Over the past year I’ve been doing quite of bit of thinking. Nothing specific, nothing groundbreaking. Just plain old thinking. I turn 40 this year. Despite the wonderful ability in Microsoft to change careers pretty dramatically inside the company, I’ve been there nearly 18 years and it’s the only world I’ve really ever known. I feel too strangely comfortable, and too strangely tied.

So over the past several weeks I’ve made the decision to resign and have been working with my management for an orderly transition. My last day will be February 15^th.

On the 16^th, I’m going to head down to Dallas to visit my family. Then I’m off to JocoCruiseCrazy! I have no other plans beyond that. I’m a free agent! One with 18 years of experience in technology, public and written communications, and 5 years spent deep in the entertainment business. If you have something you think I’d be good at, by all means feel free to contact me at Stepto at stepto.com. Or you can buy my book or the audio version of my book via the links to the left (shameless plug).

Nothing will change with regards to my Twitter or blog, I plan to return to doing a lot more writing here on new topics and video game thoughts.  And I’ll continue to be a super tweeting twitter guy who tweets a lot, again keeping a video game oriented focus.

For anyone wondering, I want to make sure I am clear: This is a positive thing. I have nothing but confidence in the future of Microsoft and specifically Xbox and Xbox LIVE. I have enormous gratitude for my time there. I want to finish my next book, and explore other opportunities.

So there it is. I have no idea what the future holds, for the first time in my life.

This ought to be interesting!

In the time honored tradition of Microsoft employees who make the decision to leave, I just sent my farewell email.  In another tradition, Microsoft doesn’t comment on specific personnel changes and I’m going to be honoring that. I’ll be declining any media requests for now since until the 15^th I’m still a Microsoft employee, and after that I plan to be enjoying rum drinks and being disconnected from everything for a while. I’ll be back online and in Seattle on the 28^th.

Here’s my goodbye mail, presented here with some personal names removed:

Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen.

On a warm Dallas day April 11th, 1994, I grabbed my keys and wallet and headed for the front door of my apartment. I stopped short when I realized I was going to need my building access badge that I had just been given that previous Friday. I walked into my bedroom and grabbed the badge, making a mental note to remember to keep it with my wallet at night so I wouldn’t forget it in the morning. It was my first full day at Microsoft. I was 21.

Since that day (very nearly without exception) I’ve carried a Microsoft badge with me basically where ever I went. That April day I was a contractor with Microsoft, A-Stepto. The following January I was hired as a Microsoft FTE and issued a new email name, SToulouse. Because everyone had already started calling me Stepto, my manager had them change it to Stepto. It stuck.

I wrote in my book about some of the amazing things I’ve been a part of at this company. Shipping Windows 95. Traveling the world in the training organization teaching support engineers about upcoming technologies. Being a security PM and spokesperson for the entire company on security issues. Getting to play a part in the success of Xbox, Xbox LIVE, and Kinect. I can’t possibly conceive of the good fortune, challenges, and rewards I’ve gotten from almost 18 years at Microsoft happening to me anywhere else.

But I’m going to go see just to make sure.

February 15th 2012 will be my last day at Microsoft. My reasons for leaving are complex and personal, but the parting could not be more amicable. I continue to believe this place makes great technology, and I am absolutely thrilled for the future of Xbox and Xbox LIVE.

What are my plans? I don’t have any! That’s both scary and exciting. Well, it’s also a bit untrue. The day after I leave I’m headed out to join my Internet friends on JoCoCruiseCrazy in the Caribbean. And I’m nearly finished with my second book, on a topic unrelated to Microsoft.

But after that I don’t have anything lined up. I’m going to see what happens.

My team will continue its work as always, there will be no interruption. In the meantime don’t worry, we have top men working on an orderly transition. Top men.*

After almost 18 years There’s too many people to thank. First and foremost CSS for my start at Microsoft in the Las Colinas office. TwC for my wonderful time there working at the Microsoft Security Response Center. I’d like to thank Xbox, my team and the entire staff of my wonderful enforcers who work so tirelessly to help protect the Xbox LIVE service. It’s been an incredible privilege and honor to work with people so friendly, dedicated, and nearly impervious to naughty Internet slang.

I’d like to thank Microsoft for an unbelievable set of opportunities, an incredible education that they paid *me* to obtain, and for the opportunity to be neck deep for five years in my first love: video games.

