Well, given that it’s been over two years since I posted here, you’re probably wondering where I’ve been. Or maybe not. Hell, you may not have even noticed I’ve been gone. But I’m going to tell you anyway!
Short Answer: I retired and rode off into the sunset
Longer Answer: Last December (2022), I (early) retired from Microsoft. After nearly two and a half decades at Microsoft, I was fortunate enough to be in a financial position where I could walk away and spend some more time with my (at the time) college-bound daughter, my aging parents, and my wife with our newly empty nest.
It’s been an incredible blessing to be able to take on a slower pace of life and focus on the home life and recharging the batteries after the “dog years” (despite how great they were!) of working at Microsoft.
I am doing some part-time work/consulting on the side, so I’m still doing some technical stuff, mostly broadly Azure focused. But I’m no longer doing any direct IoT or Azure Digital Twins work.
I started this blog because, in trying to solve some complex customer questions/issues in our Microsoft’s IoT Platform, I obtained some obscure and valuable knowledge that really wasn’t in our Microsoft’s ever evolving documentation. So, I felt like this blog added a lot of value. In fact, it still gets a couple dozen hits per day with NO SEO and no new content.
But the broader Azure areas I’m focused on in my part-time/consulting role are more well-trod (and documented) than IoT was back in the day, so I don’t know if I’ll keep writing here anymore or not. Maybe if I figure out something nobody else seems to know, I’ll put something down. I just don’t know yet. And since I’m (semi-)retired now, the odds are not in our favor.
Or maybe I’ll morph it onto writing about a totally different area. Some possibilities:
- Home Automation
- DIY – electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc
- Mustang restoration
- Alabama Crimson Tide football and why it’s so awesome 😉
- Ways to survive being retired and home full-time with your wife and not anger her into a murderous frenzy! <– this is still very much a work in progress!!
Thanks for all the support of my content. The popularity of this content, at least internal to MSFT, actually helped earn me my last promotion before I retired. I appreciate you all, and may we meet again, in this life or the next!
Steve
