Leaving MIcrosoft

Well, it has been 6 months or so since I have posted here. I have tried to get someone to take over answering your questions regarding MSNTV2, but no one on the engineering team really has much time these days as we've been asked to take on additional work from other teams but with about the same number of people. In these last six months, I've moved to a new town (Berkeley), started working on a new project (MSN Mobile), and had numerous other milestones in my life. But none so important as my decision to leave Microsoft.

So as of the 5th of January, I will no longer be a Microsoft employee. It's still sort of a weird thought for me really. Being a part of Microsoft has been almost like a part of my identity for about 7 years now. Nevertheless, I think it will be a good change for me to go to a much smaller company and move forward in my career.

Anyway, this site will continue here for the newbies to MSNTV2. I do have about 2 weeks off during my transition period. If I feel like I need a break from GMAT studying, I'll setup a neat bulletin board system for you guys to use on this site.

Happy New Year everyone...2007 is looking to be quite the interesting year.

6 Years Today

I didn't even realize it until I came in a saw an ecard from our administrative assistants saying that I've been at Microsoft for 6 years. Now I remember, I started on 2/22/2000 (I figured it was catchy). Anyway, back to work...I can hear the six year whip cracking again...

Transition

Well, I'm back from my Los Angeles trip and had a great time. I'll post some photos later today. Anyway, I found out that I'm transitioning to a different team at MSNTV and will be working on some cool new technologies geared around making the TV viewing experience better. Not to fret though, I plan on keeping this site running and leveraging my former teammates expertise in regards to helping y'all out. And, of course I will continue to be an MSN TV 2 user myself so I'm sure I won't fall too far behind.

Anyway, I'll be back to answer questions later this evening as I'm busy catching up and working on transition stuff (filling in documentation holes, cleaing up my test cases, etc).

MSN TV 2 Upgrade: 1.2 Release

Wow, have we been busy here at MSN TV. We've started rolling out our latest update to a limited group of users and will be sending the updates to others soon.

Here's the relatively full list of the changes and enhancements made.

A note for you technical types: We've upgraded the underlying OS from Windows CE 42. to 5.0! Anyway, if you're one of the lucky ones who have this release, enjoy! To those still waiting: it's coming to you very soon.

Sorry, No Questions Answered Yet

Man...I get back to work this past Wednesday and am instantly slammed with tons of work to do. I've resolved one crisis (so I believe), but need to come into work during the weekend to verify the change is good. If all goes well (along with my backlog of things to do: IKEA trip, Home Depot trip, car washes, etc etc), questions will be answered (probably Saturday and Sunday evenings assuming all goes well with verification of fixes this weekend).

Hotmail.com with MSN TV 2

Update: Hotmail.com is using a new version of Passport. What does this mean? New quirks of course!

Here's how to get into hotmail:

Go to hotmail.com

If you see a page with the blue header and sign in box on the right side, just procede to sign in.

If you see a stark white page with the sign in box on the right side of the screen and the page only knows the first part of your email address (ie "myemail" not "myemail@msn.com") then just sign in.

If you see a stark white page with the sign in box on the right side of the screen and the page knows your FULL email address (something like myemail@msn.com) then click "Sign in with another email address" even if it knows the correct email address. Then click on "Return to hotmail" and type your full email address and password to sign in.

The Life of an Engineer

Dodoskido Gallery :: 2005-03 US My Stuff

I've been seeing other geeks posting their "geek bag" (aka, the gadgetry that gets carried around on a daily basis) and I decided to post what I carry.

I have 3 bags that I use on a regular basis...I usually carry 2 if not all 3 bags. My first bag is my daily workhorse:

The contents of this bag are:
HP Compaq nc6000 laptop with two batteries and DVD+R drive
PCMCIA Firewire Card
PCMCIA Smart Card Reader
PCMCIA 802.11b Card (backup)
30GB 3G Ipod with black earphones
White Ipod earphones for laptop
Sanyo cellphone
Sanyo cellphone to USB charging/data cable
80GB USB 2.0 Harddrive
Various keychains with the all important bottle opener
MS Bluetooth mouse with batteries
A wax candle
Checkbook
Heart Rate zone card
Flat ethernet cable
Microsoft badge
Mileage rewards card (AA, UAL, Southwest, NWA, Hilton Honors, Starwood, Joie de Vivre)
2 pens, 2 mechanical pencils
Mini-MSNTV notepad
Wallet
CD case with DVDs
Photography book
Sunglass Hut $20 gift card
MSN TV metal luggage tag
Microsoft PCB luggage tag
Lifescan OneTouch Ultra blood sugar monitor
Handwarmer pack

