In the midst of the chaos

Sorry to have the blog so quiet lately, but I've flown over 7,000 miles, moved over half a ton from attic, basement and shed and shredded an unimaginable amount paper over the past few weeks. I'm preparing for relocation. Strangely the movers would not go into the attic nor under the house to get anything, so I had to move everything into the garage that they couldn't or wouldn't go get.

Before we put our house on the market, it seemed like everyone wanted it. Now, strangely, it didn’t sell immediately. Fumbles by the realtor only add to my frustration in this key piece of the puzzle. If this piece was done, the rest would be much easier to deal with.

Now I’m back in Redmond, my two sons are wreaking havoc on my wife back in the home state and there are obstacles popping up at every turn. Things that should be simple and almost automatic are taking days to work out and are so overly complicated as to make your hair fall out.

Add to the pile of problems, the project I left to come here could not find some documentation that I had left for them so to help them I’m trying to recreate it from memory. Yet another frustration, but unbelievably, this work is giving me a little bit of an outlet.

The work and team here are good, but due to an upcoming deadline this week, I’m pretty much on my own until then. So I’m fumbling around like a totally green bean. This is not comforting and actually is totally frustrating. I’m used to hitting the ground running and jumping immediately into the fire. Still, this place is unbelievable and the opportunity that I’ve come into has all the potential you could want.

I do want to say that the Microsoft back office and support crew, the relocation crew, the car shipper crew and the temporary housing crew are the best I’ve ever dealt with. I’ve worked with many different companies in and around these areas and the team that Microsoft has put together really has it together. Out of half a dozen trips, car shipments, stays and everything else, there have been only a couple of hiccups that I can recall and they have worked very hard to work those out as well.

So, having little sleep, enough frustrations to last a year and painfully slow progress I can still say it is progress none the less. Be patient, we’ll get back to the wonderful world of software development soon.