a day with bill gates 1 of november, 1999 by johnmichael patrick monty monteith

Last Saturday morning I finally caved in. After years of building my web site from raw HTML code, I realized that the time had come to suck-up and start building web sites with a web design program. I felt such a pang of dread spread throughout my body as I unsealed the Microsoft FrontPage 2000 box. It was not unlike the feeling of sitting in the dentist office waiting for my wisdom teeth to be pulled. I knew I had to do it, but somehow that knowledge did not make me any happier.

When I put the CD in the drive, like the teeth pulling experience, my body started to go numb. I could feel myself drifting off into a trance, glazed over by the "Microsoft Office Installation" window that popped up in front of me. Visions of HTML code dancing through my head with IMG SRC this and ENCTYPE that. I typed in my name when prompted, as if under a spell, and the files started taking over my hard drive as I drifted to another plane.

The phone rang, breaking the spell, and I quickly picked it up.

"Hello?"

"Hey. It's Bill."

"Oh, hi, Bill. What's up?"

"Notice you were installing FrontPage 2000."

"Oh. Really?" A bit baffled, "How did you know that?"

"Registration."

"I haven't registered yet."

"Yeah, well.. Pre-registration, really."

"Oh. Right. Pre-registration."

"Saw your name fly by in the millions of software installations of my products being installed at this very second, and thought I'd give you a ring."

"Thanks for checking in."

"What do you think of it?"

"Um. Well, I actually haven't had a chance to use it yet. It's still installing."

As if not hearing a word I was saying, "Yeah, great piece of work. Everyone will be using that soon enough. Just got to get rid of the PageMill thing and a couple others."

"I'm sure you'll think of something. You've never had much trouble with competition. Well, except that whole Intuit thing."

"Hey, nobody is allowed to mention that name around me!"

"Sorry. Right. Forgot."

"That's okay."

"No one was paying attention to that Q mess anyway, Bill."

"I think you're right. Anyway, Monty, I didn't really call to see how you liked FrontPage. I've been sitting around working on a problem, and you remember when you helped me out with that browser for an operating system thing?"

"Oh, yeah. Windows 98 and internet explorer."

"Yes. That was a great idea, Monty!"

"But I didn't think of it ---"

"Oh, you're too modest. You were the inspiration!"

"But the justice department -"

"Don't worry about them. Secretly, they really liked the idea, too. You did get a half off coupon for Windows 98, didn't you?"

"Yes. I mean - it was for release one and arrived a month ago so it was already expired. But I did get the coupon."

"Good. Hey, why don't we chat about this over lunch. Head on over."

"Okay. I'll see you in a bit."

When Bill Gates asks you to lunch, can one really say no? So, I got in my car and drove over to Bill's house on One Bill Way. There was a checkpoint guard outside the gate to his house, not unlike the checkpoint before driving over the border to Canada. He asked me a few questions:

"Do you have any Netscape products in the car with you?"

"No."

"Do you own or have you ever used StarOffice?"

"No."

"You're not lying to me are you?"

"Well, okay. I used it once at work. On a Linux system. But I didn't like it."

"Alright, you can go in."

Bill came out to greet me as I pulled in. He seemed genuinely excited to see me. He took me inside his huge techno-dream home, and gave me a bit of a tour. It was extremely dark, and occasionally we would bump into furniture and things.

"Hey, Bill. Why don't you have the lights on in the house?"

"I'm not sure. Lets go check with the guys."

Bill pressed a button behind a painting, I think it was a Van Gogh or one of those guys, and a secret door was revealed from behind the wall. He opened the door, and inside were four geeky guys dazed in front of a row of 21" monitors in a rather small room. Cheetos and Coke cans were thrown about the room, and I could not help but step on a couple as we walked in.

"Monty, this is my home tech team. Doug here is in charge of coffee and other small appliances. Steve is in charge of water distribution systems. Eric takes care of automatic cleaning devices. And Bob here does the lighting."

