Since moving into the condo, my life has been taken over by doing all the little things one must do just after moving into a place. It's driving me insane, but I keep telling myself that it'll be worth it. That ripping out the carpet, painting the walls, and installing hardwood floors will be worth the headache. I'm sure I'm right, as I am about most things in life, but we'll see.

Fortunately, though, I'm not dead or gone or anything. I've been writing a lot, but haven't been hitting the "Post" button. I don't know why. I guess I've just wanted a little peace and quiet as I get my new life in order. I'll eventually post the stuff I haven't been sharing, but not before I've written four more posts (yes - I have it all planned out).

One of the benefits of not being dead or gone or anything is that the appearance of being dead, or the belief that one has taken off, is probably often due to the sheer quantity of exciting stuff someone's doing.

In my case, aside from the condo, it's Microsoft Research TechFest. It's a small convention meant to show the outside world a piece of MSR.

I've just posted the first in a series of videos I'm doing on the convention. There'll be many more, and they're all going to be freaky cool (if you're a geek, anyway). The stuff these people do is bloody effing amazing. I wanted to hug everybody I met. The work they're doing really could change life for the better, and that's one of the promises of computing that's only been half delivered. Life has gotten profoundly more complex with the rise of computers, and that's not really a good thing. I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm often frustrated by the difficulty of some tasks, the time required, and so on when it comes to computers (of any kind - Windows, OS X, *nix, phones, and so on). The work being done at MSR, in my opinion, is the stuff that could take all this cruft, trim the fat, and repair the damaged goods that modern personal computing has become. It's a problem to which nobody is immune. Yeah, some things are easier now than they were years back, but this industry is driven by change and flashy-flashy more than it is by progress.

I'll be back to write more about this, as I've been writing a very long post in my head about MSR and its role in fixing the planet, but right now, I've gotta run and get back to TechFest.

In the meantime, check out my first TechFest video on Channel 9. I'm going to put out tons more this week, so keep your peepers on the C9 home page.

It's going to be fun.

Tah.