Into the belly of the beast

Yesterday I spent the day at Microsoft.

I flew up on Wednesday night, out of LAX at 6.30pm, and it was a beautiful evening. As we took off over the Pacific, we passed over a small bank of stratocumulus and banked north, flying over Malibu and the mountains. Two hours later we passed Mt Rainier, Mt St Helens, and Mt Baker on our descent into Seattle-Tacoma airport.

The cab ride to the hotel was $57. The Seattle area is very spread out, it seems. We arrived at about 9.30pm – just in time to have the hotel shuttle give us a ride to Red Robin where I refuelled with a burger and a chocolate malt. Returning to the hotel, I was directed to the third floor to find my room, 324. I went down the corridor and saw 321, 322, 323, … 325?! My room didn’t exist! Returning to reception I discovered it was in the other building. For some reason the numbering was weird that way.

Whenever I go on business trips, I always stay up late watching movies in bed – and Wednesday was no exception. The Matrix Reloaded was on late, and I got to sleep around 1.45am.

After breakfast (fruit/nut waffle & OJ) at the restaurant next to the hotel next morning we headed to the Microsoft Millennium campus, and spent the whole day in a 20×10 room with 25 PCs and about 20 Xbox 360s (and surprisingly effective air conditioning). We were there to do profiling and performance testing on our game. We got lunch delivered – Indian – and worked right up to the wire at 6.30pm when a “town car” (local cab/limo service) arrived to take us back to the airport ($63).

Touched down LAX at 11.20pm or so – the approach is fantastic at night: LA looks like Xmas lights. Taxi back to the office to my car, and finally crawled into bed at midnight.