BlueBadgeMojo.com

West Campus Progress (WCP)

                               

Now that Building 92 is up and running, the Company Store, MSLibrary, Visitor Center, and other celebrations of the Microsoft campus experience are soon to find their way into their new - and very beautiful - West Campus digs. On a recent visit, I took a couple photos of the buildings still under construction, only hinting at the hidden splendour soon to be unleashed upon Redmond. That's right kiddies, once the West Campus has been completed, you will have no need of those fanciful flights to warmer climates with sun and fun and white sandy beaches. All of your vacations will become staycations, as every workaholic whim will be met. Watch the video here. The building with the huge gray roof is 92, which is the old Eddie Bauer building.

Spacious, energy efficient design, connection with outdoors, tons of common areas, large cascading pools that could double as a swimming facility (just an idea), even more free soda, room for all of your 4600 cars underground, a soccer stadium, several restaurants and a pub, all surrounded by man-made natural beauty (?). Personally, I'm pushing for a Days Inn so that my staycations can be complete.

I *am* the empire

Just a quick shout out to Ariel for the great t-shirt, which pokes fun at how Microsoft has been referred to sometimes as the evil empire. And, as promised, I took a photo of me wearing the shirt in my office this morning...

                                     

Microspotting

                                 

If I can break away from my Billg Rick-rolls and future cafeteria tour-stop planning for just one minute, I'd like to point people over to the Microspotting blog created by Ariel Meadow Stallings in an effort to dispel the preconceptions of Microsoft as the evil company. In essence, she took a bit more serious (i.e. professional, visually pleasing, management endorsed, actual content) road than I did with this BlueBadgeMojo blog (to each their own). Of course, I was instantly a fan of the site, and am a regular reader...but got caught up in the whole end of year cycle + vacation and haven't read through my NewsGator clippings for a month, and saw that Ariel is giving away swag for shout-outs to her blog.

C'mon people, how could I walk away from the allure of free swag? Saddle me up, Ariel! Oh yeah, and maybe you'd like to join our next cafeteria tour stop. What is next, anyway? The new West Campus buildings? The MEC Leadership Team keep telling me I need to make an official visit to Cafe A, which kind of breaks the model. But as it is a Microsoft mainstay, it might be a good filler until one of the new buildings are completed. Hmmmm....decisions, decisions...

To Mike, from Chuck

If you were to receive a personal note from someone famous, with words of encouragement, wouldn't you be flattered? Of course you would be! So I'm not sure why our friend Mike gets bent out of shape every time Chuck Norris sends him a note. Sometimes via autographed photocopy. Sometimes in a book. And then another book. And then another. Sometimes in books that are sent daily....but not in a creepy, I'm-being-stalked kind of way. Really.

Chuck was nice enough to send us snapshots of the inspiring words he shared with Mike, and I thought I'd post them here for posterity (click to enlarge):

                            

And since this is such an important area of focus, I've also added a new blog category entitled: Notes from Chuck Norris. Enjoy!

A quiet lunch in 37

                             

It was sort of anti-climactic: the date was set, about a dozen people feigned interest and accepted the invitation, and then two of us showed up. What is up with that? Well, maybe it was because this tour stop was late in coming: the building has been open for months, most of us had already visited the building and the cafeteria, and it all seemed kind of forced. What was the point of it all? I forgot my camera on the last two outings.

So there we were, sitting in a booth overlooking the nice, new cafeteria in Building 37. Which is almost identical to Building 99. The main difference between the two? Building 99 has a higher geek quotient, as it is the home of R&D. Thirty-seven houses a good portion of our marketing folks. Other than that, it's all the same.

I had the slightly seared, mostly raw tuna steak on a bed of baby spinach, while Kimberley went with Indian. Then we left.

                           

The Cafeteria Tour Coming Back To Life

                             

Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it is once again time to iron your Jim Ward fan club t-shirts, dust off your official gerbil-cam coffee mugs, and join us for yet another instalment of the historic Microsoft Cafeteria Tour as we visit the relatively new and yet-to-be-christened Building 37 cafeteria over on main campus.

Please join us on Wednesday, August 6th!

Jim Adams Fan Club Goes International

                           

I think he just happened to be wearing this to work that day. Oh Jim....

WFO: Jason Dorsey

                         

Mr. Dorsey had some fun last week. With the record-setting heat and beautiful blue skies experiences here in the Seattle area, he found himself a change of venue. He sent a brief message with the following pictures:

It is too beautiful a day to be in the office so I am WFO today.  (Working from Outside)

If you need to reach me you can call me on my cell at 425-749-1086 or just “step out” to my office. 

Anyone is welcome to join me for a fun work environment.

Gotta go.  The sunshine and breeze are calling me.

                         

                         

                         

                         

                         

A few minutes later, Jason found himself with a friend (albeit less productive than Mr. Dorsey, who was actually working).

                         

Hmmm....sounds like evil to me

                           

A friend forwarded the following email and screen shots. Amazing that Google can skate by with things like this, and yet Microsoft would be raked over the coals. You'd think the EU would be all over this one. Here's the email body:

Y’know, if WE were to do stuff like this, we’d probably get SUED…

I got this alert after seeing a pop-up telling me “a program is attempting to change your default search settings away from Google”.  Really?  A program?  Actually, that was ME changing it after discovering that for some reason MY default choice was mysteriously switched from Live Search to Google in IE, but as far as Google is concerned I’m not a user but merely a lowly program (why am I having a Tron flashback all of a sudden?).  Maybe it’s just me, but this seems a little heavy-handed. 

I wonder if the folks at Yahoo have been seeing THIS alert lately…

                           

Surface Computing

I laugh out loud every time I watch this. "Instead of using one of today's more popular compact devices to get directions to where you're going, why not use a device the size of a small car to do the same job?" Ha! I love this parody.