Greetings to all from the very dreary northwest United States! I think the last time I wrote one of these was in January 2006, so I guess these things are turning into annual reports. :-) Those of you who have been receiving these mails from me for awhile will be pleased to know that this one will be pretty short in comparison to some of the James Joyce-worthy ones I've written in the past. :-)
Where to begin... I guess we'll go through the year chronologically... In January, Ben Onken came out here to live with me. He didn't have a job yet or anything, but I told him he could live with me for awhile while he found something. He got a good internship at Intel within a few months and moved about an hour south to Puyallup to be closer to work. It was great to have him living with me, and even better that he's been close by for the last year. We hang out on the weekends every couple of weeks or so. It's also great to have a buddy to go to summer concerts with. :-)
It was yet another year of weddings. In December 2005 I went to Heather Relyea's, then in August Ben and I went to Angie Van Der Wal's up in Vancouver. I guess now she's Angie Johnson. :-) Neil is a great guy and they are lucky to have each other. My close friend Aaron Whiting (the other half of T&A) married a great girl named Rebecca over the summer as well. I sang in their wedding and was a groomsman, which was cool.
Unfortunately, I didn't take a lot of vacation last year, so by the end I was pretty burnt out. Luckily, we shipped Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 in October (Office will be available for everyone on the shelves in late January), so the end of the year was relatively slow while we all recovered and started thinking about the next release of Office. It is pretty exciting stuff, and I am pretty confident this is where I want to be for the next couple of years. After that, who knows. We MK's just can't stay in one place for too long, if my MK friends' pinballing movements are any indication. :-)
Speaking of work, I am still at it. It's still hard, there are still things I don't like or don't understand about it, but it pays the bills, it's pretty interesting, and I'm relatively content for the time being. I work way too much, and have resolved this year to try and cut back but still maintain my high level of performance that I have been rewarded for thus far. I am moving up relatively quickly, and it is nice to get some validation for the long hours I put in. I did manage to get my personal website to be a part of my job, so I get to spend some time at work fiddling with it, which is immensely enjoyable. It is cool to have a job where I can work on personal projects legitimately for some of the time.
Well, I guess that's it from me. If you're interested in keeping up with me on a more regular basis, I recommend my website, http://www.tylerbutler.com. If you know what RSS is, there are feeds on my site that you can subscribe to. If you'd rather subscribe to the site via email, you can do that as well. There might be stuff posted that you're not interested in, but c'est la vie. :-) If you haven't used RSS though, I'd recommend checking out Google Reader. Lots of PNG MK's now have websites or blogs (Kazuto Ohtsuba, Jenny Micheals, etc.), and most have RSS feeds, so RSS is a great way to keep in touch with what's going with everyone.
If you're more of a phone person, my cell is <snip>. And if you'd like to shower me with gifts by mail, my address is:
<snip>
Finally, personal emails are always welcome. Just send them to <snip>. :-)
I suppose that's enough "keep in touch" plugs for one email... :-) Hope to hear from some of you soon, and if you have a website now or a blog, then definitely send me a link. :-)
Tyler
PS. Weight loss has gone well for those that care. I'm down about 65-70 lbs now I think, and continue to work out about 60 minutes a day. More details will be posted shortly to http://www.tylerbutler.com/weightloss.