3 Days in Plano, TX

Well, I guess the stories out… ARM bought Keil Software. I get to help the company get integrated and will be spending 2 days a week for the rest of the year in Plano, Texas- home of Frito-Lay and the only place I know to have a cockroach museum.
The folk at Keil are really friendly (I’ve been and met with them a couple of times already) so all in all it should be challenging and fun.

This last week didn’t quite go according to plan, but then these sorts of things seldom do.
Tues 4:45am I fell out of bed and headed to the airport to fly to Dallas and drive to Plano. When I got there I was told not to visit the company until the deal was signed- Day 1 spent in my hotel room.

Day 2 was much the same with some additional retail therapy thrown in. BTW my hotel was not in downtown Plano. It was on an industrial estate, so there wasn’t much to see.
BTW if my hotel had been in downtown Plano there still won’t have been much to see. Downtown Plano is a one horse town; literally, one of the 2 restaurants it possess has a stuffed horse outside it.

Day 3 Lawrence (who arrived the night before) and I tried to find a cup of coffee in downtown Plano, only to be told that the two coffee shops had gone bust. Sigh!
Finally things started to happen and I went to Keil to tell them about the acquisition, meet and greet. We had some fun, cake, champagne and a raffle of all their old logo clad giveaways. I got home around 11:00pm for a few hours sleep before going to Sunnyvale to brief the ARM, Inc General Manager on what we going to tell the Sunnyvale folk. I ended up doing most of the briefing to the Sunnyvale folk which was quite fun especially since quite a few of them were wearing Halloween costumes.