The Excel Automation Heist

Content Experience Goose farmer Self-employed Jul 2023 - Present 10 mos On-site Microsoft 22 yrs 4 mos Principal Performance Architect Full-time Jul 2022 - Jul 2023 1 yr 1 mo Chehalis, Washington, United States Principal Software Development Engineer Apr 2001 - Jul 2022 21 yrs 4 mos Redmond,WA Azure Performance Team, August 2017 - Present Office 365 Foundation Engineering... see more

Those mysterious colored dots in Visual Studio's scrollbar? They're actually code indicators - red for errors, blue for breakpoints, yellow for warnings, and green for changes. But let's be real: most developers just see a Christmas light display of "your code is screwed" without ever bothering to learn what each color means. After 5 years of C# development, you just accept that red = bad and silently fix it without questioning the scrollbar's judgment.

Ah yes, the tech stack of reality. The entire digital world balances precariously on the backs of DNS and some sleep-deprived open source devs who maintain critical libraries for pizza and GitHub stars. Meanwhile, AWS charges you if you breathe near their servers, AI is just getting started with world domination, and Microsoft is off in the corner doing... whatever Microsoft does. Probably restarting for updates.

The classic UNO dilemma: "Make A Good Business Decision OR draw 25" with Microsoft gleefully grabbing the entire deck instead. This perfectly captures Microsoft's legendary strategy of choosing the most convoluted path possible when a simple solution exists. Why fix bugs when you can just acquire another company? Why optimize Windows when you can just force everyone to upgrade? The house always wins when you're playing against your own users!

Content WHEN YOU PROGRAM OPEN SOURCE, YOU'RE PROGRAMMING COMMUNISM A REMINDER rom YOUR FRIENDS AT MICROSOFT

The cosmic revelation that Microsoft Office, Apple iWork, and Java are all secretly compressed archives in disguise. That moment when you realize your fancy productivity software is just wearing a fancy trench coat over what's essentially a folder of files. Fun fact: Most modern document formats (.docx, .pptx, .xlsx) are actually ZIP archives with XML files inside. Rename them with a .zip extension and extract them to see the horrifying truth. Your 10MB PowerPoint presentation is just a collection of XML files, images, and metadata wearing a digital suit. The astronaut with the gun is all of us after spending years creating "documents" only to discover we've just been making fancy ZIP files this whole time. The betrayal!