This is (was, to be more accurate) the home base of the beans - Seiko Communications of America - makers of the Seiko Receptor MessageWatch - a digital pager built into a wristwatch. It was great technology in 1992 when I went to work for them, but by the time they closed my office in late '94, cell phones had replaced the need for a lot of the pagers in the gadget world. Seiko totally closed shop and shipped the few remaining executives back to Tokyo a couple of years ago. As for the beans, they had a lot of fun in these walls.

This is my pal, Erich Franke, in front of Tektronix's worldwide headquarters. Tektronix makes oscilloscopes, logic analyzers, video test equipment, and other cool jazz used to either test or measure stuff electronically. It's a computer geek's slice of heaven, let me tell you.

Yes, Welcome to Beaverton. The lovely Paula Franke is the hand model for the beans today. According to the official Beaverton city Web site, Beaverton was incorporated on February 10, 1893, has an elevation of 189 feet, and had absolutely no trees left after the horrific giant killer beaver invasion in July 1906. OK, maybe I made that last one up... but you never know what could happen, in these days of cross-DNA splicing...

Bo Knows Beans!! This is the entrance to Nike's worldwide HQs. Gary says that they are not big on fancy signs here. (After paying Michael Jordan his share of the royalties, I bet they couldn't afford one! Heh heh.)

I didn't fully understand why there's a picture of the local Fox affiliate - so I went to the horses mouth, so to speak, for an explanation. Here's what Gary said: "What can I say? It just looked good." Ummm... OK... Anyway, Beans and FOX. If anyone can come up with a decent joke to insert here, let me know.

Finally, here's our friend Erich again, proudly holding the original, very first can of beans. This can doesn't get out much anymore - it's semi-retired, out of fear of what will come spilling out of its insides if it ever breaks open. But this ol' can holds a lot of sentimental value, and has more frequent flier miles than anything or anyone else I know!