I’m all for felines and the I’m really a fan of sinks but the unholy union of the two is a force of great power over humans. …Can’t … look … away … too adorable! Purring sounds … in my … ears … mouth making … cooing sounds … spirit breaking … I like Cats in Sinks!
…that flickr can blog your mobile phone pictures? This is a shot from the bridge to the entrance to the Benihana’s near TI on Forest Lane. We went there for Keith’s birthday which was a while ago. The landscaping at this place is really well done and must be very expensive. Plus they have real fish in their pond, possibly Coy but I can’t identify fish species.
- Erik
I’m glad to be back in Dallas, and I’m looking forward to the weekend. We got to our major milestone today at work, so I can rest easy over the weekend.
Last night I received my Logitech Harmony 880 Remote in the mail from OnSale.com and I am impressed. I’ve never had a stateful remote, which remembers the current state of the various electronic components and it is also able to operate at an “activity” level rather than the “fancy macro” level I’ve been slumming at with my current remote, the Home Theater Master MX500. My new remote even has a sleek recharging station and the software works on MacOSX. The only problem I had with the software was that it’s suppose to detect when a new config file has been downloaded, but this feature never seems to work. I’m pretty sure there’s a “Find Last Change” sort of API in MacOSX (Win32 had one). Anyway, I just double clicked the files and the programmer launched and took care of entering the data into the remote via USB.
On the gaming front, I’ve been renting Gran Turismo 4 from Gamefly. I know it’s supposed to be a *real* driving simulator, but, and maybe I’ve not been paying attention to my driving since I was 15, it doesn’t seem right. I’ve found it very difficult to pull off drifting (which is probably very hard in actuality) on the normal tracks. I also have found that it’s quite hard to just do a 180. Realistically if you are going down the road at 80 mph and cut hard and hit the parking brake, you’ll flip or break something on your car. In a video game I would expect that doing this manuveur would result in at least an uncontrolled spin. Neither happens. Instead of a spin or flip, the car just turns to the direction of the cut (but only up to about 100 off forward) begins sliding forward (slightly askew), and slowly rights itself back into the forward direction, though not completely. Maybe I’m playing with some safety mode on. If I continue to play these racing games on my plasma, I think I may invest in a driving wheel, since driving with a controller in most of these games is a little “wonky”.
I’m back in Dallas now and I’m fine mom. I missed my 7:25am flight in Nice because the ticketing counter in Nice for Swiss Air insisted they couldn’t issue my ticket again since it was originally for a BA/AA ticket, which AA said they could. So I instead went to the BA counter and found out that the BA flights to Gatwick were full so I’d have to go on standby. After about 10 minutes of typing at his console, the associate was able to confirm a seat for me on the 10:35am to Gatwick. I was also confirmed on the flight from Gatwick to Dallas. So I spent a couple hours in Gatwick poking around. I had lunch at this crazy automated Sushi bar called Yo!Sushi. Each of the plates on a conveyor belt are color coded to their price. One of unqiue dishes they had was a roll called “Spicy Chicken Katsu” and can be found on the menu. On the flight back, I sat next to a really old lady from LA who thought I had a New England accent. I don’t know what to make of that.
Huzzah! We’ve acheived a milestone of the project so I can come home now! It’s not as far as I would have liked but it’s quite an important one. My flight back is tomorrow at 7:25am. Ugh. Which means I’ll have to get up at like 5 in order to get through the airport customs in time and return the car and be up early enough to calm my “being late for my flight” anxiety. The good thing is that the hotel is only 5-10 minutes from the airport. So really the only thing I have to worry about is readjusting to CST (-6) from CET (+1).