The 2nd bag: MSNTV bag

The contents of this bag are:
MSN TV 2 box with power supply
Airlink 108 wireless router with power supply
WinTV USB (S-Video to USB converter)
S-Video cable
RCA cables
Serial cable
Netgear FA101 USB to Ethernet
Ethernet cable
4 AA batteries
Lexar card reader
SMC 2662W USB to 802.11b
DLink DWL-G120 ver:B1 USB to 802.11g
DLink DWL-G122 ver:A2 USB to 802.11g
DLink DWL-G122 ver:A1 USB to 802.11g
Netgear WG111 rev1 USB to 802.11g
Netgear WG111 rev2 USB to 802.11g
Linksys WUSB11 v2.8 USB to 802.11g
Linksys WUSB12
Belkin F5K6050
3 short IDE cables
Lots of little ribbon cables, switches, and flat cables.

The third and final bag is my gym bag:

Change of clothes
Sweat pants
Nalgene bottle
Arrowhead bottle
Shower kit:mini shampoo, mini soap, deodorant, gold bond powder, razor, facial lotion, hair brush, qtips.
Wired mag
Dr. Dobb's Journal
Health and workout records
Hat
2 Xbox power cables (just transporting home from work).

As you can see, there is quite a bit of stuff I carry around on a daily basis. All in the name of being mobile.

Spell check and favorites migration released!

Service release 1.1.2 (Build 1.1.309.21)

Spell check is now available! The service team heard everyone's "suggestions" for spell check and has turned it around relatively quick. Also another great feature that was added is the ability to move your favorites over from your WebTV account to MSN TV 2 automatically. If you migrated over with a WebTV.net account, you should be getting an email in the future to help you do this (it's very simple from what I've heard). Anyone who registers a new box now will have favorites migrate automatically along with their emails, address book, and messenger contact list.

eBay fixes

A few weeks ago, we noticed that the number of crashes were increasing quite a bit and tracked it down to some issues with eBay. We had some contacts over there and they were very quick and diligent at tracking down the issue on their site.

They've just updated their site and things are looking much better already. We'll be working internally to fix the issues that were the root cause for the next update, but I just wanted to give a shout out to the folks at eBay for being on the ball and rocking the fix.

$50 Rebate plus free shipping!

Have you been sitting on the sidelines waiting to get MSN TV 2? Well, there's not excuse anymore!

Now, you can get MSN TV 2 for $50 off the retail price! If you order through Amazon.com (my favorite), you'll get the box for $169.99 plus free shipping and no tax outside of WA. Then wait for your rebate check and you'll just have paid $119.99 for the MSN TV 2 box!

Rebate form is here

Keyboard Issue Update (The Aftermath)

Just received this message in my hotmail (that I use for my personal MSN TV 2s at home):

Dear MSN TV 2 Subscriber: The manufacturer of the MSN TV 2 Player, RCA/Thomson, recently discovered that users of some keyboards produced early in the manufacturing process are finding that in some circumstances not all of the letters they type are appearing on the screen. RCA/Thomson is therefore replacing these keyboards free of charge.

To determine if you have one of the affected keyboards, you need to see if your keyboard?s serial number falls within the following ranges:

621400001 ? 621401140
701400001 ? 701401600
702400001 ? 702402100
705400001 ? 705400170
To check the serial number of your keyboard, please turn it upside down. You will see three number or number/letter combinations that begin with Model, P/N and S/N. The serial number is a 9-digit number listed after S/N.
If your keyboard?s serial number falls within the ranges above, please call RCA/Thomson toll-free at 800-722-9599. Please listen to the menu items carefully. Press Option 3 (Repair & Exchange Assistance) and then Option 1 (Additional Help) to speak to an agent. RCA/Thomson will ship you a new keyboard free of charge. Prior to making this call, you need to have the following information readily available:

Serial number of the keyboard;
Serial number of the MSN TV 2 Internet & Media Player (see below for instructions on how to do this);
Purchase date of the device or activation date of your MSN TV subscription
To get the serial number for your MSN TV 2 Player, please turn over your set-top box and write down the number listed on the label after the word ?Serial.?
Do not return your keyboard to your local retailer. In order to receive a new keyboard, you must follow the procedure outlined above.

