Nothing to See Here

08:01 pm - Now with ankle-spraining video!

I predicted that there might be video of this on YouTube. I couldn't find it back then, but apparently the multi-talented J.C. Hutchins found video and posted about the event (not so much about my injury though) on MINE!

So, for your viewing amusement, I hereby present Jonathan Coulton, the zombie attack, and my injury -- LIVE ON THE INTERNET!


There! Was that fun?

Current Mood: amused

09:05 pm - I sprained my ankle on stage with Jonathan Coulton...

So, I, ur, fell and badly sprained my ankle while, ur, on a stage with Jonathan Coulton and three other people.

In Vegas.

( Oh, you want more explanation than that? )

Current Mood: sore

04:55 pm - TSA adds more incredibly burdensome rubbish that doesn't improve security!

http://laughingsquid.com/tsa-now-requiring-all-electronic-items-placed-in-bins-at-sfo/

"Wow, flying out of SFO just became much worse. While traveling this morning I surprised to find out that TSA is now requiring that you remove all electronic devices from your carry-on bags, including cables etc. and place them in a separate bin to be scanned at the security checkpoints."

11:36 pm - Conspiracy! =) Is Boeing's Randy Real?!

While looking for images of various Boeing 747 series planes, I stumbled upon this page, a blog on boeing.com called "Randy's Journal". It has a picture of a smiling somewhat elderly gentleman. If you follow the About Randy, it says:

"Randy Baseler is the lucky guy who gets to travel the world talking about Boeing’s perspective on commercial aviation. As vice president of marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle, Randy is always meeting with experts, analysts, and airline customers, and talking with aviation and business media."

"This is the home page of Randy's Journal, a blog of thoughts and observations hosted by Randy Tinseth, vice president, marketing for Boeing Commercial Airplanes in Seattle."

Current Mood: amused

06:32 am - Amusing/interesting tabs from my web browser...

So, my laptop failed to hibernate this morning due to the fact that there was insufficient swap space. Apparently the long-running Firefox instance (probably due to flash and the like) had eaten vast quantities of RAM. So, I drove to work with my laptop running (not suspended in any way). Shortly after I arrived, Firefox crashed (silly Firefox). Restoring my session (thank the twelve lords of kobol(TM) for restore) took ... a while ... due to all the tabs in all the Firefox windows it had to restore, so I figured, rather than having 10 million tabs open because I wanted to tell people about them but hadn't got around to it, I should actually, y'know, tell people about them and/or post them and/or just close them. So, without further ado, let me give you ...

( ... a circus of linkitude and pictoral fun! )

05:32 pm - Foodie geek-out

Thomas Keller was on our flight home from JFK to SFO last night.

Yes, THE Thomas Keller.

( more... )

Current Mood: geeky

08:56 pm - GPS Navigation? nüvi or not nüvi, that is the question

Hey readers of my LJ (I am sorry I'm not keeping up as a reader of anybody's LJ :/) ... I'm considering a GPS navigation system.

The title's a little disingenuous, but it amused me. Sorry. ;)

Costco has the Garmin nüvi 660 available for $600 until the end of the week, and I like buying from Costco because of the strength of their return policies/additional warranty coverage to 2 years for products which have shorter manufacturer warranties than 2 years. That said, however, in this case it's not necessarily the best deal, as Amazon.com has it for $591.20. Additionally, one has to consider that buying it from Costco it's really ~$650.

Then I did a little research and found that there's a newer model, the nüvi 680, which the review makes sound even better than the 660 (see also their list of reviewed GPS navigation units and ratings/accolades).

The 680 is available on Amazon.com for only $675, which compares awfully favourably to Costco's price on the 660. Alas, Costco doesn't offer the 680.

I've never owned a GPS navigation system, or any form of GPS actually, so I'm a newbie, and I figure there's folks on my flist (heh) who know GPS kit well. Advice? Suggestions? Comments?

