5 years after I moved to Sweden and joined Microsoft, it's become time to randomise everything again. Today is my last day with the SQL Server team at MS, and I'm off to join a small nordic tech company called Basefarm on the 14th February.
I'm a bit scared, a bit nervous, a bit excited as one often is when stepping off into something new. Most of all though right now I'm rather sad to be saying goodbye to a ton of great people here at Microsoft Sweden. I made some great friends and learnt alot from many people here, but it's time to move on do something completely different, hence the transfer to a company with about 200 employees as opposed to 100,000!
Showing posts with label microsoft. Show all posts
Showing posts with label microsoft. Show all posts
Friday, February 04, 2011
Friday, May 09, 2008
New technical blog
I've opened a technical SQL Server blog for work...it can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/grahamk
Let's hope I write more on it than I do here :-)
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Dual Boot Ubuntu Linux installation
Hey - don't tell my employer but I've just installed the latest Ubuntu distro, which so far has been very simple and interesting, but I haven;t been able to use it yet. When I say simple, it's actually taken me nearly 2 days and 15 attempts, but this was entirely not the fault of the linux side of things, but the fact that i was trying to repartition my desktop to keep the windows side of it running and create a proper dual boot image. In the end I had to defrag the windows drive about 5 times to move all the space to the front of the drive and then run a couple fo chkdsk passes to fix some minor errors, but after that the install went smooth as silk. It'll be interesting to compare the 2 in the coming weeks.
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Blog reorganisations
So , I've changed my template again, but I seem to have lost a few posts in the process. I've got to say though that I like the new blogger, and I've been waiting a while for it, cos I always assumed google would throw their development weight behind it. Hopefully it'l be more stable now, I'm certainly enjoying the new interface and features.
Maybe I should be using livespaces if I was a good MSFTE :-)
I've been browsing various cool things from Vegas CES this week, and its interesting to see that MS have some cool things going down...obviously I'm a total xbox live convert, which I did write about last week, but the post got lost and I couldn't be bothered to re-type it....but the thing we've been checking out this week is http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ which I think is way cool. The question is I guess is whether they'll chose to link it into other photo sources such as flickr etc, or whether they'll market it as independent. For example I was interested to note that the new Ford / MS tie in which allows you to do all sorts of computer based tasks inyour new ford is compatible with ipod as well as zune and other media players.
It's strange because for a server based person like me the whole desktop / interface / OS / macs are cool / linux is best / MS is the devil type of argument passes me by. I mean I'm aware of it but I don't get concerned about it like some people do - maybe this is my naivety...
Maybe I should be using livespaces if I was a good MSFTE :-)
I've been browsing various cool things from Vegas CES this week, and its interesting to see that MS have some cool things going down...obviously I'm a total xbox live convert, which I did write about last week, but the post got lost and I couldn't be bothered to re-type it....but the thing we've been checking out this week is http://labs.live.com/photosynth/ which I think is way cool. The question is I guess is whether they'll chose to link it into other photo sources such as flickr etc, or whether they'll market it as independent. For example I was interested to note that the new Ford / MS tie in which allows you to do all sorts of computer based tasks inyour new ford is compatible with ipod as well as zune and other media players.
It's strange because for a server based person like me the whole desktop / interface / OS / macs are cool / linux is best / MS is the devil type of argument passes me by. I mean I'm aware of it but I don't get concerned about it like some people do - maybe this is my naivety...
Friday, May 05, 2006
The Best place to work in 2006
Microsoft won the award today for best place to work in Sweden -2006, as voted by the employees. What can I say, I'm not surprised. That's what it says on the arm patch BTW for thos enot speaking swedish.....I could tell you that I heard the news whilst sitting on the sun terrace of the outlook cafe this morning having a coffee, but that wouldn't be true...well not the hearing about it then part anyway. So we all got these "presents" to celebrate. I can't say I'm surprised we won, cos its bloody great there :-)
Today was a good day (well even better than the other days)
So yesterday afternoon we received our personnummers (like an NI number basically) but as documented previusly this leads to all powerful abilities in Sweden, where administrative doors open for you! Therefore today we managed to open a bank account, which of course means I can get paid this month, and also pick up our car - see flickr and other posts...So basically we're feeling pretty satisfied cos we've done nearly all the initial admin that is needed. Also we went to the bar up the road (Rastaurang Torget - which means railway restaurant) for a couple of quick beers, and it was dead nice, so we'll probably return there before we leave Akalla for Sollentuna at the end of the month. It seemed to be serving some fantastic home cooked food for about £5 as well, which is an added bonus. I saw the most amazing calzone appear from the kitchen, which confirmed my view that I had to return, but then I'd eaten pizza for lunch anyway, which is why I didn't dive straight in there.
