As the Tech Turns

I joined the Office of the CTO at Microsoft just over two years ago. I was a ‘founding member’ as Kevin Scott was a new CTO for Microsoft. I have now moved on to another job, in a different CTO Office (Mark Russinovich in Azure).

I noticed one thing while I was in OCTO, I essentially stopped blogging. Why was that? Well, probably the main reason is the fact that when your in that particular office, you’re privy to all sorts of stuff, most of it very private, either to Microsoft, or other partners in the industry. Not really the kind of stuff you want to write about in a loud way. My colleague Mat Velosso managed to maintain a public voice while in the office, but I didn’t find I could do it. Now as it turns out, my new job is all about having a voice, and helping to make Engineering at Microsoft that much better.

But, before I get into all that, I want to reflect on tech.

I’m in my home office, and I’m looking around at all this clutter. I’ve got SD Cards that are 8Gb sitting around with who knows what on them. I’ve got motherboards sitting openly on my bench. I’ve got more single board computers than you can shake a stick it. Various bits and bobs, outdated tech books, mice and keyboards galore, laptops that have been long since abandoned, and 5 23″ LCD displays sitting on the floor.

That’s just in my office. My other cave has similar amounts of computers, displays, tvs, and other tech leavings from the past 10 years of hobbying around, trying to stay current. What to do?

Well, donate all that can to good places. Don’t give working displays to PC recycle, they’ll just tear them apart. Find a school, non-profit, deserving person. Then, all those Raspberry Pi versions you never took out of their boxes, send them to the PC recycler, or give them to a school. If there’s one thing I’ve learned about single board computers, if you don’t actually have an immediate use for them, they’re not worth buying.

Books, to the library, or if you have a local “Half Price Books” maybe you can get some money back. More than likely, if they’re older than 5 years, they’re headed to the compost pile.

I have saved one set of PS/2 style keyboard/mouse, because, they’re actually useful.

I want to reconfigure my office. Now that 4K UHD monitor/tvs are $250, it makes sense to purchase them as decorations for a room. A couple of those 55″ versions up on the walls gives me connectivity for any computers, as well as an ability to do things like use them as a false window. I need more workspace. My current configuration is sets of drawers, which hide who knows what, and counter top which is too narrow, and book shelves, which can’t hold very much weight. So, out it goes, and in come the wire rack shelving units, 24″ deep.

Copy off all the stuff from those random SD cards, and throw away the ones that are less than 32Gb, because you know you’ll lose them before you ever use them again, and you’ll always be wondering what’s on them. Digitize those photo albums, use one of your many SBCs to setup a NAS, and copy everything there, and backup to a cloud service

For me, new job, new tech, new office space. time to blab and share again.