Quite a few people have been emailing with questions regarding my employment with Microsoft - they want to know what I'm going to be doing and how it's going to impact other areas of my life.

So (I have to start most sentences with "So" now - it is the Microsoft Way) I put together a nice little NVFAQ for you (the "NV" stands for "Not very" - I'm being honest with myself here).

Are you going to quit doing .Net Rocks?

Yes.

Are you going to quit blogging?

Yes.

Are you kidding?

Yes.

So you're going to keep on keeping on with Carl, Geoff, and Richard on the show?

I'm going to see how it works out. I would consider myself to be a very lucky man indeed if I could manage to do both things. The only real problem would be one of scheduling. I'm going to be rather busy on most Thursday nights beginning this month, so the worst that could happen is that I would have to beg Carl to move the live show to sometime on Friday.

In the end, though, my first commitment right now is to Microsoft. Not only do I feel that this is the most responsible and professional way to behave, but I also signed some papers saying that I would, so there you go.

Is your blog going to get stupid now?

Is it going to get stupid? Methinks we might be a trifle late to put an end to that possibility.

Seriously, though, and it's rare for me to be serious on this site, the blog isn't going to change. You will absolutely be seeing more Microsoft related posts, but that's just because Microsoft is about to become a huge part of my life.

What I'd like most people to understand is that my decision to become an employee of Microsoft will in no way effect any changes where my tangles mess of neurons are concerned.

In fact, I might just get weirder. For example, because the benefits at Microsoft are so good, I'm finally going to be able to take my hypochondria to the next level - maybe even go pro with it. Before, I could only see the doctor when I had good contracts. Now, I'm going to be able to fake a heart attack every other week and not have to pay a dime.

And just who do you think is going to benefit from that, eh? Because you can bet that I'm going to write about it every time I go see the doctor when the new "low sugar" Froot Loops that weren't properly beta tested give me neon green diarrhoea for a week straight.

See? You're already benefiting. The world is a better place.

OK - You're still nuts, but what are you going to do at Microsoft?

My job, and this might come as a great surprise to you, is basically to interact with the community.

The title is "Microsoft Developer Community Champion," but is internally known as "MSDN Presenter" simply because "Microsoft Developer Community Champion" can be a bit of a tongue twister, and some people might have such difficulty with the title that it's possible they'll die of old age before they can get it out straight (if they don't first choke on their tongues while trying to say it). Alternatively, the acronym "DCC" is used, and is my preferred method of communicating the title.

My duties involve quite a few activities. The largest responsibility will be to travel around the Pacific Northwest (Oregon, Washington, Montana, Idaho, Colorado, some other places) and give technical presentations to various groups (look here for a schedule of MSDN events). When I'm not doing that, I'll be doing web casts and keeping my skills sharp with the usual battery of learning and development.

The traveling around is going to be quite a lot of fun, but I'm also really excited about the web casts. Jim Blizzard (the local .NET community evangelist) and I have come up with what we think is an interesting theme for a series of web casts that you'll be able to take part in. We'll announce the details when they're ready, but I'm frankly pumped about what we've sketched out so far - it's going to be so much fun that I'm having a hard time believing I'm going to get paid for my involvement.

And, speaking of Jim, one of the perks of this job is that I'm going to get to work closely with him. We've been friends for nearly a year now, and I never expected that I'd actually get to be a coworker of his, so this is spiffy. It isn't often that you not only get a seriously kick ass job, but that you get to work closely with a friend. It might be even cooler than the dental coverage in the benefits package.

Because you work for Microsoft, are you going to stop talking about non-MS things like open source?

Nope. If you go back and read some of my posts dealing with open source, you'll find that I've always been open minded, but with a very clear preference for Microsoft. I don't see that as being a position that's going to conflict with the interests of my current employer.

Anyway, I'm naturally curious about life on all sides of "the fence" (and, yes - the fence in this case is multi-faceted and not one of the traditional two-sided deals we're used to - OSS, Apple, Sun, Microsoft, Oracle, and so on are all different neighbors living on the same block). I'm reading a book about Java 1.5 right now, for example, and have plans to move on to a Mono book after that (or at the same time - doesn't really matter). If I find anything particularly compelling or offensive, then I won't hesitate to post.

One thing I've decided, however, is that I'm probably not going to openly "bash" technologies from other companies that I don't like. I usually tried not to do that in the past, but I'm going to try harder now. This isn't anything being imposed on me from superiors, but rather is a choice I'm making for myself. I obviously really dig Microsoft's products, and there isn't any reason to all out trash someone else's just because they're different.

That said, my PowerBook really pissed me off this week, and I've been teetering back and forth about whether or not to post about my experiences.

Anything else?

If anybody has any other questions, I'd be happy to answer them.