With Apache’s named virtual hosts, and the Windows hosts file, it’s easy to run multiple local websites with a single web server instance. For example, I can reach the local copy of W3Counter at http://w3counter, and the local copy of this blog at http://dg. I can even temporarily resolve the full domains of the sites I’m working on to my local machine to test code and URLs with absolute paths. There are two simple steps to setting this up:

1. Add the virtual hosts to the Apache configuration:

   Open up the configuration file, httpd.conf. I like to add my entries towards the end of the file. Add this line:

   NameVirtualHost *:80

   If your local server isn’t running on port 80, change that to what port you are running it on. Then add a VirtualHost entry for each named site you want to host locally. For example:

   <VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName djg
   UseCanonicalName Off
   DocumentRoot c:/www/dg
   </VirtualHost>

   <VirtualHost *:80>
   ServerName w3counter
   UseCanonicalName Off
   DocumentRoot c:/www/w3counter
   </VirtualHost>

2. Add the host names to Windows’ hosts file so they resolve to your local machine:

   Open up an Explorer window and go to the directory c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc. If you can’t see this directory, you may have system folders hidden. In the Explorer window, go to “Tools”, then “Folder Options”. In the advanced settings, uncheck “Hide protected operating system files” and check “Show hidden files and folders”.

   Right click on the file named “hosts” and click on “Properties”. Uncheck the “read-only” box and click “OK”. You may need administrator rights to do that in Windows Vista.

   Now that you can edit the file, open it up in Notepad. At the end of the file, add entries pointing the hosts you just added to httpd.conf to also resolve them to your local PC’s IP address (127.0.0.1). For example:

   127.0.0.1 djg
   127.0.0.1 w3counter

Save the hosts file and httpd.conf and restart Apache. When you type one of your new host names into a browser window, you should see the website located at the DocumentRoot directory you specified.

Remember that Windows sometimes keeps DNS cached, so if you add an actual domain to your hosts file, or want to change the IP a host resolves to, you may need to flush that DNS cache. You can do this from a command prompt with “ipconfig /flushdns”.

What’s so impressive is that Silverlight will include a mini .NET CLR (common language runtime). You’ll be able to code Silverlight applications in C#, VB, JavaScript, Ruby or Python and run them right in the browser. Silverlight isn’t limited to Internet Explorer 7, so unlike .NET apps written to run as an ActiveX control in IE, you’ll be able to run your Silverlight application in Firefox or Opera, on a PC or a Mac, and even on mobile devices. The beta plugin is only available for Internet Explorer and Firefox on PC and Mac, but more support is on its way. The plugin weighs in at less than 4MB, a negligible download for broadband users and an amazing feat considering the technology packed into it. A smaller plugin is automatically downloaded and installed to play multimedia content that doesn’t need the CLR and other features, less than 2MB in size. Just a few lines of code gives you browser and platform-agnostic high definition (720p) video streaming.

A Silverlight community site has already opened with everything you need to test the waters. You’ll find beta and alpha versions of the plugin, a beta of the next Visual Studio and development tools for Silverlight, SDKs and documentation. You’ll also find working examples to check out just what’s possible with this platform.

Performance is really impressive here. The media players demoed for Silverlight offer much higher quality than anything YouTube can offer with Flash while downloading and starting nearly instantly, and downloading the videos being played equally fast. You can have multiple videos playing without stuttering or flickering. Relatively complex interfaces seem to appear instantly without the “Loading…” splash screens so common in big Flash movies. Code runtime is phenomenal as well. .NET code for interactive web applications is many times faster than equivalent JavaScript, and JavaScript run through Silverlight is faster than running through the browser. That code can reach outside the Silverlight container into the DOM of the webpage, making it a complete rich internet app environment, enabling faster, more interactive, and more visually complex websites.

Tie this in with the Expression Studio line of web design, development, and multimedia tools Microsoft just released, and you’re looking at a whole new web with Microsoft leading the way. As Robert Scoble put it, Microsoft “rebooted the Web”. Bringing .NET to the web (and not just in their browser), creating a delivery platform for high definition media, and putting all the tools out there for developers to transition to this easily, I have no doubt this is going to be big. It also spells doom for Adobe’s Apollo Flex platform. There’s simply no comparison.

