Excitement on the 6th floor, or how I spent my Sunday night.

Monday morning, yawn. Not lots happening today so far but I expected it to be a mad house today. Why?

Last night I get a call from my boss. The internet is down at work. We can’t get to our web server and the VPN server is down too. So I take another sip of my wine, because it is the weekend and we just had lil’David, Alex from London and my mother (who is in town visiting) over for dinner, and ask Dave to drive me to work after saying a few choice cuss words. This is 9:30pm.

I’m very happy to say that there was nothing that I could do to fix the situation when we got there. As we got closer to work we noticed flashing lights and as we got to work we noticed about 12 fire trucks surrounding the building. Seems that a electrical transformer caught fire on the 6th floor and they had to turn off the electricity. I wasn’t able to get into the building so I just came home after calling Paul and letting him know what had happened.

Up early this morning. Dress in Jeans and casual shirt, I’m sure I’m going to be doing battle with the Dragon when I get into work….. at 7am this morning. Walk in, look round, what do you know? It all looks good. Every server came back when they turned the power back on, the internet came back. It all came back?? After the last couple of weeks I fully expected to open the server room door to a couple of inches of water on the floor and all dead drenched equipment.

This was just amazing to me.

There is a smell of burning electrical wires in the building but I can live with that.

Now here’s the funny part. I sit down at my desk and Melanie from the London office calls. Seems that they have been evacuated from the office because of a fire nearby. She needs me to send a logo out. How freaky is that, fires at both big ULI locations. Strange.

Anyway the weekend was a great success. We had the most amazing dinner on Saturday night. It was supposed to be just five people and it grew to nine by the end of the evening. We had Jon and John, Tony and Kiat, Todd, Rob, Mom and Dave and myself. Salmon for the starter and lamb for the main. Fresh strawberries on pound cake for dessert. And about 10 bottle of wine. LOL.

Saturday morning started out with getting up at 6am, Italian classes at 8am (Stanania said I’m doing really well), go pick mom up at BWI at 12, stop at the Whole foods on the way home to get dinner for the evening. Get home and start cooking. I finished cooking just a little bit before the guest started arriving at 7PM. It was a very long day.

I’m meeting mom and Dave for lunch in Georgetown today. We going to go have dinner with Brett someplace close by his house tonight. Dave has to pack tonight because he’s going to Jamaica for work Tuesday. I’m working from home on Tuesday because mom is there the whole day. She leaves Tuesday evening. I then will need to plan for the next dinner party on May the 5th. I think Dave gets back on Friday.

Somewhere in there I get to sleep. LOL.

Busy weekend.......................Again.

Just for those of you who think we’re too busy. Here are the weekend plans so far…..

Tonight when I get home we’re going to study Italian until around 8. We tried to do it the last two evenings but work got in the way and by the time I got home I couldn’t focus on studying. After studying I’m dragging Dave out some place to eat. I don’t want to cook tonight at all. It will be an early night because of what we’re doing tomorrow.

Saturday morning Stefania is coming over to the house for an Italian lesion at 8 am, yes you read that right, 8 am on a Saturday. We’ll finish the class at 9:30 so she can make it to the school for her regular class. We’ll walk her over and pay for it there.

We then head off to Baltimore International Airport at around 10 to pick up mom. Her flight gets in a little after 11. On the way home we’re going to stop at Whole Foods and pick up dinner for a dinner party that I’ll be cooking for that night. Still not sure what I’m going to make but I’ll know when I see it. We’re having Tony and Kiat, Jon and John (hopefully), Mom and Dave and myself. So I’ll be spending most of the day cooking and talking to mom. I have an opening between the kitchen and the dining room so she can sit there and talk to me.

Sunday we’ll be figuring out accommodations for our trip to Rome, Italy in September. We’re still trying to figure out where to spend the most time and exactly what to do while there. We’ll be in Rome and Florence. Not sure if we want to do the hectic tourist thing or if we want to find a villa in Chianti and take it easy. I’m thinking the latter one for my mom and the hectic tourist thing for Dave’s mom. Conflict, I love it.

We also have Alex coming over for dinner Sunday night, I think I’ll invite Lil’David too, it’s a good chance for mom to meet some more of our friends. It will not be as elaborate as Saturday night’s dinner. More like comfort food that’s easy to make and good for you.

We had some good news I suppose. Dave is going to Jamaica early on Tuesday morning instead of Miami on Monday. Now he can be in the house while mom is there on Monday. I’m working from home on Tuesday so we’ll have someone there at all time. This makes me feel much better. Dave has to work in the morning but we’re talking about mom and him walking to Georgetown and meeting me for lunch on Monday. I like that idea.

And, you guessed it again, we have another dinner on Monday night. Brett is coming back into town after being away for a good long time(about a month it seems like). Now that Dave will be there too, it will be a nice sit around, chat and have dinner. I might have to put my foot down and “suggest” we go out. Since Brett is just getting back I’m thinking maybe meeting him closer to his house. He’ll be tired and it’ll be better for him and everyone else all around.

Tuesday, I’m working from home and that night I take mom back to BWI to go home. I might have my mac mini by then so I’ll have a project while Dave is gone. He’ll be back on Friday.

And you thought this would be a computer free blog entry. Hehe.

I hate computers part I

Ok, I’m ready to cry now. I just spent the better party of late yesterday and all the morning up until 1:30pm trying to install the new helpdesk software. It’s supposed to be easy. You just install it over the old version, right? Nope. First you have to install the service pack to the old one. Then you have to install the new one and import all the information into it. But the new one will not install on the same server as the old one even though they tell you it should. So I installed and uninstalled over and over again and finally gave up on it and went home for the evening last night.

I wake up at 5:30 am this morning so I get up and start working on it again from home with terminal services (remote control). I do that for a bit and then decide to come to work after getting ready. I’m here by 7 this morning. I decide the best thing for me to do is take one of the old servers and reformat it and start from scratch. I decide on the old Dynamics server. This is our old financial software server so I decide to make a full backup of is first. This takes most of the morning.

I then proceed to reinstall windows server 2003. It goes pretty smoothly. I tell it to use the whole disk for the install and then keep installing it. After a couple of hours it’s installed and the computer comes up to the blue screen and a desktop. I’m happy and then start to look around only to find that it hadn’t erased the partitions form the old install. So I still had a small c drive and a big d drive. I decide that I can live with this and that I will proceed with the new install.

I install the service pack 1 for windows server. I install SQL server. And then I start to run the automatic updates. Goes for a bit and then tells me the c drive is running out of space. It’s taken me all morning to find out that there REALLY isn’t enough space on the c drive. I then spend 50 bucks on a disk partitioning software to try and make the c drive bigger without having to redo everything I just did. I download it and then try to install it only to find out that I had downloaded the workstation version, not the server version.

