dan - checkered shirt, edward - white shirt, tie

my first day at microsoft (october 31st, 2005) i started with a couple other people.  that's the day i met edward - we started as windows client technical specialists.  we went through a lot together starting at microsoft - we both hold the record of the shortest time with a manager - 1 day (our hiring manager transitioned us to our 2nd manager on november 1st), we had the advantage of being able to compare notes with each other as we learned what our role and working at microsoft met for each for us.  we attended a deployment airlift with partners our 3rd week.  our first tech ready we roomed together - it was like college (you immediately get to know that other person by spending the extended time together and being in the same role we spent most of our days at the conferences together as well) except we were both grown men in our mid 30s.  we both tested and prepared for the windows vista beta and release candidates.

on easter 3 years ago, edward was hospitalized and diagnosed with a brain tumor.  he returned to work with me again in the spring of 2007 and then transitioned into a different role.  around my birthday he went back on medical leave since he was still dealing with chemo treatments every other week and he has been on chemo for the past 2 and half years.  edward is younger than i am, but has been an inspriation to me in many ways.  easter has been forever changed since having known edward.

that first day we received our "blue badges" (full time microsoft employees are issued smartcards with our photographs on them - with a blue background).  when they took the pictures for our badges, the photographer jotted down "dan - checkered shirt, edward - white shirt tie" - i almost asked why are you noting what we're wearing - you've got our name and a picture of us (and we were the only two pictures she was taking that day) but then i thought that she must provide the pictures to someone else who needs to create our badges and won't know which is which.  i will always think of edward besides being great friend, as that well dressed gentleman who started at microsoft with me.