Prospectus, Manifesto, Meaning and Intent.

Welcome to my blog.

First, an initial introduction:

My name is Kristopher Makey, though typically I go by the much shorter label of "Kris".  At the time of writing this initial blog post I work for Microsoft on Visual Studio Tools for Office.  Specifically, since May of 2006, I've been working on testing the new Click-Once deployment feature in VSTO. I imagine that over the course of at least the next couple of months, the focus of postings on this blog will specifically be on that feature given the amount of general interest there has been in me sharing what I know about it.  I may occasionally write about some of my other interests (I have many) but for the most part I expect that the focus of this blog will be to divulge the secret inner workings I have divined about the great products we build here at Microsoft.

So what's up with the title:

I have to first apologize to anyone who isn't into computer/console games, I'm about to swing a little off into one of my other secret hobbies.  The title comes from two major influences:  Assassin's Creed (and Xbox 360 title) and my weird little slant on life.  I believe that most problems occur when the perspective of one entity and the perspective of another entity are so incompatible, neither can communicate in a meaningful and productive way.  Assassin's Creed is (somewhat) about the conflict between 2 groups who have completely different perspectives on what is the appropriate solution to a problem (conflict and war in this case).  The main "good" characters that the player is meant to associate with have a tenet of "Nothing is real, everything is permitted".  So take those to factors and blend them a bit, and basically you obfuscate, in an interesting way, the meaning of my blog:  Perspective is the only truth, I'm trying to teach you what I see so you understand what I know.  So, please bear with my conceit, I do sometimes think I'm clever when probably I'm just a little strange.

The history of Kris:

I grew up in South-Eastern Idaho.  I went to school in Northern Idaho (I am an alumni of the University of Idaho).  I now work at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington.  The rest is pretty much gory details, that I'm not particularly motivated to go into right now. 

Some final thoughts:

Before I finish this post (at 1:00AM no less), I'd like to mention a few more things about this blog and myself in general.  Foremost on my mind is that I really try explain technical details in a clear non-ambiguous manner.  I feel that the lines between something technical and something communicable are not so clear-cut.  Most things should be explainable in a way that non-technical people can follow if not necassarily understand the full scope, impact or meaning of each detail.  Because of this I find it easy to end up with very lengthy dissertations on simple topics because I end up not only answering the question but often end up answering the "why" of the answer and the "what it means in the grand scheme".  At the same time, I'm still learning and trying to improve myself.  I don't mind feedback, I thrive on it.  So feel free to provide any feedback about my style, any errors or simply that what I was saying was important but the way I said it was too lengthy and a shorter explanation is desired.

I maintain an active work life, social life and home life (I have a lot of hobbies and projects that I would love to get to) so it is very possible that my posting may be somewhat erratic as those three factors impact my time.  That said, I'm currently planning on doing weekly updates and hope to break down specific interesting features or aspects of VSTO that I come across.  Of course to aid in having content, I have a bit of backlog from shipping Visual Studio 2008.

Thanks for reading.

Kristopher Makey

Comments

• Anonymous
  December 14, 2007
  Kris Makey started blogging so I guess you can expect some posts about VSTO ClickOnce deployment on his