Well helloooooooo out there Bisonium readers! I'm sorry it's been a while since my last update, but as you can imagine, things are beyond hectic and I have been trying to get things ready for the past few weeks in anticipation of my final move to Seattle. I can't begin to tell you how crazy it is knowing that you are about to pick up your whole life and and move it clear across the continental United States, 3300 miles, and leave everything you know and love behind. To say this is a stressful event is putting it mildly. I have been spending the past few weeks getting things done which I have been putting off, doing maintenance on vehicles, finalizing pending paperwork, closing out client projects and more. I am moving out to Seattle ahead of my family and getting things in order with our rental home (more on that later) and getting settled into my corporate apartment which will be home for the next 45 days. I have to hand it to Microsoft, they just simply know how to take care of their people. I arrived to a gorgeous 3 bedroom 2 bath apartment with a fireplace, overlooking Lake Sammamish. This is one swanky little pad, all fully furnished as you would expect a corporate apartment to be. I seriously have no complaints...well...almost none. There was one little detail that nobody could have expected (or done anything about).
This November has been one for the history books in Seattle. A couple weeks ago I flew out to Seattle with my wife and daughter on our house hunting trip. I couldn't have picked a worse time to bring my family...there were torrential rains and flooding everywhere. The Snoqualmie Valley was completely flooded out and people in the surrounding areas were not even able to drive into work due to the conditions. One of the areas we were looking for homes was in Snoqualmie Ridge. What a beautiful area. But let me tell you...when the weather comes in, it COMES IN. The winds were insane and the rain made it just miserable. Needless to say, this was not exactly the impression I wanted to give my wife and daughter of our new home. I kept telling them that this just wasn't normal. All I saw were rolling eyes and raised eyebrows like "yeah, suuuure..." So fast forward a couple weeks. I fly in Saturday and get my rental car...errr - truck actually. I wanted an SUV, but they were all out of Ford Escapes. I'm not sure why, but I asked if they had any F-150's. They guy at the counter almost jumped with a loud "YEAH! You want one of those?" Me being the Ford guy I am, I was all over it, and the bad boy was a brand new 4x4 with 100 miles to boot. Didn't get any better. Little did I know how much of a blessing it was to have this vehicle.
So I get all settled in, go do a grocery run and get my essentials. I settled in for the night and got comfy with my new pad. So the day has finally come and gone. I officially started as a Microsoft employee yesterday. All in all a good day and a major highlight in the life of Bisonium. ;-) Then I woke up and the nightmare began. No - I wasn't having second thoughts about being assimilated by the Borg, quite far from it actually. Take a look at what I woke up to:
So for a guy from Miami, this isn't exactly a normal driving situation. I have been trained to drive cars in some pretty radical situations (I was prior law enforcement), so I figured it couldn't be too bad. I got up extra early figuring it would be a mess on the roads. As I left the apartment, things were looking alright. I made it down the mountain with no problems thanks to that 4x4 F-150. Once I got on the main roads, things were pretty decent. I actually made it to work an HOUR early. Better safe than sorry, so no complaints. My first day was spent in NEO (New Employee Orientation) and was quite informative. I thought Apple was the best organized company on the planet when it came to HR stuff through the online resources they had. Then I saw Microsoft's internal system. Microsoft just simply has their stuff together in this respect and the amount of resources available to employees is mind boggling. More on that later. The day went about as well as could be expected. We broke out of the employee store at about 4:30 - 5pm. Since I didn't have internet access at the apartment yet, I figured I would drop by a Starbucks on the way home. Spent an hour there goofin off and then started to head home. The weather had held up most of the afternoon, but by now, snow had started falling again. No big deal, I have 4x4 I thought. I proceeded to go grab some Chinese food and pick up a few things I forgot at the market next door. In the few minutes it took to get the food, the snow started coming down hard....REAL HARD. I was only a couple miles from home, no big deal I thought. Well...the problem wasn't with me...however, not everyone in Seattle has a 4x4. This becomes a real problem in these conditions. By the time I got off I-90 on my exit, I got about 100 yards and saw police lights. They had blocked off Lakemont Blvd. Owwww boy. This isn't good I thought. Check out the pic from my Treo:
.I had no other choice but to pull over to the side of the road and wait. Seems like everyone else had the same idea. We all sat there watching as one car after another struggled just to make it up the small slope from the I-90 exit to Lakemont. Cars were losing it everywhere. After a couple hours of that, I asked the cop at the intersection if there was another way for me to get home and thankfully, he guided me to an alternate road that wasn't iced over. Sure enough, I made it to the base of my complex. Then the fun began. There was a good 3 inches of powder on a very steep incline that I had to traverse in order to get to my apartment. I was already in 4-wheel drive and said "what the hell." Up I went and I'll be damned if that F-150 didn't hunker down, dig in and haul-ass up that mountain. I made it to the top without incident and I am here to tell you - there is a 2006 Ford Mustang for sale now! My ass is dropping the vroom and gettin down with a 4x4 ASAP. My 'stang would have just cried lookin at that mountain.
So I finally got in, heated up my food and called it a night. The news reports were saying it was going to be worse tomorrow and I was just hoping for a miracle and that the weather would let up. So fast forward to this morning...here's this morning's photo:
Yep. That's looking out my balcony. This was not good. I kept thinking "How the hell am I going to make it down this mountain in this?" No sooner was I thinking that, the phone rang and it was my recruiter. She told me that our HR Vice President, Lisa Brummel, had sent out an email to everyone advising them to stay home and not attempt to drive to work in these conditions. Apparently the de-icing trucks in Redmond had run out of sand and were not able to de-ice many of the roads leading to the campus. For all intents and purposes, Microsoft has been closed down due to weather today. Just after I got off the phone with my recruiter, my new boss called me and pretty much said the same things. I have gotten many reassurances that this is simply NOT normal for Seattle at this time of year, or ever really. Usually if it snows, it burns off pretty quick and people aren't usually left in these conditions for long. So lucky for me, I get to start my new career at Microsoft in one of the worse months of weather the Puget Sound area has ever seen. The bright side is that after seeing this, the "normal" conditions will seem pretty damn good from here on out. Hopefully by the time I bring my family back here at the end of December, the conditions will be a little more tolerable and make the transition easier for everyone. For now...I'll be hangin out at Starbucks all-day and trying to catch up on some reading of many blogs. Hopefully I can find my way home without my GPS! I wish I could have gone to the NEO Day 2, but I am pretty sure it was cancelled. They have one every week, so I suspect I will be attending day 2 next week. Unfortunately I don't have my company laptop yet either, so I can't RAS in remotely to get on the network. The anxiety is killing me. I don't think I can remember ever wanting to go to work so bad. Boy - that's a switch huh? :-) I can truly say that for the first time in a very long time, I am enjoying and looking forward to my new job. Can't put a price tag on that. If you want to see more pics of what it's like around here today, head on over to my FlickR page at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bisonium/. I also posted some pics from my Treo on the Bisonium Moblog on Text America: http://bisonium.textamerica.com/. More updates soon...tanks for dropping by!