Current Mood: busy

07:55 pm - LA weekend

So, this weekend I'm planning to be in LA. I'm not sure exactly when I'll be arriving. I'll be leaving on Sunday evening.

I will be going to see The Blank's "Young Playwrights Festival" on Sunday at 2:00pm, which will supposedly have Nicholas Brendon in it. At $15/person, it's a fantastic deal. The Blank is an excellent theatre company. If any of you are interested in going, buy a ticket and let me know, or something. :) I'll be there regardless.

I'm also planning to attend brianrubin's WalkenFest on Saturday.

I will of course also be going out for yakitori and ramen in Gardena multiple times. Probably at least Friday night (yakitori) and both Saturday and Sunday mornings (well, late morning/noon-ish) (ramen), and possibly also Saturday and/or Sunday evening(s) (yakitori). Let me know if you are interested in going and getting food with me! Seriously, it's frakking amazing stuff.

P.S. No, I'm still not managing to find time to read LJ (too much work and stuff on my task list outside work that's way overdue :/) and I haven't finished writing up our Japan trip. Sigh. I'll try to get to it soon.

Current Mood: busy

06:00 pm - Stop-gap update, or: "Where the hell are you?"

Hi all!

I've had no time to update. I thought I might update during our trip to Japan, but no frickin' way. No time. Too much fun stuff to do/see. Since then, I planned to update, including writings about our trip, but I haven't had any time (when your boss greets you with a too-enthusiastic, "Welcome back!!!", that's an, "Uhoh...", moment). I have my "trip report" about 1/2 written. I'll try to get to the rest soon-ish.

I've had no time to read LJ either. Alas, I think I'm well over a month behind. I doubt I will come close to catching up, but I'll see if I can get back to keeping up with the present at some point, at least.

I am now on twitter. It's sort of like LJ for IM. ;) You can use it via the web site, via your existing IM account/client, or via your SMS-enabled phone (if you're crazy). I use it via the web site and via Google Talk. It's kind of nice because 1 IM window covers all of one's twitter interactions. It's silly, amusing, and fun and stuff. Definitely not so much of a useful tool. I don't have too many friends on it, so it doesn't generate much traffic for me to pay attention to. Feel free to friend me if you're on twitter, or if you join.

I have uploaded some pictures from May 5th -- from the Silicon Gulch Browncoats meet-up, from making of chocolate-dipped strawberries for a Cinco de Mayo party, as well as other miscellaneous shots -- for "24 hours of Flickr". I chose to submit this photo to the pool (limited to 1 per person).



BTW, here's some pimpage for the SF "Can't Stop the Serenity" charity screening:



Hopefully we'll also be getting a south bay one, but it will be on a different night, so if you're really dedicated, you could go to both... :) I know I'm tempted. I haven't seen Serenity on the big screen (or at all, actually) in a long time.

-me

Current Mood: busy

09:52 am - I-551!

I now have greencard (I-551) status! :-) Back-dated to yesterday. Temporary stamp indicating GC status valid for 1 year, but will only be necessary until I get the physical card in the mail, which should be a fraction of that time! :) Yay! This means I can now work in GC status, rather than H1-B status, and I can travel (and return) at will. Woot!

Of course, since we haven't been married 2 years yet, it will be a "conditional" 2 year card, but shortly before the 2 year mark, we'll submit an application to have the two year limitation removed. :)

I had to get up obscenely early in order to get there ahead of opening time so I could be in and out of there with the stamp in my passport with the minimum of delay, so I'm exhausted and will now proceed to sleep for a while so I can be awake enough to start my work day late.

Current Mood: exhausted and elated

07:23 pm - Cheese!

While in town earlier today, we were on South Anne Street, and I suddenly realised that we must drop in to Sheridan's! We got to try lots of different cheeses while deciding what to buy. Of all the cheeses we tried, we bought 5:

Le Rustique (camembert):


Extremely creamy, rich and smooth. It's like a mature, wonderful brie, but better.



