Entangling Alliances

The hat is the pride of man; for he who cannot keep his hat on before kings and emperors is no free man.
-- Friedrich Von Schiller

Tuesday, June 10, 1997

Today I took one of the Microsoft shuttles to visit a team that creates an internal website. We needed to consult with them in person about what kind of changes they'd be willing and able to make. Microsoft runs a lot of shuttles around the main campus, and also to a satellite campus, but this was the first time I'd taken the shuttle to this particular building, which is farther away than I'd been before.

The folks I met took the opportunity to ask questions they'd been saving up, and even set up an impromptu meeting with people on a related team who also had some issues. I did my best, and pointed them to some internal mailing lists and web sites with more technical information, but some things were beyond me as I am not a developer. On a product as big as the one I am working on, no one is familiar with every part of it!

The shuttle driver had told me he'd be making a pickup at that building around 2:30. Because the building is farther than most from main campus, fewer shuttles arrive there and it can take a while to get a ride, so it behooved me to try to ride back with him then. Turned out the person he was picking up was K----, my old friend from Book Publishing Company. (That's the legal publishing company where I learned proofreading and went on strike.) We exchanged news and views on the ride back. For all the thousands of people who work at Microsoft, it seems like you run into the same ones over and over.

Jayson and Nick came over in the evening and helped with costume pieces for the Cacophony participation in the Fremont Solstice Parade. The hats are really going to be funny! They are shaped like modified fezzes, the kind with fabric around the bottom, like a combo fez and turban. What makes them Trollsylvanian is the tuft of yellow troll hair that sticks up from the top, and the fact that the smaller-than-normal size makes it necessary to tie them on like a Korean hat. When we had done enough work, each of us put one on, and we walked around the block in the twilight. Only one person asked us about them, but we didn't meet that many. It takes a suprising amount of guts to wear something odd, when it isn't supported by the context of a party or festival, and the rest of your outfit is relatively normal.

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