My leaving’s not tied to any event or thing, so I’m not out the door just yet! Please feel free to drop by or chat. After the 15th you can reach me at Stepto@stepto.com. But be aware I probably won’t be able to answer you until I arrive back in Seattle on the 28th because I’ve always been the guy that checks my email on the beach and I’m not going to be that guy anymore.

I wish you all the very best success. Godspeed and please…

Be excellent to each other.

S.

*I apologize for the gender specificity, but it’s a movie quote. I’ll let you go Bing it. :>

On December 7^th, 1995 something extraordinary occurred at Microsoft.  For years our primary focus for software development had centered around narrowly scoped features that centered around the isolated experience of the personal computer.  To the extent connected experiences mattered it was always in the context of corporate networks.  The idea of a personal network in a home connected to a giant world-wide network of computers wasn’t a scenario that factored into our planning.

Until that day.  On that day a memo from Bill Gates to the entire corporation arrived in my inbox.  It laid out in precise terms how we’d come late to the game on the Internet experience and we would now be focusing all of our energy on it.  It was a galvanizing event.  A ship as big as Microsoft turned overnight.

The power of such a memo is easily diluted.  If used too often it loses the effect.  If used for small issues it can lead to too much energy being applied to something.  Bill didn’t send another memo of its like for a while, but when he did it had the exact same effect.

On January 15^th 2002 Bill sent a memo to all employees entitled “Trustworthy Computing.”  In it, he articulated the case to pivot all our efforts in creating what was then the .NET platform to lead something he termed “Trustworthiness in Computing.”  Casting computer security against the industry and the world at large (including the terrorists attacks of 2001) Bill laid out key pillars of this effort: Availability, Security, and Privacy.  He tied the impact that a security vulnerability has to trust in Microsoft and our products.  He then made what I believe was the most fundamental change in our development methodology that would achieve the goal of more secure software:

“So now, when we face a choice between adding features and resolving security issues, we need to choose security. Our products should emphasize security right out of the box, and we must constantly refine and improve that security as threats evolve.”

The greatest impact of that memo is that I see younger people today in the industry read that line and shrug and say “well of course.”  But the computer industry was very different at that time.  People rushed to focus on features first, not just at Microsoft but other companies as well.  In general, my experience with software developers across the industry in the late 90’s was that security audits were routinely seen as a “tax” on development, and anyway if someone exploited a bug as an attack then that’s a crime and the law should handle it.

Bill’s memo transformed overnight the mindset of our development to think as much about misuse of features as use of them. That security was a fundamental aspect of software quality.

Today, security is at the forefront of software development.  Computer security is very much a journey, not a destination; much remains to be done.  But I look at the world of software and development today and I see a much different world than in 2002.  It’s fair to say that much of it started with a memo from Bill Gates on January 15^th. Great work is still occurring every day, and to celebrate an amazing ten years the Trustworthy Computing team has made a special post, you can read about it here.

Almost 30 years ago probably one of the more formative events in my life occurred. My father left my mother, and shortly thereafter my stepfather entered my life.

Independent of any other emotional or parental changes, one singular part of that transition has affected me above all else: My stepfather introduced me to rock and roll.

I’m overstating it a bit, I’d been soft rocked by adult contemporary as a child.  But regular rock and roll was the devil’s music, and I was repeatedly told by my father I was going to hell for purchasing my very first cassette tape: Queen’s The Game.  In our house it was mostly gospel, Mickey Gillis, the Gatlin Brothers, The Oak Ridge Boys, or Streisand and maybe, just maybe, those out of control rebels The Bee Gees. Neil Diamond was also allowed, sparingly.

When my mom first met Ted, my eventual stepfather, we were still struggling as she was a single parent trying to cope with her new situation and raising three boys.  Once they started dating, we got to visit his apartment.  At that time, I believe Ted’s album collection had reached close to 1000 albums. 

You have to understand just how much physical space 1000 vinyl records takes up.  It’s just gargantuan. His entire place seemed to be one large record storage area.  And he was a fan not just of classic rock but of the modern stuff I normally wasn’t allowed, some classical, jazz, etc.

When I was 11 I got my own self contained record player with speakers.  And Ted immediately began to give me all his older stuff (so that he could justify buying new copies).  His system was a high-end adjustable automatic turntable with tracking, connected to massive Cerwin Vega speakers via an amp.  Mine was a two speed manual unit with small tinny built in speakers, so the fact I had hand me down worn copies of his LP’s really didn’t matter.