Ok, I go back on-line to find the server virsion------$499!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I almost cried. IT really shouldn’t be this difficult at all. Anyway, I’m here right now reinstalling windows server 2003 on one honking huge c drive after I made for damn sure that it was erased and remade. Hopefully I’ll be done by the end of the day. Trying to get my serial number off of the eopen Microsoft website right now and it’s giving me grief. It’s been that kind of day.

Did I mention I woke up with some major allergies this morning? This only makes it ever so much more annoying.

P.S. Just a little request, if you read this leave me a comment. I do enjoy them. Thanks.

Lots to talk about this time.

Computers at work.

Computers at home.

Mom coming for the weekend.

Dave and my 50 year retirement plan.

Fist off I got everything up and working - at work - yesterday. Finally. The last server was much kinder to me then the first. It still has a few kinks to fix (maybe) but it’s doing what we need it to do right now and that’s a good thing. Hopefully nothing like this will happen again for a long time. It makes my blood pressure go up until I tell myself no one will die because of this.

We also got some more good news - at work. We’re hiring the new guy from Ohio. He starts on May the 21st. Iyante is thrilled to death about this. It will defiantly help in the transition to off site server hosting that we’re talking about. She’ll also be able to get to some paper work that’s fallen behind. Keep your fingers crossed he works out.

Now for the home computers. It’s starting to get warm here and I can hear the old Mac that’s my server making a lot of fan noise. Usually I hear this at night when I’m trying to go to bed. So what did I do, I purchased another Mac Mini. I did it with a friend of mine’s help. He works in the apple store on the weekends and can get a decent discount of 25% off. The only problem was that it was a custom order so it had to be assembled and it just finally got released for delivery today after being ordered on the 21st. (no I’m not impatient). So it should show up tomorrow or Friday.

Once I get it I have to transfer everything from my old Mini to the new one (I use carbon copy cloner) and then wipe the old one and put Mac Os X server on it. I then need to setup iTunes again on both computers and get email and my website working on the New(OLD) Mac Mini server. Once this is done I can decommission the old Mac server and we’ll then have a nice quite and cool office to work in again. Now all I have to do is find the time to do this. I need to learn how to live without sleep, that would solve a lot of my time problems.

This segways into mom coming for the weekend. I’m very excited about it. Dave and I talked about going down for the weekend but figured it would be cheaper to have one person come here then to have two go there. And get this, the airfares to charlotte (an hour flight) cost $375 from DCA (downtown DC). We have mom coming into Baltimore on Saturday morning for $198. I’ll be picking her up. I don’t know what’s going on with the airlines but the prices now-a-days are insane! You get treated like crap and get charged twice as much for the pleasure.

Unfortunately Dave now has to go to Miami on Monday for a meeting on Tuesday. I’m going to see if I can work from home on Tuesday so I’m at least there while mom is in town, she goes back on Tuesday evening.

I think Saturday might consist of the Portrait gallery followed by Tapas at Jalao and then a quiet evening at home. We might get the Italian class in early if Stafani can do it early. Sunday I think we’ll just lay low until the evening when Alex comes back into town. We’ll do a nice simple dinner with him. On Monday Brett comes back and he’s supposed to come over for dinner. Dave will be leaving for Miami that day to so there should be lots of excitement in the air. Hopefully I’ll be working from home on Tuesday. We’ll then take mom back to BWI for her flight back.

All this and I still haven’t gotten to Dave and my plans to retire by the time he’s 50. That’s what we’ve been working on the last few days. I think we’ve about decided we can do it when I’m 50 but not when he is. We have a spread sheet out with all kind of scenarios, some involving not spending any money and not working, some involving spending money and working part time. It’s very much a moving target but one that I think we can manage. Dave is calling it the next 50 years plan.

I don’t like thinking about it but it’s good we’re doing it.

I use to wonder what the heck I would write about in a blog, now I can’t figure out when to shut up. Go figure.

Computers, and why did I choose to do this for a living?

Oh my god, what a week. I’ve been so busy at work.

We had two servers go down on Friday, well one didn’t officially go down, I killed it. My boss told me to, really.

We need a development server to test out a new version of cold fusion (I’m just going to assume that you don’t know what I’m talking about but I’m going to say it anyway.). Paul told me to use this server that we’ve had since I got there 7+ years ago. So I wiped it and started over. Got a nice new install of windows 2003 and the developer’s version of Cold Fusion installed only to find out that Paul had put a production instance of Sharepoint on it. This wouldn’t be so bad but the person that was using it is coming up with a big dead-line and needs it back up. It has agendas for our spring meeting that starts in a couple of weeks. People log in and then make changes and then save it back. Up-to-date agendas that can be changed on the fly. People love it.

The other server I thought might have the instance of Sharepoint on it so I rebooted it to see if it would fix the problem. What you need to know here is that I didn’t set up Sharepoint, Paul did, so I had no idea where all its parts where. When I rebooted it, it didn’t come back. Dead, gone, ciao, bye bye. More work for me.

I’m at work until 9PM on Friday because of this little mishap, and guess what, it didn’t get it fixed.

Once again it wouldn’t be so bad working on the weekend but it’s the nicest weekend we’ve had in DC since last year. Absolutely gorgeous, the last thing I wanted to do was be stuck in a server room all weekend.

Luckily it was just Sunday that I went in. We had gone to Rob and Mikko’s on Friday night after I had gotten back from work and stayed there until about 3 that morning. Saturday I wasn’t in the mood for going into work at all. I did go to the circle with Dave and enjoyed the weather. We went to dinner and just had a great day together. Just what the doctor ordered.

I did go in for about 5 hours on Sunday and it still didn’t get fixed. I tried everything, and everything didn’t work. I do have a backup of all the data, the problem was the data didn’t want to get restored over the network. I ended up installing the backup software on a new install of windows 2003 and then attaching the tape drive to the server. This was great except that when I tried to restore it said I had to catalogue the tapes. Little did I know that it takes about 5 hours to do that? So I get fed up with the whole process and meet Dave in the circle again. I figure it can wait until today.

Dave and I go for a nice late lunch (4PM) and then head home only to be hijacked to JR’s until about 9 by Kiat. Boy was it was crowded! We had fun but it always proves to me why we spend most of our Sundays away from that place when we get up on a Monday morning. I’ll put it this way, we were both just a little bit slow this morning.

I did get to work and did a restore on the first server. I figure it’s best to do one at a time so I don’t screw something up. I did the restore following the instructions that the software gave me. It was working and I was so happy. And then it came time to reboot the server to finish the restore.

Booting,

Booting,

Windows starts.

Windows starts.

Windows starts.

Rebooting.

Rebooting.

Windows starts, kinda

Over and over again it goes without the Server really starting up. WTF?? I followed the instruction completely to a tee.

Ok, install windows over the restore and do a recovery.

Spend the rest of the afternoon reinstalling all the software from scratch. Restore the Databases. If I didn’t mention it this was a SQL Database server used for testing out web aps. Finally get the server up at around 4 today.

