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As of this writing, this blog doesn't exist.  That means that you're most likely looking through the archives.  You want to know where I started out.  Well, here it is.

I went to a tech school out in New York.  It was the first and only college I applied to, and I stayed there for six years, working through all the course work for a Bachelor's and a Master's degree in Computer Science.  The BS (no pun) is done, but before I finished the final project to get the MS I took a job at Microsoft in Redmond, WA.  I fully intended to finish the project once I got here and got settled, but I've barely looked at the thing in the last six months and, frankly, I've lost my zest for academics.  My biggest concern is the damage the not-quite-done MS is going to do to my resume when I leave this job.

So here I am at Microsoft.  Salary?  Great.  Benefits?  Awesome.  Health insurance?  Best ever.  Job satisfaction?  Eh...

I'm working on possibly the least interesting product Microsoft makes.  It's a useful product, high quality, I highly recommend it, but it's no fun.  How can I stay interested in this, especially when they have me fixing bugs and writing unit tests for other people's code?  Honestly, of all the things the recruiters told me about working for Microsoft, the one that was at the front of my mind when I took this particular position was the policy of allowing employees to move to a different job within the company after 18 months without needing your manager's approval.

So, I have a decent but boring job.  You work to live, not live to work, right?  It's the social life that's important.  Well, that's a weak point of mine, too.  Like many people at Microsoft, and at tech schools in general, I don't relate as well to people a I do to a computer.  I'm slow to build a social life, and pretty much the only get-out-of-the-house activity I have regularly is going to the casino the play poker.  I win money, but that's only because the average low-limit Texas Hold'em player is absolutely terrible.

And the funny part?  I don't even like Texas Hold'em that much.  It's just that it's the only game in town, no matter what town you're in.  7 Card Stud is much more interesting and challenging.  Evidently that's what scares people off from it.

So this is where I am now, March 3, 2009.  Job satisfaction low, social life negligible, and chance of getting laid somewhat less than zero.

This blog is the story of how I turned my life around.