I discovered I have a lot to be grateful for this week: I survived my first (and hopefully last) heart attack.

On Tuesday morning I was at my usual 6:00am kickboxing class, where I’ve been going most mornings for the past 1.5 years (JabX Kickboxing – awesome place, btw). After the typically intense 10 minute warm-up (which included two one minute rounds of burpees), I had a drink of water and noticed my chest felt tight – uncomfortable but not super painful. This sensation extended a little into my left shoulder. At first I thought I had swallowed the water funny, so I sat out the first 3 minute bag round. When it wasn’t getting better, I decided to leave the workout and go home, which I’ve never done before.

As I was driving, the feeling wasn’t getting any better, I debated whether this was a big deal or whether I was just being alarmist. Since I had never had this sensation before, I ultimately decided to stop at the emergency room at Overlake Hospital, which was on my way home. I also decided if I were really having a heart attack, it would be OK to park in the “ER only” parking spaces out front. (Yes, I really debated this.)

There was no one in the waiting room when I went in, so I got prompt attention from the receptionist, who promptly lectured me to call 911 next time instead of driving myself in (this would later turn out to be the single-most proffered bit of advice I would get.) I texted my wife Michelle at 6:27am that I was in the ER but that she shouldn’t come yet until I knew more. The triage nurse asked me a question or two and then promptly wheeled me back into the ER. As a good geek, I remember admiring the huge (maybe 80”+) monitor they had next to the bed. I also remember feeling embarrassed this was happening to me at such a relatively young age.

I was on a table and then suddenly there were 6-7 people in the room swirling around putting IVs in, asking me questions, sticking EKG pads onto me, drawing blood, and changing me out of my clothes. They also gave me a few baby aspirin to chew and then put a nitroglycerin tablet under my tongue. Based on my EKG someone confirmed that it looked like the lower part of my heart had a blockage and wasn’t getting enough oxygen: I was having a heart attack. I texted Michelle at 6:44am letting her know. I let my assistant Emilie know too that I wouldn’t be in today due to a “medical issue”. (Michelle gave her more details later, for which Emilie gave me grief later, “’Medical issue’ huh?”)

They were going to need to do an angioplasty, a procedure where they run a wire through your artery to your heart and then inflate a little balloon to expand the artery to let blood get by the blockage. The staff wasn’t sure whether the cardiologist would want to go in through the artery in my right arm or via my artery in my groin, so they prepped both. For my groin, this meant a very quick (2-3 swipes with an electric shaver) shave of my pubic hair; this was far less sexy than I had perhaps hoped. The first blood chemistry test showed my troponin level was negative. This is a protein released into the blood stream when the heart muscle is damaged; it’s a good marker for heart attacks apparently. The fact it wasn’t showing up was a good sign.

The cardiologist, Dr. Joe Doucette, explained what was going on, what was going to happen, and what the risks were. He was quick to reassure me that my case was straightforward so there shouldn’t be any big issues. He chose to go through my arm (for which I was grateful). They gave me a local anesthetic and a sedative (like Valium) and blocked my view a bit. The next parts are a bit hazy, but very soon after, Dr. Doucette explained what he saw and did. A small artery was blocked, preventing blood from getting to a very small part of my heart (he gestured like it was less than one square inch). The angioplasty balloon opened up the vessel restoring flow. He also used the wire system to shoot some medicine that also helped clear up the fatty deposits. The artery was too small to insert a stent. I then got a doppler echocardiogram, where they use ultrasound to see how blood is moving through your heart, how the heart is beating, and how the valves were moving. The person doing the test very patiently answered my questions (of which I had many).

I was driven up (the beds are motorized!) to the Critical Care Unit where I was told I would at least be spending the night for observation. Michelle met me there. My brother, Ives, arrived shortly thereafter. At this point, my chest pain was gone, replaced by a little soreness in my chest. I was hooked up to a saline IV to wash the dye they used in the procedures out of my blood (since some people’s kidneys have problems with the dye). This would be the first of several things I’d have done to counteract some other part of my treatment. I also had a liquid-filled balloon-ish thing around my right wrist compressing the hole in my arm where the angioplasty wire had gone in. Over the next few hours, the nurses would release a little fluid from the balloon at a time and check if the hole was healing. How well this healed seemed to be the biggest post-operative concern, since blood and ooze would come out if it didn’t heal well. That’s apparently bad.

