7 years ago, a few things happened on June 19th, 2000. Let’s take a look at a few:

1. Microsoft Corp. today announced that the development of the Microsoft® Windows® Millennium Edition (Windows Me) consumer operating system is complete and the product has been released to manufacturing. Windows Me is the latest version of the Microsoft operating system designed specifically for the home user. It improves the home computing experience by delivering enhancements in the areas of PC health, digital media, home networking and the online experience.

Well, WinME wasn’t exactly a giant hit – but it did introduce a great feature: System Restore.

2. Microsoft Corp. today announced it acquired Chicago-based Bungie Software Products Corp., a leading independent developer of action oriented computer and video games. As a result of this acquisition, Microsoft gains exclusive publishing and distribution rights to select Bungie-developed titles, including the highly anticipated sci-fi action epic “Halo.”

Wow, actually I had never known that Bungie was originally Chicago based.In retrospect, that was a pretty good acquisition. I hear that Halo thing is pretty popular.

3. MSFT closed at ~$36.8438.

Stock options can be a great form of compensation – but they can also be a terrible form of compensation since it’s up to the market. In retrospect, it appears I should’ve taken the option to cash out in 2003. For better or for worse, the expiration of my initial grant today closes out this chapter of my life.

4. Dennis T Cheung joins Microsoft, has the picture on the right taken for his badge, and helps ship Microsoft Entourage 2001, Microsoft Entourage X, MSN Explorer for Mac, Microsoft Entourage 2004, Microsoft PowerPoint 2004, Microsoft Entourage 2004 with Lots of Exchange Goodness, MSN Search Toolbar 2.6, Windows Desktop Search 2.6, Windows Live Toolbar 3.0, and Windows Live Hotmail.

It’s been a fun and interesting 7 years. I’ve been given a lot of opportunities for which I have been thankful, and I’ve learned a lot as well. I’ve worked on a lot of cool products, worked and met a lot of interesting people. Let’s see what happens next…

As I continue my search for a new rental somewhere in San Carlos and Belmont, I recalled some experiences that my colleagues and friends have had renting in Redmond/Bellevue, WA and some of my visits there.

Let’s just say that if I were moving from WA to the Bay Area, I’d be pretty appalled at generally how old, small, unkept, and cruddy most of the rental stock around here is. The times I’ve visited rental homes there, I’d always been impressed by how nice they were.

But the most interesting difference is this rumor I’ve heard that some complexes actually waive the security deposit if you’re a Microsoft employee. If that’s true, that completely blows my mind . Having rented in California for 7 years, and knowing many other rents, I’ve long come to expect that security deposits were nothing more than an additional $300-$1xxx on revenue for the landlord. Could this possibly mean in other places, you actually get back your full security deposit? Or that it’s actually held for… security?

Of course, there’s also the general price difference (~$1380 vs ~$2170 for a comparable 2 bedroom) – but that’s no surprise.

Between that and the income tax (0% WA vs 9.3% CA), I’m sometimes surprised more people haven’t moved to Redmond already. Me? I’ll never move there – people drive too slow there.

On Friday my dad called to tell me that his computer wouldn’t boot up – that it would give the error Windows\System32\Config\System Corrupt or Missing. Definitely not a good thing. After a lot of over the phone Windows repair kungfu, I called the time of death and declared this installation of Windows kaput. Yesterday, he found a spare hard drive lying around and installed Windows XP Pro on it. He then called me to ask me to help him set up the LAN and copy files over from the old hard drive. 

Now, normally I would simply have him log into Windows Live Messenger, and request remote assistance – except that the router at this particular location either had UPnP disabled or busted. As a result, our computers couldn’t see each other. Fortunately, I remembered Copilot - a product/service that allows you to easily control another person’s computer. They charge by time – but you can get a 24 hour pass for $5.00.

Copilot turned out to be very easy to set up and use, and in short order I was able to reconfigure my dad’s computer and router so that I can use Remote Desktop to RDP (RDC?) directly in. It struck me that Copilot was very similar to VNC which I use frequently to control my Mac at home – and that’s because it is . Personally I prefer RDP because the perf is a little better, and the graphics are a little better – but it’s not for the faint of heart, and I’ll need to disable this security hazard on my dad’s computer at some point.

But in a pinch, Copilot is pretty nifty. And it’s free all day today. I’d recommend it.

BTW, Joel, head of Fog Creek, the company that produces Copilot, has a pretty good blog entry on font smoothing/anti-aliasing: Windows vs Mac/IE vs Safari. You might want to give it a read.

Oh yeah, later while copying files from the old hard drive to the new one, I encountered a whole bunch of cyclic redundancy check errors – I guess the hard drive is failing.

Sometimes I wish California wouldn’t require two party notifications for recording phone calls - that way, I could record all phone conversations. You never know what you might just miss.

