quoted a piece of spam he received:

From: "XBOX Order Confirmation" <XBOX@brianblog.info>
To:
Subject: Order Confirmation: XBOX

[Rest of the spam deleted]

So, seeing "brianblog.info" in his spam, Reverend Clark hit up "brianblog.com" and emailed me. (It's crazy that it's actually a registered domain.)

Either way, I'm just glad I'm not the real spammer - Reverend Clark sounds like a pretty intimidating spam fighter. Many have lost!

Luggage update: Found and returned. Finally. They re-located it in Washington Dulles, and sent it through to Seattle this past weekend, where someone then delivered it to my home. Contents were relatively intact, though shuffled around, with my business cards on top -- good thing I had them in there, or else my luggage might never have been found.

Luggage update: The airline called me up the other day to tell me they found my carry-on luggage. They described some of its contents to confirm it was mine. For some reason, it was in Washington Dulles International Airport.

Today, they call me up again to tell me they haven't found my bag yet. "But you called me the other day to tell me it was found!" I say. "We don't have it," they answer. "But you described its contents!" I say. "Oh, that's strange. Well, we have no idea where it is now," they say. "We'll send you out some claim forms."

Idea: If you ever want to replace your old wardrobe with brand new duds on someone else's dime, just fly United.

I noticed the 545 bus I was riding the other day had WiFi service -- but it didn't work. The access point signal was strong, and I connected without a problem, but it couldn't make a single 'net connection. I even tried after most of the Microsofties got off at Overlake Transit Center, just in case the service wasn't working because everyone was trying to cram through the door at the same time.

So much for that good idea.

Josh calls me up the other day to tell me that we're both on the front page of super-popular gadget guide Gizmodo. I was pretty confused until I found out that it was really a story about Toshiba and Canon's SED television, unveiled at CES. Turns out that the particular 15 minute session we were in was being photographed for marketing materials, and I'm visible (front row, black shirt, arms crossed) staring at the display:

Josh is immediately on my right, though he's hard to spot.

I love the photo. It looks like I'm in a version of Apple's "1984" Superbowl ad:

I even snapped my own photo of the SED displays in that room, though it really doesn't show anything particularly interesting, besides the fact that it's a flat screen television:

Montreal was fun. I was born there, and though I never lived there, it always feels vaguely familiar to me for some reason. Still, the conference was a bit of a bore, and the recruiting opportunities were a little slow, but I used the magnetic stick building blocks we were giving away to keep myself entertained:

Travelling back from Montreal yesterday really, really sucked. My whole goal was to make it back to Seattle by 7 o'clock or so, so I could attend the giant farewell party for the entire half of MSN Entertainment leaving the team.

Super short version:

• United somehow loses my reservation, and gave my seats away on sold-out flights
• After fighting, once re-booked, the flight leaves 1.5 hours late, and sits on the Chicago runway for a half hour, missing my Seattle connection
• United forces me to check my carry-on luggage, then mysteriously loses it -- and being a carry on, it's not tagged
• After fighting again to get a new flight out Saturday night (instead of the next day), my re-booked flight out of Chicago leaves very late, killing my last remaining hope of making it to the party
• I still have no clue where my luggage is today

Pardon me while I vent the full version - it's therapeutic:

• I get to the Montreal airport and find that my return flight reservation was cancelled on Thursday (after I had already arrived in Montreal) by a United agent. No explanation why - they claim someone called them to cancel it, and that my flights are now completely sold out.
• United says the soonest they can get me to Seattle is the next day, on Sunday. After an hour of arguing back and forth with United and with the help of Microsoft's travel agent, American Express, I finally get booked into the two flights I need to get to Seattle. (Why do they say a flight is completely sold out if it's not really completely sold out?)
• While we're on the walkway to the plane, we're told that the plane is too small for rolling suitcase carry-ons to fit in the overhead bin, so United wants to check them. I object, since my carry-on has fragile items, etc, but United insists that the bag will be treated & stored differently than checked baggage, and will be waiting on the airplane walkway immediately after we unload in Chicaco. So they tag the bag with a ticket, give me the other half of the ticket, and take it away.
• Our flight was late arriving to the Montreal gate, and is delayed leaving by an hour and a half. Pretty annoying, but I figure I should have 30 minutes left to catch my connection to Seattle once we land.
• Once we land in Chicaco, too many United planes are occupying the gates, so we wait on the runway for -- you guessed it -- 30 minutes. The flight attendant suggests using our cells to call the United reservation number to find out our connection statuses, and/or alternative options.
• While waiting on the runway, I call and find out that my connection to Seattle has left, and that United has re-booked me for another flight to Seattle the next morning. After arguing back and forth at length again with United without resolution, the Microsoft travel agent (these guys are awesome) reserves me on an American Airlines flight leaving Chicago to Seattle that night, which would get me into Seattle with enough time to still make a short appearance at the party. I still need United to change my current ticket to American, though. They do, which makes me angry that United never offered this option to me in the first place.
• After waiting on the runway, I finally get off the plane in Chicaco. My carry-on suitcase, and several other people's suitcases, never come out. The captain checks, the lead baggage handler checks, and none of them can find any trace of the special carry-on bags. They're not at the regular baggage carousel, they're not in Montreal (they called), they're nowhere. The best part about this is that the ticket they tagged my bag with is not keyed to me in any way. The ticket doesn't tell them anything - not where my bag is going, not whose bag it is. Nothing. What's the point? After searching fruitlessly for some time, I head over to my American flight.
• The American flight leaves an hour late, held back because its flight crew hasn't arrived yet. My chances of making it to Seattle in time for the party disappear.
• Once I arrive in Seattle, I fill out the lost baggage form at the United desk. Once I hand it to the United lady, she enters in the info, finishes up, and just as I'm leaving she calls out "Oh, I see you came in on American on your last leg! You can't do this here, you need to go to the American lost baggage desk!" I explain that it was freakin' United that lost my bag, that United is the one who can do something now that their computer knows who the other half of the ticket belongs to, that American had nothing to do with it, but she insists, citing some arcane airline rule.

