J_K9 @ Linux

Day 7: Boeing Tours

The largest building by volume in the world as recorded by the Guinness book of records is one of Boeing’s aircraft production sites, which we visited today. We also visited some of Beoing’s concept centres and learnt more about its upcoming commercial aircraft, the Boeing 787.

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Day 6: Final Day at Microsoft

Today was our final day at Microsoft. It is odd to think that, after being here for five days and visiting Microsoft’s headquarters so regularly that I will not be returning there for an indefinite amount of time, but not at least for the foreseeable future. I may dislike their business tactics and disagree with some of their products, but they have brilliant people working for them and have an excellent workplace environment. Anyway, I’ll leave the bad note until the end: let me tell you, in the usual detail what I did today.

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Day 5: The Failed Excursion

The Museum of Flight on the outskirts of Seattle is one of the largest air and space museums in the world (according to its site, in any case), and so it was on our list of attractions to see. We left the hotel in Redmond at 9.30pm and set off for the Museum of Flight.

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Day 4: Exploring Seattle

The lie-in this morning allowed us to regain our energy and leave the jet-lag effects behind us. Despite the potential for a long lie-in, I was only able to sleep from midnight until 7am, at which point I could sleep no longer and so I reached for my laptop and went online for a good few hours. At 11am (I wasn’t online for ALL of that time!), we met at the reception desk and not long after set off in our two mini-vans to Seattle’s city centre. Our first stop was Pike Market.

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Day 3: The Labs

Today (i.e. yesterday) was Friday, in case the times and date at the top of this post are confusing. We saw some amazing technologies and demos and we also learnt a lot in the process. We also had the chance to see Microsoft’s Saturn Lab, large server rooms with racks stretching out in long rows, and much more.

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Day 2: First Impressions

Today we had our first visit to Microsoft’s campus at Redmond. First impression? It is enormous - there’s no other word for it. It comprises dozens of different buildings, each with a different purpose and for specific businesses or brands of Microsoft’s empire.

We woke up at 7am, showered, got dressed and arrived at Microsoft at 8.30am. I’m going to leave times out of this post and focus on the actual events and places rather than the time at which they occurred, although they will be written in the same order. So, what came first? An introduction to Microsoft, of course.

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Seattle 2007: Day 1

We, that is twelve students and three teachers, set out from school at 10.20am during the second class. I did some last minute packing, got changed into my casual clothes and walked over to the meeting point. From there, we took a mini-van to Terminal 4 of London Heathrow airport, checking that we had our passports, wallets and other valuables with us on the way in case we had to rush back to the school to pick up an important possession which had been left behind. Being such a large group, we had to check in at BA’s Customer Service and World Traveller [Plus] desks. This did not take long, and we were then given the privilege of going through the “Fast Track” lane to get to the security checks without having to wait in line. After the security checks, we were allowed to split up into groups to have lunch at a cafe of our choosing on the condition that we met our teachers at the flight gate at 1.15pm. The plane, BA 49, was scheduled to take off with destination Seattle, WA at 2.15pm.

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