New Employee Orientation day! Me and David woke up early at 7:00 and finished Sunday’s supply of instant ramen. We left the house at 8:40 after I convinced him that would be plenty of time to make it to the Microsoft Visitors Center by 9:30.

Since neither of us checked the building’s location before leaving I was very wrong. We went two blocks too far south. We asked the desk at one of the buildings, south of the Microsoft studios, for directions and they gave us an updated map. Every other map I had seen prior was missing the new Microsoft game studios and the Commons Cafeteria. I have since lost this awesome map otherwise I would post it.

The orientation itself assisted us through about 3 sheets of dense legal forms. I messed up and wrote my birthday under this current year (2013) and a Microsoft lawyer even caught the mistake then and there.

After orientation, or NEO in microsoft speak, we headed off to our team’s office’s,  but not before we all got free launch and a t-shirt.

This makes three Microsoft t-shirts!

Upon arrival my team was in a bi-weekly trio meeting. A trio meeting is when test, dev, and project management gets together and checks on progress. Since I am in Sustained Engineering progress means bugs. Of course we are now getting into NDA territory. All I can say is that there were indeed bugs, and that progress was being made on fixing unsaid bugs.

I spent the next day or two, or three, configuring my workstation and reading. A major portion of this amounted to acquiring source files and building. On one hand I miss Linux’s tradition of everything using make files. On the other hand building Windows means building what would amount to a full distro in the linux world. Compared to the distros’ build farms Microsoft has developed a convenient build process.

The view from my temporary office. A recent re-organization left open an office right between my mentor and our boss. I may move before the summer is over.

My roommate, David, ran the same test so I know I cannot be alone in this curiosity.

Microsoft’s free pop will either cure my suger habit or cure my healthy BMI. This first day I went overboard but I have since been drinking more tea. I am not alone with the tea; this floor of the building alone is consuming about half a box of green tea bags per week.

On the Sunday of arrival I and my roommate David went to 7-eleven for essential food supplies. We took a detour on the way and invaded the Nintendo of America campus. Visits into the buildings are only possible with an employee guide so this is the closest we will be getting this summer.

We did not find much. Beyond various signs the campus bore no markings of Nintendo. I was hoping for maybe a Mario statue but there was not even an occasional plushie on a window sill.

The lone Wii. No Wii Fitness boards were seen.

Look! We found a nintendo sign! Or atleast maybe, the sign lacked the critical border around the logotype. We can only assume this was not a Genuine Seal Nintendo sign.

This Saturday I spent 2.5 hours sitting in Calgary airport’s USA Customs and Border Protection’s Secondary Inspection waiting room. Said room is as boring as the name implies. I cannot blame anyone and the long wait was 100% to blame on only only having one person working. From what could tell everyone was putting in long hours yet they were all kind & friendly which must require effort when scaled to such volume.

My roommate, David, says the Vancouver airport had a full staff at nine employees compared to Calgary’s one. He spent only 15 minutes in secondary inspection.

The 2.5 hour wait forced me to miss my flight. Alaska Airlines tried their best to book an alternative flight but that did not work and I waited until Sunday for Alaska’s next direct flight. It was apparent the Alaska employees cared and had the authority to fix the situation. So thank you to Alaska Airlines for getting me to Seattle before Monday’s orientation.

Snapshots of the flight itself:

Our plane before loading

A random Calgary suburb

This river will join Calgary’s main river and will flow into the Hudson bay.

Most of the flight between Calgary and Seattle is over mountains. This is the mesmerizing top down view of mountains no game has quite replicated.

That clump of buildings in the photo’s middle is Microsoft’s Redmond campus. One of the squarish buildings is Nintendo of America.