In Philadelphia, my blackened windows (from the accumulation of truck exhaust) overlook traffic on pothole-filled roadways of drivers barely missing eachother to get from one all-concrete part of the city to another. Here, I can look out the window and see a stream that runs to Lake Washington around the corner, and drive around Lake Sammamish on the way to the office each day. I can deal with the morning drizzle every other day for that. Even if I stay in Pennsylvania after I graduate, it won’t be in Philadelphia.

Getting Acquainted

My first day and a half was spent at New Employee Orientation. Those are held every single week; there were about 80 people in the group with me. Microsoft has been on a hiring spree for the past two years, picking up about 16,000 employees last year as it grew to nearly 80,000 in total. Orientation was a bore — a lot of CYA stuff for Microsoft — things like document retention policies, when to consult the legal department, what the org structure looks like, etc. I won’t go into details on NEO since it’s a bore. There were two hours covering health benefits and stock options I don’t get — the only difference between intern and FTE — during which I hopped on an MS shuttle to the company store. Everything there is heavily discounted for employees. Vista Ultimate would cost me $35 instead of $275, and Xbox 360 games just $10, for example. I’ll take advantage of that soon.

On the second day I made my way from the main corporate campus in Redmond to where I’ll be working in Issaquah, what they call the Sammamish campus since it’s next to Lake Sammamish. It’s an extra 10 minute drive compared to going to Redmond but traffic isn’t too bad and the scenery is nice. Compared to the commute I’d have from Philadelphia to Malvern for Siemens or Unisys or a lot of the big Drexel hirers out there, it’s nothing.

I got a quick tour of the building — just a few floors tall with lots of open spaces and open doors — Microsoft tries to promote open collaboration and a college campus feel. I met my immediate boss, his boss, the developers I’d be working with, and the very energetic female “admin” who apparently makes the real decisions for the department as well as providing free candy and a massage chair to anyone that wants the room. Speaking of free food — what we’ve all heard is true — there are big cases of free soda on every floor of every building. Developers really do live on Mountain Dew.

The New Day to Day

My official position is Application Developer for the Account Planning team, part of the Enterprise People & Groups division, which in the big picture is part of Microsoft IT. I’m not working on Windows or Office or XBOX so you won’t see the software I build on your desktop, but several thousand Microsoft employees will. It’s a small team, with my boss across the hall, one of the few other developers in the same office as me, and the program manager right around the corner.

One of the first things I asked my boss about was what hours everyone was putting in. It’s a salaried job, so there is no clocking in or time sheets to fill out, but most people work roughly 9-5. Supposedly, if I can get my job done in 20 hours, I can work 20 hours a week. If I can get it done working from 3PM to 11PM every day, I can work those hours. If I want to work from home, I can head over to Redmond and get a smart card and card reader for a laptop to connect to the corporate network from anywhere. I have a “blue badge” which provides 24 hour access to all buildings in Washington, with other colors given to vendors and partners and other types of employees with restricted access, so my office is always open to me.

There are very few desktops around that aren’t running servers of some sort — development sandboxes, test servers, pre-production environments, etc. Most of the people here are developers, and developers get laptops. They’re pretty beefy Toshiba Tecra tablet PCs with more than enough memory to compile large apps on. Even with all the collaboration tools Microsoft makes, there are constantly people walking down halls with running laptops in hand and bringing them into meetings. Along with the laptop, there’s a docking station, 17″ LCD and Microsoft Laser Desktop 6000 wireless keyboard and mouse. Not as fancy as the Wireless Entertainment Desktop 7000 I have at home, but probably a better keyboard to use for coding anyway. With the laptop docked I spread my desktop across the two screens. This is already a much better environment for this kind of work than DuPont or Math Forum provided.

There’s no micromanagement here. I’ve had one-on-one meetings with a couple levels of managers up from me already and all of them say the same thing. They don’t micromanage, they just get projects going, set milestones, and expect employees to meet them. Nobody tells me what to do each day and rarely does my boss come in to see what I’m doing.

There’s more information than I could ever need available. Everyone’s doors are open, literally, so I have no problem talking to the right person for some guidance or advice. Beyond that I’ve got all of MSDN, tons of online training, classes I can register for, and a huge physical library of paper books I can borrow.

Microsoft Immersion

Why did I take this job? why did I choose to go through all the hassle of moving to Washington for half a year instead of taking a nice management job at DuPont just minutes from my apartment in Philadelphia? Aside from the coolness factor of working for a recognizable name, it was the only route I could find to getting experience in the Microsoft environment.