You will not need to show that you are having difficulties with your existing keyboard. You also will not need to send back your existing keyboard. There is also no need to contact MSN TV Customer Care. RCA/Thomson will completely take care of the replacement of your keyboard.

If your keyboard?s serial number does not fall within the ranges of numbers above, yet you are experiencing difficulties with it, please take the following steps:

First take the update if it is offered to you when you log in to the MSN TV service;
Be sure there is nothing blocking the line of sight between your keyboard and the front of your MSN TV 2 Internet & Media Player;
Change the batteries in your keyboard
If after following the above steps, you continue experiencing keyboard difficulties, please contact MSN TV Technical Support at: 1-866-GO-MSNTV (1-866-466-7688) for additional assistance.

This is basically the end game of the keyboard issue that users originally discovered early on. Thanks to those that sent corresponded with me personally to help MSN TV work through this issue.

MSN TV 2 email weirdness

Some folks have been experiencing periodic email outages over the past few months. We have been working in conjunction with the Hotmail team and have come up with some fixes. Beginning next week, some updates will be made to the MSN TV 2 service to address these issues.

Windows Media Connect

Windows Media Connect (Microsoft's implementation of UPnP) requires the .Net Framework 1.1. However, some folks are having trouble installing the framework from the windows update. One way around this roadblock is to install the .Net Framework 1.1 SDK located here.

New MSN TV 2 software update

Release 1.1.1 (Build 5128) is rolling to all MSN TV 2 users beginning today. There is a major fix to streamed video quality. We are also supporting 802.11g now...woohoo! A few more printer have been added to the supported list as well. I will be updating the FAQ with the details today before I go on vacation.

MSN Encarta Premium for TV

MSN TV: Home Page

I just tried it out on MSN TV 2 and it looks pretty good...however the Multimedia section of Encarta doesn't seem to work properly on MSN TV 2 (as evidenced by the marketing team not promoting that portion of the content on msntv.com).

Nevertheless, Encarta Premium is super cool and even Ken Jennings (the all-time emperor of Jeopardy) enjoys Encarta. I even have some clips of Ken just laying down the law against his opponents (he had 15K and the other two were negative a few hundred in one of the clips....that's just impressive) on the Zen portable media center that I'm evaluating.

Anyway, MSN TV 2ers, scroll along the bottom navigation bar (Mail, Favorites, etc) until you see "Encarta". And don't worry, I've already filed bugs about the multimedia section...hopefully they can fix it in their next release cycle.

MSNTV 2 Keyboard Fix

I just received word from the MSNTV customer care team and they have everything they need in place to help people that are having trouble with their MSN TV 2 keyboards. Please give them a call so they can help you get this fixed!

Keyboard Issue Update and Resolution

The engineering team has done their due diligence and we now have a process to handle the keyboard skip issue. If you have a box that has poor keyboard performance, hang in there while we put the final pieces in place and I'll let you know what to do.

Thanks for everyone's patience while the team scrambled to fix this.

Amazon getting boxes!

I just checked our production data and Amazon is starting to get a trickle of boxes! Remember, free shipping, no tax (outside of WA), and 2 months of free MSN TV 2 service...buy yours today:

Keyboard Trouble?

Some folks have alerted me to an issue regarding MSN TV 2 keyboards. I've seen some of the newsgroup posts about this as well. While I haven't seen these issues myself, I'm not taking any chances and have alerted our project managers and hardware folks. They are taking immediate action and are investigating the issue. Stay tuned...I'll keep you updated (if they don't put a gag order on me, of course).

Launch Party!

We just had our launch party at the Shoreline Amphetheater on 10/1/04...here are a couple photos of me and the gang having a good time!

There's a banner that we all signed.




Enjoying a nice beverage.




10 minute foot massage!




A neat ice sculpture.

And here's what my wife and I did with the MSN TV 2 martini glasses.