Seattle? OK, Maybe Portland Instead

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I used to play Dance Dance Revolution (the arcade game where you jump on a mat with arrows in sync with the screen) a lot. I played at least 3 times a week for 1-2 hours on very high difficulty, so I was jumping all over the place and sweating a ton—it’s actually an incredibly good cardio workout while being fun at the same time. I used to be on DDR forums on the internet, and while conversing with others, I discovered that there was a competition going on in the near future (mid November) in Seattle, Washington. I decided that I would participate.

I practiced the songs that would be in the competition and was able to beat almost all of them with AA or AAA scores, which is phenomenal. After weeks of practicing, the time had arrived.

The competition was to be held on Saturday. My plan was to drive up to Seattle from Jackson, Wyoming on Friday, which I took the day off for. I would find some motel or something when I got there, go to the competition on Saturday, and then drive back on Sunday. I left on Friday morning in my Jeep with my DDR mat in the back and hope in my heart. Continue reading →

Seattle Part II

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The second part of my trip (first part here) involved us checking out some other interesting things in the Seattle area over the next couple of days.

I am not sure of the exact order because I actually spent time naming all of my photos based on the content of the photo. While this was a nice idea at first, it took way too much time, and it completely messed with the ordering of the photos. Continue reading →

Tech Class To Microsoft’s Campus

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When I was in high school, I partook in a tech class, learning about computers – how they work and how to fix them. It was quite the insightful course, and somehow or another we luckily were able to fly out to Seattle as a small class to visit the Microsoft campus in Redmond. I can’t recall if we got a grant or if we did some fund-raising (this was almost 10 years ago), but it was made possible for our smaller class of about 10 students to go out to Redmond to see Microsoft.

Our teacher somehow knew an employee who worked there, and I guess he managed to arrange a tour of sorts for us so we flew out to Seattle! After a short trip from Wyoming, we arrived in Seattle, and shortly thereafter, we went to Redmond for a tour of the campus. Continue reading →