Scott Morgan

I recieved an email yesterday from a Microsoft technical recruiter wanting to hire me as a Flash Developer, or as they called it, a Media Author. After I laughed out loud, sent it to a few colleagues who also laughed out loud, I thought about this for a second. Not about taking the job, I would rather be probed by aliens than work for Microsoft. I thought who in their right mind would take a Flash job at Microsoft? It would be like sitting on death row. Talk about a dead end job!

It is obvious Microsoft is trying to kill Flash, it will never happen, but when they do start to push hard, and Silverlight penetration reaches, I don’t know, double digits, why would they employ anyone using a competing technology. Probably because they know Flash is superior and it is going to be a severe uphill battle to even compete. Maybe they would hire me and brainwash me to be a Silverlight developer, then slowly hire every flash developer out there and “convert” them. Ok, maybe a bit far fetched, but would you put anything past Microsoft? I also find it humorous that they don’t even use the word Flash in the job title.

With that said, here is the recruiters email to me. My favorite line is “I am sure you would be interested in working in the Microsoft campus on exciting, challenging projects.” They couldn’t be more wrong.

Hello,

This is [name removed to protect the innocent] , Technical Recruiter with [name removed to protect the innocent], Seattle and a preferred vendor for Microsoft, Redmond in Seattle for contract and some full time positions.

I came across your resume online and as I was going through it, I would like to know more about what kind of roles you are looking for, what skills, areas you would like to work on, what you are passionate about and try to find suitable challenging positions for you . We do long term contracts which are generally extendable beyond a year, we do full time positions, we do contract to hire positions too. Depending on what you are comfortable with and what you are looking for, we will look, and help you find the right positions. I am sure you would be interested in working in the Microsoft campus on exciting, challenging projects.

Currently I have a long term contract position with the MSN Media Solutions Team at Microsoft, Redmond and they are looking for Flash developers.

1. Position: Media Author (Flash Developer)

Requirements:

Experience developing Flash site, components, and/or games. Proficiency in Flash, Photoshop, ImageReady or Illustrator.

Experience with Flash ActionScript

Some JavaScript experience, working knowledge of html, and web based design experience.

Experience in driving work through the software development process.

Experience in audio and video encoding and editing is a plus.

Do let me know if you would be interested and send your latest resume ASAP

Thanks and Regards,

[name removed to protect the innocent]

Does anyone else find this as funny as I do?

Tags: Flash, Microsoft, Silverlight

Well it says a lot about Silverlight when Microsoft is still rolling out Flash sites (only targeting Flash Player 8, AS3 must be too tough for them ;). I know Silverlight is still in beta and obviously not ready for primetime, but I still find it a some what humorous, maybe you will too, maybe not. I am sure I will get flamed for this post, but isn’t that part of the fun of having a blog? http://www.syncmyride.com

I will admit they have almost implemented a nice SEO (Search Engine Optimized) Flash site. If you view the source you will notice all of the content is written in xhtml, the swf then parses that same xhtml and uses it as its datasource. I said “almost implemented a nice SEO’d Flash site” because if you turn off javascript the content is not displayed. Certain Search Engines will still parse the mark-up but others won’t. They should of made the site fail more gracefully and display the raw XHTML for those Search Engines who ignore javascript like Google.

As a side note, another thing I found interesting is they show an image of an iPod on the site next to their (crappy) Zune player. Understandable I guess since iPod is the number one portable music player. Microsoft isn’t going to deny that.

Tags: Adobe, Flash, Microsoft, RIA, Silverlight

I had a sadistic moment on the week-end. I am not sure what came over me. My desktop computer (probably the last PC I will ever buy) was running very sluggish, it has probably been a year since I did a complete overhaul of it. My mother board fried a year ago, so I got a new one, upgraded some ram, and dressed up the old beige elephant. So it is an AMD Athlon 2000+ with 2 gigs of ram, not too shabby. Since it was running sluggish and regular defrags didn’t seem to be doing anything I figured it was time to run the trusty old “format c:” and start fresh. So that went smooth, everything deleted, I put in my bootable xp pro disk, installed xp without a hiccup. For whatever reason there was an issue with my xp key, a quick call to India (or wherever the xp tech support is), a new key was issued to me and I was up and running.It was a beautiful thing only seeing that windows xp screen for a few seconds during boot up. So now I was left staring at that very ugly, over saturated hillside photo that is the default xp wallpaper. First thing, let’s hit windows update, make sure I have all the patches and updates, I didn’t think there should be too many since the disk I installed from had SP2 on it, I was wrong, about 250 megs of updates.

Time to eat lunch, wash the car, etc. while Windows downloads the updates, installs them, and restarts 42 times.

Ok, I’m back, everything seems good to go. Once again I am staring at that horrible wallpaper. Whatever my turkey sandwich was spiked with made me want to try and upgrade to Vista. A clean install, nothing to lose on my machine, should be pretty straight forward, right? So I hit up the vista site, I see they have an application you can download to see if your system is Vista ready. Perfect! I download it, run it, fairly straight forward process. Only took about 2 minutes. Good news, my system passed. Only warning is my sound card driver. No problem, hardware vendor has drivers on their site.

So I go out and pick up a copy of Vista, yes, a legit copy, hear that FBI, Bill, a legit copy! $250 (or whatever the price was), not bad, heck, it’s the life line of your computer. So I stick the disk in, a very ugly blue and green screen greets me. From this screen I can run the test again or install Vista. I was still proud of my system for passing the test the first time I didn’t think he deserved the stress of going through that again. So I clicked the install Vista button. Waiting, waiting, waiting, blue and green screen, no text. Them WHAMO! My first error, I didn’t even make it to the first step of the install process and I have an error.

Supposedly my computer doesn’t have full ACPI support and Vista cannot be installed! Um, what, but my boy passed your test? The test results didn’t mention anything about this. My XP hardware profile says I have ACPI, why can’t Vista see it? WTF?!?!? The only interactive element on this very painful message window is an OK button. I click it and it just closes the Vista Installer. I tried it again, restarted, tried it again, the same message every time.

Now I’m pissed (seems to happen the longer I work on a Windows based system)! The free online test said my system was good to go. I buy the software, I open the software (once it is opened it can’t be returned), I attempt to install it and I learn it can’t be installed on my “Vista-Ready” system.

So that’s my story, I told you it was short, I wish I could write more but I didn’t even make it to step one. Once again, thank you Microsoft. You really know how to drive people to other OS’s. Very generous, do you get tax exemptions because of this charity work.

UGH!

Tags: Microsoft, sucks, Vista

I am not one to usually bash Microsoft, I usually keep it in, but I recently switched to a Mac and I love it. But if I could ask Microsoft for one thing, I could ask for a million things to make their software better. But I just want one tiny thing that has pissed me off for awhile now.Why is it when you double click on a URL in IE that the entire thing doesn’t highlight? It stops at the start of the query string. So only the address before the ? is highlighted, then you type in your new address and you get a 404 or 500 error. Firefox does it on mac and pc, Safari does it, but IE, nope.

Like I said, it’s minor. I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I hate having to select the URL, drag and highlight the entire thing or hit CTRL A when a simple double click should do exactly what I want.

Ok, end of rant. Thank you for your time.

Tags: arghhhh, Microsoft