In the belly of the beast

Well not quite yet. I arrived at Seattle/Tacoma airport last night, got my shuttle out to Bellevue where I am staying. On the way to the airport yesterday morning I realized I’d left the power supply to my Mac Book Pro at home. I checked all the shops in the airports at Boston, Denver, and Seattle, but nobody carries them. Luckily my battery gives close to 3 hours on a charge, so I was able to get some work done on the way over. But I was pretty much freaking out about the possibility of having no computer for the next two days. So when I got into the hotel, I searched for locations of Apple stores. Got the address of one right in Bellevue. Hopefully it was not too far away. Got the address of the Westin. Searched for directions on Google maps. But only one dot showed up, no line between two dots like I’m used to. I figured I must have done something wrong, then looked at the written directions. It was one step:

1. Go south. 3 feet.

Hehe. The hotel is right next to a mall, in which is the Apple store. Crisis averted.

The hotel is also right across the street from Trader Vic’s, where Microsoft had set up a cocktail / hors d’oeuvres / get together thing. That was a bit odd. I hardly knew anyone. Erik Natzke and Jesse Warden were there, and the three of us seem to be pretty much the Flash camp. There were a bunch of Microsoft people, and some other bloggers, none that were familiar to me. It did make me realize how sheltered an existence I live, in the Adobe blogosphere. I might have to start venturing out.

I’m off soon to catch a shuttle to the Microsoft campus. Apparently they are going to split the ten of us up into a developer and designer group and have some morning sessions for each group. Then some combined sessions, then of course the hour with Bill at the end. Should all be fun.