Almost Perfect

I did not see any sunshine for one whole week, because they picked me up at the hotel at 7:00 a.m., in the dark, and delivered me back at 11:00 p.m. Staying in the hotel was lonely and boring. I lay awake for hours each night staring at the ceiling, because the TV programs were all in Dutch and I had not brought enough books to read.

I loved to go to user groups when Microsoft was there. A favorite format of many user groups meetings was to bring two competing products together and have a debate, or a shootout. I liked the format, because I can use humor to get a crowd behind me. Microsoft representatives were generally too serious to appreciate the humor and were easily rattled if I pointed a joke at them. They also came across as a little too competitive and a little mean-spirited.

Windows was an ugly piece of software to work with and not an easy platform to support. Even Microsoft had trouble working with the product, needing two years to debug their Windows word processor.