Blue D'Auvergne:


A medium-strong blue cheese, not very soft but not a hard cheese. Definitely salty. Very strong veins and large air bubbles. Quite creamy. Very good.



Gorgonzola Cremoso:


This gorgonzola is really very soft indeed. Creamy and very subtle/mild blue cheese flavour. No harshness. Very tasty.



Etivaz:


Apparently it's a cows' milk cheese from high up in the Swiss alps, and seemingly they only get it in this time of year. It'a rich, fruity, mature and very tasty.



Clonmore:


An Irish goats' milk cheese, Clonmore is unusual (as far as my experience goes) in goats' milk cheeses in that it is neither a soft cheese nor crumbly. It is about the firmness of a young gruyere or cheddar, but is clearly goat cheese ... without any of the sharpness one often comes across in goat cheeses..

Current Mood: exhausted

11:33 pm - Absolutely furious.

Flanvention II to be cancelled?!?!

The person who posted the link on Whedonesque accompanied it with a comment, "Can this be serious? How can a sold out convention be having financial problems? It makes no sense."

Damn right it makes no sense.

This makes me absolutely FURIOUS. The only way you can possibly have a sold-out convention have to be cancelled due to lack of financing is if there is disgraceful, horrendous mis-management. I am disgusted beyond words with Booster Events.

I stopped short of saying it on the Browncoats lists, because I figure it could be like throwing petrol on the flames, but ... this sounds like criminal negligence. It's not like they charged too little. The tickets were a similar price to last year's Flanvention, there's fewer headline guests than last year, I believe more people bought tickets than last year (last year didn't fully sell out), and yet ... they're having funding problems? Someone suggested in a thread about this that BE had used the funds from Flanvention II ticket sales to fund other underattended conventions. This sounds plausible and, frankly, criminal. If they can't afford to put on the convention, how will they afford to pay us all back for our purchased tickets?!

Current Mood: furious

12:46 pm - Browncoat Ball Retrospective

Photos from the Browncoat Ball, 2006

The following is a collection of links to photos from the Browncoat Ball posted by a whole slew of people (including me!), since this is easier to keep track of than hundreds of e-mails. :) I know waywardbound said he'd post a list on browncoatball.com at some point, but I can't find it yet, so I don't know if it's up yet or not and, well, maybe he can use this list to help populate it. :)

• Stephen
  
• Adam L-R (Friday, Cruise, SF, SaturdayNight, ChinatownTour, best-of album)
  
• Maribeth
  
• ziggybecket
  
• Corinne
  
• James 'danregal_ff' R. (Friday, BoatTrip, SaturdayNight, Sunday)
  
• Greg
  
• Mike S.
  
• Patti
  
• Brian R. (ArrivalThursday, Friday, BayTour, SaturdayNight, Swig, Sunday, best-of album)
  
• Jen and Bryan
  
• Norm and Barb
  
• Jen
  
• Rosie
  
• Gingi
  
• Celeste
  
• Paul
  
• Elizabeth (FridayNight, SaturdayDay, SaturdayNight)
  
• Jean
  
• Thad (Friday, Saturday, Sunday)
  

• Brian R.
  
• Jimmy Aquino (Part1, Part2)
  
• Article in SF/SF issue 32
  

• Video of the "Shindig dance" taught at the BCB
  

Current Mood: happy/tired/sick

10:41 am - Snake Threat Level Change!

Snake Threat Level Change for the Aviation Sector

Current Mood: amused

06:23 pm - Hand-crank-dynamo laptops?

On foot of the fact that Dell has apparently just issued a recall for 4.1 million (explosion-prone?) laptop batteries, we were speculating on our work chat system about TSA restrictions. Once they go back (assuming they do go back) to letting people consistently bring laptops on the plane after the current, what about potentially explosive faulty batteries (either accidental or used intentionally somehow)? Are they going to allow you to bring your laptop on the plane, but require you to check the batteries? Are we going to end up with hand-crank-dynamo-powered laptops on the market? :)

This lead me to the thought:

. o O (...you wake up to find an Iranian Chemistry professor cranking his laptop...)

