My Trip to Microsoft's "Campus"
Over the summer my family went on a trip to the northwest (mostly in the Seattle area). My Mom happens to be good friends with a woman whose husband is a Microsoft employee. Although Microsoft doesn't give an official tour of it's campus (they do offer one of their packing plant, it's apparently pretty lame), the nameless MS employee gave me an inside tour of the campus. The coolest part was the employee store, where all the software is marked down to $20 or less. Only employees can buy the software at those rates but they can give it as gifts so I got to choose my Christmas present early (FrontPage). The 2nd best part was getting a free (all the sodas are free!) Mountain Dew in the cafeteria. (If you don't believe me, screw you...I can prove it. Just e-mail me if you want more details. Here's some stuff for your consumption...I don't remember what the name of the cafeteria was, it's apparently the fanciest one on the campus. It had a firefighter theme and is in Building 1. From our table we had an awesome view of "Lake Bill". Building 1 was pretty cool because it's the only one on the campus that is surrounded by trees. In case anyone is curious, Bill works in Building 8. The museum was also cool. They have a great (funding is NOT a problem) museum on campus about computer history and everything you would ever want to know about Microsoft. The best part about the museum is a computer center type thingy with some fast computers with lots of games and some other computers connected to MSN (of course!) at ISDN speed. Still not convinced?