BlueBadgeMojo.com

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.