And I still have the other server to do tomorrow. It did the same booting, windows starting thing above after I restored to it too. Hopefully it’ll be nicer to me tomorrow.

Time to cook dinner now, I have a hungry tired looking boyfriend across the dining table from me now. More to come soon.

Another Drunken Brunch or the Day the Russians invaded….

Well, for all the intentions of being good this weekend it all went tits-up yesterday.

Evgenny come down late Saturday night. We were out eating at Mark and Orlando’s with Rob and Carlos and kept the table open for Evgenny and his posy. He had Cole and Dimitri with him when he arrived. The whole reason for them to come down was for Lil’David to take them to the club called 5. It’s mostly a progressive straight club. So, Lil’David shows up at the restaurant to meet everyone and we leave and end up going to our place for a night cap before they go to the club.

Dave and I were having nothing to do with staying out until ungodly hours clubbing.

I ended up making shots for the boys of vodka, triple sec, lime juice and Madori. They downed it and off they went. Rob, Carlos and Cole stayed over for a bit and we talked while sipping on the most amazing pear brandy. We ended up going to bed around one or two none the worse for wear. This is where I’m supposed to tell you how we got up early the next day and did productive stuff, well part of that is true.

I woke up at eight and couldn’t go back to sleep so I got up. Evgenny had come home around three or four, alone. Somewhere along the way he lost Dimitri. We found him later that morning but that’s another story. Dave and Evgenny stayed in bed and I did Sunday morning stuff, read the news paper, made coffee, got cleaned up and showered, that kind of stuff. Well after a bit everyone was up and we decided to do brunch. I got the bacon out of the freezer and started to thaw it. Dave went to the farmers market and got farm fresh eggs, French pastries and various juices and sparkling wine for mimosas.

Around 10:30 I started cooking. By 12:00 it was ready and Lil’David had show up with, you guessed it, Dimitri. We sent a text out to some more friends to come on over, Michael Torra was the only taker, Rob and Mikko decided to stay home and watch Shortbus and we never heard from Todd. I’m Glad Michael came over because he helped finish most of the food that was left.

Did I mention that we were also drinking this whole time, not lots but for a long period of time. The pear brandy is practically gone. To tell the truth I was a bit worried about Evgenny going home after all the brandy he drank. We did start having coffee later in the afternoon though.

We also played Jinga (sp?) and got trivial pursuit out but didn’t get around to actually playing it. So brunch started at 12:00 and kept going until about 9 that evening. Evgenny got another Russian friend, Misha, to come over and then they headed out to go back to Virginia Beach. I’m not sure why but Virginia Beach has a large population of Russians. Cole decided to go home too and Michael had to finish his taxes so he left also, so then there were three. At this point you would think it was over, but no. We had Sheila’s going away party to go to in Capital Hill.

So off in a cab Lil’David, David and I went. It was a great party and it was good to see Sheila before she left. We stayed for awhile, nibbled on the food and finished the white wine. (They ran out) Then home we came. I think I got to sleep before ten but I’m not really sure.

I’m feeling all the excitement catching up to me it today too.

All I really wanted to do was stay in bed all day. It doesn’t help that we have a nor’easter happening and it’s cold, wet and windy outside now. Bleagh….

After all this I forgot to say that it’s Emancipation Day here in the District. This day in 1862 Slavery became illegal in the District. All of the District government offices are closed along with schools. Lil’David has the day off because he works for the city. Here’s a quote about the Day from Wikipedia:

“The municipality of Washington, D.C., celebrates April 16 as Emancipation Day. On that day in 1862, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act for the release of certain persons held to service or labor in the District of Columbia. The Act freed about 3,100 enslaved persons in the District of Columbia nine months before President Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation which presaged the eventual end of slavery to the rest of the nation. The District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act represents the only example of compensation by the federal government to free enslaved persons.

On January 4, 2005, Mayor Anthony Williams signed legislation making Emancipation Day an official public holiday in the District. Each year, a series of activities will be held during the public holiday including the traditional Emancipation Day parade celebrating the freedom of enslaved persons in the District of Columbia. The Emancipation Day celebration was held yearly from 1866 to 1901, and was resumed as a tradition and historic celebration in 2002 as a direct result of years of research, lobbying and leadership done by Ms. Loretta Carter-Hanes.”

The funny thing is that by having it on this day, it pushed Tax Day back to the 17th. So what our local government does can effect everyone in the nation, cool!

Saturday April 14th, the weekend so far...

Saturday morning and here I sit with a banana and a cup of coffee. It’s 10:30 am and I’m waiting for my big Mac (G5) to finish copying over to a fresh Hard drive. I’ve decided to clean up our office and that means getting rid of the big Mac, the Mac server and moving everything around. I’m going to replace the server with a Mac Mini. These things are great, they take up no room whatsoever, they don’t put out too much heat and they’re quite. The computers that I have running now are way too loud and in the summer it will heat the office/guest bedroom up to an unbearable temperature. This is just the first step today, I still have to get the new mini and then move everything off of the old one onto the new one and then set the old one up as my web and mail server. This all takes time. We’ll be putting the big Mac on eBay. I’m amazed at how much people will pay for an old Mac. If I’m lucky, hopefully it’ll pay for the new Mac Mini.

We had dinner last night at Rory and Derrick’s. It was Ed, who is a person that we keep meeting there every so often and who I can never remember his name, Jim (who happens to be a world renowned economist and is retired from Cambridge), Sheila, Rory and Derrick and Dave and myself. It was quite a thought provoking evening. We were there from 8 until 11:30 so we had plenty to say. Topics ranged from Latin languages to missing the naked boy dancers in South East DC. And one particular story of Sheila's, who was a high powered big wig at some place, being taken out in Bangkok by one of the people who worked for her to a sex club to watch the live sex shows on stage. Seems because of her rank in the company the guy just treated her like a male collogue. She was mortified and talked about all she could do was look down and talk. So that explains a bit about how our dinner went last night.

We have our Russian friend Yevgenny showing up tonight at around 8pm. Dave and I already decided that we are going to let him go out and have a fab time without us. It can get sloppy when he comes to visit and we have way too much to do tomorrow.

Hello and goodbye, house warmings and bon voyages!

Ok, can someone help me with my spellings above if it's wrong? Thanks and on to the blog.....

Did I mention I ran out of oatmeal? I need to get more. M&M's just don't do it for breakfast.

Well it’s finally Friday and all I can say is think goodness. It’s been a long exciting week and I’m tired.

We had Rory, Derik and Sheila over last night for a chicken curry dinner. Sheila is Rory’s mother and she just got back from having a fabulous time in Key West Florida. She’s a widow and has taken the opportunity of being single to see the world. Good for her is all I have to say.

