Author Archives: tig

Book Review: River of Gods

February 5, 2007
Books, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Whew! I finally finished River of Gods by Ian McDonald this weekend. I categorize River of Gods as a “Great story but a PITA to read book”. Here’s the deal: I shouldn’t have to work to read a science fiction novel. To me “a great read” just flows…I start reading the first chapter and 17 hours later I close the book and say “wow”. The books I love to read don’t make me tired. I …Continue reading →

Windows Home Server team blog

February 1, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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My team (the Windows Home Server team) now has a blog. Here’s the abstract for this new blog. This blog is managed by the Windows Home Server team at Microsoft.  Our goal with the blog is to educate and inform families with multiple PCs about how Windows Home Server will help them easily store, protect and share their treasured photos, music, videos and documents.  We hope you enjoy the blog and find it a good source of …Continue reading →

Visual Studio Express and Windows Home Server

January 26, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Dan Fernandez is the lead product manager for Visual Studio Express. He just blogged about developing tools and applications for Windows Home Server using Visual Studio. + As I mentioned in my Channel9 video I’m super excited that WHS is going to enable geeks, makers, hobbyists, or whatever you want to call them to build fun and exciting things for their homes. Of course, WHS will also allow “professionals” to build products that extend the …Continue reading →

Matt Pietrek & Windows Home Server

January 26, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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I just noticed that Matt Pietrek has been blogging about his experience playing with Windows Home Server. Matt is one of the many MS employees who have been Dogfooding the product for a while.

Change the world or go home

January 25, 2007
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I’ve been working at Microsoft a long time. Almost 17 years. My family and I have made huge sacrifices in our personal lives for Microsoft.  For the most part, I’ve been financially rewarded for those sacrifices. Financially, it’s been a good deal. However, when people ask me “Why? Why do you still work at Microsoft?” the answer is out of my mouth before they can even finish asking the question: “I can’t imagine anywhere else where I …Continue reading →

Home Server Flickr Group

January 20, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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Windows Home Server prototype Originally uploaded by ckindel. I’ve created a Flickr group for collecting pictures of people’s home servers and other related imageshttp://www.flickr.com/groups/homeservers Inspired by the Media Center group at http://www.flickr.com/groups/mediacenter  

Cheesburger Brown…rediscovered

January 18, 2007
Books
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Those of you paying attention will remember Cheesburger Brown. He’s an insanely talented sci-fi author and artist who, two years ago, penned Simon of Space as well as Darth Vader’s blog. Simon of Space was originaly written in the form of a daily serial where each chapter was posted as blog entry every day. When he was posting it, checking for new chapters was a seriously important part of my daily routine. It has since been …Continue reading →

Android Dreams

January 17, 2007
Books, Smart Home, Uncategorized
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I recently finished John Scalzi’s Andoid’s Dream. I’ve said it before, but I’ve always been a huge fan of Robert Heinlein and John’s writing reminds me of his. This book is John’s 3rd sci-fi novel and his maturity over time as a writer is obvious. I think Old Man’s War is my favorite Scalzi book so far (although Ghost Brigades rocked too), but this is a fun, interesting book. It has great childish humor (passing gas is a …Continue reading →

Worst (Best?) Icy Road Video ever!

January 16, 2007
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If you’ve ever been in a situation like this you’ll probably cringe. Otherwise you will probably laugh.

Questions Answered

January 16, 2007
Smart Home
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Over on the discussion thread for my Channel9 video I just posted answers to some of the questions people have been asking about Windows Home Server…  

He bit him!

January 16, 2007
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I have not watched the 3rd and 4th hours of 24 that were on last night. Just didn’t have the time. But I did watch the first two hours on Sunday nght. All day yesterday the vampire scene kept popping into my head. Each time I burst out laughing. He bit him! He killed him like a vampire. The writers of 24 are brilliant.  

My Windows Home Server

January 13, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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My Windows Home Server Originally uploaded by ckindel. This is my WHS box at home. It started out in a different case (an Antec), but I retired my wife’s old computer and it used this Lian Lai case (which I’ve always liked). So I used this as an opportunity to put in a bigger power supply (4 750GB SATA drives are just on the edge of what a 350W supply can do) and a 4 …Continue reading →

Who I’m watching

January 13, 2007
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After keeping the secret for so long, I’m probaby over doing it by constantly searching live.com (and google, sigh) for “windows home server” and seeing what people are saying. However, I keep finding jewels. Here are some of my recent favorites that I’m now watching: http://microsoft.blognewschannel.com/archives/category/windows/server/home-server/ http://www.blogpulse.com/rss?query=%22home+server%22 http://www.techmeme.com/070108/p30#a070108p30  

King5 BillG Interview/Story

January 13, 2007
Smart Home
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Dennis Bounds of King5 News (Seattle) interviewed BillG in the CES booth over the week. I posted a still I took during the interview on Monday. I finally got a chance to watch the interview (it is posted on the King5 website). We loaded the demo home server boxes in the booth up with personal photos. A bunch of them were photos that I had on my camera from my Christmas vacation in Colorado with …Continue reading →

Someone created a Wikipedia article for Windows Home Server

January 12, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Home_Server I made a few edits correcting some inaccuracies… Whoever did it got most of it right. Nice job.

A great quote

January 12, 2007
Leadership, Smart Home
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Someone just forwarded me the following quote. This really resonates with me. I have been working on trying to get a home server product built at Microsoft for over 8 years… “At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done. Then they begin to hope it can be done. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done …Continue reading →

Interesting Flickr Effect

January 11, 2007
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I post photos to my blog via Flickr. It is super easy to do and automatically takes care of scaling the images and providing a link to hi-res versions on Flickr.   At CES I took a phone cam pic of the “hockey puck” Windows Home Server prototype and posted it via my blog (this post).   Today I noticed that a bunch of people on Flickr discovered the photo and have commented on it. One …Continue reading →

We’ve been /. ed

January 11, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/11/1711237   It’s quite gratifying to see the number of fans of WHS we have on this slashdot thread.  There was an earlier /. thread that pointed to an article that was ostensibly about Windows Home Server, but was really about Apple. The discussions in the thread were thus not about our product.   This thread, on the otherhand, focuses on what we’re building specificaly and therefore is actually interesting.  

HP MediaSmart home server

January 10, 2007
Smart Home, Uncategorized
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HP’s offical page on their Windows Home Server powered box.  My team has a great relationship with the MediaSmart server team at HP. HP has done an outstanding job on their industrial design, mechanicals, and electronics (we have early engineering prototypes in our labs).  

Alec Saunders taught me craps

January 9, 2007
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Heh, heh. I just noticed Alec Saunder’s post linking back here.  I am not a big gambler and I really only get to Las Vegas once a year…for CES, but my gambling history is deeply rooted in an amazing experience I had in 1999 or 2000 (I don’t remember which) when Alec taught me how to play craps. I had “typical” beginners luck and scored big (something like $7500 at a $5 craps table) with …Continue reading →