Gates + Stewart = $$$

Anyone else catch Bill Gates on The Daily Show last night?

I stayed up past my bedtime to see what Jon Stewart would ask the world's richest man, and what did I see? A glorified commercial. The business reporter for the Seattle P-I went ga-ga over the visit, but I went to sleep unimpressed.

Couldn't Jon ask one of the world's most influential people about his hopes and plans for ending poverty? Instead he asked about the F12 button.

Couldn't there have been SOME comment about the popularity of charity donations and concern for the developing world that the Gates Foundation has initiated? Instead, Bill talked about his dreams of web-based TV.

It didn't help that Gates ran off the set even before the commercial break! He's thinking, "Well, my job is done here, hopefully I sold a few thousand more copies of Vista!"

I wonder if there was some pre-show agreement about questions. Maybe Jon was as flustered sitting next to Bill Gates as he is when some beautiful actress comes on the show. Yeah - that's gotta be it.

Fire Works?

Uhh, yeah...

So I was at lab at 6:00 on Saturday evening toiling away at the research stuff, when JG yelled at me (I was wearing headphones) to look out the window. Actually, all I heard was FIRE! (We had a fire drill yesterday that everybody passed with flying colors...)

The moral of this story is that there was a fireworks show on Seattle's Lake Union this evening. Complete with cubes and smiley faces. Anyway, I called my cousin-in-law to see if she knew what it was all about. (She has a SWEET view of Lake Union and Gas Works Park.)

Anyone out there know what this was about?

My first thought was the Vista roll-out. (As in Microsoft's new operating system.) There could be enough tech nerds in Seattle to pull it off... Bill Gates is on the Daily Show Monday, after all. The cousin thought it was for the Boat Show. JG thought that was a good bet.