A couple of weeks ago, I was having lunch with my wife at a little Chinese restaurant. My fortune was the title of this spout piece. I immediately associated it with my recent job interview at Microsoft and it made me smile. I had already pretty much decided to take the job, but it was nice that the Universe agreed with me. : )

Right now I’m sitting in NEO (New Employee Orientation) for Microsoft employees. Not only is it a cool name, but the nice folks at Microsoft provide a wireless network for new folks that can’t spent hours w/o one (although I’m the only one that’s geeky enough to have his laptop out at the moment : ). I start today as a Content Strategist on the MSDN content team at Microsoft, Corp. I’ll be in charge of the Longhorn DevCenter. A DevCenter is a section of the MSDN web site that focuses on a specific technology area, like the XML/Web Services DevCenter.

Longhorn is Microsoft’s next major operation system (and different than Windows Server 2003, which is the OS that Microsoft is launching this month). I can’t (yet) say anything more about Longhorn except that it’s cool enough that I took a job at MS so that I could get my hands on it. If you are dying for more info on Longhorn, but aren’t quite ready to change your employment arrangements to get it, check out the PDC in October. And, if you stop by and say “hi,” I’ll show you the implant scars… : )

Here. From Carlos Aquino: I found Windows 2003 Hands on Labs on http://www.only4gurus.com . There is three exercises about the new features coming with the Windows 2003 Server. They have a section with some documentations about it too.

From Fred (not his real name):

So the interview was rough, as to be expected. Here is a synopsis:

10:15-10:45 - Met with my recruiter. Discussed what day would be like and talked about the two teams I would be interviewing with: the CLR team and the Enterprise Services team.

11:00-12:00 - Enterprise Services Interview: Discussed High Performance systems and Enterprise Service standards. Programming problem: Design and Implement a self-managing Thread Pool class.

12:00-1:30 - CLR team Lunch interview: Discussed Security in the CLR and PKI. Programming problem: two fixed length buffers padded with nulls. Swap and reverse them, not swapping and reversing nulls.

2:00-3:00 - Enterprise Services interview: Discussed VS.NET. Design a function to select the six strongest stations for a car stereo.

3:30-4:30 - CLR team interview: Implement strpbak. Common Parent for two nodes BTree problem.

Interviewer: Now comes the part of the interview where we ask a question to test your creative thinking ability. Don’t think too hard about it, just apply everyday common sense, and describe your reasoning process.

Here’s the question: Why are manhole covers round?

Feynman: They’re not. Some manhole covers are square. It’s true that there are SOME round ones, but I’ve seen square ones, and rectangular ones.

Interviewer: But just considering the round ones, why are they round?

Feynman: If we are just considering the round ones, then they are round by definition. That statement is a tautology.

Interviewer: I mean, why are there round ones at all? Is there some particular value to having round ones?

Feynman: Yes. Round covers are used when the hole they are covering up is also round. It’s simplest to cover a round hole with a round cover.

Interviewer: Can you think of a property of round covers that gives them an advantage over square ones?

Feynman: We have to look at what is under the cover to answer that question. The hole below the cover is round because a cylinder is the strongest shape against the compression of the earth around it. Also, the term “manhole” implies a passage big enough for a man, and a human being climbing down a ladder is roughly circular in cross-section. So a cylindrical pipe is the natural shape for manholes. The covers are simply the shape needed to cover up a cylinder.

Interviewer: Do you believe there is a safety issue? I mean, couldn’t square covers fall into the hole and hurt someone?

Feynman: Not likely. Square covers are sometimes used on prefabricated vaults where the access passage is also square. The cover is larger than the passage, and sits on a ledge that supports it along the entire perimeter. The covers are usually made of solid metal and are very heavy. Let’s assume a two-foot square opening and a ledge width of 1-1/2 inches. In order to get it to fall in, you would have to lift one side of the cover, then rotate it 30 degrees so that the cover would clear the ledge, and then tilt the cover up nearly 45 degrees from horizontal before the center of gravity would shift enough for it to fall in. Yes, it’s possible, but very unlikely. The people authorized to open manhole covers could easily be trained to do it safely. Applying common engineering sense, the shape of a manhole cover is entirely determined by the shape of the opening it is intended to cover.

Interviewer (troubled): Excuse me a moment; I have to discuss something with my management team. (Leaves room.)

(Interviewer returns after 10 minutes)

Interviewer: We are going to recommend you for immediate hiring into the marketing department.

Keith Michaels
krm@sdc.cs.boeing.com

From Randy Ridge: New OpenGL binding for .NET from the CsGL people, supporting GL 1.1, GLU 1.3, and GLUT 3.7.6. CLS-compliant, cross-platform, yada, yada.

I had an interesting two days interviewing at Microsoft. Bottom line: I didn't say whether I accepted their offer.

Here. This slayed me…

Here. From Keith Wedinger: Interview with Brian Valentine, Senior Vice President of the Windows team at Microsoft regarding the development of Windows Server 2003. What's interesting is Brian's comment about the possible use of managed code within Windows itself.