Digital Leon`s World

Before I left Microsoft many of my coworkers were predicting complete failure of the iphone. Mostly because the price was so high and it didn’t support Microsoft exchange email. Well I think many of the consumers that use this device don’t use or care about exchange email (more on that in a bit) and the Motorola RAZR debuted at $400-$500 and has been successful. And I’ve certainly dropped $500 on a crappy Windows SmartPhone in the past. (the cincular 8125 which is junk) In these cases I would point to my my favorite slashdot post of all time here. Basically many of the slashdot nerds predicted the complete and utter failure of the ipod. The caption is what seals the deal “No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame” We all know they were wrong. Apple won the MP3 player war by focusing on the experience and not on the technology. There were other MP3 players at the time – some even had more features (fm radio, etc) But they were all hodge podge technologies that were difficult to use.

I’ll be upfront and say I have developed a love for Apple products. (One of my good friends tells me she’s going to buy me a beret so I can sit in a coffee shop with a smug look on my face.) But I’ve been using IPODs for about 4-5 years and we’ve been running Apple computers in our house for over a year. So I’m defintely a fan – at this point in my life I’m not interested in half implemented technologies. I want my tools to work and work well. And that’s something Apple solutions always deliver on for me.

Disclaimer stated – I think Apple is poised to do it again. I think that the Iphone is going to be a smash hit. I personally had two issues with the phone. One was that is used the slower AT&T edge network. Interestingly enough AT&T has shut down their legacy systems and people are seeing profound speed boosts over edge today. And the second was lack of support for Microsoft exchange email services which are used at my new job. Well Apple announced that support for exchange is coming relatively soon. To quote Aliens – “That’s it man game over man game over”

In the past 5 years I’ve had 4 windows based smart phones. With the exception of one – the Audiovox 5600 they have all been terrible. They crash constantly, have poor battery life, and the interface is pathetic. For example if your going to use virtual buttons on a touch screen, why make the buttons so small that you need to be a 5 year old to type accurately. (Some of us have large hands after all….. )And why is a mobile phone interface based on the start menu – something designed for desktop operating systems . I love the the concept of the smart phone but I have been underwhelmed by the current implementations.

If you look at all of the multimedia devices coming from other cell phone manufacturers lately you can tell they are frightened of this thing. Anticipation couldn’t be higher and I seem to see a commercial every hour for this phone. Apple and AT&T aren’t pulling any punches here. I got to see a short demonstration of the phone and I can definitely say the thing is hot. I’m probably going to wait for the 3G version and for the price to drop a bit but I can say there’s no doubt I’ll be picking up an Iphone in the future. In the mean time Apple’s stock has been going through the roof.

The best thing to discover is your wife is pregnant.  Actually it’s good news – we decided that now was a good time and while we haven’t been trying – we haven’t been impeding the process either.  I must admit that I’m excited, terrified, and nervous all at the same time. I certainly don’t feel qualified to raise another human being. But I guess I have 8 months to figure it out.  Yesterday I talked about opening a new chapter in my life. Little did I know a whole new book was about to drop on my head.

Luckily many of the people we know in the area have children. And a couple of our closest friends are about 3-4 months ahead of us. So there will be a support structure that we can work with. Which is important since we’re transplants and don’t have family in the area.  To I guess I’m going to have to add a new category to this blog – Offspring.

P.S. – I had my first late night grocery story run last night – I secured 2 bottles of TUMS and got back to the house in 9 minutes flat.

Today is my last day as a member of the Microsoft collective. The nano probes have been eliminated and I have a sudden craving for OSX and the iphone. (actually I’ve been rocking OSX at home for about a year now and I love it – but that’s for another post) It’s time to kick back and enjoy a nice vacation before getting back into the swing of things at Amazon.com. As I stated before it’s been a hell of a ride but it’s time to close the Microsoft chapter in my life and turn the page.

What next?

First order of business is a one week stay in the Virgin Islands. We’re going to the island of St. John. I’m excited because St. John is the kind of paradise I’ve always wanted to visit. Given that the majority of the island is a protected national park. I’ll be packing all of my camera gear and taking tons of pictures. If the internet is available I’ll post a photo each day of our tropical adventures. Stay tuned!

A big part of this blog is to share some of the photographic work that I’m doing. Both for Pryorstudios.com and my personal photographic explorations. So this week I decided to provide an image from my most recent photo shoot.

I recently did a photo shoot with this lovely lady named Ting Ting. We struggled to get this going because the lovely Seattle weather refused to cooperate. But finally we got a sunny day. I shot over 20gb of data that day. The images came out really nice and this was one of my favorite images from the bunch. Ting Ting’s makeup was done by a local makeup artist named Tara who did a great job. Tara’s website can be found here.

Since the internet is full of dirty thieves I thought I would add a watermark to this photo.

Snapped this photo with my cell phone today. I thought it was kind of amusing given the transformers movie coming out in a few weeks. It’s good to know that the autobots are in place protecting our vital infrastructure from the evil decepticons.

Funny enough though – I remember that there was a mixing truck transformer but he was one of the bad guys. I’ll have to google for him.

Welcome to my new blog. I’ve decided to do a better job with blogging. But I was pretty frustrated with MSN spaces – so now I’m hosting my own blog on my own domain. I still have some work to do but the basic software is up and running. Stay tuned as I get this thing looking cooler and add new content.

But on to the subject at hand. After 10 years of service I have decided to leave Microsoft. It wasn’t an easy decision for me but it’s for the best. I have worked at this company since college and haven’t had a full time position anywhere else. I’m what’s internally referred to as a “lifer”. I’ve only worked for Microsoft, I’ve only use Microsoft technology, etc etc. I think this position was a little easier when Microsoft’s stock actually increased in value. You could work at Microsoft, save your options and retire as a millionaire. Well that ship sailed about 7 years ago and I missed the boat.

My entire full time career at Microsoft was in the game industry. I’ve worked as a developer, technical program manager, and producer on a wide variety of games. It’s a pretty cool job to have. Some people would say that I’m an idiot to leave such a cool position and I would counter that the grass always looks greener on the other side. Building games is a difficult thing to do – and I work in games publishing where we don’t directly work on the titles – we outsource their development to companies all over the world. These companies often don’t want to listen to us (until they are in trouble) , have no engineering process to speak of, and are sometimes outright hostile. It gets pretty frustrating when you are explaining basic college level software engineering process to a company that’s being paid 20 million dollars.

But enough with the past! – I promised myself that at the 10 year mark – I would look around for new opportunities and I found a great one. My new gig is at Amazon.com in downtown Seattle. Finding a nice job in the area was definitely a plus. Uprooting my wife to take on a position somewhere else in the country was out of the question at this point. The new Amazon position shows a lot of promise and I’m pretty excited about it.

So that’s it for my first entry. Hopefully I’ll keep you guys entertained.A large portion of this blog will be devoted to photography – so for those people that enjoy my photos – this is defintely the place to go.

-Thx!