I woke up at 3:30am for a 6am flight this morning from Seattle to Vegas. I know, it was early, but it was the cheapest flight. Got to watch the bottom line, you know. 😉

Anyway, the flight was uneventful and I arrived at the Venetian at something like 10:30am. Turns out that my room wasn’t ready yet, so they held onto my bags while I had some breakfast. I thought about going to Bouchon, but it was too much trouble (off in some tower on the 10th floor or something like that). I’ll try going there a different day for something.

While reading the New York Times at breakfast, I got a call saying that my room was ready, so I finished up and finished the checkin process and headed up to my room. I had to wait quite a while (something like an hour) for my bags to make it to my room, which was upsetting, but the room is quite nice. It’s got to be 650sq ft. or so. There’s a bedroom, a living room, and a very nice bathroom.

So far the most dissapointing thing about the room is the internet access. My wireless signal strength is VERY weak, ranging from 18-30%. Bleh. I have big packet loss, pages keep timing out, etc. It’s a pain.

In any case, now that I’m settled in, I think it’s time to hit the casino for some craps or blackjack.

What I could really go for right now, strangely enough, is some movie theater popcorn and a pay-per-view movie. But alas, no popcorn is on the room service menu.

After something like 5 years on the MSN (now Windows Live) Messenger Team, I’m moving to a new role at Microsoft. Messenger is one of my favorite products in the world, the team is absolutely great to work with, and we’re working on what I think is our most exciting release ever,  but an opportunity came up that was just too good to ignore.

Starting next week, I’m taking a job as a (Software) Architect reporting to Joshua Goodman, who is BillG’s Technical Assistant and reports directly to the man himself.

Yeah. It’s pretty freaking sweet. I’m extremely excited. I’ll be working on all kinds of things across the whole company. It’s going to be an amazing period of learning and I hope to contribute to some wicked hot new stuff that will amaze and delight our customers. I can’t talk about anything publicly, but it’s some software that I for one would love to use.

Anyway, I’m starting the new job off this Sunday by heading to Vegas to attend MIX07. I’ve worked a ton on clients, a ton on peer-to-peer apps, a bit on servers, but basically none on web apps, so I need to ramp up quickly there.

w00t!!!~!1!!!~one!~@~~!