For example, tonight my fiancee and I were driving around San Carlos and Belmont, looking for possible apartments to rent. We came across a sign that offered 2 bedroom/2 bath/elevator on the 1200 block of Cherry St, between Laurel St and Walnut St. A picture of the complex is to the right.

Since I was driving, my fiancee called. I thought it was a bit odd that she ended up saying things like “No, we’re not married yet, but we are going to be soon.” and “We’re in our 20’s.”

And that’s where my wish that all calls could be recorded comes in.

Those answers make sense since the manager of the complex had grilled her about our ages, our marital status, and then hung up immediately after saying that it was an “old” complex and that we’d be having babies soon. Wow! An apartment complex manager and fortune teller. I think it would’ve been fun to have captured that on record.

Looking at the Craiglist page on Fair Housing and the relevant parts of California Government Code, it appears this may have been discrimination – or it might not have been. Either way, I don’t think we’ll be living there.

This just adds to the list of other indignities I’ve faced when it comes to real estate. At this point, I think I’d rather deal with car sales people, than hear more ridiculous exaggerations about square footage, cleanliness, and parking availability. I’m just thankful that I’m not looking for a place to rent in Manhattan (which means meeting shady people at corners, with envelopes stuffed with cash), nor have I had to sign a contract to promise to take care of the squirrels and have my (non-existent) children paint pictures of a house to as part of a offer. Sheesh.

I’ve been futzing around with FaceBook lately. One of the things I’ve noticed is that when you view the friends of a friend, it sorts the friends by alphabetical order, starting by last name. I think most social sites, including Friendster, do this as well too.

I wonder if anyone has done a study to see if people with last names starting with “A” have more friends that people with last names starting with “Z”. Do the Addingtons of the world tend to have more friend requests, more pokes, more actions taken on, than the Zugs of the world?

I wonder.

But just to be sure, I’m going to make an extra effort to start on the last page from now on, and work my way backwards. All you Yangs and Wangs can thank me later.

All too often, poor customer service is a topic featured on this blog. As a result, whenever I’m impressed by customer service, I feel compelled to blog about it.

In this case, believe it or not, I was quite impressed with the California DMV.

Yes, that’s right. The DMV. The agency that’s always at the butt of so many jokes, and the agency that’s so frequently used as an example by privatization fanatics.

Last weekend my driver’s license disappeared. I’m pretty sure it’s hidden in a taxi. On Monday morning, I walked into the DMV office in Santa Clara at 8:30am, without an appointment, expecting to be there for 2 hours. Instead, I left at about 8:55am. Pretty quick! And during my wait, they didn’t blast away with loud muzak or have blaring TVs with lots o ads (unlike most airports.)

They told me it would take about 2 weeks to get my replacement driver’s license – but instead, I got it today! Less than one week later. Wow!

Now the downside, of course, was that this cost me $21 – which strikes me as being a little steep. But hey, for this speed of service, that’s fine with me.

Good work California DMV!

This New Yorker article went around today – basically they computed the profit of a variety of businesses in New York: from pizza place, to private school, to a soup kitchen and more.

Now, obviously, Goldman Sachs has a huge profit ($9.34 billion), Nina’s Argentinian Pizzeria – not so much: $18,000 profit.

But here’s the one that blew me away – this business model has all the characteristics of one that you would want:

• high positive cash flow
• ability to have smaller units and lower purchase prices, so that customers of all spending power can buy from you
• motivated customers – low marketing costs
• barrier to entry due to limited suppliers
• non-subscription based – payment up front
• low labor costs

Sound good? Check it out:

‘Nick’ – A Drug Dealer – The Profit Calculator — New York Magazine
Annual Revenue: $1.02 million ($813,600 is profit) with fifteen-hour workweeks and no taxes.

Best Way to Make Money: Sell to many users in small quantities. “It’s like taking a pound of coffee and selling one grain at a time,” says Nick. “If you sell by scoops, you’ll make a couple thousand dollars, but if you break it down into quarter grams and work for a few days, you’ll make tens of thousands.” Most top dealers don’t actually do this, and lazily sell in bulk, as Nick did.

Wow… a 79% profit margin! That’s better than Goldman! And, you only need to work 15 hours a week.

Of course, there are some risks to this:

Profit Catastrophes: Prison. “One day you open your door and there are five cops, and they take you to prison for two and a half years, where you spend all your money on lawyers and make 10 cents an hour in the prison shop, like I did. It’s almost inevitable, which is the downside of the business.” Dealers avoid police by using only a small, trusted group of associates, which eliminates selling to undercover cops. Nick went to jail when an associate ratted on him.

However, observe that even these risks are known, well understood, and actively mitigated  – so they’re not even Black Swan level.

So there you go – now you know more than you probably wanted to know about being a meth dealer.