I can’t believe it took almost ten years, but someone just asked me for the first time where the name of this blog comes from. Why “fabulous adventures”?
Unsurprisingly, it’s a private joke. Remember, the function of my sense of humour is to amuse me.
When I was first an intern at Microsoft almost twenty years ago now I decided to be brave and go explore downtown Seattle. (Microsoft is of course headquartered in Redmond, across Lake Washington from Seattle proper. Everything to the east of the lake is called “the Eastside”.) I got on the entirely wrong bus and ended up at some park-and-ride in the north end of the Eastside, which is the middle of a nigh endless suburbia, and did not realize my mistake until it was too late to do anything about it. It was just me and a very drunk man on the bus who kept telling me that I looked Australian. It took quite some doing to get back home again.
I wrote this whole ridiculous story up in an email to my friends and family back home which I titled “FABULOUS ADVENTURES IN REDMOND”. I sent home a number of FABULOUS ADVENTURES missives that winter and it got to be an inside joke. So naturally when I started a blog, the best possible title was immediately obvious to me.
So there you go. Not much of a secret science fiction origin story, really.
Next time on FAIC: I’m taking Memorial Day off; on Thursday we’ll finally answer the age old question of what the meaning of the word “is” is.
Fabulous adventures in coding 
Did the ‘looking Australian’ have anything to do with the omnipresent Tilly Hat?
“I like your hat! It makes you look Australian!” were his exact words.
Nicely done Gord. 🙂
An email to friends and family? To me it looks more like a ‘protected internal’ joke then.
Oh, the pain.
There is a simple reason for not being asked about the blog’s name until now. The reason is the manifest fabulousness of these adventures in coding. It’s a natural fit.
Just had my own FABULOUS ADVENTURE IN LYNNWOOD (a suburb north of Seattle, but not on the Eastside).
Moral of the story: don’t read really, really good books unless you’re sure you’re on the correct bus.
What was the book, if you don’t mind me asking?
I’m always on the lookout for a good one.
From your fans down here in Australia – thats fantastic news that you considered Australian-like
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