Greg

Flying during the holidays

Ever since we missed our flight to Vegas a few months ago, Clodagh and I have been fantastic about getting to the airport early and enjoying the newly redone concourses at Sea-Tac...  And, when you try to check-in online and it tells you you can't assign yourself a seat, it's another good motivating factor.  For my Sea-Tac -> Dallas (and vice-versa) flight for the trip home for Christmas, I couldn't get a seat when I checked in.  Had to go see the gate agent.  This, as you might guess was not a confidence-building message to be getting on the start of a many-hour journey.

Eventually, after everyone else has boarded and three calls for people to give up their seats because the flight is oversold, I get a seat on the flight.  Back of the bus.  Middle seat.  Between two smelly folks speaking spanish across me for the first ten minutes.  Luckily, right as I was about to ask if either would like to switch seats so they could continue their conversation one went to sleep and the other started reading.  And then the lady in front of me tried to put her seat back.  Once, twice, thrice - each time it hit my knees without moving anywhere...  So, she turns around looks at me, looks at my knees and says "I think that my seat won't go back because it's hitting your knees."  Really?  What gave you that idea?  "Yes, I know."  I say.  Then, she has the gall to ask "Can I just put it down a little bit?"  Apparently I look like I have adjustable legs - I'll just shrink them a little bit.  "No, not really." Is the nicest response I can manage.  Sheesh.  Somedays it'd be great to be short.

And this is why you don't golf in the winter

A couple of my friends and I are talking about establishing a USGA handicap so that we can potentially try to play at a couple courses this summer that require a certain skill level to enter.  So, I had this brilliant idea on Friday - let's get started now and go play this weekend.

Getting there on time was almost a comedy of errors, but I got there with two minutes to spare.  And discovered that the course is playing all temporary greens.  And it was just two of us playing.  Being brave golfers, Bruce and I forged onward and took off for the first tee box.  At which point in time the full impact of the pro's "the ground has been 20 degrees for the last week" sunk in.  Teeing up a ball?  Forget about it.  Getting under a ball with a wedge?  Forget about it.  Amazing roll down the concrete-like fairways?  You got it!

A little more than an hour, and nine holes later we finally admitted defeat and will try again some time when the nights haven't been as cold.  But now I know that when you drive into a normally packed course and the parking lot is 80% empty, there's a good reason for it.

San Diego in the wintertime

Got back from a quick weekend trip down to San Diego (obligatory photos link).  Having a direct flight makes all the difference in the the world in whether or not you can go somewhere for a weekend without needing to make it a long weekend and take a day off.  At one point when we were walking around in t-shirts and sandals, or looking out over the gorgeous sunset both Clodagh and I had the same "I wonder if there's jobs down here" thought.  But the more I think about it, the more I think that it would just be miserably hot during the summer.  Who knows, maybe the ocean keeps it sufficiently temperate that you wouldn't notice/care.

I'd been to San Diego once a couple years ago as had Clodagh, but there's still a bunch of stuff we'd never seen there.  And now that we're back, there's still a bunch of stuff we've never seen there.  :)  It kinda goes with my tourism philosophy: "If something seems really cool then go see it, but don't rush around trying to see everything.  And don't make (extensive) plans."  We had thought we'd probably go to seaworld or the zoo, and ended up spending a really relaxing afternoon in La Jolla instead and seeing the retired aircraft carrier Midway.  Maybe we'll get to the zoo or seaworld next time.

Random celeb sightings while we were on the trip:

- Sen. Ted Kennedy in the Sea/Tac airport.  Wow does he look really old

- Ricky Williams at our hotel.  He's really really big.  Somehow football players don't seem quite as large when you're watching the game on TV

When Linux Advocates Strike

Possibly the strangest experience I had while in Ireland this past week involved running into a bunch of Linux advocates.  Then night before our flights out, we met up with a couple of Clodagh's friends at a pub in Dublin (Porterhouse) for a pint or two and some catching up.  Partway into the night, Clodagh came back to the table with a CD someone had given her.  She hadn't really looked at it, but on further examination it turned out to be a couple CDs of the Ubuntu Linux distribution.

After a while, I turned around and started talking to these guys...  They definitely enjoyed it when I turned down a CD set telling them that I work at Microsoft :)  It was weird to have a geeky conversation talking about the merits of the two different approaches in the middle of this pub in Dublin; something I would definitely have expected in Seattle not Dublin.  But perhaps I've been selling Ireland short in how much tech interest there is around. 

Anyway, the most interesting parts of the conversation to me were:

• One of the guys had just finished an intership working as a tester in MS Redmond.  And then promptly went back to his Linux users SIG :)
• The level of discourse.  The person who was most likely to have a sane conversation and not just rhetoric was the guy who had interned at Microsoft.  The others were just interested in telling me why open source was better - then again after a couple beers I wasn't really listening to them talking back to me either :) At one point I asked them if anyone installed and tried this from the CDs they handed out at pubs and they wouldn't answer me.  Instead the guy started telling me how he had been Windows-free for 10 years and that his wife used it as well, etc.  When I asked again, specifically "do you know if anyone from the pub you given CDs to has tried it and stuck with it?" he couldn't and wouldn't answer the question and instead talked about the community support philosophy, etc.  A politician in training if I've ever seen one!
• On the community support thing, if you do run into the right people it can be helpful!  The organizer of their shindig thinks he knows why I wasn't able to get Linux to work on my computer when I tried to install it a few months ago.  Apparently the distribution I chose uses an old version of the kernel and the support I need is in the new one (and has been there "for the last 6-7 months").  Keep in mind the machine I have from Dell, they've been selling for the last 18 months.  Ignoring the fact this means I couldn't have used it for the first 12 months of it's life, it makes me wonder if they seriously expect the people to hunt out the distribution that works with their system from all the different varieties available???  It's just way too much hassle.  I want my computer to Just Work(tm).

If there's one thing that Linux definitely has going for it, it's the dedication of the guys like these folks.  On the other hand, if there's one thing that Linux has against it, it's the occasional obnoxiousness of guys like these folks.  After talking to them the "Open Source good.  Anything else bad." smugness of their attitude it definitely made me less likely to try Linux again.  Or at least admit to it in polite company ;-)

Thanksgiving - an American holidays spent in Ireland.

For the second time in the past few years I've spent Thanksgiving in Ireland.  It's very easy when you're in France or Italy to remember you're in a different country because the language is different - being in another country during a nation-specific holiday like Thanksgiving is a good way to remember how different places can be.  Another difference was the lack of coverage of what's going on in Iraq, whereas the news every day in Seattle talks of the latest casulties and updates.  That one was a little more subtle and it took several days before I realized what seemed different about their news...

Photos are slowly but surely being uploaded here.