In Michigan, ever so briefly.

Flew in on Friday morning. redmed picked me up at DTW. Shocking thing of note: Detroit has a real airport now! It’s modern and clean, and even has a little automated tram to convey you from one end to the other of the truly monstrous “concourse A”.

We drove to Ann Arbor and chummed around for a bit, just letting the visual memories take us back. Ate a decent lunch at Arbor Brewing Company, and even chatted briefly with the brewmaster. He was making a Porter. In 2003, they started producing champaign sized bottles of Belgian style beers, which have been aging ever since. I was sorely tempted to pick up a bottle of the 2003 tripple…but managed to restrain myself.

Then we drove to Plymouth to see John and Cara and their son Eion (pronounced like “Owen”). Having spent a couple of hours with them, we traipsed up to see Zoe and Matt, and their son Trevor. This morning, drove down to see the grandparents and new we’re prepping for a wedding (the ostensible point of the trip).

Before leaving, we managed to produce the first candidate release of the new version of my company’s software. This is a Big Deal. We got through the last of the known bugs at around 2:30 on Thursday night / Friday morning. Next step – take it to friendly beta sites and find the rest of the bugs. I’m off to MIT on Monday.

Doing an annual review process with the company. It’s perhaps the most civilized such process I’ve ever been part of. I’m chatting with each of the four other guys individually, and then we’ll have a group get together. It continues to astonish me that these corporate things don’t have to suck. It’s only the way they’re implemented. At the level of a small team, getting together once a year to review progress is a remarkably positive thing.