Drexel University helps students find jobs to fulfill coop requirements by finding employers willing to hire students for 6 month periods and listing the available jobs in a database. When I searched through there each year, three times now, there were at least 20 positions for .NET developers of some flavor. All these positions required previous experience with Windows servers, Visual Studio, some .NET language and usually Microsoft SQL Server. While I’m confident I have enough experience to pick up any of these technologies quickly and become productive in just a day or two, I’ll never get an interview for those jobs without any of the experience showing on my resume.

Microsoft came to the rescue. They sent recruiters to Drexel looking for experienced programmers but they weren’t looking specifically for experience with their technology. They were the first company I ran into developing in the Windows environment that saw my resume and gave me an interview. Those of course went well, since I’m here now, and I’m getting what I wanted. I’m being completely immersed in the Microsoft environment.

• I’m running Windows Vista Enterprise.
• I’m developing C# .NET code in Visual Studio 2005.
• I installed that with Vista’s ability to install programs over the network where every Microsoft product is available to me over the intranet.
• Every intranet website knows who I am thanks to Active Directory. I check my mail with Outlook which shows me the calendar and Communicator status of every person I come in contact with.
• Quick team chats are held with Office Communicator which also links up with IT’s bridges to AIM, Messenger and Yahoo!’s chat networks.
• I connect to Windows 2003 servers with Windows Remote Desktop.
• Before I started, I was given directions to the office with a link to Live.com Maps.
• Team documents are shared on a Sharepoint server.
• I access my e-mail from home with Exchange 2007′s Outlook Web Access web client.
• I have access to all of Microsoft’s current beta software — employees use beta software for real world testing before release.
• I’m an administrator for two Microsoft SQL Server instances and a Microsoft Dynamics CRM instance.
• I made modifications to a program written on top of Microsoft Office Groove.
• My default search engine is Live.com.

If that weren’t enough, I figured this was a good time to replace my old Creative Zen Xtra mp3 player with a Microsoft Zune. I like to load it with episodes of Battlestar Galactica to watch in one of the 26 cafeterias here. I’ve joined “The Social” – I can see the other Zune owners in the building with wifi enabled and what they’re listening to.

It’s a good thing

I’m having a good time. I like my job. I’m driving somewhere new pretty much every day. My mailbox is filled with messages from all the groups I’ve joined already — from Zune owners to Warcraft players to keeping in touch with the other interns and alumni from Drexel. I think this will be a very good 6 months.

Then I met with someone that did more technical work for MSIT who went through my experience more in depth. He was great too, I got to talk a lot about myself which doesn’t always happen with some interviewers, but it stayed conversational. We spent some time talking about Vista and the bugs in the RCs and even into Microsoft Hardware — he promised to let me know if he can find out why nobody has the keyboard I’ve been drooling over since September in stock even though the ship date for the 7000 series was supposed to be 1/8.

A couple hours later I met up with some manager types from DuPont where I worked last year and talked about coming back if I didn’t get an offer from Microsoft. It’s always good to have a backup plan. The two Microsoft interviews went well but I don’t honestly expect an offer — I have no recent work experience developing in the Visual Studio environment, with .NET or anything that’s come about in the last 4 years or so since moving off to C++, Java and PHP.

My direct manager, who offered me his job before I left, already left the company for another position, but he made sure everyone else knew I was the best programmer on the team when I was there, so they definitely want to re-hire me.

The Microsoft group that flew in got an e-mail out to everyone that interviewed with them through Drexel’s career development center to let us know they were having an info session type gathering in the evening which I just got back from. It was real casual and they and a student from Drexel that worked there last year (and is going back to join the Xbox XA team) talked about life at Microsoft and in Seattle.

About half an hour into it they pulled out a brand new Xbox 360 with a bunch of games and had everyone throw their names in a hat and raffled it off. I won! I haven’t owned a game console since the Nintendo 64, which my parents had paid for so many years ago. I’ve never spent my own money on one, but now I get to try out everything I saw when Bill Gates gave the CES keynote address last week — Xbox Live, Xbox TV, Vista Ultimate’s media center integration with Xbox Live, using the Xbox 360 controller to navigate MS Live Virtual Earth. I’ll have a lot of fun with this.

A great day in the end. I’ve got a lot of work to catch up on so I’ll stop writing here, but I also got to meet Richard Stallman in person, the man behind GNU and the free software movement. He gave an hour and a half talk at Drexel about software patents that I managed to get to between interviews and classes. Very interesting guy.