Current Mood: ew

05:36 pm - US trumps UK again

I knew it couldn't last.

In light of the fact that people may be trying to blow up planes using liquid explosives too dangerous to mix beforehand (i.e. binary explosives), the TSA (the US organisation responsible for airport security) has come up with a fantastic(ally stupid) idea! Now when you go through the security checkpoint, they'll pour all liquids into a big vat right there at the checkpoint. Um, wait a sec... ur... um... did they forget about the BINARY LIQUID EXPLOSIVES?! Hello?!

In other news, apparently at least some US airports are making people check all electronics, including laptops and mobile phones, and are suspicious of electronics they don't recognise.

Current Mood: aggravated

11:05 pm - UK outdoes US in gargantuan stupidity

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4778615.stm

I guess I'm not flying to the UK again. Maybe ever (well, until they lift those PSYCHOTIC restrictions... on trans-Atlantic flights, they'll have people going postal... you can't even bring a BOOK?!). I'll really get depressed if any other countries start following suit... :/

Edit: It seems that the new security restrictions are in fact for the most part for actual good reasons, which makes it even more depressing, because it seems more likely that this will mark a permanent change in air travel. At least some of the changes will probably remain. The fact that you can't bring a book on the plane in the UK, I still maintain is crazy, especially for trans-Atlantic flights, but I guess they're reacting with tough measures really quickly and one can only hope they will eventually relax the over-zealous bits later.

Current Mood: angry

12:09 am - How appropriate is this?

More pictures!

Current Mood: amused and sleepy

01:58 am - Movie Night, etc.

So, I went to see 2 movies, back-to-back, tonight.

The DaVinci Code - Not having read the book, I really rather enjoyed the movie! I'm sure it's historically ludicrous, mythically nutso, and totally unfaithful to the book, or whatever, but I really liked it. While many of the puzzles and twists were not too surprising or were down-right obvious, it ehlp my interest and entertained me, and that was really all I was looking for. I imagine my reaction might have been quite different had I read the book, and I'm fine with that. I will probably read the book at some point, since it's been sitting on the shelf waiting to be read for a couple of years now, and hopefully that will be entertaining too. We shall see.

Mission: Impossible III - Ignoring all the various mediocre-to-terrible reviews of M:I-III, I knew I wanted to see it because, well, what-the-frak-EVER about Tom Cruise ... J.J., man! Frickin' J.J.! How could I not see it? Well, ok, that is a little bit of a silly question since I damn near let it escape theatres before I found time to see it, but ... ur... it's the thought that counts. People dissed it as being like a 2hr episode of Alias. I say it pretty much rocked because it was like a 2hr episode of Alias! The music and the on-screen locational cues were a bit ... TV, but it was really quite entertaining, and, well, J.J.! Oh, right, Philip Seymore Hoffman was bloody good as the awfully evil guy too.

Oh, hey, BTW... topic switch... someone took some great photos (not sure how they managed that given the 'no cameras' directive, but perhaps they had some dispensation, or perhaps they were just a major chancer) at the Serenity Premiere After-Party which urox and I (and quite a few friends of ours) had the honour of attending. Yes, I know this is many months later, but "ooh! pretty pictures!".

P.S. Happy 4th of July.

Current Mood: movied

10:45 pm - Free Serenity ticket

I have one (1) ticket to see Serenity at The Bridge Theatre in San Francisco at 11:55pm tomorrow, Friday 2006.06.23.

I am not going to make it, more's the pity (I wish I could) because we're planning to drive to LA really super-early on Saturday morning, and I'm already exhausted, so I cannot drive to LA on an hour or two's sleep...