Sunday, April 30, 2006
2 weeks down the line...Spring Holiday
I’ve sent about 30 pages of emails this morning, so frankly I can’t be buggered to write a whole load here at the moment, so I’m gonna cheat and post some exerts from the mails instead:
On the subject of work I’m having a truly mad time. I’ve been given 4 weeks to come up to speed and a reading / study list a mile long. The week I’ve been doing windows internals, processes, threads, memory blah blah blah. Its very very geeky and very very fascinating. It’s a bit of a challenge for me in truth, but then its nice to be pushed. I talk to the people around me, just the other SQL guys mostly and many of them have been at MS for 10 years or so, and they know so damn much. It feels like its going to be hard to contribute something at the moment. I reckon I will be fine because I trust my ability to do support at the end of the day, but its forcing me to push myself far beyond what I’ve had to in recent years. If this makes it sounds bad though, I’m describing it badly. Its truly the most brilliant techie geeky fun I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to actually start working on real customer problems. I actually managed this week to answer a SQL question to one of my colleagues when he needed some help, so this may me feel good, and reminded me that I do know something….
Seriously though, life here is pretty sweet. I’m still integrating administratively because the Swedes have a compulsory identity card scheme (sounds familiar?), which I haven’t received yet and without which you can’t do bugger all. My application is accepted its just at the processing centre currently, so I’m waiting on this. For example I bought a car last week, but they won’t give it to me without my identity card, and I couldn’t insure it either. I can’t open an account mobile, so I’m on Swedish PAYG system currently, and if I wasn’t living in a hotel still, I’d be having trouble registering my utility bills. Its airly all pervading but then there are apparently benefits. Once you are registered, it truly does track everything. Now obviously you could arugue whether this was good or bad from a freedom of information point of view, I have met Swedes who go both ways about whether its good or bad, but the major benefits is that their technology is completely properly integrated across all government departments, meaning that for example if ou change your address, you just tell these people and they inform everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, automatically for you. Apparently when you do a tax return, they already know EVERYTHING about you income and expenditure and they just send the form to sign and approve. The guy sitting next to me at work did his by SMS last year apparently!!
Stockholm is slowly starting to green up now. Tonight is the big festival where we celebrate the arrival of spring (and therefore have public holiday tomorrow). On another note there are 6 further bank holidays before end of June – go Sweden!! But there’s gonna be some huge bonfires lit and various weird games and stuff like “hit the cat out of the barrel”, don’t know what this is yet, but it starts at 8.15 tonight. Also apparently everyone wears sailors caps and throws them in the air a lot..we’ll shall see, I’ll no doubt put some photos up on flickr next week.
On the subject of work I’m having a truly mad time. I’ve been given 4 weeks to come up to speed and a reading / study list a mile long. The week I’ve been doing windows internals, processes, threads, memory blah blah blah. Its very very geeky and very very fascinating. It’s a bit of a challenge for me in truth, but then its nice to be pushed. I talk to the people around me, just the other SQL guys mostly and many of them have been at MS for 10 years or so, and they know so damn much. It feels like its going to be hard to contribute something at the moment. I reckon I will be fine because I trust my ability to do support at the end of the day, but its forcing me to push myself far beyond what I’ve had to in recent years. If this makes it sounds bad though, I’m describing it badly. Its truly the most brilliant techie geeky fun I’ve ever had, and I can’t wait to actually start working on real customer problems. I actually managed this week to answer a SQL question to one of my colleagues when he needed some help, so this may me feel good, and reminded me that I do know something….
Seriously though, life here is pretty sweet. I’m still integrating administratively because the Swedes have a compulsory identity card scheme (sounds familiar?), which I haven’t received yet and without which you can’t do bugger all. My application is accepted its just at the processing centre currently, so I’m waiting on this. For example I bought a car last week, but they won’t give it to me without my identity card, and I couldn’t insure it either. I can’t open an account mobile, so I’m on Swedish PAYG system currently, and if I wasn’t living in a hotel still, I’d be having trouble registering my utility bills. Its airly all pervading but then there are apparently benefits. Once you are registered, it truly does track everything. Now obviously you could arugue whether this was good or bad from a freedom of information point of view, I have met Swedes who go both ways about whether its good or bad, but the major benefits is that their technology is completely properly integrated across all government departments, meaning that for example if ou change your address, you just tell these people and they inform everyone, and I mean absolutely everyone, automatically for you. Apparently when you do a tax return, they already know EVERYTHING about you income and expenditure and they just send the form to sign and approve. The guy sitting next to me at work did his by SMS last year apparently!!
