Author Archives: tig

Change the world or go home

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

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

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

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!

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

Questions Answered

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Channel9 video interview on Windows Home Server

My Channel 9 interview video just went live. Please don’t tease me about how often I say “um”. http://channel9.msdn.com/showpost.aspx?postid=270965

Divorceable Offense

Todd Headrick is the product planner for Windows Home Server. He was the first person I hired onto the team way back… Here’s Todd doing a great demo of Windows Home Server at CES. Near the end you’ll hear him utter the phrase “Divorcable Offense”. I coined this term to help make the point about how serious the consequences of loosing precious digital memories might be. Prior to the advent of digital cameras about 10 …Continue reading

Stop Digital Amnesia SWAG

Stop Digital Amnesia SWAG Originally uploaded by ckindel. Have you checked out www.stopdigitalamnesia.com yet? I know in my first post I had a typo in the URL (thanks Mark for fixing it remotely for me!).My marketing team (and the vendors who helped them) have a great sense of humor. The Dr. is very well cast, the text is hilarious, and I personally think the whole thing gets the customer promises we are making with Windows …Continue reading

Bill in the booth

DSCN0242 Originally uploaded by ckindel. Here’s BillG doing an interview in the Windows Home Server booth at CES.