We had a great time talking about her trips and our trips and about life in general. And as always happens in Washington DC, we got to politics by the end of the meal. We had done so well for two hours. Oh well.

We did find out the Rory got a job in Cambridge for a company that’s the leader in Bluetooth technology in the world. He’ll be heading up their tax department. He starts the beginning of next month and will be leaving Derik here to fend for himself for awhile. They will be traveling back in forth for a bit. Derik wants to get his citizenship here and stay with Intelsat until he retires in two years. That way Rory will be covered with medical care here if he decides to come back. Intelsat is another progressive company that offers domestic partnership benefits and one of them is retirement medical coverage. Cool Eh?

This weekend will consist of Italian studding this evening, Friday, April 13, 2007, from 5 until 7 and then off to Rory and Derik’s for cocktails and dinner. Well be up in the morning for a little bit of writing on my part, Dave wants to study some more Italian. I can’t do that much Italian in a short period of time. My mind goes into overload and it just doesn’t matter what I’m looking at, I will not get it. Besides, we have a class at 12:30 so I’ll get two hours of it them.

We then have a house warming or something for the evening, I’m not sure what but it’s on Dave’s calendar. Hopefully we’ll be home early and have an early night. I getting too old for these late nights.

Sunday we have the afternoon off but we have a going away for Sheila in the evening from 6 until 8. Then off to eat and bed. A good way to end the weekend. Hopefully I will be able to get some writing and studying in during the afternoon.

Domestic Partner Benefits, who knew?

Ok, I made a mistake on Monday’s blog, it’s Kevin Kline, not Kevin Costner and the movie is called Trade. Andy added a comment mentioning it. Opps.

Eating oatmeal again, apple cinnamon, it’s the only way I can do it. Bleagh. I hope I still get some benefits from it after all the sugar and fake flavoring!

We had the best news at work last week and I’m thrilled. They started offering Domestic Partner benefits. I have been asking for these since I got there and it’s finally happening.

I think what happened is the one of the big wigs here moved to Palm Springs with his boyfriend. He kept his job at my company and is telecommuting and I think his boyfriend quiet his job. So, one of the qualifiers for keeping him at my company had to be that domestic partner benefits be offered so his partner was covered. Also, come to think of it, our CEO just came out recently! totally forgot about that one. I don’t mind how it happened just so long as I benefit too.

We get some of the best medical coverage in the industry, well actually in the US. My company is very generous. Even the girl that works for the insurance company we use doesn’t get coverage like we do.

We also get free Legal services. It’s time for Dave and myself to redo our wills, living power of attorney, medical power of attorney and I think that’s it. It’ll save us a good $400.00 each. Didn’t even know we had this one.

Another one I didn’t know we had is World Travel Assistance. We get this at no extra cost. All you do is call them, no matter where you are so long as it’s another country or 100 miles away from where you live and they’ll do Medical services (Locating medical care, Insurance assistance, Emergency evacuation, Transportation for family member or friend, Hotel convalescence, and remains return-icky), Emergency payment/cash assistance., Legal Services, ticket replacement, credit card replacement, baggage assistance. All in all kind of nice to have considering how much we travel.

We can also get extra Insurance; I can get some for me and then get some for Dave too. It’s amazing that we can do all this considering that there is nothing like domestic partner benefits in the US. I’m very excited about getting this all together and handed into HR. Dave is coming down to my office this afternoon and we’re going to get everything notarized.

Been busy working too! Not as interesting though.

Went to bed early last night, I was just plain tired and it’s still cold here. Feel like a million bucks today. Ready to face the world. I will work out today too.

As I sit here eating my oatmeal…

I’m thinking, this stuff is supposed to be good for you. That must be why I think it’s gross. The things I do to try to stay healthy.

The working out, not drinking and eating mostly vegetarian seems to be working only after one week. My trousers fit better and I feel thinner. I’ve been doing 50 minutes on the treadmill every day and I’ve been feeding Dave and myself things like veggie chili and beans and rice. I save my greens for lunch when I have a spinach salad. Now if I can just keep this up.

Exercise, don’t smoke, exercise, eat right, die anyway.

This weekend was pretty good and not as hectic as the last few. Lil’David came over and we watched Shortbus on Friday. I have to say I like this movie but it’s not a movie that you would take your mom to go see. It’s the next best thing to porno with a good story behind it. Very explicit sexual scenes, that actually helped the story along but man, it was porno. Go see it if you get the chance but not with parents or the auntie.

Saturday was Italian class and then we headed over to Rob and Mikko’s for a Brunch. We were late because of the class but everyone else got there around 1, we were there at around three. We had to stop and look at an open house which delayed us a little bit more. Well we didn’t leave Rob and Mikko’s house until about 12 while some people stayed on, lil’David being one of them. The next day, Sunday, Alex and lil’David came over for some veggie chili. The funny part was Dave and I were having no part of drinking anything else alcoholic this weekend. Lil’David Kept joking that he’s been having brunch since Friday night and that it hasn’t stopped. We got the vodka out for him but all I wanted was a little food and to curl up next to David on the couch. After dinner Lil’David headed out to JR’s to meet up with Michael Mathews, Kiat, Rick and whoever else was there. Dave and I wouldn’t touch JR’s with a ten foot pole at that point.

Speaking of curling up on the couch, we had a fire all afternoon because it was bloody cold here, still is. We’re expecting freezing weather again tonight. Charlotte North Carolina, where I’m from, broke and all time record for cold in April with a low of 24 F last night. Weird weather, we also had a layer of snow on the ground on Saturday. Which was very pretty because all the blossoms where out and had what looked like frosting on them. I will try to get some pictures that David took and post them.

We watched a German film Summerstrum (or in English Summer Storm) last night, why you ask? Well because our friend Andy (the one who’s living in India) while he was in Cape Town hooked up with this really cute German guy. The guy even slept in our apartment. He happened to be a director and has a film coming out with Kevin Costner next year. His name is Marcco and he directed Summer Storm. It’s a very good movie about gay coming of age and coming out. I’ve seen so many of them that I was kind of dreading this one. It was worth it though. If you get a chance, rent it.

Today is a weird day at the office. It’s not an official holiday in the states so everyone needs to work Friday and Monday. But people take it off as vacation time to do the family thing. There was no one on (these three words are strange to write together) the streets on the walk to work today and there isn’t anyone in the office yet. I have a few things to do so it will be good to have a quite day.

Ok, I'm a Trend follower, not setter.

Here is the lateset blog exercise. Enjoy.

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What kind of American Accent do you have?

Lil'David pointed me in this direction and boy is my accent screwed up. ;-)

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The South   That's a Southern accent you've got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don't have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it.
The Midland
Philadelphia
The West
The Northeast
The Inland North
Boston
North Central
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Dave is Officially Back!

And I’m so happy. He got in safe and sound on Friday. He wasn’t home for more than a couple of hours before I had him out on the town for dinner.

