I am sort of friends with the CEO of a multinational corporation.  It’s weird.

I’ve got to say, though the product (like all others) has its faults, Desire2Learn’s staff is much less obnoxious to work with than any other corpo I’ve ever encountered.  They’re good folks.

Yesterday I found out that the reason one of their main tech guys is leaving is nothing particularly scandalous; he’s going to be backpacking around New Zealand for 18 months.  The CEO decided he must have been paying the guy too much if he can just up and do that.  He plans to abandon everything, even email, for a year and a half.  I don’t know if I could do that.  I really enjoy information.  When I was a kid, I was a U.S. Mail junkie.  I had ten or fifteen pen-pals (some of which worked out better than others; hi, Justin!).  I made a special mail envelope for myself to hang outside my room.

Email is better in terms of speed and quantity, but letters still have their charm.  95% of my U.S. Mail is junk mail anyway, so I guess I get more overall satisfaction out of email.  I had a friend in college who graduated before me, and he just to write me letters sometimes.  I thought that was really nice, but I later found out he…um…didn’t really know about email.  This was like 1999.  He was a sweet person but kind of dumb.

So anyway…what’s going on in Duluth, you ask?

Last night we went on this social excursion thing, which I thought was going to be a scenic train ride around the north shore of Lake Superior.  It turned out the lake was only visible for a few minutes of the two-hour ride, and the rest of the time it just went through business or residential areas.  It was mostly a drinky-drinky situation, which wasn’t really my bag last night.  There were some good food items, though.  My favorite was the pork tenderloin with some kind of fruity chutney.  We also managd to get back in time for s’mores at the hotel, though, so that was good.
I have sessions all day today, then half a day tomorrow, then a long drive back tomorrow afternoon/evening.  I’m glad Denny likes (or at least doesn’t hate) driving.  I like (or at least don’t hate) napping.