storytelling – Page 2

End of Q1 Check-in

tl;dr: On track. Back in January, I wrote about my New Years’ Resolutions. I’m now 90 days in, and things are continuing to go well. Health and Finance: A dry January. Exceeded. I stopped drinking alcohol on any sort of regular basis; over spring break, I peaked at two drinks per day. Health: Track my weight andContinue reading “End of Q1 Check-in”

Mid-February Checkin

tl;dr: On track. Back in January, I wrote about my New Years’ Resolutions. I’m now 45 days in, and things are going pretty well. Health and Finance: A dry January. Dry January has turned into dry February. Beyond idle thoughts “What should I do right now? In the old days, I’d pour myself a drink”Continue reading “Mid-February Checkin”

Cruising Solo

For Christmas 2020, I was home alone. The highlight of my day was discovering that Jack in the Box was open. I enjoyed my Christmas cheeseburger dinner at a picnic table in a park down the street. Unexpectedly, my Christmas plans fell through for 2021, and I faced a repeat of 2020. But making JackContinue reading “Cruising Solo”

Celebrating Fifteen Years

While lately I’ve been endlessly streaming the latest news with horrified fascination, this morning my calendar unexpectedly popped up a reminder set over a year ago… Today is the fifteenth anniversary of my big-league blogging debut on the Internet Explorer Team’s blog. My first post there, “A HTTP Detective Story” remains one of my favorites.Continue reading “Celebrating Fifteen Years”

My New Chromium Build PC

While I do most of my work in an office, from time to time I work on code changes to Chromium at home. With the recent deprecation of Jumbo Builds, building the browser on my cheap 2016-era Dell XPS 8900 (i7-6700K) went from unpleasant to impractical. While I pondered buying a high-end Threadripper, I couldn’tContinue reading “My New Chromium Build PC”

Retiring Internet Explorer

Prelude In late 2004, I was the Program Manager for Microsoft’s clipart website, delivering a million pieces of clipart to Microsoft Office customers every day. It was great fun. But there was a problem– our “Clip of the Day” feature, meant to spotlight a new and topical piece of clipart every day, wasn’t changing asContinue reading “Retiring Internet Explorer”

An Update on the Edge XSS Filter

In Windows 10 RS5 (aka the “October 2018 Update”), the venerable XSS Filter first introduced in 2008 with IE8 was removed from Microsoft Edge. The XSS Filter debuted in a time before Content Security Policy as a part of a basket of new mitigations designed to mitigate the growing exploitation of cross-site scripting attacks, joining older features like HTTPOnlyContinue reading “An Update on the Edge XSS Filter”

Back Home

I rejoined Microsoft as a Principal Program Manager for the web networking team on June 4th, 2018. I’m delighted to be back working with lots of old friends from my Internet Explorer days, as well as lots of new folks who’ve joined while I’ve been pursuing other adventures.

What If?

Spoiler alert If you haven’t read For a Lark yet, please go read that first. What If? I like to think. Well, actually, I’m not sure I like to think, but I find it really hard to relax and let my brain rest… given a few minutes of idle time, I usually find myself deep inContinue reading “What If?”

For a Lark

“Happy Holidays” David said as he poked his head into my office, handing me an unwrapped holiday card featuring a kitten in a Santa hat. As I took it, I nearly dropped a small white envelope that dropped out from inside. The inscription in the card read simply “Best wishes, David – 2010.” “Uh, thanks,Continue reading “For a Lark”