The Mile High City
I'm lucky enough to have been sent to Denver, Colorado this weekend as part of the Amazon.com crew attending the SHPE National Diversity Conference.
We will be running a booth and looking for top-notch engineers to come join the Amazon team. Whether it's people who are passionate about designing the software that runs Amazon's futuristic warehouses, building a complex software infrastructure that scales to millions of customers, or creating user interfaces that make online shopping easy and fun, Amazon has some of the best opportunities out there.
While I'm here I'll also try to have a bit of fun and see what's going on in Denver! I'm writing from the Adam's Mark hotel. It's my first time in this city, and so far, I have one main reaction: IT'S FREAKING COLD! Today it's -19 degrees C, or 0 degress F. Sure different from Seattle!
Jan 12, Friday
Denver is a really interesting city so far. I spent the good part of today walking up and down 16th Street, the main shopping area. There's lots of stores and restaurants, and a lot of people dressed in heavy winter gear, especially jackets with the big furry hoods, and women usually wearing big matching snow boots. It feels like a ski resort in the middle of a city! Very cool.
Later in the day I met up with my buddy Karney, another Amazon guy. We had some coffee to catch up then headed out for some dinner. Since it was so incredibly cold outside, we ended up going to the first place we could find. That place happened to be Victory, a steakhouse in downtown Denver. The food was great and we even ended the dinner with some good scotch. Our waiter had a seriously fake fancy accent, but that was just extra entertainment. :)
Afterwards we went to check out this bar Rio Grande and had some margaritas. It closed at 11 p.m., because, according to some locals we asked, "that's how it's always been." Well, it was time to get back to the hotel anyway. While trying to catch a cab in the cold, a bunch of random locals jumped into my cab with me... friendly people, and they ended up inviting me out to check out some more bars with them. Had to pass since I had such a big day coming up, but I was impressed by their friendliness. To top it all off, they refused to let me pay part of the cab fare. What cool Denverites, huh?
Jan 13, Saturday
The conference today was a huge success... it was inspiring seeing so many students out there getting their careers started off to a good start, and I was thrilled to tell them about Amazon and about working in the tech industry. Virtually every (it seemed) big U.S. company had a presence there, so this was also a first for me: it was an awesome time going around the booths talking to people from so many different fields. I talked to exhibitors about everything ranging from breakfast cereals (General Mills), to RFID chips (Texas Instruments), to fighter jets (Northrop Grumman). I have to say, all really interesting stuff.
After the conference I had to take a nap. The day took it's toll.
Pretty soon after, I woke up, and the entire Amazon crew met up for a dinner. I had the daunting task of choosing a restaurant that everyone would like, and ended up choosing the Italian restaurant Venice. This was a bit of a roller coaster experience. We ended up waiting 1 hour for our table (with a reservation), then another hour for our food. The situation was really bad, but the waitress was doing an amazing job making up for it. She ended up saving the night. In the end, (what I believe to be) either the owner or the chef came out to serve us our food himself, which was a nice touch. Ultimately though, the night was saved by the food. I had the Ossobucco and it was awesome. We had a great wine to go with it, and ended the meal with some espresso. Somebody ordered an Americano, and they brought the espresso with hot water on the side. Oops! It was a funny mistake, but overall the experience was great. A restaurant doesn't have to be perfect to leave you with good memories- in the end it's all about the food.
A bunch of us went out afterward and ended up at a place called Crocs. Lots of tequila (including Tezon Silver and Don Julio 1942) and lots of bar fights, luckily with none of us involved in the latter. :) I guess the cold weather brings out some hostility in people, but overall a fun place and a good night.
Jan 14, Sunday
During my last day in Denver I met up with Karney again and had lunch at the Denver Hard Rock Cafe. Then we spent the remainder of our time at the Denver Art Museum. Apparently we were lucky because they had just finished the new, massive, modern, 2nd building a few months earlier. I was super impressed by the museum, maybe because I hadn't expected Denver to be an artistic place. But I was wrong- the art was all really amazing. it was mostly very modern (the Radar exhibit), but they also had a Japanese Zen Buddhist collection from Kimiko and John Powers.
Bye Denver, I had a great time, and I would definitely come back someday... Maybe when the weather is nicer. :)