"Wow, a team of full time I.S. employees just for household appliances. That's pretty cool, Bill."

"Yeah. Soon everyone will have this. So, Bob, we were wondering why the lights were not on?"

Bob munched on a couple of sour cream and onion potato chips as he replied, "Well, we tried installing Windows 2000 on the lighting server, but it was not compatible with the ISA control board. So, then I tried a restore to Windows 98 second edition, but it kept coming up with a VxD error. So, I am formatting the drive right now, and will do a full install of Win98, and that should do the trick. We should have the lights back up in a couple hours."

I tried to break the seriousness with a bit of a joke, "So, instead of a blue screen of death, I guess today we have the black darkness of death." They were not amused. I guess it was not a very good joke. At least not when you have been locked up in a closet all day.

Bill changed the subject, "keep up the good work guys. Well, Monty, we can not very well have lunch in the dark. Lets go out."

"Where should we go?"

"Wendy's, of course. My treat."

As we walked out of the house I noticed his twenty car garage all locked up, but he was walking directly to my car.

"I'm afraid you're going to have to drive, Monty. I have a couple dozen cars, but I've already used them all up at Wendy's. They'll recognize me."

I assumed he meant that he did not want people to know Bill Gates was eating at Wendy's. I was tempted to let him know the entire world is already well aware of, but I simply replied "okay" and off we went.

Bill insisted we go through the drive thru, so I pulled up to the ordering stand and lowered the window.

A young man with a mid-West dialect started chatting through the grainy speaker, "Welcome to Wendy's. Can I take your order?"

"Yes. Well, I'll have a grilled chicken sandwich, a ceaser salad, and a coke." I turned to Bill, "what'll you have?"

"Three quarter pound double stacks and a coke."

I turned back to the speaker, "and three quarter pound double stacks and a coke."

There was a bit of a pause, and then the guy came back on the speaker. "Hey, that wouldn't be Bill Gates in the car with you, would it?"

Kind of excited that people are recognizing a celebrity in my car, without even thinking of it I replied, "why, yes. It is."

Bill muttered under his breath, "damn. They caught me."

The Wendy dude's voice suddenly was a bit upset, "Well, we can't serve him here."

"Why not?", I asked.

"Cause every time he comes here and orders his double stacks, he grabs the burgers, and doesn't pay the three bucks he owes. He just drives off. Then he will come back in a new car and try to rip us off again."

I asked Bill, "Is this true?"

"Well, they charge too much here.", Gates explained.

"The burgers are only a buck each, Bill."

"I know. Listen, I never have small change on me, and sometimes I just have got to have a burger. If you tasted Melinda's cooking, you'd know what I was talking about."

I turned back to the speaker, "listen, I'll be paying for it this time, so don't worry about it."

The kid calmed down a bit, "okay, well, we'll make the burgers for ya. But, you tell Bill that next time he comes here to order, he better pay for his burgers or we're calling the cops."

I paid for our meal, and we drove off. We stopped in a park in Kirkland looking out over the lake toward Seattle and ate our meal. Making idle chat as we enjoyed our Dave Thomas delight, I could not help but comment on Bill's new dew.

"Like the hair, Bill."

"It's for the kids. They're into that thing these days."

"Yeah. I hear that."

He talked as he munched away on his double-stack hamburger, "Those P.R. guys thought it might help us to sell a few more copies of those Microsoft Home products if they took some bleach to my hair and I combed it in the morning."

"I thought you dumped the Microsoft Home label."

Just as he was about to finish off that hamburger with a final bite, "Really? Damn. That is a lot of wasted combing time."

"Hey, when you're the richest man in the universe, you shouldn't have to waste your time on P.R. stuff."

"I think you're right."

Remembering browsing his site last night, "And how about that Bill Gates home page? Did you really put that together?"

