So part of work was to take the Strength Finder test and try to evaluate what are the top 5 strengths that make up you as a person. It starts by reading a book and then after you get through the first part, you take the test where by you answer a bunch of questions and you have 20 seconds per question. In the end it spits out 5 strengths and then you get to see what your strengths are. Here are mine.

Achiever - People who are especially talented in the Achiever theme have a great deal of stamina and work hard. They take great satisfaction from being busy and productive.

Relator - People who are especially talented in the Relator theme enjoy close relationships with others. They find deep satisfaction in working hard with friends to achieve a goal.

Belief - People who are especially talented in the Belief theme have certain core values that are unchanging. Out of these values emerges a defined purpose for their life.

Competition - People who are especially talented in the competition theme measure their progress against the performance of others. They strive to win first place and revel in contests.

Responsibility - People who are especially talented in the Responsibility theme take psychological ownership of what they say they will do. They are committed to stable values such as honesty and loyalty.

So yeah there are mine, and its pretty interesting. The book is also a good read if you get a chance to in a bookstore or something, however you need to buy it if you want to do the test online.

Not much to say at the moment, but will blog about this probably later on after next week when I am done with Seattle, but I just need to say that today's training was us sitting for about 8 hours in a convention center with 10,000 other attendees, listening to senior executives of the company and it was the best day I have ever had at work.

It was filled with so much passion, and so much joy which was expressed by the executives that it just made me realize how much I love working here, at the best company in the world.

A lot of it revolved around our mission statement and what all has happened within the last year and what to look forward too, but it was also about people and just understanding what gets people passionate and I saw it today. Microsoft's mission statement is:

To enable people and businesses throughout the world to realize their full potential.

I knew that always, and understood the meaning behind it, but today I realized how much it really is true, thus making me understand that this is more than just a company and a job, this becomes part of who you, part of your life, and I know I want Microsoft in mine. I love this company.

So today was travel day and get together with the MACHs here at MGX. The airport was cool and flight was okay. It was funny because this guy at the security gate was telling me to say hi to Mickey. Now the dodo that I am, I am looking at him and thinking to myself who is Mickey and how do I know that guy. In the end I realized he was talking about Mickey Mouse and it was because I was going to Orlando (duh). Oh well. Otherwise the rest went by with no problem. I was sporting the MACH Zune with me on the plane, so I got a couple people looking at me like what is that non IPod thing, which was pretty neat.

Then got to Orlando and the hotel is gorgeous and amazing and simply wow. This place is just great with pictures coming soon, I just wanted to tell people that the Gaylord Palms is simply one awesome hotel. It has a lot to offer people from a ship that is a restaurant right there in the atrium, to having alligator ponds where people can just watch as they are being fed by the hotel staff and other things like that. It is a gorgeous place, and one day I want to come back just for vacation.

Anyways more soon, as I am full after a great dinner, and now am about to go and hangout with the other MACH's from places like Europe and stuff at the pool, which should be fun :).

Well, tomorrow I leave for Orlando, Florida to take part in a week long conference called MGX (Microsoft Global Exchange). It is a once a year internal conference for our global sales team as well as evangelists, so that we can communicate and understand the strategy for the coming year as well as do a quick check in with what happened last year. It should be pretty interesting as we will have some MACH (Microsoft Academy College Hires) events and then the global conference. This ends Saturday night, and then early Sunday morning I get to fly out to Seattle, Washington to take park in another week long conference called TechReady.

TechReady, happens twice a year and I last went down in February and is essentially another global conference where all the technical folks within Microsoft get together to understand how our technologies are working and being used. There are a lot of sessions on how to deploy our business products within huge environments, as well as learn what issues most people face, and where the products are going, and is all very technical in nature with little or no mention of numbers.

It should be interesting and a lot of fun, with a chance to catch up with some team members from around the world, the MSSU folks, as well as a chance to hang out with my team. Back to Charlotte, in 2 weeks. Have fun everyone.

Well Microsoft likes to build communities and bring together like minded people into one place. It started with Channel 9 in 2004, which was meant to be for the development community and to bridge a new level of communication between Microsoft and developers. This was very controversial when it started as can be read in the following article at Wired. It is very interesting to hear about how something like this gets started and who all are involved, but in the end it was highly successful.

This led to the development of Channel 10 which was the way to bridge another gap and bring together people who had a passion for technology, which also became widely popular.

Now Channel 8 is coming soon, and it is just a teaser at the moment, but is going to be targeted towards students, and judging by how popular both Channel 9 and 10 are, it looks like it definitely has potential and should be interesting to see what all is available on that site and how much it will interact with students. Only time will tell.

What a day. Happy 7's to everyone. Is this a lucky day for everyone or just another day. Last time people were going nuts over a day like this it was 6/6/6. So lets see what everyone thinks about this.

But anyways, 7/7/7 brings together today the Live Earth - Climate in Crisis concert series from around the world. 24 Hours of concerts across 7 continents (yes they had a band playing live from Antarctica) with one purpose. To bring close to 1/3rd of the World's Population (2 Billion People) together to raise awareness about Global Warming.

During these 24 Hours, Artists from around the world are sending out an SOS and hoping that people will respond to the call.

We have one world, one planet, and we all play a part in its future. Good or Bad, we decide what happens next.

So I was just randomly searching for my name on the net to see where all it has popped up, and its kind of fun (try it out and I tell you, you will find the weirdest things out there with some of them just being spam).

Anyway I came across this article, entitled "Why is there so much Hate for Microsoft?" It was basically an article about Bill Gates and people were expressing different views about him. Open up the article and search for me, and what do you know I decided to make a post on January 1st 1999, and here it is:

Yeah i want to point out my views and just want to say that Bill Gates is a real intelligent man and why can't people just leave him alone. Because of him the computer has made it big in our life time. Sure some of his actions are not just but otherwise he should just be left alone. Thanks.

Okay, so it isn't probably the most articulate thing I have ever said in my life, but I guess it was just my thoughts back then. It's just funny that this thread is still on the net, and well what's even funnier is that I don't remember doing this, but that's my name and my email address that I still have.

This fascination or whatever you want to call it (some people tell me I am obsessed) is because I read the book "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates when it was released and I still have that copy of the book. I was 12 and decided then and there, that I could probably do a lot of things in my life, but one day, it was going to be me at Microsoft.

I am happy I was able to do it sooner rather than later, but still, it is funny how things panned out. Its always good to have a dream, even if it is just a dream. You never know when it could become reality.