My inbox is getting to be reasonable again. After two weeks on the road, it got up over 300 messages even though I cleaned it out before I left. Now, it’s back down to 45 messages. I already use rules to break out messages that come to various mailing lists, that come to our team alias, or ones that I’m cc’ed on. I’ve realized that everything that comes into my inbox falls into one of three categories: shit I need to know, shit I need to do, and shit I don’t need. I’m trying to be really diligent getting all these things out of my inbox. Shit I need to do gets moved to the task list. Shit I need to know gets moved into some other folder – usually by category though I have Lookout if I need to search for it. Shit I don’t need gets deleted. Of course, once I’m done with my inbox, I’ve still got to tackle those nearly 400 messages in my cc, team and not to me folders. I’m hoping this will help me stay better organized – something I manager tells me that I need to work on (along with focusing on what’s important and improving my diplomacy). One thing that taking this job has taught me, you can always get more email, whether you want it or not!
New Office
Almost our whole team moved offices yesterday. We used to be spread out across campus in 34, 40, 22 and 119. Now, we’ll all be on one hallway in 18. It’s a little unnerving to be able to walk the hall and see everybody after spending 6 months on a team who saw each other about once a month. Unnerving, but very very cool.
As you can see on this map, 18 is in the NW corner of the main campus. From the posters left behind, I’m guessing Mac Office used to be here – I think the whole Office group is moving to 36, the newest building on campus. (36 is so new, it’s not even on the map yet. It’s to the east of 3.) Not sure how nice 36 is, but 18 is much nicer than 22. About 30 feet from my office is a large lounge area with ~10 couches and wireless access. We have a full size cafe with ATM. And, now that we’re on main campus, we’re much closer to meetings with other groups (other than DevDiv – we used to be just across the street from them).
I was going to bring a camera and post some pictures of our new offices, but I forgot in a haze of sleeplessness. Julie and Patrick went to LA this morning for the weekend, and we had to get up at 5am to get her to the airport in time to get all the baby gear thru security. Since I can’t post any office pictures, here’s a picture of a nesting hawk my friend (and hoster) Tom emailed me.
My Work Bookshelf
When I first started my new job, I decided to blog the books I brought in from home to populate my new office bookshelf. Well, 4 months in and I’ve only just brought in my second batch. Here’s what’s up there so far.
- The Emergence of Sociological Theory 3rd Edition by Jonathan Turner et al (an old textbook of my wife’s)
- Design for Community by Derek Powazek
- Writing Secure Code 2nd Edition by Michael Howard and David LeBlanc
- .NET & J2EE Interop Toolkit by Simon Guest (a gift from the author)
- The Art of Computer Programming (Vol 1-3) by Donald Knuth (a xmas gift from my dad)
- A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander et al (recommended to me by Greg Stone)
- Analysis Patterns by Martin Fowler (signed by the author)
- Design Patterns by the GoF
- Object Oriented Software Engineering by Ivar Jacobson et al
- Software Reuse by Ivar Jacobson et al