On the PeiRoll..

Houston, we have a landing!

Sun, 06 Jul 2008 05:02:02 -0700

Finally, after 10 exhausting hours on the plane, and 3 hours going through passport and security control (where Nick was held temporarily because his fingerprints did not match his photo from the last time he was here or something), we are officially in Houston for the Microsoft Partner Conference.

I think almost everyone here is for the conference.

No smoking, No dogs and definitely No Guns at George Bush's Airport!

We haven't slept properly for about 24 hours so am quite jet lagged. Nick and co are staying near downtown, while I am in the Museum district. It all seems very spaced out and you need to get to everywhere by car. This lady asked the barman where we were having dinner how far to a particular bar she was looking for, and he said, "It's too far to walk, but quite quick on the cab - maybe only about 4 minutes."

4 minutes? Too far to walk for a 4 minute cab ride? Unbelievable.

Anyway - we had some very nice fritto misto and I had a zebra pasta. Looked a lot more interesting than it tasted though. It was just a sort of pancake with a pocket where they filled with seafood and seafood sauce. Twas ok for my first meal in the US of A.

Off to Houston!

Sat, 05 Jul 2008 05:54:20 -0700

I am off to the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, Texas! I can't believe it, I have been so busy that I haven't had time to look forward to it.

But am off in about 40 minutes. Going with Nick, Jeremy, Stuart, Dean and Malcolm. Woo!

Texas here I come!

Magee mee in Tesco Watford!

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 11:56:00 -0700

Check it out!!

I no longer need to cart them from home!

Random stuff

Wed, 02 Jul 2008 11:47:00 -0700

Jeff decided to get a new komputa and assemble the bits himself. Check out the monster heatsink!

That was triggered by my computer blowing out, so now I have new stuff, and Vista to boot! There are some nice things about it, but there are more things I dont really like. I half wished that I had never upgraded. It's got 8 GB of RAM (Yay!) but needs 64-bit Vista to support it (boo!) but now I can run multiple virtual pcs at once (yay!) but I can't run any of my old non 64-bit apps like Painshop Pro (boo!)

The jury is still out. It's got tonnes of stuff that annoy me, like it's messed up my profile and has a billion security stuff that just serves to hinder my productivity.

Anyway, here are some random pictures of Jeff being silly.

...like letting me clip his hair.

... or trying to be Mr Cletus, Mach 2.

Endofmonthophobia

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:08:28 -0700

... is a fear of the end of the month.

That's probably what I am getting... the last day of the month is billing day, when you have to reconcile your projejct forecasts/budgets with customer reports and timesheet, and invoice the customer for the time worked.

It is also the day when things are most likely to go wrong.

Our SSIS deployment have been giving us huge problems - not to mention, the extract data being not ready and the client UAT environment sitting on a virtual server (hiss!) on 2GB of RAM! c360 EmailtoCase is not working.

It's one of those days.

I have however, completed the 'Garden' Chapter in the book 'The monk who sold his Ferrari', recommended by my good friend Siva :) and am attempting to banish all negative thoughts and feelings.

Let's see how I get on. Ommmm.

Cardiff Hotel

Mon, 30 Jun 2008 11:43:00 -0700

Alison and I have been working our brains off for the project in Cardiff. I'm getting quite burned out. At least when we had a walk through with the steering committee, we stayed in the Park Plaza, which was WAY nicer than Barcelo Angel aka Fawlty Towers.

View of Cardiff from the customer's Board room.

This was the nicest room I have ever stayed in, in England.

I mean, check out the flat screen tv!

They even have a man and dog shrubbery in the middle of the hotel - how posh!

Jeff's Spy Games Birthday outing

Sun, 29 Jun 2008 11:41:11 -0700

So for Jeff's birthday, I booked us on an all-day Spy Games experience! It was quite a fun day out, although I had quite a severe hayfever reaction and my eyes just couldn't stop streaming. It was itchy as heck and puffed up as if I had been punched! We did quite a lot of things such as J-turns, pretending to be bodyguards, slalom driving, some unarmed combat and the like.

That's the 'Spy' van behind Jeff

The guys who ran the place were ex-marine dudes, and you could see how hard they were! I was quite impressed, especially with Paddy, who showed us the gagdet stuff and taught us how to draw our pistols and showed us how to protect a VIP! Funnily, we just watched Vantage Point yesterday, and we now understood what each bodyguard around the President or VIP was supposed to do!

"I'm Bond, Jeff Bond... showing a bored debonair look... "

Any way, as they say, a picture shows a thousand words, so here they are. Ooo I have also uploaded a video for the first time in my life to youtube, so you get to see my grainy video camera efforts on my Sony Ericsson phone! Apologies though - I don't yet know how to turn off the sound on my phone, and it was a very windy day!

J-turns on a wet tarmac, we had about 10 goes, of which I did 5 very well! Especially in the farty old Mazda.

Here we are, trying to protect Mr President when ambushed from the rear.

After learning how to draw our pistols, we had a quick draw competition.

... of which there was only one champion!

Jeff took his turn throwing axes at the evil agent chipboard ..

... but didn't get a 'kill'.

"Don't anyone mess with Rambo Jeff!"

We did quite a lot of other stuff, like shooting BB guns during recon missions, and practicing withdrawing techniques. It was really quite good fun, and a great day out to boot.

Office speak

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 18:25:40 -0700

I've been really busy, so haven't posted. But here's something amusing.

"Hated office speak". Embarrassingly, I use a lot of them, and they mean something to me!

18 hour workshift

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 03:24:05 -0700

Have detailed design doc for a highly complex MSCRM implementation due tomorrow. Alison and I have been tagging the document and pinging it back and forth.

We both work on it all day, and I carry on until stupid o'clock (like 3.20am. Like now.) and then she gets up at stupid o'clock (like 5 am) and carries on until we both get into work and then we get on with it. Last week I did it until 2am and then went to bed, whilst she got up at 3am and carried on.

We make a great team. Although my sleep addled brain may be making up things.

My top 5 Bestest Inventions Ever Invented... so far

Tue, 03 Jun 2008 22:13:00 -0700

1. Tape dispenser - so I never have to cut strips against the table corner.

2. Google Reader - so I can get my staple diet of the worlds most interesting blogs and news and other stuff that make me look like I Know Lots Of Things.

3. Internet - so I can chat with my parents and show off my new hair and get affectionate honest-parent-comments like, "It makes your face look like a moon". Where else can I get such honest comment? Sigh, a teleporter would be better, then I can just port myself home so mum can cut my hair for me.

4. Insoles - so my flat feet doesn't hurt when I run

5. Virtual PC - so I can install/test/configure/design/screen shot/ and ultimately screw up the whole thing, and all I have to do is to delete the .vmdk file and re-copy it over. NICE!