A Tour of My Office

I’ve been in my new office for nearly a month, so I thought I’d share a tour.

For the most part, it’s a typical Microsoft office – about 100 square feet with a window, desk, door and …stuff. Here’s what you see when you walk in the door.

I have three computers. A HP Z400 drives the two monitors in the foreground, and a Dell 670 drives the remaining LCD. Both are dual proc Xeons (which appear to windows as 4 processors), the the HP is younger by about 5 years (it’s brand new) and builds about twice as fast. I use the Dell for mail, charging my phone, writing, and most everything else that isn’t build, analysis, or test related (although it can cover those tasks if the Z400 is in the middle of something. I also have my trusty Lenovo x200s as another backup. Most of the time it also functions as my primary “home” work machine.

I have a lot of books – here’s one of my bookshelves.

I could do a whole other post explaining where some of these came from. On the top shelf (next to several copies of hwtsam), are my “commemorative” copies of Windows 95, Windows 95 Plus Pack, and some other software I worked on. The other day I ran across some “gold” copies I have of Win95, and the Win95 SDK/DDK that were handed out to team members when we shipped (it’s just a regular CD printed on a gold colored disk in a jewel case).

Here’s a reverse view of my desk – pretty much the view I have now while I type on the Dell.

Note that the phone on the right doesn’t have any keys – it connects via USB cable and works with communicator. It’s the phone that rings when you call my office (assuming I’m logged into communicator on that machine).

Here’s a view of my other bookshelf.

Again, lot’s of stuff that I’ll explain if you ask.

Finally, here’s some crap piled near my window – at Microsoft, you tend to accumulate stuff that is important enough to keep, yet there’s no place to keep it at home.

In this picture are two “Ship-It” plaques (one is filled), my 10 year award plaque, a Windows 95 team commemorative clock, and a plaque containing the one patent I have filed (the block next to it is a patent “cube” for the same thing – you get that for successfully filing for the patent.

The one thing I probably miss the most from my old office is the lack of writable surface. Just about every vertical space (and one of our tables) in the old TestEx team room was a writable surface, and I got used to writing diagrams, notes, etc. everywhere. For now, I just have a little whiteboard, but I’ll try to see if I can get it replaced with something much larger at some point..

So – there you go. If you want something explained or have questions, let’s chat in the comment section (or on twitter if you prefer – @alanpage)