Dr. Doucette came in a little later and confirmed that everything looked great on the echocardiogram. He even thought the affected area might have gotten blood from other surrounding vessels so combined with the very fast treatment, he didn’t think there would be any long-term issues. I very quickly felt fine/normal with the exception of a headache I would have the whole stay, which was a side effect of the nitroglycerin.

The rest of the day passed pretty uneventfully. I hung out chatting with my family and napping. My son, Michael (16), and our dear friend Stacy arrived later, and I got a surprise visit from my former manager at Amazon, Sean. I posted what happened on Facebook and was amazed how quickly my friends responded on Facebook, in text messages, and in email. (You all need to get back to work…) I exchanged a little email with my current manager and Senior VP, Sebastian, who was incredibly gracious and supportive.

Later that night, after enjoying a strawberry Jell-O, I slept very well, despite the noise (lots of machines beeping and general activity in a hospital). It was the first time I had ever spent a night in a hospital for my own issues, having only spent the night before in the maternity ward after the kids were born. A tech woke up me up at 4:00am for a blood draw, and another woke me up at 6:00am for another EKG. Michelle came back around 7:45am. Dr. Doucette and his nurse practitioner came by a little later to check on me and tell me about all the medication. I was out by 9:50am.

The nurses and staff were all awesome – friendly, super competent, and patient with my questions. My first nurse Aimee apparently set the standard for the others by putting Post-it tabs on the packet of material they gave me about my medications; the other nurses apparently posted pictures of it on Facebook. The hospital provided a nice sounding menu from which I could pick my meals. Patients call down and order as though it were room service. The food was a big step up from the hospital food I remember from when the kids were born, but it didn’t quite live up to the way it sounded on the menu. (Better than most coach airline meals but not nearly as good as international business class meals.)

For many years I’ve had a tendency toward high blood pressure and high cholesterol, despite my regular exercise regime. I’ll have to watch my diet even more going forward and will be on a bevy of meds for a while. I’ll also have to take it easy for a while, but I can start getting back to my normal life soon.

While having a heart attack undoubtedly sucks, I find myself feeling very grateful. Incredibly grateful in fact.

• I’m incredibly grateful to have had such great medical care available when I need it. I could easily have been far away from attention when this happened. I also realize I’m fortunate to be able to afford this medical care, through my employer-provided insurance and my good financial situation. This will be a minor event for me financially but could have ruined someone else.
• I feel lucky this happened in 2017. It’s amazing to me I could be out of the hospital and running errands just over 24 hours after having a heart attack. Even maybe 20 years ago they would have either just given me nitroglycerin and aspirin hoping the pain would go away or they’d have to do surgery.
• I’m incredibly grateful for the generous support of my Amazon management, colleagues, and team while I recover. I don’t doubt for a moment that I can take as much time as I need without fear of losing my job or standing.
• I’m grateful to myself for putting aside any notion of heroism or pride. Going to the ER immediately made all the difference. (And yes, I know, I should have called 911 instead.)
• I’m overwhelmed by the outpouring of support from my friends from around the world and from all times of my life. By way of example, I got 424 reactions and 411 comments on my initial Facebook post (I think the first 100 came in less than 30 minutes) and 307 reactions and 20 comments on my note about leaving the hospital. I was also flooded with email, text messages, flowers, and even a phone call (funny how that was the least commonly used technology). I can’t tell you how amazing this was.
• I’m reminded how lucky I am to have Michelle, my boys, my brother, and my parents.

More than anything, I’m grateful this was just a warning shot, a reminder to take care of myself because I have a lot to live for.

Well, I sucked at writing blog posts in 2016. I'm actually cheating now and back-dating this post by a day so there's an entry in 2016. I did think about writing a lot of posts since it was an interesting year. Here's a quick recap, as much for my future reference as anything else.