I wasn’t cooking.

We went to Hank’s oyster bar around 7 and it was already filling up. We sat in the back and I had fried oysters and peel and eat shrimp while Dave had coriander encrusted tuna. Very, very good food but the sticker price after Cape Town was a bit of a shock. I picked up the bill after Dave looked at it in amazement. I told him just not to think about it and that he would get use to the prices again soon. Not that that’s a good thing.

Little David came for a glass of wine and then we went to Cobalt for a drink, we didn’t stay long. We where home and in bed by 11.

Saturday was quite a full day. After puttering around the house in the morning we went to our Italian class at 12:30 for two hours. We then went for messages at Deluka’s at 3:00. After that Brett came over and we headed to Rory and Derrick’s place for a cocktail party honoring Sheila’s (Rory’s mother) return from Australia. That lasted from 6:00 until 8:00 at which point we go over to Rick’s place to help celebrate Rick’s birthday. Dave stayed until about 10 and just couldn’t make it and more so he went home. I left with Tony and Kiat later and forced Tony to stop by Alberto’s pizza on P Street.

Home, eat pizza, bed. In that order.

Sunday was spent trying to get Dave’s computer back onto the new wireless network I set up. I spent most of the morning and much of the afternoon working on it. Dave went off to the gym while I fixed it.

I got a call from lil’David (as he’s beginning to be called) that he wanted to come pick-up some of the books that we gave him so I said come on over. Then I get a call from Alex that he and Gustavo are on their way to the house after house hunting (Alex is going to move back to the states from London). They both work for Untied as flight attendants and worked the same flight from London to Washington. It was a bit of a treat for us because Gustavo stopped coming to Washington and we only see him when we go to London. The timing was perfect, lil’David showed up and then the London boys showed up and they finally got to meet. You can only hear about someone so much without meeting them. So when it finally happens it’s really fun.

Lil’David left after a bit to change for the BB-Q that we were going to at 6:00 so the London boys stayed and we had coffee until Dave showed up.

We then headed over to lil’David’s house to see where he moved to. Very nice, close-in to town, two bedroom flat. So at this point it’s Alex, Gustavo, Dave, lil’David and myself at the flat. Lil’David had invited Ken to come by and look too, Ken in turn invited Brett (who is an ex of Gustavo). Brett has no idea that Gustavo is there and when he shows up and sees him, well let’s put it this way; I’ve never heard Brett squeal like a 9 year old girl before. So next shows up Kiat and Tony with Rick in tow. I think that only Kiat and Tony and Dave and myself had invites, everyone else was an invite of an invite or an invite of an invite of an invite. We’ve got quite a group now and head over to Rob and Carlos’ house for the BB-Q.

It was a very nice BB-Q with lots of cute boys everywhere. At one point Gustavo points out that he’s a 3 tier invite, which was true and quite funny. I got to catch up a little bit with Jimmy and Berry, it had been way too long since I’ve seen them. Alex is smart and leaves the party at 7:30 because he has to work the flight back in the morning. So does Gustavo but as he said “I’ve woken up” so he stays and proceeds to get drunk. All I can say is that I feel for him this morning. He had to get up at 4:30 to be there in time. We leave and I’m in bed by 10:00. All in all a good weekend.

Dave and I plan on eating vegetarian all this week and not touching alcohol all week (empty calories!) We might have Tom and Genève over with their new baby on Wednesday. They’re in town for a wedding and will be staying with Kiat across the street. It will be good to see them.

Holly Cow! It's the reverse of the Bees Knees.

I just saw this article and it has me a bit worried. Maybe I wont go on that diet after all.

Dave's Home cooming!

I’m so excited I can’t stand it. Dave will be home tonight around 6ish. He’s going to be jet lagged for days but we still set up an Italian class for tomorrow. I haven’t even looked at my Italian book since before South Africa so I’ll be very rusty. I almost feel like everything has been on hold until Dave gets home.

On another note, I’ve gone around the house and made sure everything was in order. All the beds made with clean sheets, dishes washed, trash taken out, clothes washed and ironed and general tidying of the house. Don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t that bad it’s just that I let some things go for a bit because it doesn’t bother me but would really bother Dave. I did miss one thing. Little David got out a lot of our CD’s last weekend and I haven’t put them back. I think I might have enough time to do that when I get home tonight. Wish me luck.

Looks like another fun filled weekend is in store. Tonight will be a couples night, probably dinner and then bed. Tomorrow we have Italian lessons in the afternoon and not really sure what at night, depends on how Dave feels. Sunday Alex will be in from the UK and I think we’ll invite him to go to a friend’s house for a BB-Q. Should be pleasant enough.

Oh, and the cherry blossoms are supposed to be in full force on Saturday. I’ve been here so long I’ve become Jaded so I’ll probably skip the whole thing. Why go see it again when I need to see the real ones in Japan, right?

iPod World

I love my iPod

I hate my iPod

I started thinking about this when I went on vacation and I wondered that maybe I’m not the only one thinking about it.

I’ve had my current iPod for two years and before that I had one variation or another almost from the original that came out in 2000. And all this time I’ve been shutting the world out.

Since I’ve been back from vacation I’ve not used my iPod. I use to use it on the way to and from work and in the gym. Sometime during vacation I stopped the noise addiction and starting hearing the world around me again.

Did you know that birds sing and that weather makes a noise?

I’ve begun to think that the iPod isolates you in very unhealthy ways. I can walk to work and back without hearing or seeing any of my surroundings except for maybe the occasional traffic signal. In the past few days I’ve seen the daffodils blooming, heard the dogs in the park, listened to the wind go through the trees and heard the traffic. The sounds of the city can be amazing and I’ve cut myself off from it for close to 7 years.

I would rather be a part of the world, not a part from the world.

So that leaves me pondering about my iPod. Do I keep it? Do I ditch it? What value to me does it have other than to cut me off from my world and the rest of humanity?

Stay tuned, after I’ve been back for a bit I may just want to isolate myself again.

Ok, Meez too

Fun with Meez, Joining the ranks. Enjoy.

Interviewing Potential Employees

This morning was great fun. PM had interviewed this guy for a helpdesk/project manager/network engineer a week or two ago and told me a little bit about the guy.

What he said wasn’t the good.

When you go to a job interview, no matter what, do not talk down your current position and employer. Or talk about getting into someone’s face. This guy talked about doing both. Bad sign.

The dilemma we had was that the other three candidates that PM interviewed last week either didn’t come close to what we wanted or had a job offer already. Unfortunately the one we wanted got another job. He was young, energetic, full of enthusiasm and knew what he was talking about. Oh, and he also had a good way with people. No wonder he got a job so fast.

So we bring this guy back in for a second interview with the whole department, PM, JW, LG, IA and myself. We had JW and LG on the phone and the rest of us where in a conference room. He’s right on time and first impressions aren’t bad. We then sit down and proceed with the interview. I’m up first and ask some of the usual questions about IT.

