Worked in Houston at HP labs for a week
That was cool. The steak and the shrimp etoufe (spelling?) were good. The two HP engineers assigned to my project didn't know each other, we all got on great, but as per my colleague's (from Kansas city) advice, I was extremely careful around politics - their very own George W was POTUS at the time.
There was, however, an odd moment where one of the HP guys recalled a childhood memory (as a 15-year-old) of standing in the back of his dad's pickup at 40mph offroad while simultaneously wedging his legs in the bars behind the cab and wielding a rifle one-handed trying to shoot a fleeing deer or some other poor beast. Properly mental stuff. Only for the other engineer to exclaim that he had almost the same experience in his own childhood. No, seriously, I'm not even joking. The only reason these guys were't wearing sidearms was because HP had a company policy of no weapons on site.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
