Longhorn and Vista sightings in Austin

I spent Monday and Tuesday in Austin, TX for meetings with counterparts at Dell and AMD. Doing these meeting back-to-back is much easier now than last year due to these two companies working together. The drive on IH 35 between the two headquarters is only 35 minutes – on a good day I’m told.

One of the entertaining moments in Austin was the cab ride after dinner. Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve ridden with a technically astute cab driver; but it is the first cab driver that I’ve seen with a mounted tablet PC running Windows Vista. Our driver tracked fares with an app and ink, and ran “Street & Trips” to find best routes and destinations. My colleagues and I were impressed. Here’s a couple photos.

The next entertaining moment came at AMD headquarters. We were talking Longhorn Server, virtualization and Barcelona, the forthcoming AMD quad-core processor. AMD’s HQ is located in the farm lands. Last time I was there, I was on a conference call in the parking lot, 20 yards away from a head of cattle in a holding pen. But this time, after a productive meeting talking about Longhorn, I was driving out of the parking lot when I saw the real deal. A Longhorn steer grazing right near the parking lot … away from his friends. Given the focus of the meeting, I thought it was good karma to snap a photo here, too (from the car in case of a quick getaway).

Too bad I didn’t run into the one (University of Texas) Longhorn I really wanted to meet, Kevin Durant. Turns out he was watching the Spurs beat up the Sonics in San Antonio.  The way the Sonics are losing this year, Durant may be coming to Seattle next year to turn the team around.

Patrick