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One reaction to my story about the oldest computer at Microsoft still doing useful work was shock (shock!) that Microsoft suffers from power outages. In the Pacific Northwest, winter windstorms are quite common, and it is not unexpected that a windstorm blow down tall trees (which are also quite common) which in turn take out power lines. And if...

You can find the following typographical errors in the Big Room at the PDC: If you can locate all three of them and catch me at the PDC (say at the Fundamentals Lounge or at the Ask the Experts table), I'll award you a prize of um (rummaging through my bag) how about a retractable network cable? (Or an autographed business card? But then again, ...

Most people who care about such things know that you can press Ctrl+Alt+Del twice from the Welcome screen and sometimes you will get a classic logon dialog. (Note: "Sometimes". It works only if the last operation was a restart or log-off, for complicated reasons that are irrelevant to this discussion.) The ability to do the double-Ctrl+Alt+Del wa...

Sorry to all you PDCers who stopped by the Fundamentals Lounge to see me. The scheduling software that the PDC organizers cooked up is, um, "suboptimal" and listed me for Tuesday 11.30a–2.30p instead of 2.30p–5.30p. During the early afternoon shift, I was actually in the Hands-On Lab. But I'll be in the Lounge on Thursday after my talk ...

Sometimes, I am asked why there is no single version of Windows that contains everything. Instead, as you move up the ladder, say, from Windows XP Professional to Windows Server 2003, you gain server features and lose workstation features. Why lose features when you add others? Because it turns out no actual customer wants to keep the w...

Whereas Eric Carter will be signing his book (co-authored with another Eric) at the PDC. I have no book of my own to sign, but will be happy to sign the Erics' book if you ask me to! You can catch me in the Fundamentals Lounge pretty much the whole time. There have been some changes to my talk since I wrote about it last time. The lecture sty...

A few months ago, the usability research team summarized some statistics they had been collecting on the subject of what people spend most of their time doing on the computer at home. Not surprisingly, surfing the Internet was number one. Number two was playing games, and in particular, I found it notable that the number one game is no longer Klond...

Accuracy is how close you are to the correct answer; precision is how much resolution you have for that answer. Suppose you ask me, "What time is it?" I look up at the sun, consider for a moment, and reply, "It is 10:35am and 22.131 seconds." I gave you a very precise answer, but not a very accurate one. Meanwhile, you look at your watch...

NPR's Only a Game recently covered the rise of adult dodgeball. At MSN's tenth birthday party last week, there was a wide variety of entertainment options, the highlight of which appeared to be an organized dodgeball tournament. It was very well attended and didn't have the ego-damaging overtones you got from elementary school. A good time was ...

Late Tuesday night, Jenny Lam, the creative director for this year's PDC, came by our hallway and asked for permission to rummage through our offices for "stuff". They were looking for props to use to decorate a developer's cubicle in a video they were filming for the conference. I was able to loan her a framed letter of appreciation and my pass t...