Aloha

May 13, 2008 11:23 AM Filed in: On The Road
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I'm heading to Hawaii tomorrow for a week long trip to enjoy the sunshine and catch up with two of my most favorite people in the world, Martin & Cheryl. I haven't seen them now for a couple of years, and that is far too long. We'll be living it up at one of the Nintendo houses in Kona. "Nintendo house" you say? "Yes," I say. Let me explain.

Back in 1987 I was an Anderson Consulting green bean in Seattle, Washington working at my first client, Sullivan Payne, and just trying to keep my head above the technical high water mark. At the start of that same year Martin moved to Seattle and hired on at Sullivan Payne. The two of us ended up as a team responsible for churning out a massive number of reports as part of a huge multi-year
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system conversion project. We became the best of friends. About three years later we both jumped ship and went to work for Nintendo across the lake in Redmond, Washington. We worked together there for 4 or 5 years until I moved away to Boston. But my good friend Martin still works at Nintendo. Lucky for me.

Around 1991 or so Nintendo bought two beach front houses in Kona to be used for corporate retreats and also to be leased out by employees for personal vacation use. The houses are lavish each with a private pool, 4 private suites, and all the amenities. Back in the day it was pretty easy to get your hands on one of the houses for a nice getaway, but these days with the company
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being as large as it is, the employees have to participate in a lottery to win time in the houses.
Martin won the lottery. Happy

He got one of the houses for a two week period, and tomorrow I'll be joining him and his wife Cheryl along with a few of their family members to enjoy the second of their two weeks there. Yes, Life is good! So "Aloha" to you all. It's time for me to start packing my bags. I'll catch up with you in a week or so.