I was busy yesterday and didn’t get a chance to post. I came in late; it was due to a combination of staying out until 3 a.m. and forgetting to correctly set my pager/alarm clock. As a result, I got up around noon. Of course, I slept horribly last night. I couldn’t fall asleep until quite late, and my room was really hot.
Six days left….
14 items left on my to do list. And I have to add two or three more items.
I left for Athens on Tuesday evening and got here on Wednesday morning. It was a nine-hour flight, but fortunately I was able to fly directly and on business class. I was still a bit cranky after we landed. My coworker Geoff and I flew on the same flight. He took a photo of me on the bus from the airport. I am on the left; Geoff is on the right.
Business class on the airplane was great. I was able to get in some sleep; the seats reclined quite a bit. The food was also edible, and that was a real change for me. For an appetizer, I had gravlox and shrimp. I choose steak for the main course, and I realized too late that it would be cooked well-done. The airline also gave me a nearly-full bottle of Chianti when I got off the plane. They were going to throw it out if I didn’t take it.
I wonder a bit about some of the airline restrictions on flatware. What is the point of banning metal knives if you are going to hand out metal forks? Are forks somehow less dangerous than knives?
I am working on various computer systems in preparations for the Olympics. We estimate that we will shoot around 500,000 images at this games. The infrastructure required for the games is fairly significant. We have around ten Windows 2000 servers, ten networking devices, four printers, and about a billion desktop and laptop machines. Phil Jache, myself and half-a-dozen other people are doing a lot of work to make sure everything gets working in time for the games.
The weather in Greece reminds me a bit of the weather in Southern California. It is fairly dry and hot, but it can still get a little chilly in the evenings. The ground is arid, but it is still quite lovely.
The people here are very nice and friendly. I tried to learn some Greek, but I just ran out of time. Regardless, everyone goes out of their way in order to communicate.
The first night I was here, we all went out to a fantastic restaurant called Ithaki in a neighborhood called Vouliagmeni. Our table overlooked the sea. We had quite a few small dishes, followed by a whole sea breem baked in a salt crust. Wonderful, wonderful, wonderful.
Only seven more days to go. The sign in the photo below reads, “If you can read Greek, then you don’t need a translator.”
Actually, it really says, “Our celebration has come.”
Jason demonstrates why you really avoid writing about ex-girlfriends on your website. Even if her wedding announcement was in the New York Times.
Today the movers took away 68 boxes and 30 other items into storage. My old apartment suddenly feels much larger. I was up until 1 am last night packing, then I got up at 6:30 am to finish packing. I am a bit tired.
Next week, on to Athens….
Tonight we had a small problem with one of our RAID arrays at work. A drive in the array had failed, but every time the array rebuilt, it marked itself failed again. The entire process took around an hour and was constantly occurring. It took a few minutes to solve the problem; we ended up moving around 80 GB of data from one volume to another. In the end, it looks like two drives in the array actually failed. A RAID array can easily survive one drive failure; two drive failures generally leads to the loss of your data.
The problem wasn’t really that difficult to solve. It was just a matter of going through all of the correct steps to solve the problem. We didn’t even have a loss of functionality to our customers. The problem I had is that it got me a bit wired.
I first started working on the problem today between 7:30 and 8 pm, just as I was going to leave work. Unfortunately, the problem took several hours to solve, and I didn’t end up leaving work until 11:30 pm. I walked around midtown for a few blocks, but I remained wired. I took a taxi home and talked with a couple of friends at a local bar, Cafe Steinhof for a bit. I didn’t have anything to drink, because I hadn’t really had a substantial dinner. I didn’t have anything to eat, because I don’t want to eat just before I went to bed.
I talked with a few friends for a while; I just got back home from the bar five or ten minutes ago. I’m still a bit wired. On the bright side, I think once I hit my bed I’ll actually conk right out.
I have a lot on my plate right now:
I’m going to be wired for the next two months, I think.
My new apartment is on the edge of Brooklyn Heights, right next to DUMBO. DUMBO stands for “Down under the Manhattan Bridge overpass.” The neighborhood is literally underneath the Manhattan Bridge. Yesterday, I showed a bunch of friends the new place, and then we walked around DUMBO. We ate dinner and had a couple of beers at Superfine, a really great restaurant. After that, we walked around a little bit. It’s quite a beautiful neighborhood.
The Manhattan Bridge from Front Street in DUMBO
The Brooklyn Bridge from Brooklyn Bridge Park
The Manhattan Bridge from Brooklyn Bridge Park
So every time I spend some amount of money on my Amazon.com credit card, I get a $25 Amazon.com gift certificate. I’ve been saving them up for a while on Amazon; you can enter the certificate number immediately and redeem it later. This is a cool feature. I just spent over $200 on books and CD’s. With super saver shipping, I ended up spending exact $0 out of pocket. Well, right now that is. I spent a lot on the credit card before now. Here is what I got:
All of these links are links into Amazon.com. Amazon has a program called the “Associates Program.” It would allow me to create a link to Amazon that would allow me to get revenue every time a link was clicked. I thought about joining this program, but then decided against it. One of the clauses of the program’s Operating Agreement was:
Further, you acknowledge and agree that you will: (a) not, in connection with this Agreement, display or reference on your site, any trademark or logo of any third party seller on the Amazon.com Site; […]
It’s not the worst clause I have ever seen in a contact, but it is a bit obnoxious. Suppose I want to comment on the logo of a “third party seller.” Normally, I could include the logo here with criticism; that would be considered fair use. However, I could be in breach of my Amazon.com Associates Program agreement if I did so.
A couple of other clauses also made me uncomfortable. The revenue doesn’t make the program worthwhile for me.
I still like Amazon, and I’ll continue buying from them and linking to them.
Update at 7:00 PM: I received everything!
My friend Harlan is engaged to a very nice woman named Kathleen he met at their hospital. A bunch of coworkers and I went with them to Esca to celebrate. They make a very cute couple. Harlan is a neurosurgeon resident, and Kathleen is a speech pathologist.
We had a really great meal. Almost everyone had the tasting menu. (Anne abstained from the tasting menu due to the vagaries of what she chooses to eat.) We had several bottles of wine. At the end of the meal, Anne’s other half Stewart arrived with a friend of his and had several courses of their own as well. Phil and his wife Karen were also in attendance.
Here is a list of what we had to eat:
We also had an extra piece of crudo for each of us on a plate in the middle of the table: Sockeye Salmon with pink peppercorns. Sockeye Salmon is my favorite type of Salmon. It has a strong flavor and a beautiful color.
We had many fantastic wines, but I can’t even begin to describe them all. I could have enjoyed a white or rose wine; Phil favors red wines and he was doing the picking. That being said, we went through the gamut of heavy red wine types. The wines ranged from fruity with oak to earthy and dry.
Esca doesn’t seem to have a readily available website, so you can check out a short overview at Epicurious.
I visited John Kerry’s and George Bush’s sites today, and I found what I feel is an interesting contrast between the two web sites. Bush’s site employs significantly more negative campaigning than Kerry’s site. I took screen snapshots of the two sites, so you can see for yourself. I am a Kerry supporter. However, I have not altered the pictures in any way. I find the amount of negative advertising on Bush’s site a little amazing, but I am also shocked by the lack of negative advertising on Kerry’s site.
