Re: are you still working for macrosoft?

[<http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

--- Gail <http://profiles.yahoo.com/gail_sx> wrote:
> --- Gail wrote:
> > > Sorry to hear that you'll be joining us.
> 
> > Yeah, our company is being acquired by macrosoft. I have mixed feelings
about this.
>   It's probably not going to do your company much good. I've been here since
> last June and have seen more re-orgs than in all my previous 20 years of QA. 

That sounds unfortunate.

> > > If you have any kind of process in place, I hope you're allowed to keep
it!
> > > Did you see the voice recognition demos that happened with the recent
release
> > > of Vista? They've been all over YouTube and various places. Pretty
pathetic.
> 
> > Ah. Perhaps that's why Tell_me is being acquired.
> Does your voice recognition actually work?

Yes.

> That may be why M$ is after it.

Probably.

> Of course, once our engineers get a hold of it, there's no telling what will
> happen. Kiss your good ol' product goodbye.

Our macrosoft visitors seemed nice enough.  But, I suppose that looks can be
deceiving.

In any case, I expect one of our first projects will probably be to start using
macrosoft's speech recognizer.  Given that all of our stuff is currently on
Unix, I fear disaster.

> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Y_Jp6PxsSQ
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KyLqUf4cdwc
>   
> > I just hope they don't screw up the place. My manager is a smart guy and a
> > good manager. (But, for some reason, managers seem to have an underlying
mean
> > streak about them; perhaps this is par for the course.)
> 
> I had a strange manager situation for a while. A group of us all came on at
> the same time and were in Mike's group. He was the only one we saw/reported
> to... turned out he was a contracter too. What kind of place has contracters
> managing contracters?

I have heard from WashTech (http://washtech.org) that macrosoft only hires
contractors, except in some exceptional cases, because they're easier to get
rid of.  In fact, my friend up in Seattle said he's contracting with macrosoft
again now.  (He's worked for them several times.)

> Especially when there's all this sensitive material
> that we get access to on a need to know basis... but only through a full time
> person. We couldn't do our job effectively for months because we didn't have
> access to things like Product Studio... permissions can only be given through
> a full timer. 
>   
> > Anyway... how have you been in general?
> 
> > Fine. We're cutting through our Netflix queue. Between us, I think Noelle
and
> > I have about 80 movies. We went to Cinequest a couple of weeks ago. It was
> > good being in a movie theater again, albeit briefly.
> Is Cinequest a theatre?

No, it's a festival, as in Cinequest Film Festival.  It's held in where-I-live
annually.

> > How about you? Anything new? Are you still in where-I-live, living with your
> > sister? Is your San Leandro house OK these days? Have you seen Roberta or
> > anybody?
> Nothing new here, particularly. I'm still living in where-I-live with my sister.
> My house is still rented out. I figured I might as well keep that situation
> until I "settle down." I don't know what's going to be next after M$. The job
> market has picked up considerable, which is good. I'm seeing way more
> positions in the Bay Area, so chances are excellent that I'll be able to stay
> here.

Yeah.  With this macrosoft thing, my company will be hiring engineers like
they're going out of style.  At least, that's what I've been told.

> I'm just keeping my options open in case I want/need to move somewhere
> else for work. I don't know if I'll ever actually move back in the house...
> I'll have to just wait and see.

Well, at least, you own property.  Better than Noelle's and my situation. 
('Tho, I would never buy in the current market.)

> I did take a long weekend (last weekend) and went down to Cerritos (near
> LA) with a friend to meet a group of other people who live in LA. We hung out
> went to a play and generally tried not to breath too much of the LA smog.
> Other then that, not much excitement.

No bats, huh? :-)

> I haven't heard a peep out of Roberta. Of course, to be fair, I haven't
> emailed her lately either...