Seattle, WA-Part 1

Greetings friends! As you can tell from the frequency of posts to this travel blog, I'm not traveling as much as usual...and I've been a little busy. However, today I'm in Seattle. I'm here to visit one of the technical Meccas in North America....Redmond, Washington. This is the home of Microsoft. I'm here for a series of meetings with different groups at Microsoft.  The company is so large that you could be here for days, meeting with a variety of kingdoms inside Bill Gates' company.

My first stop was at Microsoft Studios. This is a full video-production facility, in the middle of the MS campus. Microsoft was making some videos about the upcoming Windows 7 and I was chosen to represent my company as a spokesperson. Here's a short clip of one of the videos:

The best part of coming to Seattle, is the chance to visit my daughter. She's currently working on her doctorate at the University of Washington, in Space Physics. We had a chance to walk around campus on a gorgeous day:

She took me to her laboratory research facility, where her team is working on an experiment that will see the release of high-altitude weather balloons above Antarctica, with technology for scientific measurements inside. Pretty cool, huh? Here's a snapshot of my little girl working in the lab with a digital oscilloscope:

My daughter, the mad scientist...

That evening, we met up with her fiancé. He's a great guy and we had a chance to catch-up over dinner. My daughter wanted to try a new BBQ place. It was an elegant meal, as you can tell from this photo:


I've been meaning to visit her for several months and I'm really glad I had the opportunity this week. Tomorrow holds more meetings with Microsoft....wish me luck!