A little over a month ago, I announced that I was leaving BIG and relocating to Seattle.  I think the blog post came out a bit somber, which wasn't necessarily intentional.  Leaving BIG and the DASL project was certainly hard for me to do, so I think the tone was probably a subconscious leak of my sadness to walk away from something I liked so much.  But I want to communicate firmly that I am very thankful for this opportunity to join Microsoft and work on the Silverlight framework.  I am super-excited to have joined Microsoft; more so than I can describe with words.

Last Monday, I officially started my tenure at Microsoft, and I'm getting settled into my group as well as into my new city.  My family and I managed to sell our house in Cincinnati very quickly (4 days on market) and we also found a new home here in Redmond very quickly (we close this week).  We have just moved across the country but we already feel at home out here.

When Kelly and I started discussing the idea of moving to Seattle for me to work at Microsoft, we decided that this was a great opportunity to get a new start on life.  We're hoping to use this event as a mechanism for triggering several changes in our lives.  First and foremost, I will be spending more time with Kelly and the boys.  Of course, this is much easier said than done, and the following attributes were necessary to insure the ideal:

  1. Find a home close to work (I'll have a 10 minute commute)
  2. Hand off all side-work (also a bit of a necessity for joining Microsoft)
  3. Wake up earlier (the 3-hour time change is in our benefit)

Handing off all of my side work was a difficult task.  This was in many ways more difficult than transitioning my responsibilities at BIG.  Ridding myself of the many side projects has been very liberating though, and I'm looking forward to spending weekends with my family instead of with my computer.

Over the past couple of months, I have fallen behind on many personal chores though.  One of them is of course the completion of my Custom Controls & ASP.NET MVC article series.  I plan to get back to that very soon, and I've actually exchanged a few messages with Rob Conery, which is helping drive the direction of the series.  Another chore that has been neglected is reading blogs.  Today, I zipped through about 200 blog posts, either reading them or dismissing them as unnecessary to my successful start at Microsoft.  A few got saved for later, but only a few.  I needed a clean start.

What all of this boils down to is that I am in the middle of what I consider a reboot of my life.  My family and I have many new ventures ahead of us, including my new career at Microsoft.  I am anxious to see how well I adapt to change and how many old (bad) habits creep back into my life.  So, here's to Seattle--cheers!