In the last two weeks, I had reviews/meetings with my entire management chain from my immediate boss through three levels of VPs plus Bill Gates. I only missed Steve Ballmer. Damn. I've never gotten so close before. (Not sure this is a really good goal or not, actually.)

The meeting with Bill was almost a disaster. I was preparing to show Bill some of our competitors; I had arrived early and was all set to go. Then thirty minutes before the meeting, I lose network connectivity; my computer cannot see the Internet. This is a very bad way to demo web browsers. A little panicked computer magic and everything is OK again. Whew.

Then twenty minutes before the demo, my boss asks if he can borrow a pen to take notes. No problem, I hand him mine. He uncaps my nice new rollerball pen to discover it's leaking blue ink everywhere; it's all over his hands. Just as I'm about to start laughing I notice my hands are covered in blue ink too. Lovely.

We were a sight. The guy demoing before us is brilliant; he invented the laser printer and was showing off some cool very futuristic display technology he whipped up. By comparison, my boss and I are covered in ink and barely able to surf the web; not a great way to establish credibility with the richest man in the world.

Fortunately, we were able to clean up, pull our shit together, and give a good demo. Dodged another bullet...