"Yeah. That took a lot of time. Someone told me that old Steve was putting together his home page, and I didn't want to be the last CEO on the block with one."

"Well, I'm really impressed. You have the whole family thing going, your own home page, a spiffy new home, a new look, and running a little business on the side. You're not doing too badly for yourself, Bill."

"Yeah, things are going pretty good at the moment. Not too much to complain about." Bill then squinted a bit, and put on a serious look, obviously now wanting to get down to business, "Still, I have a bit of an issue that I could use your advice on."

"What's that?"

"I was out surfing the web last night, and went into one of the chat rooms. I decided to listen in on what the people are talking about. And, you know what I found out? It might just be my imagination, but it sure seems like people don't like my company too much."

Now, my memory is a bit fuzzy at this part, but if I didn't know any better, I'd say Bill almost had a tear coming to his eye. It was a touching and heartfelt moment.

Bill continued, "I talked to the P.R. folks about it, and they told me to do Newsweek interviews, and to bleach my hair, and all this stuff. But, has it really helped? Do people like my company any better? Those people in the chat room sure didn't."

Trying not to be overcome by the emotion of the moment, I attempted to put it all in perspective for Bill, "Listen, you're successful. People can't help but not say a couple less than nice things about the richest company in the world."

"I suppose you're right. But, I really want people to like my company, Monty. What do you think I should do?"

Quite seriously, I responded, "Well, if you gave away Windows for free, that might perk people's spirits."

"Always the kidder. I like that about you. But, no more joking. What do you think I should do? Remember the goal here, though. The reason I want people to like Microsoft better is so we can sell more stuff, of course."

"Right. I forgot about the whole profit thing. Sorry about the Windows idea."

"That's alright."

We both stared off over Lake Washington at the peak of the Columbia Seafirst Tower on the other side. Watching the boats float peacefully by, and pondered how to make Microsoft a likeable company. I considered telling Bill the truth, which is that until Microsoft starts losing money, it is still going to be the most hated computer company. But, he was in a very sad mood, and I did not want to be responsible for inflicting a Prozak prescription on the richest man in the world.

Suddenly the perfect idea occurred to me, "You know, Bill. Microsoft could come up with something truly original. Something no one has thought of. That would make people excited about Microsoft, and sell some product, as well."

"That is fabulous! Why didn't I think of that? A brand new idea. Well, lets come up with one, then."

There was a long pause as we both pondered the question. Then Bill chimed in, "How about that Apple iMac thing? Everyone's talking about that as the big original thing. Everyone loves Apple. We could just take that idea."

"Um, I think that sort of defeats the purpose, Bill. Besides, you don't sell hardware."

"Oh, right. Maybe this original thing wasn't so great after all."

Bill got up and started walking back to the car. Clearly he was getting upset again, and I did my best to cheer him up as we walked back. "Not so quick, Bill. You know, your iMac idea wasn't bad. We just need to evaluate it. Now, Apple had an original idea to change the look of their computers to something no one had seen before. The inside is still the same old crashing out of date Macintosh, but the outside looks cool and hip. It sold like hotcakes. We just need to come up with an idea like that for Microsoft."

My Redmond friend got quiet for a while, and we started driving over the Evergreen Point Floating Bridge toward Seattle. I thought maybe seeing the big city might be a good inspiration for him.

"You know, Monty, I think you're right. We can use that iMac idea."

"Well, that isn't exactly what I said."

"No, it's your idea. It's great. We just need to change Microsoft packaging. We keep the same old software inside, but on the outside we use a new and exciting box. Shaped like nothing anyone has seen before."

"I'm not sure, Bill. I mean, software packaging?"

"Sure. We can have software boxes shaped like a - oh - how about a circle? And it can be see-through bonsai-blue!" Bill clearly was getting excited about this.

"Well, if it is shaped like a circle, wouldn't the box fall off the shelf? And if you could see through the box, wouldn't people be able to copy down the product key information?"

