Craig’s Musings

Paul Graham’s essay last month, “Stuff,” really resonates with me. I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes and go read it. Good, isn’t it?!
Stuff appears to be a key contributing factor to the commoditization–er, evaporation–of my time. In fact, I can effectively replace “stuff” with “information” in Paul’s essay and feel equally downtrodden. I’m [...]

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A few months back I posted my review of The Starbucks Experience. At the time I raised a concern to Starbucks: when you “outsource your experience” to someone else (e.g. to grocery stores such as Safeway or Albertsons), you run the risk of damaging your brand. The people running the Starbucks kiosk are employees of [...]

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While I’m on the subject of MVP’s, I have to mention my brother. Brent is the epitome of community service to me–always generous with his time and talents.
Over the years, my brother has made it a priority to give back globally when it comes to the application of his licensed architectural skills. (There’s a running [...]

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This morning I received official word from Microsoft that I will continue for another year (7/1-6/30) as a “Visual Developer - Solutions Architect” MVP. I am grateful to receive this community involvement-based recognition, and I look forward to the coming year’s worth of interactions (e.g. Acropolis, Visual Studio 2008, .NET 3.5 with WCF, WF, etc., [...]

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From “Lessons from the Anti-Mentor” (via my folks):

People are essentially reliable; therefore, their actions should be understood with that consistency in mind (e.g. always generous, always selfish, always doing, always (just) talking, etc.). Trust your instincts here.
“You spend too much time at work to spend it around people you don’t like or trust. If you’re [...]

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