Thanksgiving week at Microsoft

There are certain times of the year at Microsoft that I like to think of as "golden time," when email is slower, meetings are fewer, and we all have more time to stretch out and dive deep into tasks that we never usually seem to have sufficient time for. One of those "golden times" is this week, as American Thanksgiving looms tomorrow. There are seldom very many people in the office this week, so for those of us who are working, this is a fantastic time.

For me, it's been a great week for spec writing, investigating a particularly troublesome bug, and studying. If this were a normal week, with all my other work flying around, I might never have gotten a chance to get the studying done. However, this week, I'm able to focus on these important tasks and still spend some quality time with Ivor Horton's "Beginning Visual C++ 2005."

Sometimes this is a quirky and intense place to work. One of those quirks is that sometimes work is just very quiet. It's nice taking a breather, even if I'm still working hard.