One of the great benefits of working from Microsoft is the ability to connect to your work from your home computer.  It's been a great tool for me to balance my time between family and work.  I really blew it yesterday, though.  I stuck my card in the card reader, but when I tried to connect I just got this funny error message:

"
Provider could not perform the action since the context was acquired as silent.
(Error 0x80090022) For customized troubleshooting information for this connection, click Help.
"

How useful!  Of course, clicking the "Help" button didn't provide any useful information.  I even tried calling the Microsoft Help Desk, and they informed me that they were having some network issues, so I assumed that to be the problem.  It wasn't until I was about to leave for work that I noticed the card in the reader backwards.  How great!

As I mentioned earlier, I recently started a new job at Microsoft.  I want to get things started off on the right foot, so I've been trying to network and generally get to know people.  Last week a few people from the team invited me to join them for lunch in the cafeteria.  I eagerly agreed and was pleased to find several more team members already there.  Some people I already knew from my summer internship, and some people I was meeting for the first time.  I was generally making good conversation when I decided that I should open up my milk carton.  I started to give it a few shakes before opening it, but only then did I realize that the carton was already open!  Splish, splash, the milk went all over the table!  Nobody realized what had happened, and I was so embarrassed that I started cracking up laughing with my face turning red.  I had started laughing so quickly that everyone thought that the laughing came first and that I spit the milk out.  It was a disaster!  Between my laughs I managed to get out a few words to explain what had happened, but how embarrassing!  Luckily I already know a lot of people, and everyone was nice about it, but can you imagine!  What a funny thing to do in your second week at a new job!