(I've actually gotten a couple requests for me to continue the blog...sooo HERE TIS! =D )
So like I mentioned at the end of the last blog, it took ages for me to hear the results back from Lucas Arts. In the mean time I heard from some of the friends I had made at Microsoft and word had gotten around that I wasn't really interested in working there. Well...."ish" :)
Cut Paste from last blog:
They didn't have any full time positions. It would be a one year contract and they would not move me down there...or even pay for my flight to interview...not nearly as good of a deal as the Lucas Arts thing, so I put them off while I pursued Lucas Arts
Anyway, eventually word got back to me from Lucas Arts and they went with one of the other 11 guys based on my greenness. I was just to young for a top position like that I think. They wished me the best though and said I was going to have a great career.
So I bought a plane ticket to Redmond Washington and visited Microsoft for an interview there for the test position. The interview was with Christian Caroll and Brent Mills. I did great on all the MIDI and DirectMusic stuff but failed badly on two parts.
1. Didn't know DOS commands
2. They asked me to look inside an open computer case and name everything....I couldn't do much lol
I can do those things now of course but back then my biggest things were music production and some basic C++ programming.
Soooo....normally they wouldn't have hired me based on the hardware weakness, but they needed a music guru who knew his way around a PC for DirectMusic testing (those were hard to find at the time) so I got the job!
To make a long story short Emily and I packed up all our belongings in a moving truck and drove from Texas to Washington. Ah heck I'll give a few details...
That trip was TOTALLY scary...we had this truck that couldn't go more than 30 mph because it was full of ALL our stuff and we had a car being towed behind us. We drove down tiny little roads with cliffhangers on either side...up and down mountains in the slick rain...with almost no braking power going 60 mph (gravity) AND cliffs on the side. Going up the mountains was a 30 mph thing with cars zoooooming past us. I swear we almost died sooo many times.
Our cat was a real trooped he basically stayed with us in the cabin of the track for nearly a week of driving. We played with him in the hotels secretly at night (hotels don't allow cats) cause he was still pretty young and energetic. He never even really complained until the last few hours on the last day...when he started meowing constantly. Luckily we arrived at our new Apts soon.
Btw all this was in 2001. I had a great first year working at Microsoft..learned a TON of stuff, strengthened relationships I had with everyone. I should mention a few people:
Nathan Eckerman: The guy came and got me on my first day of work and was my best friend and mentor at work for the whole year. He was a total hardware and DOS Guru..which were my weakest areas so I felt pretty stupid at the beginning. Nathan was a contracter like myself so he was in the same boat as me about having to leave after a year for 100 days. Nate was super cool though..hehe when I first met him he had an entourage of "Agents" which is what he called all his girlfriends. He always asked anyone who he had just met what their "Agent name" was....so either you proved you had wit.....or not so much....hehe I was the latter.
David Yackley: A graduate from the EastMan school of Music and the Program Manager of the DirectMusic Producer project...and shortly became the Program Manager of all of DirectMusic and DirectSound. He was really really nice to me and always asked my opinioins on whatever was happening with the products.
Kelly Craven: A Test Developer (programmer) who is one of the nicest people I have ever met. He mentored me in programming during that first year. Kelly was really good friends with the people who created DirectMusic before they were acquired by Microsoft.
Anyway, I'll try to tone down some of this Microsoft stuff now because this blog is supposed to be about my music career and the Microsoft stuff started out related to my music career but becomes less and less relevant over time.
Biggest thing is that I was building contacts at Microsft, I got on a special email group that specialized in DirectMusic. One day a company called Stainless Steel Studios put an ad up on that email distributioin list asking for DirectMusic demos because they were searching for a composer for their next project. "PERFECT" I thought...