... so, let me know if you want it! If you want it, you'll have to pick it up from me in Redwood City (at my office) or some time later in the evening (say, 8pm) further south (San Jose), I can give it to a colleague who's going up and he can give it to you up there, though that might be error-prone if you don't know him (Brian), and if you don't get it from him by the time he has to go in, alas that would be tough luck, as I don't want him to be inconvenienced if I use him as a ticket conduit.

Call me on my cell if you want it, or send me e-mail, or comment here.

See http://www.sfbrowncoats.com/ for further info, including info on people meeting up beforehand at a pub type place.

If nobody claims it, no problem. I just donated the ticket price to a great charity, so I don't feel bad about it at all. In that case, I'll give it to Brian and he can give it to someone random if the show sells out (perhaps making the person promise to donate the face value to Equality Now or something; if it doesn't sell out, I'd just tell him to hang on to it and make random people buy tickets, thus getting more money for EN :).

Current Mood: tired

10:47 pm - I wasn't boring!

Rather than sitting in my hotel room, I ventured bravely unto the breach (well, to Denver) and drove to downtown Denver and wandered around the 16th St. mall. It was interesting. Possibly a tiny bit sketchy at 10-11pm on a Tuesday night, but less sketchy than the rest of the city that I drove through. Yay! Now I can say I've been to Denver, not just DEN!

Current Mood: tired

08:18 pm - Things to do in Denver when You're Bored

You're in Louisville, CO. It's 9pm. You have to check out of your hotel room at 9am the next morning to have breakfast and drive to the airport. You have a rental car and a tank of gas. What do you do? What DO you DO?!

I may just be boring as heck and hang out in my hotel room, catch up on LJ (haven't been caught up in over a week), then go to sleep ... but ... but ... I feel like I ought to explore. I still haven't been to Denver itself, only to DEN, the airport. I have no clue what I'd do in Denver at 10pm on a Tuesday night, though.

Current Mood: curious

08:00 pm - What do they need such good eyesight for anyway?

My hotel is surrounded by cute little bunnies!

In other news, aglaglaglaglagl... Aged New York Steak, medium-rare, with asparagus, potato gratin, roasted garlic and a balsamic reduction at Bloom: OMGWTFYUM! Oh, and same can be said for the "Bars of Sin" dessert: rich praline base, heavenly chocolate mouse, coated in a beautifully perfect shell of shiny dark chocolate, with caramel and dark chocolate sauces, creme anglaise, a stylishly curved wafer drizzled with chocolate, and Bailey's ice cream. Oh, and some berries (raspberries this time -- which Damien took, since I wasn't going to eat them) and an orchid bloom (which I did not eat, and I did not give to Damien, though he tried the orchid on his plate, apparently, and it was purportedly bland).

Current Mood: satiated

05:06 pm - Colorado

So, I'm in Colorado. Louisville, CO, to be precise. I'm here with 2 colleagues, Matt and Damien, from my team at work, testing DCS at CableLabs.

After a horrible ordeal (I HATE United with a fiery passion) getting here on Sunday afternoon (yes, we wasted our Sunday sitting around in the airport, sitting around on a motionless plane stuffed into dispersed middle seats, and sitting on a finally in-flight plane), we found an awesome restaurant entirely by chance. We were actually going to go to a Gordon Biersch, but Bloom was in the same super-swanky, super-new mall thingy, and it looked so good that we went in. We did not regret it! The food was fantastic! The rack of lamb (medium-rare) was delicious, and I'm not sad that the aged new york steak (which also sounded great) was no longer available that night. Guess what? We're going back tonight (in about half an hour). Maybe they'll have the steak. :) The bread was FANTASTIC herb bread, with herb butter. The appetizer (warm brie, with whole roast garlic, roasted red peppers, crostini and baby greens salad) was wonderful, and more than enough for 3. Damien's Tilapia, which I tried a little bit of, was also stunningly good (and had a description longer than crankyfool's *$$ drink order -- it would've been about 5 lines -- wow). The desserts were utterly delectable. *DROOL* YUM. Good gods, yum! I am so looking forward to 40m from now when we arrive and sit down to eat dinner there again! :)

Monday, we spent the day at CableLabs, with a short trip to Chili's (the Louisville, CO Chili's is really good, BTW) for lunch, then had dinner at Il Fornaio, in the same mall restaurant-y area as Bloom.

