I'm realizing I can't keep the weblog pace up that I've been doing. Something has to give over the next month. I gotta move our house. Gotta figure out my new job. Gotta deal with stress of leaving a place I've known for more than 30 years (and my wife's stress of leaving her family).

One thing I also realized is my email and IM load just went up dramatically. Being associated with Microsoft definitely makes you busier. I love it. Thank you to everyone who sent such nice comments. I've only been posting to the harsher ones, but the nice ones are outrunning the harsher one by about 30 to 1.

While at Adobe, my friend Thomas talked with me at length about how Adobe is trying to get the industry to implement its XMP (eXtensible Metadata Platform). Here's a paper on XMP.

I'd like to get feedback on XMP and give that back to Adobe. What do you think? Oh, yeah, they are giving this to a standards body so that it's not "just an Adobe" thing. This looks pretty interesting. When I start at Microsoft next month I'll try to find out what Microsoft's official position is on XMP. Anyone know?

Today I sat in the lobby of Adobe for a while waiting to meet my friend (who I used to work with at Adobe). They are building a third tower in their downtown San Jose location. It's a very interesting headquarters. Much different feel from Apple's headquarters, or Microsoft's (or NEC's).

Whenever I visit a company, I try to feel the "vibe." Adobe's vibe is a good one. It's busy. It's growing. It's people seem happy. My friend laid out why Adobe is important to me. Personally, that's not important to repeat here, but the fact that he did it, was.

Those who wonder if the buzz is really back in high tech should visit a few lobbies.

Dwight Shih says "I think he'd be better served by tracking the release of .NET applications and the conversion of .NET developers."

I don't like sexual metaphors. There's too much baggage to them. I mean, look at our "negative" language. Much of it comes from sexual metaphors. "Screw you." "You suck." "F### you." etc.

Not to mention, females are often on the receiving end of negative sexual terms. In my childhood, how did other kids call other kids names? "Girly boy." "Slut." "Ho." etc. (Hey, I still get called some of those today! Heh.)

So, I feel real uncomfortable with talking about Microsoft as "being back on the dating market (especially in the male role model)." On the other hand, if you're in a healthy relationship, then the metaphor maybe can work.

Today I met with my friend Thomas DeMeo, who works in a high up position at Adobe. Was that a date? Absolutely!

I know what happens when companies let their relationships slide. Look at Apple and Quark. Quark hasn't brought out a version of its QuarkXPress for OSX yet (they are about to). That seriously hurt Apple's efforts to get its users to move to OSX (and, it's very easy to argue that it hurt Quark as well).

So, now that I'm at Microsoft, am I accepting dates? Heck yes!

Dan Shafer is sad that I took a job at Microsoft. "By taking a job as an evangelist for the worst-behaved technology company on the planet, Robert has perhaps tainted much of the advice and insight he's been offering on his blog over the last few months."

That's an argument I wouldn't have predicted. Well, I first started getting hints of this new job in late February. Did I change after that? Maybe. I did write some weblogs to generally prepare me (and the folks who'd interview me) for my interviews. But, did I back down off of stances I took before then? Did I take new stances? If anything, my traffic has started to go way up since then. So, it could be shown that my stances since then got me hired and got me more traffic (at least half of the people who interviewed me read my weblog on a regular basis).

I also told Dan I disagreed with him since my interviewers said they hired me because of my ideas, not in spite of them.

I believe the folks who interviewed me have integrity -- that's hard to prove, and even harder to justify in a weblog, I know, but they've been very straight with me and have so far done exactly what they said they would do (and these are people who have a good reputation in the industry, even with folks who can be extremely tough, like Dave Winer). Shafer, it seems, believes that no one who works at Microsoft has integrity. I hope to win over his trust again, both as a friend, and to show him that there's a new Microsoft.

John Walkenbach: "A day when everyone likes Microsoft? It'll never happen."

Joe Beda asks "do we [Microsoft] pay you enough yet to get a decent URL?"

Um, no. I'll probably be stuck with an MSDN address like the rest of you! Heh.

Uh, oh, not even on the job yet and already Eric Albert admits to working to getting me fired. Well, I should have been clearer than that. I don't see this industry as a zero sum game. Guess, what, Eric (who, I think works at Apple) and I can both win! How? Make this industry better for everyone. You know, there are are billions of people on earth who don't have a computer yet. Why don't we work together to expand the computer market? That way we both can get raises and avoid the layoff line? (Disclaimer, several friends and family members work at Apple and I owe my career to Apple. I want to see them win too).

Received via email from Jonathan Barry: "When you've settled in, can you please find out what the deployment strategy is for .NET mobile applications. As to how the hell do you develop a custom .NET sales force app and then get it onto 500 PDSs in a controlled manner, with the ability to roll back, refresh, and revoke the apps and manage the PDAs themselves with a SMS like tool?"

Hey, maybe that's a job for NEC -- they have several solutions that help with the deployment, maintainance, and security of your mobile devices.

The MCSE Certification Track: "Can I call them liars now?" Ouch.

Howard Greenstein gave me (and all evangelists) some great advice. He used to be an evangelist at Microsoft.

In one part he mentioned a list that Linda Stone used to keep about all the nasty things that people said about her and Microsoft. Personally, if someone needs to keep such a list, they shouldn't be an evangelist.

I'd rather keep a list of all the people who move from Linux or Macs to Windows. Those will be my successes. I'll also keep a list of people who move from Windows to Linux or Macs. Those will be my failures. That's how I judge this.

Keep in mind, I'm really not a good evangelist. In my career, I've only been able to evangelize things I really believe in. I've seen the next version of Windows. I really believe in it. If I didn't, I wouldn't have taken the job. After all, I had a nice cushy spot at NEC all carved out, and there were other opportunities being offered to me as well.

I'm of the Guy Kawasaki school of evangelism. You can only really be a good evangelist if you have something good to evangelize. Microsoft does. I'm betting that the list of people who move to Windows is longer than the list of people who move away from it.