Day 9&10 - Keep reading

On these particular days, we had self-study of the Windows 7 environment and did some shadowing. Since I haven't explained yet what shadowing is, well, it's just about watching closely and learning what an actual employee is doing. Sounds more like stalking, and sometimes it is :P

Since Camelia is working on an article about the internship program, we've taken some cool team pictures :)

On Friday we discussed some first details about our final project. I can only tell you that we have a very generous theme, "How to get 3 WOWs in 3 minutes from your client". The presentation will be held in front of the top management of Microsoft Romania, so we can't afford to be less than great :) Wish us luck!

Day 8 - the Exchange day

On Wednesday we were given a very important presentation by the Exchange Team in Microsoft GTSC. I say important because it's related to what I'm currently reading about, Outlook 2007, but also because it's quite a difficult topic to discuss.

I thought it was, by far, the most complex presentation we've had yet. But it turned out to be very interesting and revealing :) So thank you, Andrei, you did great :) The words Active Directory, Forest, DNS and many more will never sound unfamiliar again :P

It was during this presentation that I also got to play with the lovely Microsoft Roundtable.

Day 7 - What Ferrari, Volvo and Carlsberg have in common

Thanks to Radu and Corina, we were introduced today to one of the most successful Microsoft technologies. It was launched in 2001, but became a hit in 2007. The license for it is extremely expensive, so is the support package. It's used by the American, British and Israelian armies, by NATO, Cern, the EU and lots of corporations. With it, productivity goes through the roof :P

And I had never heard of it before :| Until today. It is what Ferrari, Volvo and Carlsberg have in common. No, it's not about DUI :P Their websites were built entirely using this particular technology. And these are just a couple of examples.

Since, by now, you are absolutely dying to know what I'm talking about, I'll just say it: Sharepoint. And yes, it's that great :D

My next post is gonna talk about some other cool ways of spending your time at Microsoft. Just wait and see. And don't be afraid to comment :)

Day 6 - self study

On day 6 I began studying for the Windows 7 certification. More precisely, I'm reading about x86 and x64 architectures, minimum hardware requirements, dual boot and other complicated concepts. I'm turning geek :D

I've also managed to sort of solve my first Outlook 2007 mock case. With lots of help from my buddy, but still :) And I found out that Exchange servers can go down even when you're working for Microsoft :)

In the evening a couple of us went for a drink in Control, where the bartender was particularly generous with the Cachaça in my Caipirinha :)

Since I didn't take any pictures, I'll just post an older picture of my colleague Andrei, who insisted that I make him famous. So this is it. For the girls out there, let me know if you want his phone number ;)) Ok, I'm just kidding :P

Day 5 - the feedback day

I believe this is the day I've learned the most on, so far. Not only have I received feedback from my acting TM, Micky, but I also got the chance to offer feedback and Alina (the German Outlook team manager) was really nice and gave me an insight on what a manager is doing at GTSC.

Besides that, my blog became really famous and I already have people offering to pose for it ;)) Today, Camelia and Alin:

Another nice thing was Catalin offering me the best mouse ever, a Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0, with 5 buttons pulsanti, 9000 fps, scroll detents, max acceleration to 25G, max speed 54 ips, aaaand (drumrolls) legendary precision and comfort :P Plus, it's big and shiny and gets the work done :P Thank you!

Oh, and we got the documentation for our Windows 7 certification. Pfff, difficult, but not impossible. Keep your fingers crossed for me ;)

Day 4 - start reading

Thursday was my first day of actually working with Outlook 2007. It was fascinating, and I'm not kidding.

Well, Catalin (my buddy) gave me this introductory guide (no less than 1053 pages long) and in about two hours I reached page 18. Yey :P

Besides that, I got my really nice Toshiba laptop, with an equally nice wallpaper:

So, did you know that Outlook 2007 has an overlaying calendars feature, as well as different message templates and an included web browser? :) Me neither :P And I've only reached page 18, imagine what I'm gonna find out next :P

As I have promised, I'm gonna talk a bit about the coolest cubicle ever, that is Nic's cubicle (in the Exchange Team, hi guys!). So there's this helicopter landing on his monitor,

A Boeing 737 cockpit poster, a piece of an engine, some cockpit windows, a couple of triodes (no idea what those are exactly) and some speedometers. Coolness overload :)

In the evening we all went out to have dinner at City Grill, thanks to our lovely team manager, Alina.

Day 3 - or What am I doing here???

Today was the day of all technics. I'm serious. We had presentations all day long. Some from our lovely acting TMs, and I give you Camelia:

and Micky,

but also Adina, Costin, Michael, Sascha, and another German manager whose name I forgot, sorry :( We were given info about the GTSC structure and roles, so we already have a good insight on what a Microsoft support engineer is doing. And a support escalation engineer. And an escalation engineer. But let's not digress :)

We're starting shadowing tomorrow, weeee. And although it sounds like it, this is not a creepy voodoo ritual, so you're gonna have to come back to find out what it is ;) Tschuessie!