As many of you may already know, I am now a father of two beautify girls as of two Mondays ago.  My second daughter, Reanna Rae Rutledge, was born on April 7th at 5:19 p.m.  The full story and pictures are on my family blog.

One great benefit of working at Microsoft is paid parental leave for new fathers.  I began leave the day of the birth and plan to be off work for about six weeks.

There's something of a showdown occurring in my life this week.

As you may know, I recently moved to Redmond to start a job at Microsoft.  Things worked out to where I can commute on the city bus to work everyday.  It's a nice chance for me to read, relax, and allow my wife to have the car at home.  Well, it turns out that the city of Redmond will actually pay you to use alternative transportation to commute to work.  You log your trips on their web site, and after your first 45 trips they will send you a $50 cash card.  After that there are no incentives, but hey, $50 is $50, so I'm going for it.

Now things get a bit more interesting.  The city is changing over this incentive program on May 1st, so you must finish your 45 alternative commutes before that time.  I'm pretty close - I have 42 commutes under my belt already.  I should finish my 45th on Friday . . . that is unless my daughter is born before then.  The due date for the baby is on Thursday, so she could come at any time.  When she comes I will immediately go on parental leave, and I will probably stay on leave through the 1st of May.  So, it's now or never!  Will the baby come early, or will I be able to continue commuting and snatch up that $50 cash card?

If you have a blog on Windows Live Spaces and you also have a Facebook account, then you should import your Spaces blog to Facebook.  It's easy!

To start, you'll need the Facebook Notes application.  Open the application, click on "My Notes", and then click to import notes from an external blog.  All you need to do is to enter the RSS feed of your spaces blog - something like http://your-alias.spaces.live.com/blog/feed.rss.  That's it - you should be set up to see your blog on Facebook.

New entries that you post to Windows Live Space will be automatically set up to appear in your Notes on Facebook.  In addition, an entry will appear in your news feed that allows your friends to see when you publish new blog entries on Spaces.

I've found it to be a convenient feature that allows my friends on Facebook to see what I am doing in Windows Live.  It's also driven a few views to my Space from friends on Facebook.

I made a decision yesterday - lunch at work is just a half hour for me.  Even though nobody counts your hours at work, I strive to always put in a full 8-hour day.  Between family and myself and work it's just not important for me to plan for an hour lunch break.  I wanted to keep that lunch time open to network with other employees, but lots of times a lunch with coworkers still only takes about a half hour.  If it does take extra time for some reason then that will just have to be part of my work day.  I'd like that extra half hour to put in time on family and personal things.

My sister-in-law had a baby last night.  That means that I'm an uncle.  What's an uncle supposed to do?  I want to be more than a stranger to this kid, but I don't feel any immediate attachment.  I guess I'll just do my best.

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!

Well . . . almost.  I've finished all of my coursework at Harvey Mudd College, now I just have to wait for the administrative processes of the college to finish.  Assuming all goes well, I will officially graduate on February 2nd of this year.  What a milestone!  I've enjoyed the time of college, but I'll also enjoy being out in the working world with the ability to support my family.  With college over, I will soon join the Windows Live Spaces team at Microsoft.

The countdown has really begun now.  I am in my final full week of classes.  I've done a reasonable job managing my time up until now and so I am left with a large, but not impossible amount of work between now and the end of the term.  I have major papers due Thursday and Friday of this week, two projects due the following Monday, final exams next Monday and Tuesday, and a final presentation to give next Wednesday.  I am energized to get working and get it done!  After next Wednesday I will be completely finished with all work of my undergraduate career.  I'm looking forward to a solid month off with fun and rest with my family.

If you're like me, you love using the Internet.  The Internet is a powerful way to access data from anywhere in the world.  For families spread across one or more countries, the Internet also allows people to stay in touch across long distances like never before.  Today, many extended families (mine included) take advantage of the Internet to stay in touch over e-mail.

While e-mail is a great step forward, it also lacks in several points as a mechanism to stay in touch.  The biggest problem is that contact is completely controlled by the sender.  If I send out a large e-mail with an update on my life or some family pictures, I have to remember to type in your address or you don't get it.  Also, you will keep on getting such updates until I remove you from my list of addressees.

RSS Feeds attempt to give control back to the recipient.  With a feed reader, the consumer can opt in or opt out of receiving content that is posted online.  I blogged earlier about the RSS support for Windows Live Spaces.  RSS feeds aren't a complete solution, either.  For one thing, many people (even techies) don't know what an RSS feed is or how to use one.  The acronym itself will probably scare away people who are not tech-savvy (leave a comment if you can think of a more consumer-friendly term for an RSS feed).  Secondly, even if you do know what an RSS feed is, many existing e-mail tools don't support RSS feeds.

The solution for my family (and perhaps yours!) may be Windows Live Alerts.  The Windows Live Alerts service is available to everyone with a Windows Live account.  The service allows you to subscribe to updates on any particular Space.  You can subscribe to the updates for any combination of the following: blog entries, photos, or lists.  When the Space owner publishes new content, you receive an e-mail telling you what content was changed and providing a link back to the updated content on the Space.  Windows Live Alerts allows consumers the familiarity of e-mail with the control of an RSS feed.  You can even use your existing, non-Microsoft e-mail address as a Windows Live ID.  The content producers are freed from having to send out e-mails to a large distribution list - they can simply post content on their Space, and everyone who is interested in seeing it will get an alert by e-mail.