Today, we never did get out of the lab for lunch! Instead, we had free pizza! Another vendor visiting the CableLabs Dev Lab had pizza brought in, and there was far too much, so they invited everyone to dig in. :) It was pretty decent pizza.

Over the course of the 2 days, it seemed at times like we were totally wasting our time, but in the end we managed to achieve everything that we set out to do, plus learned quite a few things about DOCSIS, CableHome and PacketCable. Oy. Such a lot of complexity. Oh, right, and we found 2 bugs... both related to options in the cablelabs DHCP option space ... which we have, of course, fixed.

Tomorrow morning, we fly back to SJC.

Current Mood: exhausted

11:46 am - Jewel blogs; Flan II update

Jewel Staite posted to her blog the other day, and confirmed (it was news to me) that she'll be at Flanvention II, which totally rocks!

So, so far we have Nathan Fillion, Alan Tudyk, Adam Baldwin, Jewel Staite, Christina Hendricks and Mark Sheppard confirmed as headliner guests. Nice!

Hopefully they (esp. Nathan, Alan, Adam and Jewel) can exert sufficient peer pressure on Morena, Gina (we can hope, even if the indications are that she may be avoiding doing conventions), Summer, Sean and Ron. :) Regardless of whether other headliners are reeled in or not, it is shaping up to be a heck of a lot of fun. I'm really interested to see who the non-headliner guests will be. Last year, it was really cool to have Yan, Rafael, Dennis, James, Jason, Jonathan and Camden -- oh, and kradical -- as guests at Flanvention. While I did get to meet all the headliner guests, I spent a lot more time just hanging out and chatting with the non-headliner guests. I thought I heard somewhere that Greg Edmondson might be at Flan II. Oh, and I believe The Bedlam Bards are set to appear. Anyhow. 'twill be fun, that's for certain.

Current Mood: anticipation

12:32 am - Sunday: Ramen, Pool, Bowling, Yakitori & back to San Jose

This is very late, but this is a summary of last Sunday, the last day of our whirlwind LA trip!

( This is a looooooooooong one, so behind a cut, to keep you all happy! )

What a fun weekend!

To summarise:

• Friday (and update)
  
• Saturday (photos)
  
• Sunday (photos)

Current Mood: tired

02:15 am - Back in San Jose

We got back home just a few minutes ago. Yay! Easy drive back from LA, comparatively speaking.

Current Mood: tired

12:36 am - Saturday: Costumes and Movies and Yakitori! Oh my!

( Summary of our day today... )

Tomorrow: Ramen, this time with a bunch of Browncoats (number yet to be determined), then bowling/pool/etc. with same at Lucky Strike at "The Block @ Orange", Orange, CA, then Yakitori again (yes, really), then drive home to San Jose, hopefully arriving home before 2am (if we're lucky, maybe even by 1am).

Current Mood: mmm

01:23 am - Ok, I lied

Well, not lied, but underestimated/understated crappiness.

Hotel really is bad. Lay down to go to sleep and started coughing and felt almost like I was having trouble breathing -- feels like from the dust, and I'm not someone who is sensitive to dust. I'd say I'm less sensitive than average if anything. Running the A/C unit on fan-only (effectively) constantly has I think made it a tiny bit better, though not a great deal (and it made it worse if anything when first turned on).

Also, first time since 2001 (Beijing -- or maybe Shanghai, but I think the hotel in Shanghai did better) that I've had synthetic bed sheets. Yuck.

