Monthly Archives: October 2006

Karate Tournament Results

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View Photos – I hope to have the video of our team kata and my individual kata posted this weekend.

We took 1st place in the Women’s Team Kata.  It was really close, as the second place team did a fantastic job of Jion perfectly synch’ed.  We did Gojushiho Sho, which is a more difficult kata, so it gave us a slight edge.  i haven’t seen the video yet.  i can’t wait to see the video.

I took 2nd place in the women’s black belt (age 28-35 category) individual kata.  I did my kata more "martial" and the first place kata winner did hers more "art", but she had a lower stance and was more technically accurate than i was, and she trains at the main FSKA dojo (with Shihan), so I felt honored to tell her congratulations.

The best moment for me the entire trip was doing the Yame (finishing move back to the ready position), feeling the tape under my feet (you are supposed to start and end on the tape), and hearing everyone from my dojo start cheering very loudly for me.  A close second best moment was having Shihan (the title for the top ranking instructor in the FSKA style of karate) take a picture of me during my individual kata (as my karate team told me afterwards).  Now that is worth any gold medal.  =)

Seriously though, it was an honor to be able to compete.  It had been 12 years since i had competed in a tournament.  And to train for 9 months straight, to be able to make a commitment to your team, to be able to follow thourgh injury-free, and to do compete among people from all over the world is why i love karate.

I cannot wait to see the video.

FSKA VIII World Karate Tournament this weekend!

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I’m competing in the FSKA World Karate Tournament in Las Vegas this weekend in Individual Kata and Team Kata.  We (the team) have been training every Saturday morning at 7am since March 25th.  I am so excited that this date has finally come.  Team kata is where three people do the kata at the exact same time with the exact same intensity, landing right back at the exact same spot (without any counting).  The kata we’re doing takes almost 2 minutes to do, so it is a *lot* of work to keep focus for that long.

I’m doing the same kata for my individual.  i love doing kata competitions.  i love the feeling of focusing so hard on just the kata that you tune everything else out.  And of course the adrenaline rush lasts for an hour (from just 2 minutes of work).  Probably why i’m a adrenaline junkie.  =)

We have several camcorders going with us, so i hope to have the video posted when we get back.  Very cool stuff. 

Wish us luck!

Pop Quiz: How good are you at technical support?

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I enjoy telling this story of these unfortunate events as a technical support quiz.  Makes me feel a little better about myself.

The game is you have to guess what happened or what set of questions you would ask to narrow down the problem space.  There are no prizes for figuring it out, besides the sense of satisfaction of getting it right and maybe having me come to you for tech support in the future ::grins::

The Situation

(note: this is the exact info i would have given tech support / helpdesk)

I install Vista on my Toshiba M4 Tablet Friday night at the office (yes, exciting Friday night)  I immediately install the required apps from IT, change the desktop wallpaper to the bamboo theme (green is my favorite color and i love bamboo), and make a few other user appearance tweaks.  Over the weekend, I read a few blogs via IE7, download some family pics of the house being rebuilt, and change my desktop wallpaper to this picture of red leaves. 

On Monday morning, i dock my tablet and wait the appropriate amount of time for my monitor to come on.  To my surprise, i see the old bamboo wallpaper from Friday night.  I think "weird, my desktop customizations weren’t saved from Saturday."  So, i open IE when i realize that nothing is found in the history.  Now this is getting weird, almost alarming.  Now i realize that i can’t find anything from using the laptop on Saturday.  There are no pictures of the house on the laptop at all. 

I’m asking around, as this is the first real time i’ve used Vista.  I installed it the week before on both my desktop machines, but didn’t do much with it besides personal tweaks, like changing the wallpaper.  My laptop is my primary machine.  I’ve checked file versioning, file redirection, nothing.  There’s no trace of my session.

The Hint

Then i realize i’m late for my team’s morning meeting.  So, i’m going to make you click here for the next part of this saga, since i think this may be a clear give-away.  I don’t want to spoil the fun.

Happy Technical Supporting!

The Answer

Click here for the answer

VS Extensibility, VS SDK, and Shared Source

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James Lau is a Program Manager for the VS SDK.  He describes the near future of community projects and activities for the VS SDK, including Shared Source and Power Toys (my new 4 favorite words).

Check out his post and leave him some feedback.  I’ve been advising them on how to do Shared Source releases and use CodePlex.  And yes, we’ve been chatting with them about Pack Installer too.

Just the other day, Dr. Ex (from the VS SDK team) and I were discussing the necessary values needed to generate a Package Load Key.  I could still remember the test cases i used 5 years ago to test the thing.  (Techincally the first feature i ever tested was the /safemode switch, but PLKs came soon after.)  It’s funny the things you don’t forget.

New Comment Policy

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I’ve implemented a new comment policy that comments won’t be allowed on posts older than 2 months.  I hate doing this, but last night i deleted 200 spam comments (since i have comment moderation turned on, you didn’t see them), only to get another 200 this morning waiting for me to delete 10 at a time.

So, out of the 400 comments, i found approx 4 that were legit.  not good times.

5 years = 5 dozen pastries

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On 17 September, 2006, I made my 5 year anniversary at Microsoft.

5 years ago, i attended NEO (new employee orientation), listening to all of the nightmares of cancelled flights, people getting stranded out-of-country, and so forth.  And every 20 minutes, someone would run to a Kiosk to check the stock price.

And now for the traditional 5-year summary:

  • QA on the Environment SDK (then called VSIP, now called VS SDK)
  • QA on the Profiles feature (Tools – Import / Export Settings) – my first M0 feature, meaning i worked on it before it was coded into the product
  • QA on the Extensibility team
  • QA on the Core IDE team
  • Drove the Accessibility Effort for Visual Studio
  • Assisted driving the User Experience Consistency Effort
  • QA on the Editor team
  • QA on the Project / Solutions team, completing a tour of all the Visual Studio feature areas (okay, okay, i didn’t own Help, but i helped analyze test case failures when Jeremy and Aaron were out of office)
  • PM on the Developer Solutions (aka Power Toys) team, driving the Power Toys for Visual Studio

And now, to kick off my 5 year anniversary

  • Assisting teams and individuals within Visual Studio (aka Developer Division) in releasing Shared Source and Community Releases

5 year award crystal

Thanks to everyone for a great 5 years!

My Interview with James Howison, speaker from OSCON

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MichaelF from the Port 25 team had a great idea to have me do a follow-up podcast with James Howison, the speaker from OSCON 06 that i learned a tremendous amount from about OSS Communities, and apparently, how to build cathedrals, since that’s what my mom thinks i do now.   ::winks::

Link to: Sara Interviews James Howison

Direct link to podcast

I should mention that I really hope I can return the favor and help out James in some way.  It’s just in my nature to give back.   Of course, as of right now, i have no idea what i’ll be able to do, but i usually think of something.  I’m pretty good at that. ::grins::