Well, that was easy…

So my phone interview with Microsoft lasted all of 20 minutes?  They asked me to explain a technical challenge I have faced, asked me to do a simple coding example (was like 4 lines), and then asked me to explain how a computer network worked to someone who knew nothing about computers….and that was it.  So then I guess this round was to weed out people who know absolutely nothing about computers.  Eventually though, if they like me, they will fly me out to Redmond (all expenses paid, cha-CHING) and have me interview for like 9 straight hours… that should be fun.  On a somewhat separate note, I was supposed to download some LiveMetting software for the interview.  Its basically a chat client so that during the interview I can type code and such for the interviewer to look at.  The fun part is that when I tried to download it on my windows machine, windows was convinced this piece of software from Microsoft was a virus.  I spent about an hour turning off every security feature I could find so I could get the download to work, but to no avail.  So then I ended up using the java version through firefox on my linux box, which worked first try, no problems.  I thought it was amusing.