What was your most challenging/rewarding IT experience?

Can you work with -blagh –blagh –blagh kind of software/hardware?

Do you communicate well with others?

Where do you want to go in the future in this field?

All of the common questions

I wasn’t impressed with his answers, or lack thereof. Some questions just were not even answered. Like JW says, he kind of almost interviewed himself and rambled with the answers he gave. He also came across as not really wanting to learn any new things until forced, which is a very bad thing in the IT field were things change daily.

We keep him there for about an hour and then walked him to the door.

The after interview meeting was interesting, we went to PM's office and called LG and JW; everyone was a thumbs down. We were asking PM if there were any other candidates. He assumes that there are and that the recruiter is on it. It’s a very tight market right now in DC for IT help and you don’t want just anyone. They need to be able to fit in with the organization’s culture and your team.

I guess we’ll just treat this one as a test interview until the next one shows up.

A weekend in the life of Mr.

Well, what a weekend. Kiat and I started out on Friday after work at Laurel Plaza where we went to met up with Jason, Britton, Amy and Mary. At least I think those where the girls names. They didn’t talk to Kiat and myself very much.

We stayed there for some (strong) frozen margaritas. Then everyone, but Kiat and myself, went to see a concert of some band I don’t know. Kiat and I then went to eat at Hank’s oyster bar. We got it into our heads that oysters would be the only thing that would do. Well, 48 oysters and two oyster shots (Thanks Ken) later we go to Jr’s to meet up with David and his friend Mary.

There’s a little bit of a story here. Jr’s had been closed to “redo the floors”, which they did do but everyone knew the real reason. They had served an underage person and the city closed them down for a bit. Friday was the first time they had re-opened and they were being super cautious. So, David’s friend Mary had an expired driver’s license and they actually checked out the expirer date. She couldn’t get in. Sooo… off the Halo we went.

We stayed there for a good long time, Mary got in no problem. I ended up leaving Kiat there and David and Mary came back to my place and stayed in the guest bed. We also got a pizza on the way home and ate most of it. David woke me up around 9 to say goodbye so he could make sure Mary got on her train to go home. Had a slow morning and decided to go shopping.

I had originally asked David if he would like to come to the mall with me and he did but he’s moving and had to stay at the house to wait for the Salvation Army to show up. Of course they came 5 hours later. I called Kiat and off we went. Now the only reason I wanted to go to the mall was to go to the Apple store and pick up the new Apple TV. Which I did. But. We ended up spending a lot of money. After the mall we went to Georgetown to the Diesel store, and get this, got parking right in front of it. That never happens. I got a pair of nice pants and Kiat purchased half the store. It turned into a 1k day for both of us. Eek.

After shopping we went and picked up David and Ken at Ken’s house and then went to Bistro Du Coin to meet up with Rick. We ate some very French food, shared a bottle of pink Champaign and then proceeded to go back to my house to sit on the deck and have drinks. A lovely time was had by all.

The next morning I made breakfast for Ken, David, Rick , Kiat and myself. Rick and Kiat went to Kiat’s house while David and Ken stayed in the guest bedroom. Just so you know Kiat lives across the street from me.

1 lb bacon

3 Rather obscene Italian sausages

Lots of mushrooms cooked in the bacon grease.

Beans

1 dozen eggs

Oh, yes, we also had mimosas and coffee. What we’re thinking of I don’t know. At some point Rick and Ken had to go. So David and Kiat and myself went out into the afternoon. And somehow made it to Jr’s for two dollar vodka. I stayed for a bit but then just got to the point where I was like “go home” “now”. Luckily it was still quite early and I got home in time to get a good night’s rest.

Dave comes home soon. Next Friday and I can’t wait. Let the countdown begin.

Andy's Blog has pictures too.

I forgot to mention that Andy has put up some great pictures of Cape Town too. Not to mention that his blog is a interesting read anyway.

Every day life starts to settle in.....

OK, so I’m not as miserable by the end of the week as I was at the beginning. All the jet lag is gone and I’m actually smiling at work again. Which is a good thing.

Bret had me over to his house for a mid-week dinner last night. The evening started out with Kiat coming over to my house to chat and have a glass of wine on the roof deck. It was an amazing evening, about 74 degrees and still sunny. We talked about the Cape Town trip until about 6:30 at which point I needed to make a mad dash to Bret’s house for dinner, stopping along the way to drop off clothes at the cleaners and buy a bottle of wine for Bret. No matter how much time you give yourself to get to Bret’s, you always need more. 30 minutes is just about right if you don’t have errands on the way. I was sweating buckets by the time I got there.

Dinner was great, Ken was there and we treated it like a school night. In other words I was headed home around 9ish after only drinking a little bit of (excellent) wine. All is good in the world and then Kiat texts me “we’re at Cobalt, stop in on the way back” So I did. And to my credit only stayed for two more drinks. I was at home and in bed by 10:30.

It’s Friday today so I’ll be heading out of work early and going over to Laurel plaza to meet up with, you guessed it, Kiat for happy hour. Little David will met up with us at some point and I think we’re going to go eat and then bar hop. It could be a very drunk evening. I need to be somewhat good because I have a few things I want to do tomorrow and one of them means getting up around 9.

Speaking of things I want to do tomorrow, I’m going to the Apple store in the mall and I’m going to get an AppleTV. If they have them in stock. This will be my big purchase for the month. Once I get it I should be entertained setting it up and connecting it all for at least 1 or 2 hours. LOL.

I’m off to lunch with my boss now.

Kiat's Cape Town Pictures.

Ok, Kiat just put up pictures from Cape Town on his blog and all I can say is wow. Lots and lots of pictures with less words. Go take a look.

Tuesday, and still Jet Lag!

Jet Lag, who knew it could take so long to get over? I’m still tired, going to try and workout tonight though. Sometimes that gives me energy.
Work has been interesting so far, most of the problems that I’ve fixed have come from the people off-site and most have to do with blackberries, oh my favorite of favorites.
I did get in trouble for miscalculating my vacation time by what I thought would be a little over a day under but turned out to be close to three days under. Can’t say Paul (My boss) was too thrilled about that, I wasn’t either. I don’t like being put in the hot seat. It makes me very uncomfortable. Not going to happen again.
Tonight will be an evening of giving David his card from Anton along with a couple pairs of underware that where left in the wash in Cape Town. Afterwards we’re going to get something to eat. I’ll probably do some laundry too. I was getting used to having a maid everyday on vacation who did that. Coming back to reality has been more like a crash landing and less like parking in your garage.
I’ve been invited on Sunday to a going away party for Andy Post, who happens to be leaving for San Diego on the next day. That was a bit of a shock to me because I knew nothing about his leaving. You go away for close to three weeks and the world changes.
Ok, enough about all this excitement since I’ve been back. On with life (and work).

