Hey, Longhorn team, if I disappear for half a day sometime soon, you might check for me over in the games division. I'll be checking out Train Simulator 2.0.

Lest you think that Microsoft tries to hide bad news, during the NEO, this headline glared at us from the front page of MSFT's intranet: "Electronic Arts disses Microsoft."

Randy Holloway is asking for the Longhorn Team's clarification on the recent stories that WinFS isn't a File System. Or is it? Well, we're all confused. I'll try to get the team to give an "official" answer when I get into the office tomorrow. No promises, though. I still am figuring out the system here.

My off the cuff answer is: if it looks like a file system. Feels like a file system. Smells like a file system. Then is it really a file system? But, didn't we have these same kinds of arguments over whether or not Windows 95 was an operating system?

OK, so what was NEO like? (NEO=New Employee Orientation at Microsoft).

Lots of forms. Mostly online. Hearing a Microsoft Corporate Vice President, Peter Pathe, talk about Microsoft's business.

No, I didn't get implants, but I got a blue badge. Where's the Koolaid? The red pills? The Darth Vader breathing apparatus?

Oh, we did sit through several cheery videos about the company and how it's trying to redefine its culture. We were told "never lie," among other things.

Being inside the belly of the monster is sorta weird. Tonight I wandered around the halls at 8 p.m. Tons of people were still at work.

Are these people crazy? I listen into some of their conversations. Very geeky stuff. Lots of .NET/XML/C# talk that I didn't understand.

By the way, I had one spam and 63 emails when I turned on my new Toshiba Tablet for the first time. Tomorrow I gotta setup my weblog and go to my first meeting. Oh joy.

Marc Canter says that I caused a disaster by moving to Microsoft. Heh. I know there are some folks inside Microsoft who feel the same way!

Scott Johnson wants the skinny on whether or not Office 11 will have XML support.

I'll try to find out.

Whew, what a first day. Oh, I see I already have a meeting about "how to crush weblogs" scheduled for later this week.

That's a joke, if you are one of the guys who post over at Slashdot.

Brad Wilson, the .NET Guy, takes on Don Box's push for RSS to support XHTML. The comments are interesting.

I'm gonna try out Linked In today. Here's some info about it over on Joi's site. The comments on Joi's site give a good idea about the pros and cons of Linked In, and the entire new "social computing/networking software" scene.

Photoartist Asya Schween is now selling her images. Her self-portraits are disturbing, but alluring.

JY, in my comments, tells us about SMBmeta.org, which is an attempt to help small businesses out through metadata. I just don't see this catching on. Too many small businesses don't have a clue and it's hard enough to simply get them to put up a Web site.

But, now you know why I stick so much information into my weblog. Hey, yesterday I put my cell phone here. Google will now be able to find that.

Personally, I just don't get the value add here. I guess if it catches on it'd be useful, but that's the rub. How do you get meta data to catch on? And if it isn't caught on, then it's just work for very little benefit, no?

RSS caught on for me because I didn't need to do anything. My tool created the RSS for me. I certainly would never have done it myself (although I know folks like Zeldman hand code everything, but that's always seemed a wacky approach to me).

Eric Norlin is wondering "what is Scoble gonna do?"

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm looking forward to finding out myself! I have a few vague ideas (and have already been working on some projects) but I find out the meat of what I'll be doing this afternoon. Unfortunately, NDAs will probably prevent me from disclosing what I'm doing (since I'm working on the Longhorn team). We'll see how much I can disclose.

But, yes, Eric, today should be one of the more interesting ones of my life.

Good tips from MSN on participating in a business lunch. Hey, anyone wanna go to lunch on campus?

Dave Winer says that the Semantic Web is overhyped. I'd say it's worse than that. The whole metadata movement is overhyped. Folks are always trying to get me to type in some metadata. Look at Microsoft Office from a few years ago. It tried to get me to enter in more information so that it'd be easier to search for documents.

Problem is, I've never used those features. Past behavior is a good predictor of future behavior, so I doubt I'll ever enter metadata for anything.

So, the semantic web is dead on delivery for me. Hell, I had a tough enough time trying to convince past employers to use meta tags. Ain't gonna happen.

Now, can someone release a pre-processor that'll add good meta data before you post? That's a more interesting idea. Imagine if Google put something on your machine that made it even easier to become part of Google's index (and made Google's index even better).

I'd love to be convinced why I'm wrong.

Dave Sifry announces the Technorati API.

Don Box is proposing moving to XHTML for RSS.

John Lam has released demo code from his talk on the CLR at VSConnections.

What's more interesting is he wrote "YARR" (for Yet Another RSS Reader) for one of his tutorials. I love speakers who give out source code.

Well, now that I'm awake, due to a dream, where I get fired, and my first hour as a Microsoft employee is coming up fast, might as well post some weblogs.

Scot Hanselman has a good PowerPoint tip.

Dana Doss had a profound effect on my life. He was the guy who owned LZ Premiums, the camera/video/appliance store in San Jose that I used to work at.

Tonight, in a dream, he fired me for insubordination.

That was notable for a few reasons. One, I can't remember the last time I had such a vivid dream where I was prompted to wake up and write about it. Two, it was for quoting prices over the telephone (a big no no in his store, since he and his dad realized that the only way you'd be able to make a sale is to get people into the store. We also knew that if competitors were able to call and find out our pricing that they'd be able to match our prices. Since we had the lowest prices, that'd kill our main competitive advantage since most folks would rather buy from a big-name store in some other part of town).

Anyway, I've lost track of Dana and Laurie Doss. I'd really like to get back in touch with them. If anyone knows how to contact them, I'd really love to know. Yeah, I already tried Google, but they aren't there.