Mrs O'Leary's Cow strikes again!

So it's 3:45am on a Monday morning in Chicago and the fire alarm in the hotel goes off.

Grab some clothes, find my passport and wallet, race down the stairs. I help an elderly couple with the husband using a walking frame down the stairs. I can smell smoke, but there are a dozen people around me smoking already.

Fire brigade turn up, a dozen firemen race inside.

Darn, I think to myself. Left my Motorola badge and my camera inside. Besides the passport and wallet, these are the things I should've taken with me.

45 minutes later and the fire brigade decide it's a false alarm. People were smoking in their rooms, someone smelt smoke, and pulled the fire handle in the hallway.

Had a look at the fire engine. They're running the PMDC Client v5.5. My first look at the predecessor to what we're developing actually running in the field. Works well enough to get the fire brigade here. The night mode looks pretty ugly.

Back to the room and email. 4:41am is too late to go back to bed. It will be a long day.

travel/chicago | 19 Jul 2004 | #

Mmmmm

I discovered something yummy in Chicago...

Krispy Kreme doughnuts...

travel/chicago | 17 Jul 2004 | #

Chicago Day 1 - July 10

Up early at 4am for a 6am flight to Sydney. All goes smoothly until we get ther when I find out the flight has been delayed due to mechanical failure. Ok, not problems, better to be safe. But now there are two SYD->LAX flights within 10 minutes of each other. Where this becomes a problem is bording. The two gates used are adjacent, and the ground staff don't allow extra time for security clearing 600 instead of 300 people. Both flights delayed further - mine being over 3.5t hours late :-(

Sunrise over Sydney

600 or so people going through security

Arrive at LAX and yes, I missed my connecting flight. No problems, rebooked on the next one. Only just made it after getting through security. I've learnt that a young male travelling alone is always a terrorist suspect - even if he's while skinned.

Arrive at ORD, must lusher than I expected given Chicago's reputation as the hub of the US automobile industry. Get into a cab and start driving off only to find out he'll only take cash. I leave the cab without payiong for the 100 meetres or so travelled to the disgruntled look of the driver. Tough, to expect cash is a bit rich I think.

Finally arrive at the hotel, still about 3 hours later than planned. The new cab driver was good, but needed me to do the navigating. Huh? I've never been to Chicago before - he admitted to being new to the area too.

Dinner at RAMS, watched "A Few Good Men" on TNT, finally to sleep at 2am. Cold Turkeying the body into the timezone is the only way to go.

travel/chicago | 10 Jul 2004 | #

Chicago is go!

Work confirmed I'm off to Chicago next week for 3 1/2 weeks!

travel | 01 Jul 2004 | #

Mono 1.0

Mono v1.0 is released.

tech/code/C-Sharp | 01 Jul 2004 | #

uptime gone

About to get some electrical work done at home, but this means that :

~$ uptime
 07:33:29 up 21 days, 18:27,  2 users,  load average: 0.32, 0.09, 0.03

this goes away. Uptime starts again :-(

meta | 01 Jul 2004 | #

Java 5

Java 5 J2SE aka "Tiger" is about to be released. Looking at the release notes and the Java 5 in a Nutshell article, Java's finally got generics (Ada had them in 1983 :-) not to mention inherited primitive type boxing borrowed from C#, and varargs, and as would expected, many more APIs.

The market swing (pun intended) appears to be towards C#. Will this release revive Sun's fortunes?

tech/code/Java | 01 Jul 2004 | #