Outrageous Malfunction

I met Joe on an airplane in Seattle; I was returning from an interview at Microsoft and he was returning home. I had known about Joe through the Microsoft Gun Club and had read his website about the Palouse; it was his living there working in Seattle that gave me a reason to move to Moscow. What’s odd was we didn’t meet until a few years later on that airplane. I took a leap introducing myself; he was wearing some gun-related hat and reading Modern Sniper & Home Decor magazine, so I figured I was right. We talked some about work and life, and I ended up interviewing at Chromium and working there for a few months. Over the few years we’ve known each other we’ve done a lot, mostly surrounding the Boomershoot and various related activities. We talk a lot and plot and plan; we’re similar in a lot of ways (risk-taking, stress-thriving, having kids (is that a product of the first two?); into guns and computers and explosives) but we’re also quite far apart in other ways (he has a wife, for one). I’m certain I would have been a lot worse off having taken the job at microsoft; for this, and a million other reasons, I’m thankful I met Joe.