Daydream Rich: Bill Gates & Xanadu 2.0
This week’s installment of Daydream Rich may be a bit obvious but DragNSync thinks it’s that important to mention. Bill Gates, billionaire / founder and owner of Microsoft / one of the most influential people of the 20th century, lives in a technologically advanced Pacific lodge style house which overlooks Lake Washington in Medina, Washington. The lodge (also known as Xanadu 2.0) and all of its glory are spread over 66,000 square feet and has a waterfront area of approximately 500 feet.
Looks somewhat average at first glance, right? Except it’s anything but. Here’s an aerial view:
Inside are seven bedrooms, 24 bathrooms including ten full baths, six kitchens and six fireplaces— all of which are surrounded by some sort of technological beauty that most other average homes don’t have.
Hundreds of microcomputers are used to make simple, everyday tasks, simpler.
The house lights are computer controlled and gradually turn on when someone walks into different rooms. Are you listening to music in the kitchen, but need to take a quick bathroom break? Not to worry! There are speakers beneath the wallpaper which allows the music to follow you from room to room. Gates’ guests are surveyed and given a über special pin to wear. The pin is connected to the electronic services of the house (music, lighting, climate) and automatically adapts to their tastes.
Other cool features include:
- a large private library with a dome shaped roof and oculus
- an Olympic sized private swimming pool with an underwater music system
- a trampoline room with a 20 foot ceiling
- a 20-seat art deco theater spread over 1500 sq feet
- a hidden beneath the forest, an underground garage that could house 20 vehicles
Here are more detailed images of different parts of the estate:
Don’t forget to download DragNSync today on your iPad!
How much would it cost to be Batman? This website says $682,450,750. Luckily, he can protect his secret identity for only $2.99!
Equipping the Man Cave: 9 Epic Card Tables
Having the guys over for poker night? You might want to upgrade your card table. Here are some ideas:
Ok, guys, seriously this time: no splashing.
Here’s an opportunity to show off your chainsaw carving skills.
Any ACC fans?
Great use of iPads.
As always, know when you’ve been beat.
Daydream Rich
Among the working class, you will frequently hear the optimistic utterance: “If I were rich I would…” followed by some ludicrous act of extravagance. It is said that when a person goes blind their other senses are enhanced to compensate. Similarly, the proletariat’s ability to fantasize compensates for his lack of resources and upward mobility.
The rich, however, typically abandon frivolous daydreaming for the more practical, calculated thinking required to attain financial wealth. Once wealth is then obtained they squander it buying boring, unimaginative status symbols. Only on exceptionally rare occasions do you find a person both fantastically rich and fantastically eccentric. Should you get the chance to meet a person like that, consider yourself lucky, because you are about to see the fruition of all that person’s wildest fantasies.Daydream Rich will be a recurring post on the DragNSync Tumblr. For our very first issue, we present you with Jay Walker, chairman of Walker Digital, creator of Priceline, and inventor with more than 200 patents. Walker’s daydream brought to life is this amazing, tri-level, 3,600 square foot library of history and human imagination. Enjoy.
Among the many objects in this picture, you may notice the large chrome, orb-like piece at the top, which is an original Soviet Sputnik.
View of the third floor. Artist Clyde Lynds created the intricate illuminated glass panels and many other visual elements in the library.
A first edition Encyclopedia Britannica, published in 1768.
A bridge made of glass on the third floor
On the table rests Andrea Cellarius’ hand-painted celestial atlas from 1660, which is the first published maps where Earth is not the center of the solar system, and a fragment from the Sikhote-Alin meteorite that fell in Russia in 1947—it’s tiny but weighs 15 pounds. 
Many of the books in Walker’s library are considered priceless. In the foreground of this picture, these books are all decorated with real gold, rubies and diamonds. In the first row, (open, with Post-it flags) an original copy of the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle, the first illustrated history book, and in the second row, the 1535 Coverdale Bible (the first completely translated into modern English).
The chandelier hanging from the ceiling is from the James Bond movie Die Another Day.
A full skeleton of a juvenile raptor.
A globe of the Moon signed by 10 of the 12 astronauts to have walked on its surface.
An Egyptian wooden sarcophagus (approx. 1800 BC).
A clutch of fossilized dinosaur eggs.
A miniaturist’s on-site painting of one of Napoleon’s battles (one of a series commissioned by Napoleon).
A page from a Bills of Mortality summarizing the week’s deaths from the plague year of 1667.
A leaf from a 1440 Illuminated Flemish Book of Hours.
A lunar module surface checklist that astronauts took with them on the Apollo 16 mission.
Congressional Space Medal of Honor given posthumously to Edward Higgins White, who died in a pre-launch test of the first mission to the moon.
A variety of gadgets including the Nazi’s infamous Enigma coding machine (center) and an 1890 Edison phonograph (back-right).
Phil Pirages (shown explaining a particularly unique book) is Walker’s antique book expert.
Finally, here’s Jay Walker showing off one of Gautier D’Agoty’s anatomical masterpieces
