Seattle rush hour traffic sux. But, it is rather a tidy city, so once you’re well clear, things start moving again. Which is nice, except when you’re moving towards The Belly of the Beast!
That’s right – first stop, the “M-word” company – shudder - which actually looked a rather pleasant place, everyone young and nerdy-attractive in a “we are the world” kind of a way. Not to mention the parks and grassy walkways and clean, pleasantly lit office buildings – no one can tell you exactly how many there are, and we kept tripping over them 20 minutes after having fought our way clear of the main fortifications – themselves looking much more like the dormitories of a comfortably endowed private university than the reality, which is of course that it’s all a facade built to hide the beating, diabolical heart of tech darkness that is the snug Redmond fastness of He-who-will-not-be-named. Fortunately, I was forewarned by one of my brave Gungan spies to keep tinfoil wrapped tautly about my noggin, for to keep the nano-bots out.
Which it served admirably to do, even if it did give the receptionist something of a start. We few, we happy few, we twenty-odd grad students broke the karma of her workaday routine by checking in at her desk with no clear idea who it was we were supposed to see, where to go, or how it was, exactly, that we had come to be there. That knowledge being safely ensconced within the crania of our brilliant and talented professors, clever lads that they were, and themselves hideously late, having taken a wrong turn sommers along the way. Which there is a point in there about theory vs reality in academia, cross-pollenized withoxymoronic military efficiency. This point flickers tantalizingly at the margins of my imagination, but does not entirely coalesce, which is kind of a pity, but anyway:
Startled Microsoft receptionist (disbelievingly): Are you… Microsoft employees?
Your humble narrator (with warm charm and encouraging bonhomie): Oh, no, ha-ha! We’re from the IRS!
But she was exceptionally well trained, because this sally did not throw her off stride for a moment. Instead, while keeping a professional smile on her face she deftly hit the floor switch by her foot, opening up the trap doors at our feet – seen, alas, too late! – sending your humble scribe and all of his cohort sliding down a long and darkened laundry chute-type affair into the dungeons carved by wage slaves into the living rock several miles below the campus. There Micro-demons struck us all about the face and shoulders with empty Microsoft NT Server boxes until the hot blood mingled with our unasham?
Per the next to last paragraph, I try and figure out where the architect wanted the cleaning crew to plug in the vacuums and go there for my AC power…
I suppose if I look up through the rest of the day, I’ll chance to be looking up as you pass overhead….
Wow – quite a missive. References to Star Wars, Star Trek (specifically The Borg), The Highlander and even a smattering of Harry Potter. Visting “the beast” really did turn your head dear Cap’n, didn’t it….
Hope the travel home is safe – you’ll be cuddled up to your precious Apple somethingorother soon enuff.
Lex and Mac’s fine dining adventure- complete! What a food tasting and wine adventure! All on the $55 dollar JTR per diem rate! What a whirl!
I’m jealous…but then you’ve earned it with prob/statistics et al.
BTW, I know an ex-0-6 in the belly too. His initials are G.P. and he went to CanoeU also. Same guy?
B2
Rather a heavy emphasis on the gastronomy, no? What was the purpose of the visit, again? Not that I’m criticising, merely remarking.
Lex;
You certainly are fast becoming a master of the art of embelishment of even the mundane, and making the it quite interseting. Maybe that’s part of the partly trained part….
Were-kitten must be nearby, what with all this talk of: falling in love, strong spirits, and tendencies toward oral and anal fixation.
Here kitty, kitty. Surely, you must have something to say, that will make us all blush for having witnessed something that should be kept private. Please.
B2, the guy we spoke with left the service after 5 1/2 years – surface line/quickest time, and all that. Spent five years in the field before moving to haitch queue.
Chris – we were there for an “industry visit,” and hoped to gain insight into the processes that delivered products from insight to in-store. The closest folks to satisfy that urge were actually the Fluke people. But after all of that learning? Well, we just wanted to go out on the local economy and give a little back
You know, Idaho – the whole thing breaks down for me on the anal compulsiveness – I’m just not that tidy.
You didn’t have to worry about the trapdoor. They forgot to document the user interface and nobody “claimed ownership” of keeping it maintained and up to spec, so it probably doesn’t even work any more.
However, if you had revealed you were a Mac user … that’s when the air-hardening safety foam comes out of ceiling. The only thing worse would be a Mac-using Google stock owner
I don’t know what they’d do for that, but it would be drastic.
I actually told the MS guy that I’m a Mac user, and he seemed, well: OK with it.
I did sort of hold back on the fact that I use Mozilla Firefox for a browser though. Because, even being in a crowd? You don’t wave the red flag at the bull.
Unless of course you’re in one of those short, sequined jacket and high-rise trou combinations, with the mickey mouse hat on top. That’d be OK.
Mostly
Ole’!
So glad that you successfully defended your cranium from the nano-bots, wouldn’t want the writer’s voice to be affected in any way
Many Gungan spies died to get us that information.
On the tinfoil, I mean.