Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Sorry I haven't posted in awhile...went to Vegas for CES and saw tons of amazing stuff. Got back to work afterwards and just haven't had time to blog at all. Here's a quick rundown of the past week or so.

Vegas/CES: Awesome. CES was definitely a great convention to go to. I ended up spending most of my time there with Eric as a result of showing up about an hour after everyone else, which ended up being great since it was just 2 of us and we were able to cover a lot of ground. Some of the highlights for me:
  • Toshiba's scrolling tablet
  • Listening to Creative's X-FI sound
  • Checking out the Creative ZenM, their video mp3 player which won Best of CES. Honestly, the only thing the iPod has over this is size; otherwise, the ZenM's usability kicks butt.
  • Motorola Mini Blue. I know it's not the tiniest bluetooth headset (shall we say earset?) out there, but it certainly made me want to buy it!
  • Motorola Pebble phone. I really liked this phone.
  • I can't name them all--but all the huge plasmas. Awesome.
  • The LG booth. Lots of fun, random cell phones and gadgets.
  • The plasma mirror display by Phillips shown in the Yahoo NextGen House. I want to buy one of these now.
  • Previews of the PS3 games.
  • Bypassing the hour or so line to get into the NextGen house just because I was a Microsoft employee. Wahoo.


  • MS Women's Conference: I spent 3 days attending the Microsoft Women's Conference. The highlight: seeing Steve Ballmer. The lowlight: getting my car towed by freakin' Microsoft Security while attending the conference (I don't even want to get into this--but yes, Microsoft will tow employee cars parked in company parking garages if they're parked "illegally"--i.e. not in a parking stall). Anyhoo, I was just happy to be attending a women's conference at all. Sure, there were some topics that could be geared towards both genders...but I found many talks interesting. For example: "Women Don't Ask" -- a session on women's negotiating skills (or lack thereof) because women, in general, don't ask for what they want. Congrats to Microsoft for even putting something like this women's conference--it really makes me feel good as a women to be working for a company that does things like that, especially in an industry that's so male dominated.

    Monday, January 2, 2006

    Feliz Ano Nuevo

    Happy New Year everyone! I had a fantastic ball by inviting a bunch of good friends over for a potluck dinner party (a rather tame party compared to the Halloween one)--about 25-30 people showed up with all sorts of delicious appetizers, entrees, desserts and drinks. It was overwhelming how creative people got! Thanks to you all for bringing such great dishes. We celebrated the stroke of midnight by joining all my neighbors up on the rooftop to watch the fireworks set off from the Space Needle--it was awesome. May 2006 be a great one to all.