We started powerboating in earnest this year. Michelle and I were sailors before we had kids, but last year we tried cruising powerboats and really enjoyed it. We chartered again in February and decided we could even enjoy winter cruising, so in June we bit the bullet and bought a 47 foot Selene trawler. After some refitting and renaming her Tonic (her former name was Eric K), we cruised her up into Canada as far as Princess Louisa Inlet (really stunning). We spent most weekends aboard through the summer and fall and look forward to more cruising. Since we're only a few years from being empty nesters, we're also using this boat to see if we could realistically downsize and live aboard. Stay tuned on that front.

Tonic in Princess Louisa Inlet

Andrew (19) scouting ahead as we cruise in Canada.

 

I also continued to race sailboats with my buddies this year aboard the J-24 Rajun' Cajun. We moved from racing in the Lake Washington J-24 fleet to the much less competitive (and more fun) Duck Dodge races in Lake Union. We've been racing together for so many years that we've lost count, but this was the first year I drove the boat for a few races (since our skipper Rico was out cruising on his new boat). We didn't do as well as usual, but it was fun and a good learning experience (except the part where I hit another boat, causing a bunch of damage to their outboard...)

 

Aside from boating, we had a quick trip in June to Chicago for my cousin Eric's wedding. It was a fun occasion and great to see family from all over the country in one place.

Me photobombing Eric and Melodie while Andrew (19) looks on. Michael (16) is on his phone, as usual.

 

Three generations of Chor boys and Michelle

 

Michael turned 16 this summer and got his drivers license. I'm not sure who is more nervous, Michelle and I or Michael (although he is a good driver). Oddly (at least to me), Andrew (19) never got his license. He's gotten back into rock climbing in a big way when he's not playing PC video games with his friends online or telling me everything is my fault.

 

Andrew (19) finished his first year at Evergreen State College. He decided to take some time off, so he's working at a nearby ramen restaurant now. We also had our first drink together in Canada, where the drinking age is 19. It was fun to hang out in a pub near the marina we were in and shoot pool together.

 

I started going to JabX Kickboxing, a nearby gym, in November of last year. I was a mess when I started; I couldn't even get through the ten minute warm-up. Here's me lying the on the ground after my first warm-up.

Despite the inauspicious start, I kept it up all year, going most weekday mornings at 6:00am for the hour-long workout. I'm much stronger now. I also lost about twenty pounds and two inches off my pant size.

I got called to jury duty again, just a little over a year from my last time. This time I had a civil trial involving a slip-and-fall outside a local grocery store. Although the plaintiff was severely injured and was really sadly impacted by his injuries, we found in favor of the defendant. Despite the inconvenience of being on jury duty again, I thought it was interesting to see a civil case and contrast that with the criminal case from the year before.

 

On the work front, I completed my third year at Amazon. I continued to lead the Detail Page team (we make the shopping pages that have the information about each product like the picture, title, price, reviews, etc.) and added the Shopping Experience Platform team (we build the user interface framework and key API platform for Amazon's shopping experience as well as ensuring the site is great for customers with disabilities.) Despite whatever reputation Amazon has for being a bad place to work, I still really love it there. A big part of my team is in Bangalore, so I went there three times this year. On one trip, I ran into a bandh (protests), trapping us at the hotel for two days and forcing us to leave the office early one day. Fortunately, we had fun on other trips. I got to catch a performance at the Hard Rock Cafe by a local band, Agam, that two of my teammates were in. The Hard Rock staff apologized about the high cover price saying there was a "famous Indian band" playing; we told them we knew the band. They were skeptical until our friends came down to welcome us. It was cool to see the crowd all singing their songs. They're really good and worth checking out.

 

I also finally left the airport in Dubai and spent a little time exploring there with some of my colleagues. We checked out the Burj Khalifa, hung out with some friends from Beijing, shopped around the old areas of Dubai, and went dune bashing in the desert (where our 4x4 got stuck and had to be rescued). Here I am in the desert, waiting for help. The Facebook caption contest returned themes Dune, Star Wars, Lawrence of Arabia, lost golf balls, new Amazon offices, and how generally dumb I was to wear black into the desert.

Of course, I was most happy to find the "pork room" in the Burj Khalifa, a big deal in a Muslim country.

