Trip to Seattle - Leisure

I went to Seattle this week. Here's a day-by-day non-technical account. There's a whole bunch of nothing covered in the following paragraphs.

Monday 4/9/2007
For some reason I felt obligated to work from home for a few hours before the flight. If I paid attention to the itinerary and understood the 11 hours of travel to follow, I probably would've let myself off the hook and slept in.

The first flight was from West Palm to Charlotte. I had about a 90 minute layover in Charlotte. I started off thinking what a nice airport it was. There were plenty of amenities, etc. I stopped at a giftshop to pick up some odds and ends. The cashier was completely non-friendly, thereby forever tarnishin my image of Charlotte.

The next flight was from Charlotte to Seattle. 5 hours and 20 minutes. Ouch. I watched 8 BELOW and most of FINAL FANTASY, THE SPIRITS WITHIN before the DVD player ran out of juice. I don't know if it was Monday or not, but it occurred to me shortly thereafter that it sucks that the battery died. I was going to take the battery with me on my next outing, and see about getting a second. The battery pack doesn't detach. It's screwed in. It has a relase latch whose function is negated by the 5 screws holding it in . What's up with that? They're not regular screws either... some proprietary thing. I find this non-consumer-friendly.

Thanks to my TomTom 910, I found my way to the hotel without a problem. I unloaded my stuff as fast as possible, then ventured outside to find some food. It took about 45 seconds to realize that food was not to be found within reasonable walking distance. The hotal is smack-dab in the middle of a commercial zone, not a retail.

I got back to the room with just enough time to put in a room service order. I ordered a cheeseburger for $15. After tax and forced gratuity, the price was $21.

Oh yes... I forgot to mention the air conditioning. I walked into the room and immediately dropped the AC down to 63 degrees. I like it cold. 63 is colder than what I would normally do, but it's rare that I have full control of an AC, so had to compensate. I thought for sure the maid would have changed it to a more reasonable temperature, but it's now Friday, and it's still at 63. Maybe we're having a battle of wills?

Tuesday 4/10/2007
Typically, when I'm going somewhere new, I do a recon mission the night before to make sure I can get there. After a day of travel and a $21 burger, I wasn't real motivated to venture out Monday night. Instead, I set the alarm for 6:30am. (Incidentally, "the alarm" is my cell phone, since the inroom clock was off by an hour with no apparent way of correcting it. I didn't need the extra complication of doing math in my head to compensate for the hour). I was enroute to Microsoft by 7am. Once again, my trusty TomTom 910 delivered. It got me to the campus, at least, which turns out to be pretty big. From there, it was just a matter of driving around randomly looking for signs for building 20. This is hard to do short of stopping in the middle of the road to read the signs. there were several U-TURNS involved, but I got there in plenty of time. A bunch of us, all strangers, stood outside the building until the doors magically unlocked at 8am.

Since this is a leisure post, I'll omit what happened once in the building. See the tech post for that.

The classes wrapped up at 5pm. I headed back to the hotel. I was almost there when I realized I was hungry. I considered another $21 burger, but opted to venture out a little. There was a galleria near by. I parked and ate at the Rock Bottom Pub and Restaraunt (or something like that). I sat at the bar and had dinner. The Red Sox beat the Mariners 14 to 3 earlier that day. The guy sitting next to me wasn't thrilled about that. I, being a Red Sox fan (limited), was ok with it. The Mariners beat the Sox the next day though, so the Universe has balanced itself.

I returned to the hotel, then went to the gym. I'm not a big gym guy, but I do dips at home a few times a week. I was hoping the gym would have something to facilitate that, but no such luck. Instead I lifted some dumb-bells. Thankfully there weren't any witnesses. I still didn't feel right about myself, and managed to do some dips between two treadmills. It wasn't quite the same, but I gave it my best effort.

I returned to the room and watched some random television. I then read a few chapters of THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER before crashing.

Wednesday April 11th, 2007
On Tuesday, I got up at 6:30 in order to be at Microsoft by 8am. Wednesday is different. I didn't actually have to be there until 9, and I proved that it was only about 20 minutes away. I set the alarm clock (again, my cell phone) to 7:15. I got to Microsoft right at 8am. I walked in at the same time as another guy, and learned that we were the first ones there. Still too early. I had a leisurely breakfast. Before class started at 9.

Microsoft provided a BBQ at 5:30 that night. A guy and woman backed into the parking lot with a pickup truck. The pickup was hauling a grill. They served great ribs, chicken and beef. We sat around for a couple hours and ate ridiciulous amounts of bbq food, and talked about the things that geeks talk about. I'm not usually the religious sort, but God Bless Microsoft.

I was back to the hotel by about 8pm. I thought it would be great to watch a movie. I've been meaning to watch Deja Vu and Smoking Aces. I was about to order Deja Vu then saw the $13 price tag. $13 for a broadcast-quality movie on a 20 inch screen? I'm not a cheap person. I occasionaly spend money wrecklessly. You remember the $21 cheeseburger, right? Well, I couldn't bring myself to spend $13 on the movie.

