Much too short

"Do you want to go to Seattle?"

Kris asked me over IM when I was still in Boston. He was heading up to Washington for work, and was going to have dinner with Ben and Lisa. Since the trip was for work, if I also went, we would need to pay for only my ticket. I asked if we could stay overnight, would work still pay for his ticket. When he said yes, I said yes, too.

The plan was to drop me off at the ferry on the drive from the airport to Redmond, and for Kris to continue on for work. I'd spend the day with Ben and Lisa and Jake, with Kris meeting us for dinner and the evening.

Well, our flight was thirty minutes late in departing, which was the buffer needed to divert from the airport to downtown to drop me off at the ferry. I ended up driving with Kris to Redmond so that he could make his meeting on time.

Me. Redmond.

As in Microsoft.

As in, the belly of the beast.

Everyone who knows me and my computer ways knows I hate Microsoft Windows. Mostly, I hate that I can't be productive keeping my fingers on the keyboard. With Windows, everything is mouse, click-based. Pretty much the only way to be semi-productive on a Windows box is to install Cygwin on it, which gives you, well, a Unix interface on a Windows box. There are other annoyances (rebooting to install software or change settings, the BSoD, crappy error reporting interfaces, hidden settings, case insensitive file systems, etc.). I recognize its dominance in the marketplace, but I completely disagree the best technology won that fight.

So, my going to Microsoft is sorta, well, wrong.

Kris mocked me for a while about my heading there, but it's not like I did more than ask the receptionist where the nearest Starbucks was.

"Next building over."

"Can I get wireless there?"

"Oh, we can assign you a wireless account right here."

"Um, I'm not actually in any meeting. I'm here with him. He's going into a meeting here."

"Oh... well... uh... I can't... wireless..."

"That's fine. Where's the second closest Starbucks?"

I spent a few hours in the next closest Starbucks, working, surfing, and relaxing. Although I've spent a lot alone as of late, this trip was more relaxing than I expected it to be.

Kris' meeting, of course, went much longer than expected, and we were late heading over to the ferry. We missed the 5:30 ferry by about 10 cars, having to wait until the 6:30 ferry. Ben and Lisa had food ready for us when we arrived around 7:15.

The evening was wonderful. I love Ben and Lisa and Jake. They're such amazing, wonderful people. It's been months since we've seen them, but the visit was as if no time had past. We had more stories to tell, but it was still as comfortable as if we were still neighbors over for dinner one night.

Ah, how much I still miss them.

Jake's a chubby little boy, terribly adorable.

The trip was much too short, with Kris and I leaving the next morning at 7:00 am to return home by noon to feed the dogs.