In the new year I'll be starting a new job in the same division, leading the new Shopping OS team. I'll keep the platform parts of my current team and add more platformy parts. We'll be building the next generation of Amazon's shopping application platform. It should be interesting, but I'll miss the detail page part of my team.

 

Personally, I learned to enjoy my life more. I stopped commenting on politics on Facebook. It was no fun and frankly kind of stressful to get into those kinds of discussions with friends, especially in such a contentious year. I was also reminded that our time on earth is precious. Two of my former teammates lost their spouses unexpectedly and a teammate on a partner team suddenly passed away. They were all younger than I am and were apparently healthy. We need to really enjoy every day.

Here's to enjoying every day of 2017!

As I committed to publicly on January 25, I ran the Magnuson Spring Series 5K last weekend. It was a cold and windy day (25+ knot winds -- lots of wind surfers out). Waiting around before the race was pretty uncomfortable, but fortunately the race wasn't super crowded so I was able to park close to the start (and wait in the car).

Once the race started, things felt better. The sun came out, and hills blocked the wind for part of the course. As usual, I started out too fast (even though I was trying not to). I was hurting by the end, but I managed to push out a 30:56 overall time. This was slower than my goal of 30 minutes, and slower than all of my previous 5K runs nine years ago, but I was happy to average just under 10 minute miles (9:59/mile). My splits were 9:29 (too fast!), 10:10, 10:12 and (on track for) 9:10 for the last .1 mile.

Being older definitely makes things harder, and to be frank, I didn't run nearly enough over the last two months to expect anything else. The friend who signed up with me bailed, so I wound up doing this alone. In the end that was probably better, so no one I knew saw the agony on my face.

According to the official results, I finished 56th overall out of 142 runners. Unfortunately, they didn't report results by age group.

All that aside, it was fun to test myself and motivational to have the goal of running the race. I need to figure out my next goal race now.

 

Somehow, I've managed to go this long without having done jury duty. I haven't even been summoned in the almost 25 years I've lived in Washington. I did get a summons during college in the Bay Area, but my group didn't need to show up. Finally, last year I received a summons for King County Superior Court. I was actually pretty excited about the opportunity to participate in a jury.

Jury Selection

After deferring the duty once (I was supposed to be there Christmas Eve, the day before our New York City trip), I showed up at the jurors' room in the King County Courthouse in downtown Seattle. There was a huge room full of potential jurors -- easily a few hundred including two friends of mine from Amazon (neither of whom wound up on a jury). We watched a video and then listened to a judge explain how jury duty was the most important way for a citizen to contribute to our system other than military service. We then sat around waiting to see if we'd get called to be a potential juror for a specific judge/court. Fortunately, there was wi-fi and a desk area so I was able to get some work done while waiting.

Then, my name came up along with 49 other people. I received a card with a number on it: 14. More waiting. Finally all fifty of us went to the courtroom of Judge Catherine Shaffer. We learned how to line up by number and file into the courtroom in the right order; we'd eventually get quite good at this. I was surprised that everyone in the courtroom was asked to rise when the jurors came in; I later learned this was because the jurors are officers of the court. Inside the courtroom were Judge Shaffer, her bailiff, court reporter, and courtroom clerk, as well as the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and what I later learned was the defendant.

Judge Schaffer did a great job throughout the process explaining the system; I found it quite interesting and educational. We then spent the next two days in jury selection. This involved a one page written survey (and going back down to the jurors' room). Once back in the courtroom, we were asked a series of questions about our answers on the survey and whether anyone had a reason they couldn't serve. These seemed to fall in a few camps -- upcoming travel, financial difficulty from not working for a few days, and physical issues. She was pretty firm with the travel issues (since those people could have deferred around the travel). She was also pretty binary about the financial difficulty; if serving in the jury meant you couldn't pay your essential bills like rent and utilities, she'd excuse you. Throughout the process, she kept reiterating how important it was to not talk to anyone about the case, not research anything or anyone associated with the case, and to only get information about the case through what was presented in the courtroom. This made total sense, but it was hard not to want to talk about it or look up information on the case and people involved.