The Trip back.

Frankfurt, oh Frankfurt, oh how I love thee……

That was my feeling as soon as I set foot in the first class terminal. Mind you the flight wasn’t bad at all but there is some amazing calm at being in a first world country that I can’t explain.

I think my main gripe about the trip back was that Jo-Berg is a mess, totally. They put us on a bus to go to the plane, which was parked by a boarding ramp attached to the terminal. Why they didn’t use the boarding ramp I’ll never know. Lots and lots of people everywhere. I got there just in time to find the first class lounge, pee and leave for the plane. Next time to SA will be direct to Cape Town.

I’m missing Dave already. I got a text from him saying that he watched TV all night and that it was strangely quiet in the apartment. Wish I was still there. What a great time was had by all and so sad to be leaving it.

I have to say that I love Cape Town, so much so that I would move there and Drag Dave along. As we sat the last day at Salt eating lunch with Simon, I remarked that it was good to have Dave stay a bit and see what real life was like there. To which Simon responded “it’s exactly like this” as we sat and ate our amazing lunch. Oh to have that life.

Enough for now…..later.

Cape Town South Africa 2007

Well ok, sorry it’s been so long. One of the things I found out about South Africa in general and Cape Town in particular is that internet access is very expensive. Relatively few people have private DSL. I’m writing this from the dining room table looking out over the ocean. I’ll then take it to the internet café and upload it.

So here we go.

Here are some pictures of the Place we’re staying. We were very lucky to get this place. The views are stunning, there is plenty of room and it’s close to most everything that we need to get to.

This is the main living area above.



Here is one of the views from the balcony.



And another looking up the beach.



Above is a picture of the place we’re staying from the beach.



We didn’t start taking pictures until David and Brett showed up on Sunday. Dave and I kind of kept a low profile until then. We had dinner with Simon and went out to the local gay bar – The Bronx. We also got invited to a very Afrikaan’s event on the Saturday before everyone else showed up. Mark, the owner of the property where we’re staying invited us to what I can only call a high-school dance with a bar in it full of youngish Afrikaners. It was a blast and not something everyone gets to do who’s visiting.

Here are some pictures from the first day of having everyone here.




This is us having a drunken lunch on the first Sunday where everyone was here. It’s at our favorite restaurant in Cape Town, Paranga. This is our friend Andy who came out to see us from Mumbai India.


This is everyone on the deck this Sunday. Tall Simon has his back towards us. Little David is the one in the bathing suit. I’m behind him with the sun glasses on. Brett is lying down and Andy has his back towards us in the background.


Monday we tried to go to Robben Island but they were sold out so we went to the top of Table Mountain instead. This is one of the most amazing views of Cape Town you’ll ever see. We froze to death while we were up there. Tony and Kiat went on Friday and almost burned up. Depending on the day you can do either.



Behind the smaller mountain in front is where our apartment is.




This is a view of downtown Cape Town from Table Mountain.




A good picture of me with the view in the back ground that I was privileged to witness.




David and Andy looking down the mountain. Kind of scary.

On Tuesday we had tickets to go to Robben Island at 5 that day so Dave and I decided to work out while Little David went to the beach and others just hung around the deck. We then got the call from the Robben Island people that it was too windy to go that day and that we would need to reschedule which we did to Saturday. So we just ended up going to diner and then out to the Bronx again. We went to bed early and woke up early the next day for a long day out. Cheetah petting and wine tasting. (Sounds kind of like lawn mower repair and cappuccino doesn’t it?)

We rented a van and a driver for the day, that way everyone could partake of the wines and we would all get back safely.

After getting everyone up and ready (getting 8 gay people to be ready to leave early in the morning is a lot like herding cats) we first stopped at Spier. This is where the cheetahs are, it’s a conservation area for the cheetahs and they make their money by letting people go into the cages with the Cheetahs and pet them. Look below.




Little David, Andy and myself petting a young male Cheetah whose name escapes me.

After petting the pussy cats we went to a nice long lunch at Reuben’s in the city of Franschhoek. This is like having lunch in the Napa Valley. Below is the menu. This was one of the best meals that I can remember having. Brett chose the most wonderful wines, the oysters were to die for and the duck was just amazing. After we got back to Cape Town and started telling locals where we went, they told us it was one of the best in the country. Way to go Brett for making the suggestion.




Tne thing to remember is that you get 7.5 Rands for the dollar and 15 Rands for the pound so going out to eat for us was cheap. What would cost 40 dollars in the States would be 12 in South Africa. I’m talking about some of the most amazing food too. It’s also hard to spend more than 30 dollars on a bottle of local wine. I guess I’m just saying that I’ll need to go on a serious diet when I get back.



Above you’ll see the gang. We have Kiat, Little David and Brett on the left and we had Tony on the end. Daniel, Andy and Dave are on the right with Dave in the Back. I’m taking the picture.



Chris in his natural habitat.




Kiat, David and Brett.





Here we are boarding the magic mystery bus after visiting a lovely winery.



Belly up to the bar, at yet another winery. Very cool place.




See Dave and I did travel together.



A size for everyone.

We go to another vineyard and then off to Stellenbosch to waste a little time before we head up to Tokara for dinner.

Before I show the pictures for Tokara you need to know a few things. We have a few world travelers in our group. Kiat and Tony are regularly doing fabulous trips to Asia and beyond, Brett has been known to be sent to amazing places for work. So, when we got to Tokara for sunset drinks on the porch overlooking the valley going back to Cape Town and they were speechless I was thrilled. It made me feel great that I was able to show them something like that.



Here is the view from the deck.




More wine. It’s a lovely rose sparkling wine.

I would like to have more pictures for the food and the inside of the restaurant but at this point we were tired and DRUNK. So I do have one picture but it’s so blurry you can’t make anything out.

After dinner we crawled to the magic bus and went home. Most of us slept but Tony and Daniel had a fascinating discussion about satellites the whole way back. I learned quite a bit in though my dreams. LOL.



The next day was the day of my birthday, the big 40. Now the only problem is that we tasked Tony with the picture taking and well, he’s not here anymore so I don’t have those pictures. We’ll just say that we ate at 95 Keerom and had an amazing time. They put us in our own private room and closed the doors. Thank god.

Here is a picture of little David and myself before going to the restaurant on the deck of the flat.



It’s a hard life but someone has to do it.


Our friends Brian and Dale, who we met in Rio, live in Cape Town and were lovely enough to invite us to an amazing cocktail party at their house on Friday. Little did we know that we would be in store for.

Unfortunately we didn’t think of bringing cameras and I’m really sorry for it now. In Cape Town they have an area called the Bowl, it’s mostly down town and has most of the business district along with residential along the top going up the mountains. We arrived at their place after going up and up to a gated community. We followed the road up to the end and there sat the most amazing place I think I’ve ever seen. In Cape Town there are lots of houses on the hill sides and most of them are being overlooked by other houses. Not this house. It was at the top.