What mattered is that while I wanted Michael Jackson and Taco, what I got was Jimmy Buffett, Bruce Springsteen, Poco, and an education into classic rock and roll that, lacking the albums I wanted, I had to play because they were the only albums I had.

Over the next year I bet I was the only 11 year old in early 1984 listening to Dylan, Brinsley Schwarz, Jethro Tull, Beatles, Stones, and my Stepdad’s favorite, It’s a Beautiful Day and Blood Sweat and Tears’ “Child is Father to the Man”

Fast forward to today, my stepfather’s marriage to my mother lasted almost two decades, but they eventually divorced.  But he’s probably one of the most profound influences on my life and my appreciation of music.  I still remember once I got a cassette recorder system that recorded from the phonograph.  I made a general mix tape for myself of my favorite stuff that got spied by an older kid in middle school who grabbed my walkman. 

“Cream?  Led Zeppelin?  not exactly new age music” he mocked as he read the tape label I worked so hard on.  My Depeche Mode and Duran Duran cassettes were in my backpack still but that was ok.  I look back on it now as a validation, not that the modern music at the time was bad, but that I was capable of enjoying it all.

This Christmas I thought of that time in my life.  My stepdad’s vinyl collection is long since sold and he’s relocated to his hometown of New Orleans. On a whim I hit Amazon. I sent him the following:

An Audio Technica Automatic Turntable (has an amp)
Logitech 2.1 Z323 speakers (has inputs for the turntable amp)
Blood Sweat and Tears, Child is Father to the Man

Along with cables to make sure it would all work.  I sent him this note:

Almost 30 years ago, you introduced me to so much music via your record collection. Included in this package should be everything you need to start your record collection over again. Much love and merry xmas, Stepto and Rochelle.

I hope he likes it as much as I think he will.

I hope he knows just how important his gift of music was to me.

I hope my brothers remember to send him more albums as their part of the gift.

I hope.

For years I’ve been using either store bought meat rubs or creating general purpose meat rubs from the Intertubes.  Recently Rochelle and I have been getting a meat package from our local farm drop.  It contains locally raised grass fed beef and pork, chickens, etc.  For the first time I got a cut of side pork.  Basically the easiest and quickest way to explain what side pork is would be to call it uncured, unsmoked bacon.  The cut is fatty, but with a little more meat than bacon. 

To deal with the lack of curing and smoke you can do two things: cure and smoke the cut, or season and cook it.  I chose the latter.  The cut came pre-sliced, so I chose to marinade the slices for 8 hours in a mixture of 90% Apple juice and 10% Garlic infused Tabasco sauce. I decided on an oven roasting cooking method so I wanted to season each slice with a rub. 

Now, as I mentioned there’s a bazillion general purpose rub recipes out there.  Most of them are variations of black pepper, chili powder, paprika, onion powder, sugar, and salt.  I didn’t deviate too much from that basic foundation, except that I added a special ingredient that yielded a really great rub that tastes better than the general purpose ones I’ve been making for years. 

The secret ingredient?  Habanero infused cane sugar from Flavorstorm.  This created a rub with bite, but not the normal bite of cayenne pepper.  I omitted brown sugar and garlic powder (two common bbq rub ingredients) because for the amount of rub I wanted to create, I figured that I could better focus on onion as a flavor and use regular sugar so that the habanero would power through even only using a tablespoon.  I also substituted Ancho Chili powder instead of regular chili powder.  (I do this for most recipe’s that require chili powder.  I find the ancho chili powder to be a nice change of pace.  Ancho chili powder is just ground dried pablano chilies, but the powder has a slightly sweeter taste)

I hate “secret” recipes, so here you go:

1/2 cup paprika
2 tablespoons black pepper
2 tablespoons onion powder
1 tablespoon sea salt
2 tablespoons ancho chili powder
1 tablespoon habanero infused cane sugar
2 tablespoons regular cane sugar

Shake it up good in a container to mix it evenly.  It doesn’t have a strong salt component so you can be ok using a little more rub so you get that onion and that sweet ancho chili and  habanero flavor to come through.

I’ll let you know how the side pork turned out.  Enjoy!