We didn't finish the interviews on Monday, and they didn't need to talk to me on Tuesday. On Wednesday, the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney lead us through a discussion and asked some questions directly -- had you or someone close to you been sexually assaulted, could you imagine finding someone guilty even if there were no physical evidence, could you see past racial stereotypes (the defendant was black) to rule impartially, etc. We started to get a picture of what kind of case this would be. Finally, by mid-afternoon, we knew who was selected. Since I was number 14 and they select 13 jurors (12 plus an alternate -- although who the alternate would be wouldn't be decided until the end of the trial via random selection), I figured it was highly likely I'd get picked. Sure enough, they dismissed a few people ahead of me, so I wound up on the jury.

The Trial

The trial started the next Monday. The charge was Attempted Indecent Liberties (an attempt to sexually gratify one's self with someone who is not capable of consenting). The defendant showed up drunk at his ex-sister-in-law's house in Renton at 3:00a. After talking and drinking together, she went to sleep. He allegedly went into the 16 year old daughter's bedroom where she was asleep and pulled down her pajama bottoms. She awoke to feeling pressure and then saw the defendant fumbling with his pants. She went out and woke up her mom. The mom went to her bedroom, got out a rifle (a scoped .303 -- a pretty big hunting rifle) and chased the defendant out of the house. The daughter was the one who called 911, afraid that her mom was going to shoot her uncle. The police showed up pretty quickly then took the mom and daughter to Harborview Hospital. The daughter was checked out, but since there was no penetration, they didn't test for things that might have left DNA. The daughter talked to a social worker there too.

The prosecutor and then the defense attorney made their opening remarks. I thought the prosecutor laid out a pretty clear story. The defense attorney was a little more dramatic (overly so IMHO) and was clearly trying to inject doubt into our minds. Then the prosecutor started calling his witnesses. He called two King County deputies first. They didn't remember much from the case since it happened 2.5 years ago, but once they saw the reports they filed, they remembered more. The defense cross examined a little, but this whole part was mostly non-eventful to me (although I was amazed they had both been working in the King County Sheriffs for over 30 years). He then called the mother. She seemed pretty tough -- not afraid and very straightforward about her opinions. During cross examination by the defense, she started getting visibly mad, which I think may have been the attorney's intent.

We then heard from the daughter. She was understandably nervous and shy about talking about what happened, especially around the details of the contact. At a few points, I could see a tear rolling down her cheek. The defense tried to inject some doubt about the story by showing inconsistencies in the different reports from the police and  social worker about what side of her body she was sleeping on. However, the daughter kept having to hold her fingers up in the "L" shapes to figure out which side was left and right; she admitted she confused the sides a lot, but she was very clear she was facing the wall. (We had a photo of her bedroom for reference.) After seeing this, I wasn't surprised by the inconsistencies in the report.

The next day (Tuesday) we heard from the detective who handled the case and the social worker (one of them might have testified on Monday, I don't recall now). The detective didn't impress me much, but the social worker's testimony was consistent with what we had heard earlier. The defense didn't call any witnesses; in particular, the defendant did not testify. Judge Schaffer reminded us that the defense has no burden to prove anything, that the defendant doesn't have to testify, and that the fact the defendant didn't testify was not evidence of anything. We broke early for lunch then came back for closing arguments and instructions from the judge. Again, I thought the prosecutor did a good job tying the story together while the defense mostly just tried to create reasonable doubt, reminding us that even if the evidence was clear and convincing, meeting the bar of beyond a reasonable doubt needed in a criminal trial like this one was a higher standard. The bailiff drew a number out of a box to pick which of us was the alternate juror. He was then excused. (I would have been a little bummed to get picked as the alternate at that point; I'd have wanted to get the whole experience.)

 

The Deliberation

The jurors filed into the adjoining jury room around 3:00pm or 3:30 and sat around the table. We quickly selected a jury foreman, a young guy who had been through law school but wasn't a practicing attorney. I'm not sure who suggested him, but since no one else really seemed to want to be the foreman, he accepted the role, which was mostly to run the discussion and keep things moving.