I fell asleep sometime between 9:30 and 10, west coast time. I guess the change in time zones was a factor. To that point, I didn't think it affected me, but there was no other reason for me to be that tired. That resulted in me waking up in the wee hours of the morning, but I kept forcing myself back to sleep. I finally got up at 7:30, and headed out to Microsoft.

Side bar: the clock in the room has been set to the proper time, but I'm stubborn and will continue to use my cell phone.

Thrusday, April 12th 2007
Something went horribly wrong on the way to Microsoft. I didn't pay attention to the TomTom, and zigged when i should have zagged. This set me way off course within the Microsoft campus, and I wasted probably an extra 15 minutes trying to find building 20. There were more U Turns then I care to count. I finally got there at 8:40. This was plenty of time to grab some breakfast, then get started.

The presentations wrapped up a few minutes after 5. I said my sincere good byes and thank yous (it was a great week), and headed out.

Here's the dilemma: I've been in the greater seattle region all week, but didn't actually do anything or see anything in Seattle. I had planned on play tourist all day Friday, but that didn't work out due to an unexpected early flight. It was decision time: Go back to the hotel and watch TV, or try to get in some touristy stuff.

I went back to the hotel and fired up the laptop to find things to do in seattle. Of course, the space needle was at the top of the list. I entered that into the trusty TomTom 910, and headed out.

It turned out to be a good decision. Its getting dark out much later now, so I was able to get to the space needle in daylight and take a bunch of pictures. I visited the surrounding attractions, but wasn't impressed. There are a bunch of old and beat up carnival rides that should probably be bulldozed. There were a couple museums there, but they looked tacky. I started looking for food, but only found mall-type food courts.

I blindy jumped on the monorail and asked the attendant where it goes. She told me it goes to downtown where I can do some shopping. Oh goody. I love shopping. I could, at least, hope for some decent food.

The monorail ride was kind of fun. It was a good touristy thing to do. Its final (and only) stop is at the Westlake? mall. This was a much nicer mall, but still just a mall. At this point, by only motivation was to find some decent food. I walked around the mall and the surrounding vicinities, but only found junk. I ended up getting a Gyro at a meditteranean joint. They were about to close (at 7:40?), but were very friendly and courteous about providing the food. They were nice guys. I appreciated that.

I walked around downtown a little bit. There were a lots of gangs of kids hanging around, and there didn't seem to be much to see. The buildings and sky line were kind of cool. It reminded me of Chicago, but not as impressive. If I hadn't been to Chicago, then down town seattle may have been more impressive.

I eventually gave up on being a downtown seattle tourist, and got back on the monorail. I then returned to my car and thought about heading back, but it was still daylight. I used the TomTom to try to find other points of interest. I didn't know what 1/2 the stuff was, so picked the "Bank of America Tower". The road to get there was beneath the monorail, so I got to see the same route from a different perspective. I got to see more buidlings at a more leisurely speed, and was more impressed than I was before. I passed the Bank of America Tower at some point, but I don't know which building it was. I just kept moving.

At that point, I disregarded the TomTom and tried to work my way over to the coast, which I thought I could see from th vicinity of the tower. I eventually made it down there. I pulled over once to get some pictures of the skyline, then found parking in a garage near Pier 70 and the Spaghetti factory. I walked out of the garage and found myself staring at the logo for REAL NETWORKS. Apparently they're based in seattle. I got a picture of that. (yay).

At this point, it was pretty dark. I took a bunch of pictures from the pier, but they didn't come out very good. I put the camera in night mode. Unfortunately, night mode requires you to hold the camera very still for a few seconds as it captures the image. That didn't happen. They all came out blurry. How do you hold a camera completely still?

At last, I was content that my visit to Seattle wasn't completely spent on business purposes. I got out and was able to do a few things: space needle, mono rail, drive through down town, drive to the coast, get some pictures of the mariner's stadium, get some pictures from the pier, get a picture of real networks.

I returned to the garage and got into the elevator amidst some fanfare. There were a few other people there, and it turns out that they had, to that point, needed to go to different floors in sequential order. Floors 2, 3, and 4 were set. They were hoping that I was on the fifth floor to keep the trend going. I offered to go for the ride to the 5th floor if that would make them feel better, but it would be dishonest of me to claim that that's where the car actually was. It was on the 2nd floor. This revelation was met with dissapointment but understanding. I broke the trend. During the ride to the 2nd floor, one woman commented on how many people were out and about at that time. I stated that I was there randomly, which got a couple chuckles because they thought I was kidding. But I wasn't.

That ride in the elevator made more sense when I saw that the name of the garage was something like "Technology Garage". They were probably all geeks too, perhaps even from Real Networks, which explains their appreciation for patterns: 2nd floor, 3rd floor, 4th floor, 5th floor. Had I known, I certainly would have parked on the 5th floor.

Once back in the car, I had to rely on the TomTom to get me back to the hotel, because I no longer had any idea where I was. I had a few mishaps along the way... there were a lot of criss-crossing roads. I took some wrong turns, but eventually made it back to the hotel.

The gyro didn't really fill me up, so I bought another $21 cheeseburger from room service. I've been writing this blog ever since.