Stockholm is slowly starting to green up now. Tonight is the big festival where we celebrate the arrival of spring (and therefore have public holiday tomorrow). On another note there are 6 further bank holidays before end of June – go Sweden!! But there’s gonna be some huge bonfires lit and various weird games and stuff like “hit the cat out of the barrel”, don’t know what this is yet, but it starts at 8.15 tonight. Also apparently everyone wears sailors caps and throws them in the air a lot..we’ll shall see, I’ll no doubt put some photos up on flickr next week.
Wednesday, April 19, 2006
First days in a new job....
The obvious question from the previous post having just read it back (and looked at the photo) is why are you drinking beer for breakfast? Well obviously I’m not, but the point of this story is that you can eat pickled gherkins with whatever the hell you want, whether it be whilst drinking beer in the evening or with cheese and crisp breads in the morning
So anyway…..1 week later and here we are.
What with everything being closed for Easter we kinda had to stop sorting stuff out as everything closed down, so we just spent a few days hanging out and doing the Stockholm tourist thing. You can see the photos on flickr, its been a sunny few days, everything is starting to green up a it with hints of spring and the city is looking better and better.
We went walking at the nature reserve which is just up the road from us for a few hours on Monday and that completed a fairly chilled weekend of the usual type of thing from home really – cooking, eating, drinking, walking, hanging out in town. It was all good and the right way to be before the start of a new job.
So come Tuesday morning it was time to go to work – I must say compared to some jobs I felt decidedly relaxed the night before and I slept quite well. The morning came round and I headed off for my huge 3 minute walk to work. Quite a change from 90 minutes on London public transport.
I think I felt so relaxed because of the fact that I’d met so many of my colleagues in a fairly social situation at the interview stage and kinda felt that I knew what I was getting into.
Anyway the first morning, Alf, my new boss spent the morning driving us around to complete a few more of our administrative tasks. First off we went to Bostad to sign the contract on our new house. Then we went to the tax office to apply for a social security number. This all seemed to go frightening well until today at lunchtime they phoned me back to say that the copies of documents that I’d submitted were not correct and that we didn’t to provide some more info. Anyway – its all moving in the right direction if nothing else. It’ll be a while before I get a bank account, and therefore a while before I get paid, and it also turns out that I can’t pick up the car that we ought until I have a social security number from the tax office. At the end of the day though it all just takes a bit of time. We’re getting there.
Alf helped us a load yesterday anyway, translating for us in the offices etc. We also went to a couple of banks, but we couldn’t open accounts without the documents from the tax office. Its all quite chicken and egg really. Anyway onto Microsoft…
Even after 2 days in the office, the culture is distinctly noticeably different. Quite how much of this is down to Swedish work culture and how much is down to Microsoft I’m unsure as yet, but its been most pleasant so far.
Currently I’m just building and configuring my computers and the like. I could go on for ages about the amount and quality of kit that I have compared to BNY, but then this is probably taken as read! For those of you still at BNY though…..basically though I have a new server, a new tablet laptop, a couple of 19” flat screens wired together, a proper office chair and general cupboards, space and suitable equipment (basically it sure makes a change from buying all my own stuff whilst working for a bank). The space and comfort is very pleasing indeed.
Beyond my actual desk space, there’s the whole office environment generally. Everything is so damn spacious and comfy, there’s free fruit and drinks, the coffee is more than drinkable and you just kinda feel at home really. When I arrived my colleagues / boss had bought me a huge bunch of flowers and an easter egg to welcome me. Its just the little touches.
Obviously though I’m not saying that this is some great utopian vision of work life balance. At the end of the day the bank paid me nearly double what MS are paying, and frankly I was fine with that, cos it was a fair deal. I was happy with them being the crappiest damn employer in terms of anything but money, cos well they paid they fair due. The true trouble is that there were tons of people who weren’t being paid their fair worth who were being paid their crappy London impossible to live on salaries, and its those people that deserve to be treated better with all the benefits when the sheer financial strength of the package is not up to it. I guess I’m experienced and lucky enough to realise this, having worked for enough dumb ass financial houses and the like, but it must be tough for others in a different position. I’m just gonna enjoy the change of culture for a while yet…..
