It makes sense since Seattle has Microsoft, Amazon, and other tech companies up there.

A few bonus gifts I've received this year:3 day deep sea fishing trip, all expenses paid 5 day fly fishing trip (guides included), $500 cash, Microsoft Surface Pro 3, bottle of Dom Perignon, and just last week an all expenses paid cruise to Alaska for my wife and I that we'll be going on next year.

Microsoft Visio works well.

I asked him nicely to provide a spreadsheet from his MLS access portal with targeted zip codes, absentee owner only properties, my house specs, and separated each column representing property owner mailing address, owner state, owner zip, first name, last name etc. so that it could be easily used with mail merge in Microsoft office.

Currently, I live in the RTP area but am moving to Redmond WA in October to start full time at Microsoft.

A couple people also mentioned the Microsoft Surface, but I'm not too keen on tablets (maybe it's just because I've never used one before).  

Buildium and I'm sure other similar programs will allow you to keep your books/run financial reports - IMHO more user friendly and readable than a Microsoft legacy product.  

Should I create a Microsoft excel doc and track them that way?

Why does Microsoft have $50 billion dollars in the bank, because they forgot how to spend it – no, so they have capitol for stability and new acquisitions!

If you are starting out then I would look to get a SFR closer to downtown Atlanta in around Mechanicsville (prices are lower relatively speaking), Pittsburgh, Peoplestown or look properties closer to Bankhead where Microsoft purchased a site for its campus.