Tonight I am proud, very proud, to release the audio version of my book, A Microsoft Life.  This edition is called “A Microsoft Life: The Audiobook Expanded Edition with Bonus Material and Surprises (Abridged), with a forward by Wil Wheaton. A forward by Paul and Storm. A forward by Mike Phirman. A forward by Len Peralta, A forward by Larry Hryb, and a forward by Joel Watson”

I am BEYOND EXCITED to tell you it’s now available at Bandcamp. It’s 13 dollars, NAY!  $12.99! Go here to get it, then come back!

From the moment I released A Microsoft Life people asked for an audio version of it. That was fine by me because I have immensely enjoyed actually performing stories from it at spoken word events and at w00tstock. So I invested in some audio equipment (a q-mic personal audio booth and Blue Yeti microphone) and got to recording and learning the ins and outs of producing audio. At the same time, I knew this was going to have to be an abridged version of the book. Some stories in the original work relied on visual gags, and others just didn’t make sense to perform (like some of my speeches, which are widely available on YouTube.) So I picked my favorite stories to perform, and recorded those.

I felt a little bad about the audio version having to be abridged,  then I remembered “hey! I know a bunch of famous people! I wonder if they would like to contribute!” So I had some very good friends each record a Foreword for the book.

I’d like to think that my audio book has the most forewords of any audio book ever. It’s, quite frankly, FOREWORDTASTIC.

I created a couple of new content bits, and I wrote BY MYSELF* an original song and all the chapter intro music. Ok, on the chapter intro music I cheated a lot and used Garageband. In addition to the tracks I included an outtakes reel, some scans of the original drawing my friend Mark did for the cover, a .PDF copy of the FULL text of the book itself, and some pictures of Remington.

I learned a lot and had a great time producing this edition of the book. I pretty much did it all on my own except for the forewords of course and the final song, so if you spot amateur mistakes then yup, that’s me. I’m an amateur at this.

Here’s the track list:

• 1. Introduction 04:22
  2. A Foreword by Wil Wheaton 04:08
  3. Introduction the Second 09:30
  4. Genesis 07:39

• 5. Genesis 2 09:37
  6. A Foreword by Len Peralta 01:26
  7. On Bill Gates 09:09
  8. The Great MS-DOS 7 Caper 10:04
  9. A Foreword by Storm, of Paul and Storm 02:00
  10. That One Time, During the Windows 98 Launch 08:26
  11. Sydney, Where the Bare Ass Spankings Lie 12:09
  12. A Foreword by Mike Phirman 02:57
  13. Perspective 06:03
  14. A Foreword by Joel Watson 03:07
  15. Don’t be a Dick 06:29
  16. I got the PAX 26:37
  17. A Career in Infinite Repose 05:46
  18. A Foreword by Paul, of Paul and Storm 02:59
  19. Outtro 01:33
  20. A Foreword by Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb 03:43
  21. Stephen "Stepto" Toulouse and John Drake – The Legalese (A song) 05:03

•  

Now this next bit is very important: Two thirds of the proceeds from the audio book will be going to Child’s Play, in keeping with the blog entry I wrote here.

Let me say that again, 2/3’s of the proceeds will go to Child’s Play. The remaining third is basically for recouping a little of the money we spent on taking care of Remington. For everyone who originally contacted me to donate to Remington’s treatment, not only can you do that but you can help sick kids as well! I’m handling the donation directly because if I do it that way, Microsoft will match dollar for dollar the amount I donate. I also plan to keep the blog and my twitter updated with the running total to keep me honest and you can see the progress.

There’s so many people I want to thank. First of all I absolutely want to thank Mr. John Drake of Harmonix for his audio work, as well as Paul and Storm, Mike Phirman, Wil Wheaton, Len Peralta, Joel Watson and Larry Hryb for their incredibly funny and clever forewords. It was insanely generous for them to lend their names and time to this project. What started out as kind of a funny joke took a more serious turn when Remington got sick, and knowing that their time will most likely result in increased funds to charity makes me feel really really good. As always I want to thank Rochelle, we managed to keep each other sane both during the recording process as well as Remy’s illness. She had to endure periods of time where I had to insist on absolute silence in a house with several dogs and a cat. No easy feat.

Lastly thank you guys. Your support during the past two months has meant the world to me.

So all this has been really long, I hope your download of the book is complete. It will be appearing on other venues like iTunes, etc at the end of the year. But for right now the maximum return on dollars for charity is through Bandcamp. While iTunes and Amazon MP3 and Zune may be convenient, I urge you to use Bandcamp and add the book manually to your library.

The kids will thank you for it.