"Oh. You see, this is why I run these ideas past you. You don't miss anything. Well, lets think of something else then."

We were driving down interstate 5 past Seattle, and we both started staring out the windows looking for inspiration. Bill then thought of another idea.

"We could have it shaped like famous American landmarks. One shaped like a redwood tree to sell in California, and a gator for Florida, and a space needle for Washington. What do you think?"

I was trying not to bring him down, but had to continue to put a little reality on the situation, "It might be expensive making individual packaging and distribution systems like that. You would lose some money."

"Oh. That's no good. Well, how about a familiar shape for everyone, that everyone knows and loves. Oh, I've got it! We could have it in the shape of a Wendy's Chicken Nugget! Everyone loves those!"

"Well, I'm sure Wendy's would like the free advertising, but I am not so certain that would be an overwhelming success with everyone, Bill. Some people don't even eat fast food."

Bill looked at me quite puzzled. "Really?" He then stared over at Safeco field as we started driving up the overpass toward interstate 90 to head back to the east side. "Well, this packaging idea is real difficult. Sure seems like we will have a tough time pleasing everyone with whatever shape we might choose."

"That's the tough part about a new idea, Bill. It is difficult to come up with something everyone will like."

"Yeah."

As we were driving back toward his home, I could tell he was really trying hard to come up with a good idea. Every so often, when he would notice a flower, or a car, or a building, he would raise his finger and open his mouth as though he was about to share a great new idea, but then would pull back before he said a word.

When we started to get near the techno dream home, I could see Bill starting to get sad again. Admittedly, I could not think of a new original idea that Bill would like. Everything I thought of involved risk, or perhaps losing money. Nothing that Bill would like at all. So, I opted to just give him some words of advice.

"Bill, you know, as good as the original packaging idea is, maybe you should focus your creative energy on something else. People these days are downloading software from the Internet, and doing without packaging all together. Some people think that in a few years packaged software might disappear all together."

Suddenly Bill's face lit up. "That's it! You're a genius! We will do without any packaging at all! How original. We can sell software with no packaging. Oh, I got it! We can have an online store where people can download software right off the Internet. This is great!"

Bill just seemed so happy at that moment, that I just could not break the news to him that this idea was not original at all. I just could not let him go home upset. "That is a great idea, Bill. You have thought of a great one this time."

I pulled up to the front door, or what seems like the front door, to let Bill re-join his home and family. I could see inside the house that the lights were all still off. Obviously the re-installation of Windows 98 did not go well. Still, the darkness did not deter Bill's happiness.

"Thanks, Monty. This has been an inspiring day for me. I will have the guys at the office work on this no packaging software idea right away. This is great. We can sell the same old stuff, and it will be like it is all new. No packaging! Wow. Thanks."

"You bet, Bill. Anytime."

As he got out of the car he turned to me, "Hey, you want to have lunch next weekend?"

I know I used to think that when the richest man in the universe asks you to lunch you should say yes without thinking about it, but.. Well.. This time I thought about it. "You know, Bill, I have plans next weekend. Can I take a rain check on that?"

"Of course. See you around, Monty."

"See you, Bill."

With that, I drove home. So ended my day with Bill Gates.

Sure, maybe we did not solve the world's problems. Maybe Bill did not have a truly original idea. But, he thought he did. And, maybe with that brief moment of self-discovery, that small moment of imagination, Bill might try to come up with other original ideas. Maybe this is the first in a long string of original Microsoft ideas. Maybe this day will change Microsoft. Perhaps the mission of Microsoft will alter. Microsoft will endeavor to inspire and develop products the world has never seen before, and never knew we needed. Maybe billions will be spent trying to develop fabulous new packaging, or new software distribution methods. Perhaps even new software. And maybe .. just maybe .. someday .. one of those ideas might really be original.

Okay. You're right.

Probably not.

But, it's a nice thought, isn't it?