Back From Fargo

Ray and I are back from Fargo, North Dakota. Fargo lived up to all of my expectations...a pretty desolate town. We flew in Monday night and the first thing we drove past were the campuses of North Dakota University. We passed the Dairy Research campus, the Sheep Research campus, and the Horse Research campus. After checking into the hotel, we walked around town to see if we could get something to eat. It was after 11pm at this point, and the only places open were bars. Turns out, Monday night is a big drinking night in Fargo. Coincidentally, Tuesday through Sunday nights are also big drinking nights in Fargo. I was amused that the streets were desolate, yet were set up as if it was a big city. They had numbered streets going in one direction, and numbered avenues going in the other direction. Most streets were also one way, I'm still not sure why they would need that.


The hotel we stayed at was actually pretty nice. They had Sleep Number Beds which I was excited to try out, but was disappointed with. It took me 2 days to figure out that the left and right side of the controllers were switched and I kept trying to use the wrong one. When I finally figured it out, I was very conflicted over which number to choose. I think I finally settled on a 25. It is basically an air mattress inside of a regular mattress. The first time I tried to use it, I thought someone was breaking into my room because it makes a weird sound when increasing the numbers.

The next morning, we met with the San Francisco team for breakfast at the hotel restaurant. After breakfast, we drove to the Microsoft building to meet with the client. The meetings went well and we did a short SEO kick-off and then sat in on stake holder interviews which were interesting. The Microsoft office was really nice and had a cool cafeteria. They had bench seats like in a diner and tons of free soda, both in cans and in the machines they have at fast food places.

After the meetings, everyone went back to the hotel for a few minutes before heading out to dinner. Ray and I were the first ones to arrive at the restaurant and when we walked in, the hostess asked us if we were with the Microsoft party. We said yes and were seated. We were surprised to see that the table was set up for twice as many people as we thought were coming. Ray joked that it would be funny if there was another Microsoft dinner there and we were sitting at the wrong table. Members of our team started to funnel in and other people from other Microsoft and Microsoft Dynamics groups sat down. We began talking to them about Dynamics and what everyone was working on. Soon everyone started to realize that we weren't working on the same things. Then it finally hit everyone that we were indeed at the wrong table.


After moving to a separate table, we had a nice dinner. I had walleye fish, which I've never tried before, but was good. Its a popular dish in Fargo. I was happy eating fish since there were not too many meat-less options for me. I expected that though, considering buffalo/bison is another popular dish there.

After dinner, we went out for drinks with 2 members of the San Fran team. We went to the bar at the hotel they were staying at which was the trendy spot in town. The place was actually pretty cool and I had a nice time there.

The next morning we had breakfast at the hotel again and then went to 2 different Microsoft offices for meetings. The offices looked pretty new and were really nice. I was surprised that the offices in Fargo are nicer than some of the Microsoft buildings in Redmond. A few interesting things we found out while there is that for $180,000 you can buy a 3,000 sq foot home in Fargo. And in talking with the San Fran team, we found out that beer pong is only popular on the east coast. Ray was happy to explain the rules to them.


After the meetings, we went straight to the airport. My bags of course got searched by security because I always forget to put something in the little liquid baggy. As my bags were searched, Ray was very hopeful that they would pull something embarrassing out of my bag, like a teddy bear, and was disappointed when I only had normal stuff in there.






I sat next to Ray as we flew back to Chicago. I wanted to play some pranks, like asking him to get up half way through the flight because I needed to stretch and do lunges, but the thought of it was too funny and I couldn't go through with it. We had an hour layover in Chicago before flying back to Philly. I brainstormed some possible pranks, but didn't go through with any. Next time I'll know to be more prepared for traveling pranks.