If you didn’t already know, I’ve been in Redmond, Washington all week doing some top secret training at the Microsoft Headquarters, or the “Mothership” as my Microsoft buddy likes to call it.
So far everyone has been very warm and friendly and helpful around here. Microsoft does an amazing job at keeping their employees happy. I was amazed by the number of shuttle cars and vans that are operating at the Microsoft campus and the cool system that efficiently runs the shuttle operation. All of the Microsoft shuttle cars are hybrid Toyota Prius’; very cool that Mr. Gates is doing his part to help the environment.
Apparently it only snows in the Seattle area once a year, and it just happened to snow while we were here. My buddy Tim in Vancouver told me about how everybody freaks out when it snows in Vancouver, and we saw a similar reaction to the snow here in Seattle. There was less than an inch of snow, but it took 1.5 hours for a taxi to arrive because they had all gone home. We even saw a lady who couldn’t move forward on a flat surface in a little pickup truck. It looked like she had racing slicks on the truck.
When I heard people referring to this snowfall as an “emergency”, I could only think about my recent post entitled “Winter Storm ‘Disaster’” where I talked about how people in North America overreact to such trivial events.