SADev

I am a proud contributor to the Microsoft Visual Studio ALM Rangers (see this post for who they are) and each year, the Rangers have a vote for who they believe are helping the Rangers initiatives the most. The top four from the votes are honoured with the title of Champion! I was honoured in 2009 to be included in the list of the four champions and even more honoured that I have again been listed in the top 4!

Congrats to the other three champions and especially to Mathias Olausson, who was also re-awarded!

For more details on the latest Rangers champions see: http://blogs.msdn.com/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2010/05/12/external-visual-studio-alm-rangers-the-votes-have-been-tallied-and-the-2010-champions-are-have-been-known.aspx

After being at BB&D for almost two years, I finally managed to get an article in the BB&D newsletter! The article is about my trip in January to Canada and US for the ALM Rangers work! This was a different experience than writing for my blog, because this had to go through an editor and a copywriter before it was included. They made enough changes to the article that reading it myself, it felt strange because it sounds like me, just a different me. This article will now be shipped off to the BB&D offices around the world so that should be very exciting!

Click the image for a bigger view of it.

Thanks to Martin for spotting that the clicking of the image didn't give a bigger view, which is now fixed up.

[The series index can be found here.]

Considering Zayd Kara, Rudi Grobler, and I were in Seattle we took a few days extra to sightsee around the town and so here is some of the highlights from the camera:

First thing we did was find the Needle – since it was the only thing Rudi wanted to see.

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

Three weeks away from my family, 32900km in distance travelled, thousands of lines of code written, and hundreds of pictures taken what is the outcome of all of this and what do I do next?

Rangers

One of the activities I took part in during my time in Seattle was a code review session of the work I had done. The outcome of that was a list of cleanup and fixes so I need to get that done, which means my weekends and evenings are not free. I also have documentation to do, part of that will be a blog series on the adapters and and another aspect will be a more formal lab guide so people can set it up.

Moving further from the integration project, the Rangers projects do not stop, in fact this is my forth one to date (and the biggest one I have done)! So I am sure when this moves from active development to a more maintenance cycle I will get involved in some other aspect of the Rangers work. I’m hoping that future projects involve testing TFS from the beaches in Hawaii ;)

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

The second part of my trip, was a short stay in the city of Redmond (near Seattle, Washington, USA) which is where the worldwide headquarters of Microsoft are located. I knew it was big, but I suspected it would be more a big office park… I very quickly stopped thinking of it like an office park but rather like it’s own city, a Microsoft City because it is MASSIVE!

Let me take a step back here, I got off the bus from Vancouver and caught a cab to Microsoft. I expected to have to tell the driver where the Microsoft Campus was, but he knew – in fact he knew it so well, he even asked which building I wanted too (which did not help, since he still got lost looking for the building). Coming off the highway to Redmond all you see is the Microsoft Connector busses and shuttles (they have almost 60 busses alone) which are used to help the staff get around the massive place. A good review of all the transport, which is not just the busses and shuttles, is on the Microsoft Alternative Commuting page. 

I didn’t think to take a photo of the busses so here is one I found.

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Vancouver, BC, Canada:

• Host of the 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympics games
• Where the X-Files was shot for the first five seasons
• Home of the Canucks ice hockey team
• And where I stayed for two weeks!

While there I took a few hundred photo’s (thanks to my sister for lending me her camera) which I thought I would share. Not all of them, but some of the highlights that will stay in my memory long after my code is no longer used.

Work

My laptop felt a little threatened by the two 24” monitors my desk came with.

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The MCDC (Microsoft Canadian Development Centre) was where I spent most of the day during my trip sitting and focusing on code, drinking Dr Pepper (yet another drink no longer available in South Africa) and bugging Microsoft staff for assistance. I sat next to Willy-Peter in the unofficial VSTS section of the building and as is my luck the other person next to me was yet another South African working for Microsoft, named Adrian (who works on the data warehouse in TFS).

One of the cool Lego based art works inside the MCDC.

The MCDC was just like any development company I’ve seen in South Africa, but what really struck me was seeing how much time is spent on conference calls and see what dedication these people put in to shipping quality products. Weekends and evenings are not time to relax but time to continue pushing.

An evening with Willy-Peter (far left), his two sons and myself in typical Microsoft delivery mode – evenings are for getting more done.

For more in this series, please visit the series index.

I write to you today from the back of a bus in Vancouver, Canada! It’s 7h20 in the morning here, although my clock and body are telling it is 17h26. This is the first of two busses and a train I am currently using to get to the Microsoft offices. This is a far cry from my usual sitting in Johannesburg, South Africa traffic! What is going on?

Last year I joined the Rangers projects and as part of that (an unexpected and enjoyable part) is a three week trip to Vancouver, Canada and Redmond, USA. The purpose of this trip was to finish, polish and deliver the TFS Integration Platform adapters I have been working on. At the same time this gave me the opportunity to see what life is like at Microsoft and more broadly in North America!

I had never heard of the shoe bomber before this trip, but this ass has ruined flying to America for the rest of the world. That is my belief after going through airport security. While at OR Tambo Airport (or Johannesburg International), I have never had to take my shoes or belt off for any flights to the countries in Africa I have been. However being an American inbound flight there was an additional check before the flight which was the first of the very many times I would take my shoes off.

The trip itself was from Jo’burg to Atlanta, USA (red line below) then a connecting flight from their to Seattle, USA (blue line) and then finally a bus to Vancouver, Canada (yellow line).

Map from http://www.oera.net/How2/TextureMaps2.htm and pins and lines added by me (not accurately)