Current Mood: blah

12:16 am - Droolworthy dinner, crappy hotel

We're camped out in a crappy hotel room ($4.99 for Internet access ["For the day?" "No, for your entire stay, no matter how long] and cheapness really being the only redeeming features). ExtendedStayAmerica, Gardena, CA: Just say no. Hotwire 2-star hotels in the LA area: Shell out more and go for a 3-star or better. This is really just advice to myself. Hopefully I'll remember.

That said, it is a room, with a bed. It doesn't smell too bad (though I'm not convinced it's a non-smoking room... hmm). There's a kitchenette we won't use. It is a place to sleep. *shrug*

Dinner at Shin-Sen-Gumi Yakitori (Gardena) was, as we knew it would be, pretty damned great.

( Details of wonderful Yakitori dinner behind a cut since it's ... kind of long )

Tomorrow, Shin-Sen-Gumi Ramen (Gardena) for lunch? Brunch? Breakfast? ... then hanging out with SoCalBrowncoats types, then Kinky Boots (what looks to be a hillarious British movie starring Serenity's own Chiwetel Ejiofor) at Arclight Cinemas (supposedly where 'Hollywood' go to see movies. Supposedly Best. Sound. EVAR.), then Yakitori again (mmm) tomorrow!

Current Mood: sleepy

05:33 pm - SFin'

So, I'm in SF attending a course on Solaris DTrace (as mentioned in my "Workness" post on 2006.03.17). Solaris is still ew, but DTrace is kind of cool, actually. I can see it being useful at times for work, since our products are built/supported on Solaris 10 as well as a bunch of other platforms (some of which I will not mention, for fear of making people sick; others which are quite sane, such as a variety of Linuxes [ok, SuSE/Debian aren't very sane, but RHEL is sane enough, modulo stupidity about core dumps being disabled by default, but a lot of platforms seem to have that particular stupidity]) so, well, hey, I can analyse[1] stuff on any of the platforms.

I am meeting tamino for dinner (at Hawthorne Lane -- YUM!) about an hour from now. Yay! This means I need to figure out how long it'll take me to walk to HL from Kearny & Washington. I'm thinking of budgetting about 15 minutes.

I really should try to get a bit of work done, but I'm being unproductive. That said, the class is pretty fast-paced and we're getting a lot done. The instructor's Canadian, eh? Flew down from Vancouver (eh?) to teach the class. He's a pretty good instructor and a nice fellow.

P.S. Yikes. Someone's selling an Enigma machine on eBay. Wow. Geek historic tech lust! I wish I was rich so I could buy it. :) Alas, not a frakkin' chance. :)

P.P.S. I am SOOOOOO far behind on reading LJ. Eeg. Too many posts! Well, mostly too little time. Had to get up at 5:30am yesterday morning to get to the course up here in SF by 9am. This morning, I had the luxury of "sleeping in" until 7:30am, a mere 2 hours earlier than I normally get up!

[1] I've lived here (USA) long enough that reading the text I wrote, I did a slight double-take at "analyse". Sheesh!

Current Mood: busybusybusy

11:17 am - Animals on planes

People should not be allowed to bring animals with them in the cabin of the plane.

Period.

I like animals a lot, but a LOT of people have allergies, and it's just plain obnoxious (at best -- medically dangerous at worst) to have animals in the cabin. The air in a plane ALL mixes. You can't just say, "Ask to be reseated further from the animal," depending on level of allergy.

I don't know how it came about that people were allowed to bring their cats and dogs in the cabin. Perhaps it's always been allowed in the US. In Ireland (I think in Europe in general, or maybe even more globally), if you wanted to bring a cat or dog with you, you put it in a really sturdy travel carrier that was designed to be put in the luggage compartment (I believe there is [was? if so, airlines need to put it back in!] a heated portion of the luggage compartment for precisely this reason), and ... that was it. I know people are very attached to their animals (I would rather have my cat with me if I were travelling by plane), but, well, tough. It's not fair to other passengers.