I'm trying to keep it all in perspective -- this isn't that big a deal, overall, there are much bigger problems in the world -- but wow, I'm frustrated.

From Defective Yeti, Another Awesome Seattle Weekend:

You know how, in science-fiction movies, every world has a single, defining characteristic? It's always, like, The Desert Planet or The Ice Planet or The Swamp Planet or The Lava Planet?

I have apparently been marooned on The Planet Of Perpetually Shitty Weather, populated by a race of pale, damp creatures who subsist exclusively on coffee, and spend their days fretting about the standing water in their crawl spaces.

Okay, I'm a bit behind in posting. Rapid fire update:

• CES / Vegas was fun, though I burnt out after about three days and came down with a nasty cold -- probably from shaking hands and handling casino chips.
• Engadget did a pretty good photo tour of the Microsoft booth
• Overall, I lost $140 gambling, mostly at Blackjack. Not too much of a loss in the end.
• The SED televisions at Toshiba's booth were incredible
• Nothing too exciting happened at the Microsoft booth during my shifts, though I did spend a good half hour chatting with Danny from season 3 of The Apprentice. Interesting guy, and he still looks exactly the same as he did on the show.
• Josh and Scott made frequent fun of me for keeping the "Privacy Please" tag on my door so housecleaning wouldn't tidy up my room. I'm OCD, it's already clean -- so why would I want some stranger alone with all my stuff? Huh?! I'm not crazy!
• Work's a bit chaotic, especially since it seems half of our team is moving to other parts of the company, but at least I finally have a project to really focus on
• I'm jetting out again twice more this month -- first to Montreal from this Wednesday to Saturday to help with a recruiting event, and then again on the 24th to San Jose to visit some internal partners at the Silicon Valley campus.
• Saw The Producers (the movie) last night, and enjoyed it quite a bit. How old is Mel Brooks now, anyway?
• More Vegas pics coming soon!

So I'm in Vegas! I was lucky enough to be asked to help man the Microsoft booth at the CES tradeshow. Flew in a few hours ago, waited in the taxi line at the Vegas airport for an hour with five hundred other people, and am staying at the Wynn hotel. I snapped a few quick photos and have posted them in an album here.

I've never been to Vegas before so heading down the strip was a bit of a sensory overload. Right now I'm watching the Bill Gates keynote. Bits I'm particularly excited about:

• The Phillips VOIP phone that plugs into Messenger to make calls
• The DirecTV partnership with Media Center to enable rich on-demand TV content
• The Averatec mini Media Center (< $1000 w/ tuner, $499 w/o a tuner) -- seems like Averatec is trying to release a Mac Mini PVR before Apple does
• The MTV Urge music service -- this seems like a slick service, has a subscription option, and seems to integrate tightly with Media Player. Our team will have mixed feelings about it, though.
• They showed off a very sexy portable video device, roughly the size of a PSP, made by LG. Widescreen, too.
• A Windows Live gadget that recommends TV shows based on the shows you've recorded on your MCE (which can also be remotely programmed via a Live Remote Record gadget)
• A $400 HD DVD drive to be released in March, though the floating head producer / director commentary was a little creepy
• An agreement with the cable operators to allow HD protected content to be recorded & transfered via Media Center was announced -- I want to learn more about this
• The Xbox team is adding a third worldwide manufacturer to try and keep up with demand / supply issues
• An external Xbox HD DVD drive to be released later this year

I missed the first 15 min of the keynote, though, so I may have missed some other announcements.

Anyway, it's about time I get out of this hotel room!

New Year's Eve was a blast. We started the evening out with dinner at Pellini's, overlooking the city from the 28th floor of the Renaissance Madison hotel. The food was decent, and the view was impressive. Afterwards, since the monorail is still broken, we caught a cab up to the EMP to party & see the Presidents.

The EMP was busy, but certainly wasn't packed, which made it easy to get close to the main stage. We wandered through all the exhibits (open for the evening), mostly ignoring the three stages until the Presidents came up to play. They were fantastic. They sound great live. In fact, they sounded nearly identical to their CDs -- they certainly don't seem to rely on studio magic. They put on a great, funny show. I enjoyed it more than any other concert I've ever been to.

I recorded a super secret video of them performing Lump; check it out here.

Around midnight, most of us snuck out of the concert and the EMP temporarily to witness the start of the new year up close in front of the Space Needle:

The fireworks lasted for 7 minutes, and were great to watch from up close, though most people who watched it on TV seemed to think they were somewhat underwhelming. For us, it was a tough to know exactly when the new year started since there was no dropping ball or other sort of marker to indicate when midnight hit. Still, there were plenty of people nearby watching it with us:

Overall, lots of fun.

All the best to everyone in the new year!