I went in thinking the verdict was pretty clear but was willing to listen to the others. I figured this would go quickly and that we might even finish before the courtroom closed up at 4:30. However, everyone wanted to be deliberate and hear each person's view; I thought this was fair and tried not to let my desire to wrap up quickly affect things. It seemed most people were leaning toward guilty, but then one guy started proposing a pretty wild theory, that the mom didn't like the defendant and made up the whole thing to frame him, that maybe the defendant was never even in the bedroom. He wasn't sure at all that the defendant was guilty. We had to leave for the day with this theory still out there.

We came back Wednesday morning. The guy with the wild theory had thought about it a lot overnight and realized it was a little far fetched vs. the testimony. We discussed the case for about another 45 minutes. At this point I tried to move us to consider the three things that had to be proven for a guilty verdict: that the defendant had taken substantial steps toward committing an act of indecent liberty, that he had an intent to commit this act, and that the act took place in Washington State. We voted on each pretty quickly (with only one speech about how a guilty verdict would probably ruin the defendant's life), unanimously agreeing on a guilty verdict. We had to wait about 40 minutes for the attorneys and defendant to come back to hear the verdict. We filed in, the judge read our verdict, and then we each had to answer to the judge whether this was our vote individually and that this was the decision of the entire jury. The defendant had been pretty stoic through whole trial, but he was shaking his head a little after the judge read the verdict. I'm very confident we made the right decision, but I couldn't help but feel a little bad for the guy. His life will never be the same again.

Somewhat surprisingly, we each received a certificate recognizing our service. (Sentencing happens later and doesn't need us.) Then, as we left the courtroom, the prosecutor and defense attorney were waiting outside. The judge had told us they might want feedback, but since they didn't stop me to ask, I left. My duty was done.

Some thoughts

Overall, I was impressed with the process and especially Judge Schaffer. As I mentioned, she explained things well to the jurors. She was also clearly concerned about everyone's comfort, even bringing in pastry and bagels for us each morning.

Before coming, I was concerned about crazy, illogical people in the jury. There were certainly more non-sequitors and logical mistakes during the discussion than I'm used to in my meetings at Amazon or Microsoft, but the deliberations were mostly on topic and rational, modulo the one crazy theory. My fellow jurors seemed able to separate their personal experiences out and only consider what was presented as evidence.

The biggest hassle about the process was the lack of predictability around time. Each potential juror is called for either two days or the length of one trial. I blocked out time on my calendar at work, but I wound up going into the office on Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday the first week but then back in court on Monday through Wednesday the next week. There was also a lot of waiting around at the courthouse, first in the main jurors' room and then in our jury room. The days were shorter and slower paced than my normal work day.

While I don't think it played a role in this case, I would have liked the jury to be more diverse. There was only one woman out of the thirteen of us. There was one black man (maybe two -- I wasn't clear about one guy) and three Asians. The rest were white men. Other than gender, this might actually map pretty well to Seattle's demographics, but it still looked pretty unbalanced.

I was surprised that the bailiff was a law clerk, not a sheriff. The bailiff's role is to keep the court running smoothly and serve as a liaison with the jurors. I guess I watch too much TV. The whole trial was not like TV, in fact. I knew this going in, but it was still a little surprising how matter-of-fact and almost mundane most of it seemed.

One nice perq was having 90 minutes for lunch in a different area of town. I got a chance to visit some of my favorite places that I don't normally get to visit -- in particular Salumi (opened by Mario Batalli's dad, they make sandwiches from their house-made salamis -- awesome) and Mike's Noodle House (good Hong Kong-style noodle and congee joint).

I'm glad I got a chance to do this (and that it was a short case). It's definitely worth doing.

Geekwire mentioned today that the Amazon Echo team updated Echo to respond to famous quotes in time for tonight's Oscars. I made a little video demonstrating it. Fun stuff! I'm glad to see the Echo team has a sense of humor.

 

Long time readers (hi, Mom) know that I've done some long distance running and biking events over the past few years like the Mercer Island Half Marathon and the "Ride from Seattle to Vancouver and Party" bike ride. However, I fell off the wagon once we moved to China and never really picked it back up. More than ever, I need work out, so I've decided to use the same formula I did nine years ago - signing up for an event with friends and committing publicly to it. I seem to need a clear goal and some accountability to motivate me.