Well I’m still here in France. I’ve extended my stay again to help finish off this problem we’re having. I think this is going to be the last extnesion. I’m getting pretty tired if living out of a bag. I miss seeing friends, sushi, and my sadly all my gadgets 
. I had to change hotels again due to a packed area because it’s summer in the Rivera. This current hotel was nearly impossible to get it to. I could have sworn that it was located in some sort of curved space pocket. I drove by the thing 3 times before I was on the right road for the entrance. I’d be heading straight for it, then I’d be on the higway somehow. Then I have to make a 4-6 km u-turn and try again. On the final appraoch I had to make an enourmous loop, heading completely away from the thing, Then I ended up driving right up to it. I don’t know how residents can form a mental map of some areas around here, their just too convoluted.
This is one of those pick-you-up links if you like cats. Junku’s airborne cats, a study of the jumping feline.
Technorati Tags: cats, sinks, cats sinks
Yes, I’m still in Nice France, on my business trip. I spent this weekend changing hotels (and then going back again) and lots of driving around the countryside in and around around the area\’s many towns. I drove down to Antibes and spent some time on the rock beaches there, but taking care not to get sunburned. I’ve posted a few photos on Flickr of my weekend excursion. You can find that here.
I had to extend my stay here from last Friday until this Wednsday. We’re pretty close to getting the project working so I’m getting excited about coming back. I’m scheduled to leave on Wednsday on a 7:25am flight which will end up in Dallas sometime in the afternoon. I’m not going through Gatwick like I originally planned, but back through Zurich.
Work has been hard, but we’re making progress. I’m enjoying my nights in the seafront restraunts and on the boardwalk. It looks like I might get to finish my work before I head home but we’re faced with lots of little issues that crop up at every turn. I worked most of Saturday and went to the beach (just out the door and around the corner really) and got sunburned pretty bad while at the “beach”. “Shoreline” would be a better description since there is no sand. The majority of the “beaches” in this area are covered with large pebbles and small stones, all rounded but still very painful to walk on. The sea water is a bit colder than I would prefer as well. I enjoyed the weekend butIi look forward to finishing my work here. I’m the type of person who can’t really relax unless I finish my work. Even though I spent Sunday afternoon on a french “beach” I couldn’t stop thinking about work. And it definitely was french. That’s all I’ll say about that.
Well, I’m back in France again on assignment for TI. It was a long flight but I sat next to an interesting guy from Texas who was on his way to Sadir City in Iraq as a contractor. He said that it was a tough job, but they fed you well and the pay was really good. I don’t think they could pay me enough to work out in 140 degree weather though.
I found that I remembered my way around fairly well. I was able to get to the hotel, and the office with no problems. I did a little exploring too but I didn’t find anything of interest.
There have been a string of problems on my trip already though. I found that my T-Mobile Sidekick II (Hiptop) doesn’t play nice with the local carriers here in France (Oragne J, FPR, and some other one). I can only assume that means that there aren’t any agreements between those carriers. I also found that my camera (a Canon PowerShot S400 Digital Elph) which has been flacking out recently is only getting worse. It can’t seem to use my 256MB compact flash card anymore. It claims that the card has an error on it, but when I use the laptop to scan the card, it has no errors. When I format it in the laptop the camera still can’t see it. When I format it in the camera, the camera turns itself off gives the error “E50″, which I interpret as an expletive directed at the user (it actually means “compact flash error”). And to top it all off, my DVD drive on the work laptop isn’t working either. Now I can’t watch all the movies I brought with me. It’s a good thing i always overpack my entertainment items. I brought several books, my PSP, my iPod, and even an old text book on Linear Algebra, which I am re-reading for the fun [sic] of it.
I also managed to pop the circuit breaker on the room last night when I plugged in a power strip I brought, not thinking that it, itself, would have a power requirement (it had a ground detection circuit). My thinking was that it would pass whatever power was already in the walls, this way I only had to have the one power pin adapter for a whole set of US plug devices (which all do their own drop down to whatever output voltage they produce from 220V 50Hz). It took about 40 minutes for the hotel to get someone to come throw the circuit breaker back on. Looks like I’ll have to buy a power strip locally and use all of my converters ( i brought 3).