Everyone seems busy in the much the same way as any office, and everyone has the usual stuff going down – “we can’t afford that because of budget constraints” – “we need to focs on customer satisfaction” – the usuals, nothing surprising, but the pace, the people, the plesantness, the overall vibe for want of a better word is different. I think so far that I weigh on the side of this being the Swedish thing as against the MS thing, but we’ll see. After all I have worked for suitably trendy dot com startups in the UK – and the kinda tried to promote that feeling I think but it just couldn’t quite be managed.
Anyway enough the moment, if anyone has read this far then congratulations and respect to your great stamina! Many more things happened today, inside and outside of work, but I reckon I’ve had enough typing for the moment.
So anyway…..1 week later and here we are.
What with everything being closed for Easter we kinda had to stop sorting stuff out as everything closed down, so we just spent a few days hanging out and doing the Stockholm tourist thing. You can see the photos on flickr, its been a sunny few days, everything is starting to green up a it with hints of spring and the city is looking better and better.
We went walking at the nature reserve which is just up the road from us for a few hours on Monday and that completed a fairly chilled weekend of the usual type of thing from home really – cooking, eating, drinking, walking, hanging out in town. It was all good and the right way to be before the start of a new job.
So come Tuesday morning it was time to go to work – I must say compared to some jobs I felt decidedly relaxed the night before and I slept quite well. The morning came round and I headed off for my huge 3 minute walk to work. Quite a change from 90 minutes on London public transport.
I think I felt so relaxed because of the fact that I’d met so many of my colleagues in a fairly social situation at the interview stage and kinda felt that I knew what I was getting into.
Anyway the first morning, Alf, my new boss spent the morning driving us around to complete a few more of our administrative tasks. First off we went to Bostad to sign the contract on our new house. Then we went to the tax office to apply for a social security number. This all seemed to go frightening well until today at lunchtime they phoned me back to say that the copies of documents that I’d submitted were not correct and that we didn’t to provide some more info. Anyway – its all moving in the right direction if nothing else. It’ll be a while before I get a bank account, and therefore a while before I get paid, and it also turns out that I can’t pick up the car that we ought until I have a social security number from the tax office. At the end of the day though it all just takes a bit of time. We’re getting there.
Alf helped us a load yesterday anyway, translating for us in the offices etc. We also went to a couple of banks, but we couldn’t open accounts without the documents from the tax office. Its all quite chicken and egg really. Anyway onto Microsoft…
Even after 2 days in the office, the culture is distinctly noticeably different. Quite how much of this is down to Swedish work culture and how much is down to Microsoft I’m unsure as yet, but its been most pleasant so far.
Currently I’m just building and configuring my computers and the like. I could go on for ages about the amount and quality of kit that I have compared to BNY, but then this is probably taken as read! For those of you still at BNY though…..basically though I have a new server, a new tablet laptop, a couple of 19” flat screens wired together, a proper office chair and general cupboards, space and suitable equipment (basically it sure makes a change from buying all my own stuff whilst working for a bank). The space and comfort is very pleasing indeed.
Beyond my actual desk space, there’s the whole office environment generally. Everything is so damn spacious and comfy, there’s free fruit and drinks, the coffee is more than drinkable and you just kinda feel at home really. When I arrived my colleagues / boss had bought me a huge bunch of flowers and an easter egg to welcome me. Its just the little touches.
Obviously though I’m not saying that this is some great utopian vision of work life balance. At the end of the day the bank paid me nearly double what MS are paying, and frankly I was fine with that, cos it was a fair deal. I was happy with them being the crappiest damn employer in terms of anything but money, cos well they paid they fair due. The true trouble is that there were tons of people who weren’t being paid their fair worth who were being paid their crappy London impossible to live on salaries, and its those people that deserve to be treated better with all the benefits when the sheer financial strength of the package is not up to it. I guess I’m experienced and lucky enough to realise this, having worked for enough dumb ass financial houses and the like, but it must be tough for others in a different position. I’m just gonna enjoy the change of culture for a while yet…..
Everyone seems busy in the much the same way as any office, and everyone has the usual stuff going down – “we can’t afford that because of budget constraints” – “we need to focs on customer satisfaction” – the usuals, nothing surprising, but the pace, the people, the plesantness, the overall vibe for want of a better word is different. I think so far that I weigh on the side of this being the Swedish thing as against the MS thing, but we’ll see. After all I have worked for suitably trendy dot com startups in the UK – and the kinda tried to promote that feeling I think but it just couldn’t quite be managed.
Anyway enough the moment, if anyone has read this far then congratulations and respect to your great stamina! Many more things happened today, inside and outside of work, but I reckon I’ve had enough typing for the moment.
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