This time, I've signed up for the Magnuson Spring Series 5K on March 21. It should be a flat 5K (I ran there before); I mostly just need to get out and start running to get this one done.

Anyone else want to join me?

I think it's been a while since I've done this, but here are some of my best photos of 2014. I think these all have something generally interesting about these. There were many other photos I didn't include that I liked because they have meaning to me personally (e.g. travel/family stuff) or looked good only because the subject was so good looking (e.g. photos of the amazing Crater Lake).

I didn't apply any special effects filters to the images, although they're all pretty heavily edited for color, contrast, and composition.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what you think!

Gallery of my best photos of 2014

Andrew (17) kindly agreed to pose for photos during our recent trip to New York City. I'm biased, of course, but I think he's turning into a pretty handsome dude. Not sure when he grew up though.

 

Happy 2015! I can't believe I didn't write a single blog post in 2014. I didn't intentionally abandon my blog. Most of the stuff I used to write in short posts are now on Facebook; this leaves only longer posts for the blog. Of course, these are more effort, so I didn't write. Not really a good excuse, so I will start again. Here we go!

Today will be my last day at Microsoft. I've been at the company for 23 years, coming straight out of college. I'm incredibly grateful to this company that I still love, but it was time to try something new, to get a different perspective. Starting Monday, I'll be at Amazon, where I'll be the director of their product details page. It will be a big change (and a much longer commute), but I'm really excited.

Still, I'm finding that I'm pretty emotional about leaving. Being at Microsoft is a huge part of my identity and my life. I've worked at Microsoft longer than anything I've ever done. It'll take a while to get accustomed to a new way of thinking.

Here's the mail I sent announcing the change.

Subject: Farewell

It's become painfully clear that my bid to become the new CEO of Microsoft will not be successful, so today is my last day at Microsoft.

A few highlights from the past 23 years:
1990 Shocked to learn Microsoft shipped software with known bugs. More shocked to discover a big part of my job would be to pick which ones.
1991 Made the only known hole-in-one during Golf 1.0 testing (my first product). It didn't help my review score.
1993 Surfed the Internet for the first time in the Microsoft Library. Didn't get what the fuss was about.
1997 Learned to do The Hustle at a ship party. Grateful that cellphone cameras hadn't been invented yet.
1999 Spent six months addressing Y2K bugs in Works Suite. Saved the world from calamity.
2000 Hit my lifetime net worth high point. Oh well.
2003 Got my hands covered in blue ink minutes before a demo to BillG. Managed to not get him inky too.
2004 Pilloried in blog comments after jokingly claiming we invented pop-up blocking in IE6 on Windows XP SP2. Learned that including smiley face in a blog post is no protection against trolls.
2006 Was called "cute" by a prominent blogger. Faith in the Internet restored.
2007 Testified before the DOJ and EU on the same day. Lowlight was the French official jumping out of his chair yelling, "Aha! I caught you!" during my talk.
2008 Moved to Beijing. Delighted to find I was expected to sing and drink (sometimes at the same time) as part of my job.
2010 Had a 1:1 lunch with BillG. His hands got covered in Big Mac special sauce, and he couldn't figure out why. Felt secret sense of schadenfreude.
2011 Moved back from Beijing. Missed the office tea lady with my daily fresh fruit and pot of tea, but clean air was a big plus.
2012 Started surfing online porn professionally for Bing SafeSearch. Surprised to find this is not as cool as it sounds.
2013 Learning how hard it is to say farewell to an amazing company, brilliant colleagues, and good friends.

Thanks to all my teammates, past and present, for making me look good (or less bad, at least!) Thanks to my managers and mentors for your patience and guidance. Thanks to you all for a lifetime of great memories.

FAQ
Q: What will you do next?
A: I will be the director (like a PUM) for Amazon's product details page.

Q: Will you still be in Seattle?
A: Yes.

Q: Why are you leaving?
A: I've never worked anywhere else as a fulltime employee. I realized I would regret not ever having a different perspective.

Q: How can we keep in touch?
A: Facebook, LinkedIn, my blog (kind of), email, WeChat/微信 (ID: F218828), Pinterest, Foursquare

Q: What is the best way to cook bacon?
A: In the oven.