Now you're wondering, how do I sign up for Windows Live Alerts?  Just follow these instructions:

1. Navigate to the Space for which you'd like to receive alerts.
2. Click on the "Tools" dropdown menu on the upper-right navigation bar and select "Sign up for alerts"
3. You should be at a Windows Live Alerts explanatory page. Click "Sign In."  If you already have a Windows Live account then skip to step 5.  If not, click the "Sign up" button on the left.
4. Create a Windows Live account.  You will probably want to use your existing e-mail address, but you could always sign up for one of the new, cool, @live.com addresses.
5. You should be at a Windows Live login page.  Sign in with your Windows Live account.
6. You should be at a page that allows you to specify how you want your alerts delivered.  If you are not, then you may be at step 7.  If you want e-mail alerts then you will probably have to click on a link to first verify your e-mail address.  Select your preferred delivery method and click the "Finish" button.
7. You should be at a page that allows you to select for which type of content to receive alerts.  If you have not already set your delivery preferences, then you should do that first by clicking on "Change delivery preferences" in the upper-right and following the instructions in step 6.  Once you have completed step 6, select for what content types you would like to receive alerts and click "Submit."

If you completed all of these steps, then you've successfully signed up for Windows Live Alerts!  Enjoy staying in touch with friends and relatives!

One of my fellow summer interns, Rayyan, mentioned me in his blog.  Rayyan was the tester for our feature, and he and I worked closely to ensure a quality product.  We also became good friends and spent a lot of time chatting about various things over lunch and breaks.

Here's the blog where he talks about me.

Russell

Christina and I were watching Stuart Little last night with Rebekah when I realized that the actor playing the father on the movie looked surprisingly familiar.  All of a sudden I knew what it was - he looks just like my Dad!  I couldn't get over it for the rest of the movie!  The actor's name is Hugh Laurie.  Check out some photos here.  Can you see the resemblance? 

Russell

I'm nearing the close of my summer internship with Windows Live Spaces.  Today we did a demo of the product for the team and others in the group.  It went really well!  Everyone seemed excited about it and genuinely impressed with the work that we had done.  We got a huge compliment from my great-grandpa manager.  He stood up in front of the whole group and talked about our project.  He said that at the beginning of the summer he had in mind a couple of different stopping points that we might get to over the summer.  If we finished one point before the summer was over we might try to get to the next point.  He said, though, that our work blew away past all of those points and anywhere that he thought we'd reach.  Needless to say - that makes me feel good!  We'll see what ends up happening - I'll have more news when my internship finishes next week.

Russell

I blogged earlier about the ability to view RSS feeds in a mail program like Windows Live Mail.  This is a really fabulous way to keep up on me while you check your e-mail.  For those of you who are on Facebook, you can add the "my RSS" application to your profile and subscribe to the same feed that I gave earlier:

http://russell-rutledge.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

You can view updates on my blog and Space by clicking on the RSS application on the left.  Alternatively, the application also puts a module on your profile page where you can see updates on me as well.

How fortunate - so many ways to stay up with me!

Russell

We just found out this week that Christina is pregnant!  See the post on our family blog.

Russ

I'm coming in to the wide world of blogging!  I never saw myself as one who would blog.  I really considered it a waste of time, and I couldn't imagine why people would spend time writing their thoughts, posting them on the Internet, and then just waiting in the hopes that someone would come and read.  But recently I've really seen the light and have gotten excited about blogging.

It started when I got a summer internship working on Windows Live Spaces.  It's Microsoft's social networking site, which includes blogs, among other things.  Since I've been at Microsoft I've enjoyed reading blogs of other people and teams.  What always got me, though, was the fact that a blogger has to post and wait in the hopes that some soul will check his blog and read what he wrote.  Well . . . no more!  I learned this summer that most blogging sites will publish your new blog entries to an RSS feed* to which anyone can subscribe.  I'd like to blog regularly and have friends and family subscribe to the RSS feed of my new blog entries.  It should be an easy way to stay in touch - I just post my blogs to one place and everyone who's interested can see what I write through the RSS feed.  Some mail programs like Outlook or Windows Live Mail even integrate RSS feeds, so you can see the contents of the RSS feed (my new blogs and posts) right along with your normal e-mail.

If you're interested in keeping up with me, add this feed URL to whatever RSS reader you have:

http://russell-rutledge.spaces.live.com/feed.rss

If you don't have an RSS reader, you can download, install, and configure Windows Live Mail as your new mail program.  Within Windows Live Mail you can subscribe to an RSS feed by clicking 'Feeds' in the lower-left, then 'Add a feed', then providing the URL I gave up above.  It's as simple as that!  Now, when you check your e-mail make sure to click on the 'Feeds' button and you will be able to see any new blog entries that I have posted.

Well, happy reading!  I really look forward to sharing the happenings of my life with you.

Russell

*For those who haven't heard, and RSS feed is just a fancy word for a list of newly-published items of a web site.