Why not come work on the Common Language Runtime team at Microsoft?  My team is a team of SDETs (Software Development Engineer in Test) that works in the really low levels of the CLR.  We cover areas like assembly loading/fusion, AppDomains, the shim (mscoree), and interop.

As an SDET, you are in charge of all aspects of quality for the areas you own. This means you get to be involved in the design process and be literally the first person developing code using new features coming out of the team.  I've found my last year and a half here to be extremely satisfying.

This is a pretty exciting time to join the team as we're working on some long-lead items for the next version of the CLR and we're also busy shipping Silverlight 2 and .NET Framework 3.5 SP1.

You'll need strong coding, problem-solving, and communication skills.  Some background on the CLR and managed code is a plus, but not required.  If you think you've got what it takes to join the team, check out the job details and submit your resume.  I'm happy to answer questions about the team and the jobs within reason, so feel free to ping me at marklio at [you-know-where].com.

There are several openings in other areas of the team as well.  Feel free to search the other CLR jobs and find the one that's right for you.

Today, we are closing on the sale of our house in Austin.  What a relief to have that over with.  She was a good house for many years.  In many ways, we'll always miss that house, but we're excited about the new things that God has planned for us in our new house, which we love so far.

Yup, it's my Dad's birthday again.  This next year of his life holds alot of excitement for him as he becomes a grandfather.  Happy Birthday Grandpa!

So much stuff has been going on in the last few weeks.  I hate it when I get behind here.  Yes, the rumors are correct.  Becky and I are going to have a baby.  I don't really like the term "expecting".  Whenever someone says they're expecting, I always say, "I hope you're pregnant, or you're going to be dissapointed."  I also don't like the term "due".  It makes me think, "Boy, I hope we get it turned in before it's due, or we'll get points taken off".  Anyway, I was waiting to make this announcement until I could get the ultrasound picture scanned so I could share it.  But the scanner is on the fritz and I haven't had time to mess with it.

Oh, yeah, the official date is December 4th.

It's my friend Peter's birthday today.  I'd tell you how old he is, but I don't even remember how old I am.  Here's a picture from a couple of years back of Peter in the Olive Garden in Waco, Texas.  I believe the haircut is a few revisions behind, but the goofy grin is up to date.  Sometime, we'll make it out to Cali for a visit and stay at their new place.

Happy Birthday, buddy.  I believe I have the distinction of being the first to say it online.

Well, it looks like the Lady Bears are gonna win it all.  That's really exciting.  They really deserve it.  I played in the basketball band at almost every home game while I was at Baylor.  Just heard the 'bones playing Emperial March.  Cool to see the band still doing some of the things that Dave, Jeff, and I started while we were there.

[Update] It's now official

[Update] changed 'game' to 'band'. He he

Evidently, this is the weekend for floods.  Jeff (Flint) evidently had a flooded basement, and Becky and I discovered our guest bedroom was full of water.  We thought it was our washing machine, but it turned out that our hot water heater had developed a leak and had been dripping for some time.  So, I ripped it out of there and, with the help of my dad, put in a new one.  It was pretty easy.  I bought a torch because I had to sweat on a threaded adapter to make any future work easier.  That was pretty fun.  Thank goodness Lowe's was open on Easter.  Otherwise, it would have been a cold shower for me tomorrow.  Thanks, Dad!

With my mom's help, Becky was able to pull up the carpet and dry things out in the guest bathroom.  Thanks, Mom! (and Becky)

My dad got some pictures.  I would have taken some, but I was pretty busy and ticked off that I was having to spend my Easter replacing my water heater.  When he gets them up on Flickr, I'll link to them.

Sorry to hear that my friend Jeff is sick.  I'm also under the weather today.  As usual for me, it is the sore throat that is the most bothersome.  One time back in college I had a really bad sore throat and my long-time family doctor asked, "Who removed your tonsils?"  I responded that I had not had them taken out. He remarked, "Oh...I was going to say they had not done a good job."  Although I wasn't exactly sure how to take that, it was clear that my tonsils are not in the best condition.

Hope you get feeling better, Jeff.

I recently recommended MSN Spaces to my dad to start up a blog.  He got really excited about it and began posting his thoughts and photographs.  Today, we discovered that for people to leave comments, they must have a .NET passport.  Personally, I have nothing against passport.  I think it's great, but not everyone does.  There are lots of people scared to create a passport because they think there is some kind of privacy issue involved. I can see this as a defense against comment spam on the blogs, but to my dad, it's a barrier for his friends and family to join in the conversation.  We're looking into all the options, but I may recommend he look elsewhere for his blog hosting needs.

Well, I'm off to bed early tonight (not that this is that much earlier than I normally go to bad).  I've got a 7:00am test time slot to bitmap some packaged devices for correlation with data gathered at probe.  Hopefully, I can get the data I need before my slot runs out at 10:00 and I get kicked off the tester.

On another note, I grabbed the latest snapshot of RSS Bandit, which now has ATOM support.  So now I can get Dave and Jen's ATOM feed (their blogging provider doesn's support RSS evidently).  The new version also “double-click a tab to close it” support just like MyIE2 so I don't sit there like an idiot trying to close a tab.

You may be wondering why I'm being particularly quiet. I my readers will recall, Becky is out of town...still. Our anniversary was last Thursday, so I've been getting a few surprises ready for her return. I'm very excited about them, but, on the off chance that she should stumble onto my web log while in Germany, I will not mention them. I'll relay her reactions to you when she gets back.

Andrew and Sara came up yesterday evening. We played some ping pong and went to Red Lobster. For those of you wondering...yes, he can still beat me in ping pong. I usually lead until we tie up at 12, then he leads until about 21-19. I rationalize it by saying that I win the first half of the game.

I successfully fixed my broken sprinkler head. Today, I went through a full diagnostic of the system and targeted a few more heads to replace, as weel as an entire zone in the back that doesn't turn on. Not having a map of the pipe and valve locations will make that one a little difficult to fix. I'd say the whole thing's in pretty good shape for being 20 years old.

Yesterday was the "Grand Openning" of the Super Target openning in North Austin. My friend Jen (Dave's wife) works there and knew they were having fireworks to celebrate the openning. She and Dave invited me to come watch them. Many of you know I cannot pass up such a mixture of technology, fire, loud noises, and bright colors. Jen picked us a spot that was VERY close to where they were being shot from. I had assumed it would be a few rockets and mortar shells and it would be over....I was wrong. It turned out to be a show rivalling many of the 4th of July shows I have seen over the years. And being so close made it even better. It lasted for a long time, and the finale was absolutely deafening. We were so close that the fireworks filled practically the whole sky and made you feel as if you had ascended into the sky and were right there with them. It was really cool.