Today is the last day of my trip to MS Towers and surprise, surprise it’s raining. Most of my fellow ‘softies are soon to be ‘blighty’ bound and it’s almost time breakout the ski boots, although the drive to Whistler might take longer than expected as the Canadian border controls are now more stringent. Apparently any excuse for the Canadians and Americans to inconvenience each other. We’ve hired two ‘full size sedans’ which in English is a couple big arse saloons, I haven’t seen them yet and I hope they don’t suffer from ‘American car syndrome’…big on the outside, small on the inside. It’s the weirdest thing; you climb into these huge taxis and you think “Where did all the space go?” As from tomorrow I’m going to be knee deep in snow so it’s unlikey that I’ll be able to access the web, but who knows maybe I can find a Wireless Hotspot somewhere.

With a significant number of ex-Lotus employees now resident at Microsoft, or is that significant ex Lotus employees resident at Microsoft…I’ll let you decide, Ed Brill has noticed a growing numbers of discussions in Blogland between them and those who remained to become IBMers. I might play a more active part.

Right I’ve now been here a few days and now feel a little more normal…I guess it would take at least a week for the body clock to get use to the big time difference between the UK and the American west coast, luckily I’m here for two. A handful of people I work with fly here on a regular basis…I take my hat off to them as I’m sure it doesn’t do the human body any good. That probably also includes Ed Brill although I hear he’s banned from the state of Washington. So what’s the Seattle area like? Well the first thing to appreciate is that Seattle is a long way from anywhere else in the United States. Yes, Vancouver is about 90 mins drive away but as that’s in Canada for many Americans it doesn’t count. The locals are friendly but not in the usual pastiche of sincerity you see elsewhere in the US and for many locals they are as different from their fellow Americans as we natives of Blighty are from the French and Germans. The city is pretty spread out on around Puget Sound and Lake Washington so there are thousands of private boats, the mountains make for a beautiful backdrop too. One problem is that Seattle suffers from the West Coast car culture like LA and San Francisco and has no mass transit system thereby making you very dependant of having some kind a vehicular convenience. A rental car is a must if you intend to move more than a couple of hundred yards from the hotel and this is what a bunch of us did on Sunday, firstly to check out one of the outlet malls (it’s the cheap dollar again) and to see the countryside. If you live in this area you have to like the outdoors as there is a lot of it and only an hour from the city centre we stumbled on our first ski resort. As it was a warm day I could have gone sailing in the morning and skiing in the afternoon…now that’s fookin’ brilliant.

Despite waking up at silly times of the morning I'm not feeling quite so ropey from jet lag. Seattle as it turns out is a nice city and some of the views towards the mountains are superb. The event itself is the usual mix of executives talking in a language few understand, sessions some great some bewilderingly technical and lots of lots of fatty food. A big plus at the moment is the dollar/pound conversion rate. First purchase was one of the as yet unavailable in the UK Mini iPods...I'm sure the credit card will take more of a bashing as the week passes as Mrs C arrives on Thursday before we head up to Whistler. Oh...Longhorn looks very smart...

London to Seattle turns out to be a three movie flight if you include a few episodes on the comedy channel, getting up to stretch the legs and sundries. BA have a captive audience as the only carrier flying direct to Seattle but not having flown 'The World Fav Airline' longhaul for a while I was surprised despite having the usual economy seat, which yes is still far too cramped. So far I haven't seen much but I have the whole of Sunday to take advantage of the favourable dollar pound rate and take in the sites. One idea is to have breakfast at Pike Place Market and have a look at the bay. Right I'm going to try and get some more sleep...the jet lag is hell.

I'm off to Seattle today for the annual techincal get together at MS Towers, should be interesting to see what going on with 'Yukon' and 'Longhorn'. However the best bit will be the week skiing in Whistler afterwards...I'm looking forward to some gentle 'motorway' pistes.

A publicity seeking pop star exposes a part of her anatomy during a publicity seeking sports event whilst dancing with another publicity seeking pop star. This creates thousands of complaints and one woman from Tennessee decides to sue. As Rory Bremner pointed out last night maybe these people should be less concerned about Janet Jacksons’s right tit and worry more about the tit living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Not surprisingly I’ve had an Xbox for sometime and despite it’s size and questionable styling I rate it, but I would say that wouldn’t I? But until now I hadn’t realised how good it was until last night when I wirelessly plugged it in to the DSL modem and played on line for the first time. I’d been part of the Xbox Live! beta programme but the physical distance between my modem and the Xbox meant that running an Ethernet cable from one end of the house to the other a no no. Personally I didn’t have a problem with gaffer taping a cable to the carpet and running it down the stairs, but for some odd reason Mrs C did. Weird huh? However the purchase of a MN-740 Wireless Adaptor means I can connect to Xbox Live! without offering cables for the dog to chew her way through; The daft thing is that it’s not available in the UK and had to be acquired from the US, and I had to pop to Argos for a 12V multi voltage adaptor. An alternative is the top notch Linksys Wireless Game Adaptor, but the MN-740 I reckon is more discreet. As I was pressed for time I tried Crimson Skies and joined a 16 plane dogfight. Most excellent especially with the voice integration, although having a bunch of people shouting abuse at each other in North American accents does grate after a while. Where the voice stuff really shines is with team based games like Rainbow 6, Counterstrike and Ghost Recon. Just need someone to do a version of Mario Kart: Double Dash for XBox. Unlikely I know but who have ever thought you’d see Sonic on XBox.

Been having a problem with the car recently. Nothing serious, just need to have the valve clearances sorted. However it's like herding cats to get the dealer I purchased the car from, Sytner, to talk to my local dealer, Park West, who need to do the work. I'm hoping to get the work done under warranty hence the requirement for them to talk, but one doesn't trust the other to do the work properly as it's an M car. I was hoping that the premium you pay for driving one of Bavarias finest would off set dealer stupidity...obviously not.

I know that Fox/Murdoch/News International aren't big fans of the BBC or public service broadcasting but I hadn't realised the anamosity went this deep. And you thought all the nutters where working for Al Qaeda. Take the video clip as a warning…