I seem to do my best writing at 37,000 feet.
I got out here on Sunday rather uneventfully. Direct flight, so that was nice. Initially it seemed Microsoft was trying to win me over. My rental car was a fully-loaded 2005 Grand Prix Widetrack. I had a hotel room to myself designed to accommodate four people. Man, were they in for a surprise.
My interviews didn’t go so well. I had four and a half hours of interviews not counting the debriefing at the end. The second interviewer was the worst, major prick. On top of being a douche, he bragged about how their project got changed, and they were given three months to make the changes. His part of the project didn’t change, so his responsibilities now consist of playing Counter-strike and World of Warcraft. I saw the icons on his desktop. Oh, and he looked exactly like Mark Kehres. It was fucking uncanny.
The two interviews with MSN Search went much better, but that’s only relative. I totally nailed the first one. The second one was with this hyperactive Asian guy who looked like at any minute he was going to dive out his chair or do drugs. I messed up the technical question he asked at first, it was hard, and natural language processing isn’t my thing.
In order to cap off my towering inferno of a trip to Microsoft, Jeff and I put our $40 dinner reimbursement to the limit. The Fish Café was a place I read about on Penny Arcade as being where Microsoft takes the press for its major release parties. It had been a while since I’ve had valet parking, but I did ok, it’s not that hard. Our waiter was awesome. When Jeff ordered wine, and went to get his ID out, he said “Whoa, anyone who goes for his ID that aggressively has to be ok.” I ordered the salmon, and it was by and far the best seafood I’ve ever had. When it came time for dessert, I ordered the cheesecake. Our then waiter exploded into superlatives trying to describe the cheesecake. He earned his $20 tip. I went $20 over my $40 reimbursement, but hey you have to indulge once in a while.
My flight this morning left at 8:55AM. To make my flight, I had to set my alarm for 5:45AM. 5:45AM. My call to the front desk went something like this:
Them: “Front desk.”
Me: “Yes, I’d like to get a wakeup call tomorrow.”
Them: “What time sir?”
Me: “5:45AM.”
Them: “Very good sir, will there be anything else?”
Me: “Yes, if you could send someone up to shoot me in the face, that’d be great.”
Ok, so I made up the last part, but that’s what was going through my head. Leaving the hotel, I had to drive a half hour on the 405, which quickly became 50 minutes with traffic, to get to the airport.
I’m on the plane now, on the way back from SeaTac. I’m in the aisle seat, and the two ladies sitting in my row have to get up every 10 seconds to “stretch their legs.” I hope they stretch so far that they break.
My interviews didn’t go so well. I had four and a half hours of interviews not counting the debriefing at the end. The second interviewer was the worst, major prick. On top of being a douche, he bragged about how their project got changed, and they were given three months to make the changes. His part of the project didn’t change, so his responsibilities now consist of playing Counter-strike and World of Warcraft. I saw the icons on his desktop. Oh, and he looked exactly like Mark Kehres. It was fucking uncanny.
The two interviews with MSN Search went much better, but that’s only relative. I totally nailed the first one. The second one was with this hyperactive Asian guy who looked like at any minute he was going to dive out his chair or do drugs. I messed up the technical question he asked at first, it was hard, and natural language processing isn’t my thing.
In order to cap off my towering inferno of a trip to Microsoft, Jeff and I put our $40 dinner reimbursement to the limit. The Fish Café was a place I read about on Penny Arcade as being where Microsoft takes the press for its major release parties. It had been a while since I’ve had valet parking, but I did ok, it’s not that hard. Our waiter was awesome. When Jeff ordered wine, and went to get his ID out, he said “Whoa, anyone who goes for his ID that aggressively has to be ok.” I ordered the salmon, and it was by and far the best seafood I’ve ever had. When it came time for dessert, I ordered the cheesecake. Our then waiter exploded into superlatives trying to describe the cheesecake. He earned his $20 tip. I went $20 over my $40 reimbursement, but hey you have to indulge once in a while.
My flight this morning left at 8:55AM. To make my flight, I had to set my alarm for 5:45AM. 5:45AM. My call to the front desk went something like this:
Them: “Front desk.”
Me: “Yes, I’d like to get a wakeup call tomorrow.”
Them: “What time sir?”
Me: “5:45AM.”
Them: “Very good sir, will there be anything else?”
Me: “Yes, if you could send someone up to shoot me in the face, that’d be great.”
Ok, so I made up the last part, but that’s what was going through my head. Leaving the hotel, I had to drive a half hour on the 405, which quickly became 50 minutes with traffic, to get to the airport.
I’m on the plane now, on the way back from SeaTac. I’m in the aisle seat, and the two ladies sitting in my row have to get up every 10 seconds to “stretch their legs.” I hope they stretch so far that they break.