I have had occasion to be travelling with someone allergic to cats/dogs and have somebody bring an animal on the plane, and it is not a good thing. I was reminded of this when, a few minutes ago, an old woman was wheeled up in a wheelchair and seated a her bag put up on a chair beside a girl who was a couple of seats from me. The girl quickly realised something was wrong, and asked, "Is that a cat...? I'm deathly allergic!", and had to leave immediately for another part of the gate area (or further; didn't see where she went). "Deathly," was probably an exaggeration, but ... this really still shouldn't have to happen.

10:39 pm - Boston trip, day 2

So, maeglin73 put up a few pictures from day 1 at: http://gallery.caerleon.us/gallery/boston01

Yay for people with cameras (extremely nice camera, too) when I forgot mine!

I'm back in my hotel, having said bye to maeglin73 and Tale after dinner and to Mikko around 1am, after playing pool and bowling. I may try to do a little touristy stuff in the morning before heading to the airport. I'll see how that goes. I fly back to San Jose tomorrow afternoon. It's been a lot of fun, but I'm also really looking forward to getting home.

( Click here to see an account of stuff that I did today! )

Current Mood: exhausted

07:24 am - Two things I forgot to mention.

JetBlue rocks. Cheap as heck, 36 channels of live TV and ... completely contrary to what I had expected, they served quite a variety of snack foods (remarkably high quality/yummy stuff, including naturally blue potato chips and biscotti) and drinks, and were extremely friendly/helpful. The stewardess who most often served my part of the plane offered to get me several drinks at once if I liked, and did, and offered that I could take a selection of snacks, not just one, if I liked. I took the chips and biscotti, and she asked if I wanted any more. Wacky. So not what I was expecting. I mean, I heard that the service was good, but really, it seems like the only thing some airlines have over JetBlue these days is ... uh, well, you might get a pretty mediocre sandwich in a paper bag on your way onto the plane on an AA flight, whereas you just get snacks on JetBlue, but the snacks on JetBlue are better than any other airline ... and if I want a sandwich sort of thing, I can choose my own by purchasing a sandwich/bagel/something on my way to the airport/plane.

Secondly, "Patty" or "Pattie" is typically short for "Patricia". It's not "St. Patty's Day". If you want to shorten it, I suggest the normal short form for Patrick--Paddy. "St. Paddy's Day" or just "Paddy's Day" is fine.

09:13 pm - Boston trip, day 0/1

Left SJC at 8:15 last night, arrived in BOS at 4:50am. Had forgotten to print out information on the hotel that maeglin73 was staying in -- D'OH -- which meant I had to do some sluething from the airport to get the address of the hotel and confirm that I had the right hotel, as I was then to go to his hotel, bang on the door, waking the poor fellow, and kip for a couple of hours on the extra bed in his room. Woke up at 9am local (6am Pacific--yuck! I should probably have spent more than 0 minutes sleeping on the flight out and less of it making code 64-bit clean, watching DirecTV [a bit of Dr. Who; a show on BBC America called "Black Books" about a comical trio involved to varying degrees in running a behind-the-times book shop in England], watching video on my laptop [an episode of Futurama; an unaired episode of Kitchen Confidental] and lisening to my iPod) and drove to wizzu's hotel, via a stop at *$$[1] to grab something to keep me going until late lunch a few hours later.

( ...and then I wrote far more than I expected to about the rest of the day! )

Current Mood: funned-out/exhausted

07:36 pm - o/~ Airportin' across the whole US, all aboard the JetBlue plane, under Captain [insert name] o/~

I'm sitting in SJC, leaching power for my laptop from them and about to get on a JetBlue flight to BOS to meet up with wizzu and maeglin73 for a couple of days. Should be fun. Got restaurant recommendations for Boston from a waiter at (the fabulously fantastic San Jose restaurant) ARCADIA last night! :>

(Oh, and new, cool default usericon, created (ahem) right here in the airport!)

Current Mood: ready for stupid long flight