One of the enduring effects of my tenure at Microsoft was a sore right index finger; the result of millions of mouse clicks over the past fourteen years. I had received cortisone injections a couple of years ago but after another flare-up last fall the hand specialist recommended surgery for a permanent fix. Microsoft insurance finally approved the procedure two months after I retired and almost five months after my last visit to the doctor. However, Friday morning it was off to the hospital for a remarkably quick, fifteen-minute procedure. I’m supposed to be functional again in a couple of weeks. I hope so; I have a golf trip scheduled for Desert Canyon on May 7th.

I don’t know if 14.5 years can “fly by” but it sure doesn’t seem like I spent that long at Microsoft. The last day went by in the blink of an eye too. For some reason I visited my very first office then set about doing final weeding of email and saved files. By then it was the traditional farewell event with cake, wine, etc. And what a delightful surprise. Folks I hadn’t worked with for years took the trouble to stop by to say good bye. Here I am just a hour or so before final check out. I must say, it felt very strange leaving the building without an employee ID. It’s definitely going to take some time to adjust.

I set up my book indexing web site today: EvergreenIndexing.com. I registered the domain and put together the web pages with GoDaddy.com. I’m using this photo from last winter as the company logo. With Kindle, the Nook and the iPad, printed books may soon be dead but I hope they hang around long enough for me to do a few indexes. It has always been my favorite task. I recently purchased SkyIndex and used it to compile an index for Dave Pelz’s Damage Control, a tome on how to recover from all those terrible golf shots we hackers make.

It was two years ago today that I has prostate brachytherapy surgery.

Paul Krugman‘s New York Times December 27th column (“The Big Zero“) notes that for most of America the past decade has been at best an economics holding action. For the first time in U.S history private-sector employment declined and median household income ended up lower than it was in 1999. Trisha and I have been fortunate in many ways. We both kept our jobs, managed to make some home improvements and pay off the mortgage, and get through a variety of health issues. We also found time to take a couple of memorable trips in Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico. I’m optimistic that the next decade will offer more time for gardening, reading and travel.

I finally took the plunge and posted a few U.S. stamps for sale on Ebay. I doubt I’ll sell these initial items but I wanted to go through the steps and set up an efficient process for scanning and uploading the images, creating descriptions, and tracking my inventory. I have about 100 items in the queue and will be adding more to Ebay over the next few weeks.

In anticipation of selling my huge inventory of extra mint U.S. stamps I registered two Internet domain names I’ll be using for my web presence: EvergreenStamps.net and EvergreenStamps.biz. The email address for the business will be EvergreenStamps@Yahoo.com. I hope to spend some time over the holidays putting some initial items on Ebay and setting up a basic web site.

I sent my official notice to Microsoft HR today that I’m retiring on February 28th.