Sam I am

Today is my last day in Athens for a few weeks. In around 40 minutes, I am going to get a cab to the airport, and then I’m off to Faisal’s wedding in Washington, DC.

I took this photo the other night. It was a four second exposure at a low iso with a flash. From left to right is Phil Fairbrother, Philip Jache, Geoff Michaud, Spencer Wise, Dimitris Karklidis, and myself. Phil, Phil, Geoff, and Spencer all work with me at Sports Illustrated and Dimitris is a volunteer. At the Olympics, they take in digital cards and use software I helped write to upload the images into our databases. Today, we uploaded 6,363 jpegs (14 GB). And that’s just for opening ceremonies and two minor soccer games.

Opening ceremonies were pretty nifty and very pretty, even though I did just see it on television. On the bright side, we didn’t have any annoying commentary. Well. At least any annoying commentary we weren’t making ourselves. :-)

I’m rambling on a bit. I got up before 10 am today; it is now 3:32 am. I programmed for over 10 contiguous hours, so I am pretty beat. I’m looking forward to sleeping on my flights.

Two days left. I wiped off a couple more items on my todo list. We are in really good shape. Almost all of our photographers, writers, and editors are here.

On the pub side, the ship arrives on Friday. I think things are going well, there, too. I’ll write up a bit more about what they are doing later.

I met the two Olympic mascots for the Athens games today. Pictured is Athena; the other mascot is Phevos.

Aesthetically speaking, I think this Olympics is quite beautiful. The color schemes are very nice, and most of the posters and clothing is refreshingly free of corporate logos. It was fun posing with the mascots. This photo was taken by Geoff Michaud.

I am staying at one of the Media Villages called “Selete.” The rooms are fairly nice. There is a small single bed in each room. Most rooms share a bathroom. I am sharing one with Geoff Michaud, Director of Imaging at Sports Illustrated. It’s pretty interesting how the bathrooms are shared. We each have a doorway to the main hall. Then, there are two doors at the back of the room. One door leads to a private balcony, and the other door leads to a hallway shared by the two of us. There is a third door in the hallway that leads to the bathroom. All of these doors lock from the inside.

Sunday morning, I got up a bit late and went to use the bathroom. I left the door to the private hallway open. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard housekeeping enter my room. They shut the door to the private hallway. I realized that they also locked the door, so I banged on it until they opened it back up. I told them that it was my room, and asked that they not lock the door. They smiled and nodded, and I hopped in the shower.

When I got out of the shower, I went to open my door. Of course, housekeeping had locked it when they left. Fortunately, Geoff was in his room. He was able to grab housekeeping and get them to open my door.

I wish I spoke Greek; I think what we had there was a failure to communicate.

If Geoff wasn’t there and his room had been locked, there is an emergency cord in the bathroom to summon help. But who knows how long that would have taken.

Anne, Phil, Mike, Martin, Demitris and myself all went to Ithaki on Saturday night to celebrate Anne’s birthday. We had a lot of nice appetizers and fish cooked two different ways. One was roasted in a salt crust, and the other was simply roasted. Anne looks both pleased and intimidated by the sea breem’s toothy grin.