The front of the house was all glass and it had a deck with a pool and Jacuzzi that overlooked all of Cape Town. Think of the pictures that you see of the house in LA that overlooks the city. We had views of Table Mountain, which is lit at night. The inside was something out of architectural digest. I wish I had pictures because I can’t express in words how amazing it was. We stayed there until about 2 in the morning.



The next day was Saturday and now we’re off to Robben Island, now I’m not sure if I’m spelling it right because it’s Dutch and means the Island of the seals. This is the island where Mandela spent 18 years of his life during apartheid. It’s about 12 miles from Cape Town by way of ferry. We first did a bus tour of the Island where you could see all the famous areas where they made the political prisoners do manual labor. The funny thing is the island has lots of wild life too. We saw springbok, penguins and get this, rabbits, lots and lots and lots of rabbits. There are no natural predators on the island to curb the population. Here are a few pictures.



This is inside the prison where Mandela stayed.



This was Mandela’s cell where he stayed for 18 years. Amazing what people can live through.

We stayed there most of the day and then went to eat in the V.A. Water front. Kiat and Tony left at this point. They had to catch a plane that evening.

The next day is Sunday and it’s time for most people to leave. The only problem is they need to go by 5:30 in the morning and we’ve stayed up until 2 the night before. Actually, little David didn’t go to sleep but he had someone to help him stay awake but that’s another story for another time. Dave got up and helped everyone get out, I had said my goodbyes the night before so I wasn’t about to get up.

Andy didn’t wake up so there was a 15-minute rush to get him packed and out the door. I had a hunch he might have trouble because he stayed up and edited some of the photos that you’ve seen in this blog until about 1. Anyway, no one showed back up because they missed their plane so it all worked out.

We spent the day taking it kind of easy; it was a bit of a relief to have everyone go if not a bit sad. Dave and I walked to Paranga for lunch; they have this huge bicycling event that was happening on that day so we had to walk because the roads were closed. There were 42 thousand bicyclists and it started at 6:30 and went on to 6 at night. Huge event. We then came home and Daniel moved in and we went to eat in De Waterkant. That was pretty much it so far.



I do have some pictures of when Kiat, Tony, David and Andy drove down to the end of the cape on Thursday before my birthday dinner. Dave and I had gone before and I didn’t realize that Tall Simon had set up a birthday surprise for me so I was at the spa for a facial and pedicure. Enjoy the following pictures.



The boys on the cape.



They have baboons at the cape; here is a mother and child.



This is the light house on the cape.


Another view of the cape.



And now for a few parting shots of everyone’s time here.


Wine with friends.


Chilling with friends.



I have to say, all in all, this was the most amazing holiday/birthday I think I’ve ever had. And I still have a few more days to go.

I also have to say that I feel blessed to have friends that would travel halfway across the world to spend my birthday with me. That’s the best present in the world.

I’ll be updating the blog again in a few days, maybe from the Frankfurt airport. We’ll see.

Frankfurt, Lufthansa 1st Class Terminal

Well, first off there will be no pictures. I thought my laptop had Bluetooth so I didn’t bring my usb cable for my phone to connect directly. So now, no conectie no pic.

Sigh

We arrived early this morning and took a cab to the Kapinski hotel where we were given a day room because we’ve flow Lufthansa first. We ate breakfast and then sleep for awhile. We then got driven back to the airport by private limo to the 1st class lounge. That’s where we are now.

I love this place. The limo stops and they come out to greet you. You are the only ones here there so you go right through security and straight past the duty free to the lounge part and for us, to the restaurant. Today they had a special there of giant prawns done in an Indian style. We just did the Mediterranean tapas and some local German wines. All in all not a bad experience.

It’s about 8pm here and our flight doesn’t leave until 10:20. They will come and get us around 9:40 and take us to our airplane by way of a chauffeured limo service( Porche or Mercedes) . This is one of the coolest bit of this service. Once you are driven to your plane, they stop everyone else getting in and then you walk to our seat in the upstairs. People think you’re a rock star. ;-)

We’ve finished with the computer/internet stuff for now and are going to get another glass of wine and go shopping in the duty free. This is the only place I know where you can take a glass of wine with you to shop the duty free. Love it.

Anyway, it’s a tough life but someone has to do it.

Fun and useless

Visitied Countries. Looking to see more



create your own visited country map
or check our Venice travel guide

Special thanks to Andy for the link.

Dilemma on Travel and other irritations…

Well, Dave and I are going to Capetown with the journey starting tomorrow. When I booked the Award tickets months ago the only flights they had down there in first class where flights stopping in JoBerg and carrying on to Capetown on South African airlines in business. This is fine but after posting a question about it on flyertalk I realized it would be better to go direct without the connect in Joberg where it can be a beast in immigration. Also we would then have to drag our luggage to the domestic terminal while swatting away the “helpful” locals. So. I’ve been looking on the ANA star alliance award tool everyday to see if first class opened up on the direct flight to Capetown. This morning it opened up, it’s an A340 (which I like) and it has availability for the direct flight to Capetown from Frankfurt. Here is where the dilemma comes in. I have two secured first class tickets right now. I know the award people and how bad they can be. I had one ticket on a previous trip get canceled when I called to make a change after they told me everything was ok. I fixed it two days later but It could have cost me my vacation. You have to get the right award reservation agent. I also wasn’t sure if they would have to cancel the trip we have booked to make a change to a segment. In the end it just wasn’t worth the risk of changing them. It still gave me a twinge of excitement that we might get the flight we wanted. So now its onward and upward with the original plan/tickets. I still want the direct flight though. Today is a beast at work too. Paul, my boss, has had the whole weekend to think of things that might go wrong while I’m gone. Not good to come into in the morning. The first thing that happened was Martha (aka Marthra) couldn’t get onto the new mac server again. She sent an email to Paul and he forwarded it to me stating that “ he didn’t want to have to deal with this while I was on vacation”. I had it set up to use our Active Directory for authentication. This worked for a day and then would quit. You would have to re-bind the mac server to AD domain everyday for it to continue working. So this was more of a “it’s cool I can do this” kind of thing and not really necessary for the server to work. I ended up creating local user accounts for the mac people and enabling guest access for the windows folks. Seems to be working fine with one level of complication eliminated. The second thing is Paul is freaking about the Day light savings time change that congress approved and that is being implemented this spring. This is going to happen halfway through my vacation so he wanted to make sure all the patches where installed and working. They are. I did have to push out the fix for Outlook by way of a group policy. Hopefully I will not be getting any calls in Capetown. We also have Dave Wilson on call if something horrible happen, which I doubt. I think we’re going to buy a 30k video conference system after Paul and I have a meeting this afternoon. Should be cool if we get it. The next post will probably be from the First class terminal in Frankfurt on Wednesday.